SOUNDGARDEN TRIVIA
Trivia
The publisher of Kim Thayil's memoir, A Screaming Life, describes how the band was shaped by its members' backgrounds: Thayil's Indian heritage and founding bassist Hiro Yamamoto's Japanese background, it says, added something distinct to the band's identity and to its experiences in the industry as well as its music. Bassist Ben Shepherd was born in Okinawa, where his father was stationed with the US Army.
Soundgarden played Japan only once, in February 1994, a month before Superunknown came out: four shows promoted by Udo Artists at Club Citta Kawasaki on the 8th, Tokyo Kosei Nenkin Kaikan on the 10th, Osaka Mido Kaikan on the 12th and Nagoya Club Quattro on the 13th. VICE Japan reports that the crowds were modest, and the band never came back.
The band is named after a sculpture of wind-played pipes on the grounds of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration at Sand Point in Seattle; NOAA's own history of the site says the band took its name from the work. When Soundgarden returned to the stage at the Showbox in Seattle on 16 April 2010, thirteen years after they split, they were billed as Nude Dragons, an anagram of their name, and Kim Thayil, Matt Cameron and Ben Shepherd were announced under the same name for a benefit show at the Showbox on 14 December 2024.
Kim Thayil had a hand in the birth of Sub Pop: he introduced Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman, the label's eventual founders, and encouraged them to start it. Pavitt had been his classmate in a progressive high-school programme outside Chicago, along with Hiro Yamamoto, who would become Soundgarden's first bassist. In October 1987 Sub Pop released the band's Screaming Life EP.
Live on I-5, released on 22 March 2011, was recorded on the West Coast leg of the band's 1996 tour, the first time they had ever recorded their shows; engineer Adam Kasper travelled with them. They had meant to release it soon after the tour, but once they split, the tapes sat in a closet at Studio X in Seattle. The title refers to Interstate 5, which runs the length of the West Coast.
In the band's first days Chris Cornell sang from behind the drum kit. As he told it, they did not know whether a singer or a drummer would be easier to find, so they looked for both, and because a drummer turned up first, he became the singer. That drummer was Scott Sundquist, who joined in 1985, and the producer Jack Endino saw the handover happen mid-set: Cornell came out from behind the kit, introduced the new drummer, and sang the rest of the show.
Founding bassist Hiro Yamamoto left in 1989, just as the band moved to a major label. Years later he said that he had not been comfortable, at the time, with an industry in which the music is a product. He went back to university and later became head of organic chemistry at a Washington company that tests drinking water. When Soundgarden entered the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2025, Yamamoto was inducted alongside Chris Cornell, Kim Thayil, Ben Shepherd and Matt Cameron.
The title "Black Hole Sun" came from Chris Cornell mishearing something a news anchor said on television. He put the song together in his head on the drive home from Bear Creek Studio in Woodinville, kept the melodies turning over so he would not lose them, and whistled them into a dictaphone when he got home. When the demo reached the producer Michael Beinhorn, he has said, he played it fifteen times in a row.
"Spoonman" began as a fake song title: Pearl Jam's Jeff Ament had made up a handful of them for the fictional band in the film Singles, and Chris Cornell wrote real songs to go with them. The Seattle street performer Artis the Spoonman, who inspired it, plays the spoon solo on the record, and the song won Best Metal Performance at the 37th Grammy Awards.
It was Rick Rubin's idea for Johnny Cash to cover "Rusty Cage". Chris Cornell, asked to work up an arrangement for Cash, at first thought it was a stupid idea; but once Cash's recording reached the radio, messages from people who had heard it started arriving on his answering machine. Short of the Beatles covering one of his songs, Cornell said, it was the biggest fan experience he had ever had.
A line from "Outshined" gave its title to Feeling Minnesota, the 1996 film starring Keanu Reeves. In 1992, warming up for a show opening for Guns N' Roses at Madison Square Garden, Chris Cornell said he had never really written about himself in his lyrics, which was why that line had felt refreshing to write.
In the summer of 1996 the band headlined Lollapalooza alongside Metallica. It was their second time on the tour after 1992, and SPIN wrote that it made them the first group in the event's six-year history to play its main stage twice. The pairing with Metallica drew criticism at the time from those who felt it did not suit an alternative festival.
At the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ceremony on 8 November 2025, the band were inducted by Jim Carrey. When Carrey hosted Saturday Night Live in 1996 he had insisted on Soundgarden as the musical guest, and after the show he was given Chris Cornell's Fender Telecaster, which he calls his most prized possession. Each member, including Hiro Yamamoto, who left in 1989, gave a speech, and Cornell's daughter Toni and Heart's Nancy Wilson played "Fell on Black Days".