The story of Soundgarden

A garden that sings in the wind

The story starts in Seattle in 1984, with three young men who had been circling each other for a while. Bassist Hiro Yamamoto and guitarist Kim Thayil had grown up together in Park Forest, a suburb of Chicago, before moving west. Chris Cornell was a Seattle native who had dropped out of school and was working in restaurant kitchens. Cornell and Yamamoto had been jamming together, and after trying out several guitarists they settled on Thayil. At first Cornell sang from behind the drum kit. For a name, they borrowed from a strange piece of public art, a sculpture of tall metal pipes on government land next to Magnuson Park, called A Sound Garden, which hums and moans when the wind blows through it.[1] [2] [3]

Kim Thayil's parents were Protestant Malayalis from Kerala in India. His mother had studied piano seriously and taught music, and his father was a chemical engineer whose job took the family to Chicago. In Park Forest, Kim and Hiro went to the same high school program as a slightly older kid named Bruce Pavitt, who would later found Sub Pop. Thayil played in a teenage punk band called Bozo and the Pinheads, and then the three friends drifted west together. In Seattle, Thayil earned a philosophy degree at the University of Washington and spun records at the student radio station KCMU, a station that would matter a great deal to what happened next.[1] [2] [3]

In 1985 the band brought in drummer Scott Sundquist so Cornell could step out front and concentrate on singing. With that line up they made their first recordings, three songs on a 1986 compilation from C Z Records called Deep Six. It also featured the Melvins, Green River, Malfunkshun, Skin Yard and the U-Men, and it is often described as the first document of the sound that would be called grunge. Soundgarden supplied the most abrasive tracks on the record. That same year Sundquist, who by then had a wife and a young child, decided to leave the band so he could spend more time with his family.[1] [2] [3]

His replacement was Matt Cameron, a drummer from San Diego who had moved to Seattle in 1983 and worked at a copy shop while playing in local bands like Bam Bam and Skin Yard. By September 1986 he was considered the best drummer in town, and Cornell later said Cameron seemed confident and well adjusted from the moment they met. Cameron's taste leaned toward jazz and progressive rock, which suited a band that liked to wander into odd rhythms. Around the same time, Cornell's girlfriend Susan Silver, a sharp young promoter and manager, started managing Soundgarden. The line up of Cornell, Thayil, Yamamoto and Cameron was now in place.[1] [2] [3]

Sub Pop, SST and the first buzz

One night a Soundgarden show knocked out a KCMU disc jockey named Jonathan Poneman, who later said he had seen everything rock music should be. Poneman offered to pay for a record, and Thayil suggested he team up with his old Park Forest acquaintance Bruce Pavitt, who was running a small label called Sub Pop. Poneman's money helped turn Sub Pop into a real record company. In 1987 the label released Soundgarden's first single, Hunted Down, followed that October by the Screaming Life EP, produced by Jack Endino. In 1988 came a second EP, Fopp. Pavitt later said that when he heard Hunted Down, the flawless voice set against the wild guitar told him something special was happening.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Soundgarden quickly became the first band of that Seattle scene to make noise outside the city. Variety later recalled a packed, sweaty show at CBGB in New York during the New Music Seminar in July 1988. Onstage Cornell was a force, shirtless, stomping in army boots, hurling himself into the crowd. A friend from the scene remembered him buying cheap thrift store T shirts just so he could tear them off during shows, and joking about it. Offstage, people who knew him described him as kind, funny and oddly private. His bandmates said that even after years together they did not feel they really knew him.[1] [2]

Major labels were already circling, but in 1988 Soundgarden chose the independent SST Records, home of Black Flag, for its first full album. Ultramega OK came out on Halloween 1988. It mixed psychedelic rock, seventies hard rock and hardcore punk, but Cornell was never happy with it. SST had suggested producer Drew Canulette, and Cornell said the band made a huge mistake leaving the people they knew, because the producer did not understand what was going on in Seattle. The title itself was a joke about the finished product, meaning roughly not bad at all. Even so, the album earned the band its first Grammy nomination, for Best Metal Performance.[1] [2]

In 1988 Soundgarden also signed with A and M Records, becoming the first band from the grunge scene to join a major label. The move cost them. Thayil said their early fans came from the punk crowd, and many walked away, believing the band had sold out by signing to a big company and later touring with Guns N' Roses. Their first music video, for the song Flower, got regular play on MTV's late night alternative show 120 Minutes, and in the spring of 1989 they toured America and then Europe, their first trip overseas. The underground band was starting to look like something bigger.[1] [2]

Going major and losing a friend

Soundgarden recorded its first major label album with producer Terry Date at London Bridge Studios in Seattle over the winter of 1988 and 1989. Louder Than Love came out on the fifth of September 1989. It was slower and heavier, built on huge detuned riffs, and it leaned toward metal. Some songs ran in strange time signatures, and one track was a deliberate parody of glam metal's sexual boasting. Its explicit language earned the album a parental advisory sticker, and stores balked at stocking it. Still, Louder Than Love became the first grunge album ever to reach the Billboard 200, peaking at number 108, helped by videos on MTV's Headbangers Ball.[1] [2] [3]

Inside the band, things were fraying. Cornell said Hiro Yamamoto had more or less removed himself from the process, so Cornell ended up writing much of the album. Frustrated that he was contributing so little, Yamamoto left a month before the tour to go back to college. He later finished a master's degree in physical chemistry at Western Washington University. After a brief try with Jim Tillman of the U-Men, Soundgarden hired Jason Everman, who had just been let go as Nirvana's second guitarist. They toured North America from December 1989 to March 1990, opening for the Canadian metal band Voivod, with Faith No More also on the bill.[1] [2] [3] [4]

On the day Cornell got home from that tour, the nineteenth of March 1990, his friend and former roommate Andrew Wood died. Wood, the flamboyant singer of Mother Love Bone, had been found in a coma three days earlier after a heroin overdose, and was taken off life support. He was twenty four, and his band's debut album was only weeks from release. Cornell was devastated. A few days later he left for Europe with Soundgarden, and on the road he wrote two songs for Wood, Reach Down and Say Hello 2 Heaven. He said later that for years afterward he kept thinking he saw Andy through car windows.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Back in Seattle, Cornell took the songs to Wood's old bandmates Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament, who were trying to work out what to do next. With Matt Cameron on drums and Gossard's childhood friend Mike McCready on lead guitar, they became Temple of the Dog, named after a line in a Mother Love Bone song. A young singer from San Diego named Eddie Vedder, in town to audition for Gossard and Ament's new band, dropped by a rehearsal and ended up singing on several songs, including the duet Hunger Strike. It was the first time Vedder had been recorded on a real record. The album came out in April 1991.[1] [2] [3]

Ben Shepherd and Badmotorfinger

Jason Everman did not last long, and he was out after the promotional tour for Louder Than Love in 1990. Thayil said he just did not work out, and that the band needed a kindred spirit, not merely a better player. The man they turned to was Ben Shepherd, born on a military base in Okinawa and raised in Washington, who had been a Soundgarden fan since the early days. He had auditioned once before, as a guitarist who did not know the songs, and lost out to Everman. This time he got the job. The band said his musical knowledge and writing skills redefined the group, and he introduced some of the unusual tunings that became part of their signature sound.[1] [2] [3]

With Terry Date producing again, the new line up recorded Badmotorfinger in early 1991, and A and M released it on the eighth of October. It was sharper, stranger and smarter than anything they had done, full of odd meters and alternate tunings. Thayil jokingly called it the heavy metal White Album. The title was his too, a play on the Montrose song Bad Motor Scooter. The timing was tricky. Nirvana's Nevermind had come out just two weeks earlier and swallowed the headlines. But the spotlight on Seattle helped, and Badmotorfinger climbed to number 39 on the Billboard 200 and eventually went double platinum.[1] [2]

The first single, Jesus Christ Pose, started a storm. The song came from a rehearsal jam, and Cornell wrote the words about celebrities who use the image of the crucifixion to present themselves as martyrs, a pose he said had become fashionable among rock singers. The video, full of crosses and a crucified woman, was pulled from MTV's playlist, and many listeners took the song as anti Christian. The band received death threats while touring Britain. The next singles, Outshined and Rusty Cage, did better on radio and MTV. Outshined, Cornell said, was about swinging from total self belief to feeling worthless in a moment.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Then came the big stages. Guns N' Roses picked Soundgarden to open on the Use Your Illusion tour, and they also supported Skid Row. Cornell admitted it was no fun playing for thirty five minutes to forty thousand people who did not know their songs, but he later said Skid Row's audience went out and bought their records. In the summer of 1992 they played Lollapalooza with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Pearl Jam and Ministry. They also appeared in Cameron Crowe's Seattle film Singles. Crowe had wanted Cornell for the role that went to Matt Dillon, but the band's schedule made it impossible.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Superunknown

After two albums with Terry Date, the band wanted a change. They chose Michael Beinhorn, a producer who did not impose a trademark sound, and recorded from July to September 1993 at Bad Animals Studio in Seattle, where Adam Kasper was the house engineer. Beinhorn was obsessive about sound, and Cornell complained that by the time the tones were right, everyone was sick of playing the song. Each member wrote on his own and brought demos in, and the band gave one another more freedom than before. The album ran to fifteen songs and about seventy minutes, partly, Cornell said, because nobody wanted to argue about what to cut.[1] [2] [3]

The song that changed everything came to Cornell in his head while driving home from a studio in Woodinville. He misheard something a television news anchor said and caught the phrase black hole sun. He thought it would make an amazing title, worked out the melody and arrangement on the drive, and whistled it into a tape recorder when he got home. He said he wrote it in about fifteen minutes, expecting the band to dislike it. Beinhorn had him listen to Frank Sinatra before recording the vocal. Cornell always insisted the lyric was a surreal dreamscape with no real message, and that people wrongly heard a sad song as cheerful.[1] [2]

Superunknown was released on the eighth of March 1994 and entered the Billboard 200 at number one, selling three hundred and ten thousand copies in its first week. Less than a month later Kurt Cobain died, and the album's themes of depression, isolation and death took on a heavier weight. Cornell had been reading Sylvia Plath. The first single, Spoonman, featured a real Seattle street performer, Artis the Spoonman, playing spoons in the bridge. Black Hole Sun, with its unsettling video of grinning suburbanites swallowed by the sky, spent seven weeks at the top of the rock chart and became the band's signature song.[1] [2] [3]

The rewards piled up. At the 1995 Grammys, Black Hole Sun won Best Hard Rock Performance and Spoonman won Best Metal Performance, and the album was nominated for Best Rock Album. The Black Hole Sun video won an MTV Video Music Award. Superunknown was eventually certified six times platinum in the United States, and it remains their most successful record. Critics were stunned by its range. Thayil joked that deep inside the band's soul there was a little Ringo Starr wanting to get out. The music moved through Indian and Middle Eastern flavours, psychedelia and brutal riffs, often in time signatures most bands would avoid.[1] [2] [3]

The tour was relentless. It began in early 1994 in Australia, New Zealand and Japan, places they had never played, then moved through Europe and America with Tad and Eleven opening. By late 1994 doctors found that Cornell had badly strained his vocal cords, and the band cancelled shows to avoid permanent damage. Cornell said they had been playing five or six nights a week and nobody should pay to watch a singer croak for two hours. The missed dates were made up in 1995. A year after the album's release, Soundgarden had gone from underground heroes to one of the biggest rock bands in the world.[1] [2]

Down on the Upside and the fall

For the next album the band decided to produce themselves, with Adam Kasper helping, recording between November 1995 and February 1996, mostly at Stone Gossard's Studio Litho. Cornell felt a fifth voice in the room was too many cooks. The songwriting was less shared than before, with members bringing in songs that were nearly finished, and much of the material came from Cornell and Ben Shepherd. Tensions grew. Thayil and Cornell were reported to have clashed over Cornell's wish to move away from the heavy riffs that defined the band. Thayil ended up with just one song of his own on the record, Never the Machine Forever.[1] [2] [3]

Down on the Upside came out on the twenty first of May 1996. It was looser, rawer and less dark, with mandolin and acoustic guitars alongside the distortion. It entered the Billboard 200 at number two, behind the Fugees. Pretty Noose, which Cornell described as an attractively packaged bad idea, earned a Grammy nomination. Burden in My Hand spent five weeks at number one on the rock chart, and Blow Up the Outside World spent four. Reviews were mostly good, though some critics felt it was too long. It sold well, but nowhere near Superunknown, and the band that made it was running out of patience with itself.[1] [2] [3] [4]

That summer they joined Lollapalooza, largely because Metallica, the headliner, insisted on having them. Thayil said the band only agreed once it became a Metallica tour. Band members reportedly flew separately and met at the shows. A long world tour followed, with Moby opening, and the mood soured further. Cornell said touring became tedious when every night felt like acting, and he snapped at critics who complained the band did not jump around enough. Shows in December 1996 were postponed because of his throat. By early 1997, few of the people around them were surprised by what came next.[1] [2]

The last show was in Honolulu on the ninth of February 1997. When Ben Shepherd's equipment kept failing, he threw his bass into the air in frustration and walked off, and a furious row with Thayil backstage nearly came to blows. The band left the stage, and the show ended with an encore that did not include the full band. Two months later, on the ninth of April 1997, Soundgarden announced it was breaking up. Thayil said everyone's attitude over the previous half year had made the dissatisfaction obvious. Cameron put it more bluntly, saying the band had been eaten up by the business. A greatest hits set, A Sides, followed in November.[1] [2] [3]

Thirteen years apart

For Cornell, the breakup came alongside the collapse of his marriage to Susan Silver, and he fell into a serious depression. He had struggled with depression and drugs since his early teens, and now he turned to oxycodone and other substances. He later said he barely ate a full meal each day and had to change almost everything about his life to get out. He still made music. His first solo album, Euphoria Morning, came out in September 1999, made with Alain Johannes and Natasha Shneider of the band Eleven. It included a tribute to his late friend Jeff Buckley. It sold modestly, but the single Can't Change Me earned a Grammy nomination.[1] [2]

In 2001 producer Rick Rubin suggested Cornell to the three musicians left behind when Zack de la Rocha quit Rage Against the Machine. Tom Morello said that when Cornell first sang with them it sounded transcendent. As Audioslave they released three albums, sold millions and in 2005 became the first American rock band to play an open air concert in Cuba. During the first album Cornell went to rehab for two months and separated from his wife, and he later stayed sober. In 2004 he married Vicky Karayiannis, a publicist based in Paris. In 2006 he wrote and sang the James Bond theme You Know My Name. He left Audioslave in early 2007.[1] [2] [3]

Matt Cameron landed on his feet. In 1998 Pearl Jam's drummer Jack Irons left, and Cameron got a call asking what he was doing that summer. He learned more than eighty songs in about two weeks for the Yield tour and was soon asked to join for good. He would stay with Pearl Jam for twenty seven years. Ben Shepherd had a much harder time. He later said that after the split his fiancee left, he broke three ribs, got hooked on painkillers and drank heavily, and he overdosed on morphine and lay in his house for days without anyone knowing. Then in 2008 all of his instruments were stolen from the band's storage warehouse.[1] [2] [3]

Kim Thayil mostly stepped back from the spotlight, playing sessions with friends. In 1999 he played his first show since the split with Jello Biafra and Krist Novoselic as the No WTO Combo during the protests in Seattle. Over time the band's legacy began to bother him. A and M had been bought and dismantled, and you could not find a Soundgarden T shirt anywhere, which he said drove him crazy. In March 2009 Thayil, Shepherd and Cameron played three Soundgarden songs at the Crocodile in Seattle with Tad Doyle singing. Cornell later said that moment sparked the thought that maybe all four of them could do it again.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Knights of the Soundtable ride again

On the first of January 2010, Cornell posted a message on Twitter announcing that the twelve year break was over and that the knights of the Soundtable would ride again. It linked to a site where fans could sign up for news. The reunion had grown partly out of practical business, a 2008 meeting about the band's shared finances where they realised Soundgarden had no website and no real presence online. On the sixteenth of April 2010 they played their first show in thirteen years at the Showbox in Seattle, billed under the anagram Nudedragons. In August they headlined Lollapalooza in Chicago.[1] [2] [3]

The band eased back in. A compilation called Telephantasm, which Thayil said meant a ghost from afar, was bundled with the video game Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock and went platinum on its first day in stores. It included Black Rain, a song mostly recorded during the Badmotorfinger sessions and finally finished. In November 2010 they made their first television appearance in thirteen years, on Conan O'Brien's new show. In 2012 they recorded Live to Rise for the film The Avengers, their first completely new song since reforming. Cornell's sobriety changed the atmosphere too. He noticed that there were simply no bottles of Jack Daniel's around anymore.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Recording a new album began in 2011 with Adam Kasper at Studio X in Seattle, fitted around Cornell's solo acoustic tours. Their old A and M contract was finished, so they made the record independently and only then found a label. King Animal came out on the thirteenth of November 2012, their first studio album in sixteen years. It debuted at number five in America. Cornell said the title reflected how the four of them had always felt like them against the world, and had survived. Dave Grohl directed the video for By Crooked Steps. Reviews were mostly warm, with several critics saying it picked up right where Down on the Upside left off.[1] [2]

The reunion settled into a rhythm, scheduled around Cameron's commitments to Pearl Jam. When he sat out the 2014 tour to promote Pearl Jam's album Lightning Bolt, Matt Chamberlain filled in on drums. In 2014 they released Echo of Miles, a three disc box of rarities, including a new recording of an old pre Cameron song called Storm, produced by Jack Endino. By 2015 the band was writing again, and in 2016 Shepherd and Cameron said they had six solid songs for a new album. In the spring of 2017 they were back on the road across America, with Taylor Momsen's band the Pretty Reckless as their opening act.[1] [2] [3]

Detroit, May 2017

On the night of the seventeenth of May 2017, Soundgarden played the Fox Theatre in Detroit. Before the show Cornell had posted that he was finally back in Rock City. Afterward he went to his room at the MGM Grand hotel. His wife Vicky spoke to him by phone and became alarmed by how he sounded, and asked his bodyguard to check on him. The bodyguard had to kick in the door and found Cornell unresponsive in the bathroom. Medics could not revive him, and he was pronounced dead in the early hours of the eighteenth of May. He was fifty two. The Wayne County medical examiner ruled that he had died by suicide by hanging.[1] [2] [3]

Cornell's family could not accept that he had meant to die. Vicky said he had sounded different and was slurring his words, and that he told her he may have taken an extra Ativan, an anti anxiety drug. The toxicology report found several prescription drugs, including lorazepam, which is Ativan, but the medical examiner concluded that the drugs did not contribute to the cause of death. Vicky said that after years of sobriety, a terrible moment of impaired judgment had taken him. In 2018 she and the children sued the doctor who had prescribed the drug, and the case was settled confidentially in 2021.[1] [2] [3]

His funeral took place on the twenty sixth of May at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles. Thayil, Cameron and Shepherd were there, along with former members Hiro Yamamoto and Scott Sundquist, Tom Morello, and members of Pearl Jam, Metallica and many others. Chester Bennington of Linkin Park, a close friend and godfather to Cornell's son, sang Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. Cornell's ashes were placed beside a memorial to his friend Johnny Ramone. On the evening of the eighteenth, Seattle's Space Needle went dark for an hour in his honour. Soundgarden cancelled the rest of the tour, including festival dates later that month.[1] [2] [3]

The grief spread in painful ways. Two months later, on the twentieth of July 2017, the day Cornell would have turned fifty three, Chester Bennington also took his own life. His bandmates said he had taken Cornell's death very hard. Tributes came from everywhere, from Elton John and Jimmy Page to Ann Wilson singing Black Hole Sun on late night television. Matt Cameron simply wrote that his dark knight was gone. Eddie Vedder said Cornell had been like an older brother to him. Years later, in his memoir, Thayil wrote that he felt he had let Chris down by not reading something in his eyes or his voice.[1] [2] [3]

Lawsuits, the Hall of Fame and a final album

In October 2018 a bronze statue of Cornell was unveiled at Seattle Center, and that same month Thayil told the Seattle Times that Soundgarden was finished. There had been four of them, he said, and now there were three, so apart from looking after the catalogue there was little left to pursue. In January 2019 Vicky Cornell organised a huge tribute concert, I Am the Highway, at the Forum near Los Angeles. The surviving members played their first show since his death, with Taylor Momsen, Brandi Carlile, Taylor Hawkins and Marcus Durant taking turns at the microphone, and Metallica and the Foo Fighters also performing.[1] [2] [3]

Then came an ugly legal fight. In December 2019 Vicky Cornell sued Thayil, Cameron and Shepherd, accusing them of withholding royalties to pressure her into handing over seven songs Chris had recorded at his studio in Florida in 2017. She said the recordings were his alone. The band said they were Soundgarden songs, worked on together since 2015, and pointed to Cornell's own interviews. The dispute widened, over the value of her share of the band and over control of Soundgarden's social media accounts, and the band briefly started new accounts under the name Nude Dragons. In 2020 the song rights to Cornell's catalogue were sold to Hipgnosis.[1] [2] [3]

In April 2023 the two sides announced an amicable settlement, opening the way for the final recordings to be finished. Cornell is credited as a writer on all seven songs. In December 2024 the surviving three played a benefit for Seattle Children's Hospital as Nudedragons, with singer Shaina Shepherd. In July 2025 Matt Cameron announced he was leaving Pearl Jam after twenty seven years, saying he wanted to put his energy into his own music, and that the parting was friendly. By September 2025 he said the band was more than halfway through finishing the last songs, and that hearing Chris's voice on them was both gut wrenching and empowering.[1] [2] [3] [4]

On the eighth of November 2025, Soundgarden was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Los Angeles, on their third nomination. Jim Carrey, who had insisted on having them as musical guests when he hosted Saturday Night Live in 1996, gave the speech. Hiro Yamamoto stood with the band for the first time in thirty six years. Joined by Brandi Carlile, Taylor Momsen, Mike McCready and Jerry Cantrell, they played Rusty Cage and Black Hole Sun, and Cornell's daughter Toni sang Fell on Black Days with Nancy Wilson of Heart. Cornell's daughter Lily said she was simply happy her father got to make music with his friends.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

In June 2026 Kim Thayil published a memoir, A Screaming Life, written with Adem Tepedelen, and as of 2026 the surviving members are still working to finish that final album. Soundgarden's place in history is secure. They were the first grunge band on Sub Pop, the first on a major label, and a Grammy nominee before Nirvana broke through. Critics credit them with bringing heavy metal into alternative rock, and Kirk Hammett of Metallica has said a Soundgarden album inspired the riff of Enter Sandman. Ben Shepherd always rejected the grunge label anyway. In his view they were never grunge, just a rock band from Seattle.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The people around Soundgarden

Chris Cornell and Kim Thayil. They were the two members who were there from the first day to the last. Thayil's squalling, inventive guitar and Cornell's huge voice defined the band, with one critic calling them grunge's Tony Iommi and Robert Plant. Their partnership frayed during Down on the Upside, when Cornell wanted to move away from heavy riffs. After Cornell's death, Thayil became the keeper of the catalogue, and in his memoir he blamed himself for missing signs of his friend's pain.[1] [2] [3]

Chris Cornell and Susan Silver. They began dating in 1985, and a year later she started managing Soundgarden, which she did until 2010. She also managed Alice in Chains and Screaming Trees and became one of the most powerful figures in Seattle music. They married in 1990 and had a daughter, Lillian, in 2000. Cornell said she was the first person he loved so much he could not imagine life without her. They divorced in 2004.[1] [2]

Chris Cornell and Vicky Cornell. Cornell married Vicky Karayiannis, a Paris based publicist of Greek heritage, in 2004, and converted to Greek Orthodox Christianity to do so. They had a daughter, Toni, and a son, Christopher, and set up a foundation for homeless and vulnerable children. After his death she disputed the suicide ruling, organised the I Am the Highway tribute, and fought a long legal battle with his bandmates before settling in 2023.[1] [2] [3]

Chris Cornell and Andrew Wood. Wood, the glam loving singer of Malfunkshun and Mother Love Bone, was Cornell's roommate, and the two recorded one song together, Island of Summer. Wood died of a heroin overdose in March 1990 at twenty four. Cornell's grief produced Temple of the Dog, and Thayil believes Wood's death made Cornell braver as a songwriter. Ben Shepherd's main Soundgarden bass had once belonged to the Wood brothers.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Chris Cornell and Eddie Vedder. When Vedder arrived in Seattle from San Diego in 1990, shy and intimidated, Cornell welcomed him, took him out for beers and sang the Hunger Strike duet with him on Temple of the Dog, Vedder's first real recording. Cornell even carried Vedder onstage on his shoulders at an early Pearl Jam show. Vedder called Cornell the best singer on the planet and, after his death, said he had looked up to him like an older brother.[1] [2]

Matt Cameron and Pearl Jam. Cameron drummed on Temple of the Dog with future Pearl Jam members, and in 1998, after Soundgarden split, Pearl Jam asked him to fill in for Jack Irons. He learned more than eighty songs in two weeks and stayed twenty seven years, making seven studio albums with them and entering the Rock Hall with them in 2017. He left in July 2025, saying the parting was amicable and he wanted to focus on his own music.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Ben Shepherd and Kim Thayil. Shepherd joined in 1990 and brought new songs and odd tunings that Thayil said made the band faster and weirder. But the two clashed at the very end. At the final show in Honolulu in 1997, after Shepherd stormed offstage, a backstage argument between them nearly turned into a fistfight. Years later the pair were side by side again for the reunion, the tribute shows and the Hall of Fame.[1] [2] [3]

Kim Thayil and Hiro Yamamoto. They met at Rich East High School in Park Forest, Illinois, graduated together in 1979 and moved to Washington together. Their early songwriting, with Cornell still on drums, was the core of the first Soundgarden. Yamamoto left in 1989, frustrated, and became a chemist. In 2025 he rejoined his old friend onstage at the Hall of Fame, the first time with the band in thirty six years.[1] [2] [3]

Chris Cornell and Tom Morello. Rick Rubin brought them together in 2001, after Rage Against the Machine lost its singer. Morello said Cornell's voice sounded transcendent from the first rehearsal. As Audioslave they wrote twenty one songs in nineteen days and made three albums. Cornell quit in 2007 citing personality conflicts and musical differences, but they reunited for one show in January 2017, and Morello later wrote a poem in his memory.[1] [2]

Chris Cornell and Chester Bennington. The Linkin Park singer became a close friend and toured with Cornell on Projekt Revolution in 2008, where they sang Hunger Strike together. Bennington was godfather to Cornell's son and sang Hallelujah at his funeral. His bandmates said he took Cornell's death very hard, and on the twentieth of July 2017, which would have been Cornell's fifty third birthday, Bennington also died by suicide.[1]

Soundgarden and Jonathan Poneman. Poneman, a DJ at KCMU, saw Soundgarden around 1985 and was especially struck by Cornell. He put money into Bruce Pavitt's small label to release their first single and EP, and soon became Pavitt's full partner at Sub Pop. The band's success helped turn Sub Pop into a serious label, and Cobain reportedly signed Nirvana there partly because Soundgarden had been on it.[1] [2] [3]

Rare facts about Soundgarden

• The band took its name from a sculpture of metal pipes on government land in Seattle that makes eerie sounds when the wind blows. A Sound Garden sits on National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration property on Sand Point Way, next to Magnuson Park. Its pipes channel the wind, producing low hums and tones, which suited a band that loved strange noise.[1]
• Kim Thayil, Hiro Yamamoto and Sub Pop founder Bruce Pavitt all went to the same high school in Park Forest, Illinois. Thayil and Yamamoto graduated from the same program at Rich East High School in 1979, two years after Pavitt. All three later ended up in Seattle, where their paths crossed again at KCMU and Sub Pop.[1] [2]
• As a teenager, Matt Cameron sang a song in the cult film Attack of the Killer Tomatoes under the name Foo Cameron. In 1978 he sang Puberty Love for the film. The nickname came from his older brother, who could only pronounce Matthew as something like Ma Foo.[1]
• At thirteen, Matt Cameron played in a Kiss tribute band that was literally called Kiss, until Kiss's management threatened to sue. The word imitation was printed in small letters under the name. He even met Paul Stanley during the stunt, but a legal letter soon ended the band.[1]
• Original bassist Hiro Yamamoto became a chemist after leaving Soundgarden. He finished a master's degree in physical chemistry at Western Washington University and went on to run organic chemistry work at an analytical laboratory in Burlington, Washington.[1]
• Circle of Power, on Ultramega OK, is the only Soundgarden song sung by Hiro Yamamoto. It was also one of the rare Soundgarden songs written without any input from Chris Cornell, created by Yamamoto and Kim Thayil.[1] [2]
• Ultramega OK ends with a minute of silence, presented as a cover of a John Lennon and Yoko Ono piece. The band admired Lennon's Two Minutes Silence enough to do their own version. Cornell joked that they tried hard to shut up, but Kim could not stay quiet for a whole minute.[1]
• Two joke songs on Ultramega OK are called 665 and 667, mocking the fear of satanic messages in rock. The logic was that if 666 was so powerful, the numbers on either side of it must be too.[1]
• Before joining Soundgarden, Jason Everman was credited on Nirvana's Bleach without playing on it, then later became a Green Beret. Cobain credited him because he paid for the recording. After music, Everman served as an Army Ranger and in Special Forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, then studied philosophy at Columbia.[1]
• Jason Everman appears in the Loud Love video even though he did not play on the recording. He had just replaced Hiro Yamamoto when the video was made in 1989, so he was the face on screen and on the single's cover.[1] [2]
• Badmotorfinger's title is a joke on the Montrose song Bad Motor Scooter. Kim Thayil came up with it off the top of his head. He liked how colourful and aggressive it sounded, and how many images it conjured.[1]
• Soundgarden's cover of Black Sabbath's Into the Void swapped in words attributed to Chief Seattle, and earned a Grammy nomination. Called Into the Void, Sealth, it replaced Ozzy Osbourne's lyrics with a protest text that fit the song's meter. It was nominated for Best Metal Performance in 1993.[1]
• The original master tape of Badmotorfinger was destroyed in the 2008 fire at Universal's tape vault. The label told the band in 2015. The twenty fifth anniversary reissue had to be made from a backup digital tape copy instead.[1]
• The title Spoonman came from a list of fake song names that Pearl Jam's Jeff Ament wrote for the movie Singles. Ament made the list for the film's fictional band, Citizen Dick. Cornell took it as a challenge to write real songs to fit the titles, and an early acoustic Spoonman is heard in the film.[1] [2]
• The band barely appears in the Spoonman video, only in still photos. The star is Artis the Spoonman himself. Cornell said they wanted to keep some mystique, remembering how as a kid the only way to see a band was at a concert.[1]
• Producer Michael Beinhorn had Chris Cornell listen to Frank Sinatra before recording the vocal on Black Hole Sun. Beinhorn later said that hearing the band play the song for the first time felt like being hit by a thunderbolt.[1] [2]
• The album title Superunknown came from Cornell misreading the name of a video called Superclown. He liked the mistake so much he kept it. He said the title related to being born or dying, getting flushed into something you know nothing about.[1]
• The song Like Suicide was written after a bird flew into a window of Chris Cornell's house. He found it badly injured and ended its suffering himself, and the experience became the song, one of the few on Superunknown he described as literal.[1]
• The ending of Head Down features three drummers playing at once. Matt Cameron was joined by bassist Ben Shepherd and drum technician Gregg Keplinger, who was known for building extremely heavy stainless steel snare drums.[1] [2]
• Soundgarden appear in an episode of Bill Nye the Science Guy. Behind the scenes footage of the band tracking and mixing the song Kickstand was used in the show's episode about sound.[1]
• In the Black Hole Sun and Spoonman videos, Cornell wears a fork necklace given to him by Shannon Hoon of Blind Melon. Hoon gave him the unusual piece of jewellery, and it can be spotted in both 1994 videos, which were among the band's most played on MTV.[1] [2]
• Johnny Cash covered Rusty Cage on his 1996 album Unchained. Cash's version later turned up in a Call of Duty zombies map. Kim Thayil had also recorded with Cash, on a 1996 Willie Nelson tribute.[1] [2] [3]
• A line in Outshined contrasting a sunny California look with a gloomy Minnesota mood gave the 1996 film Feeling Minnesota its title. Cornell said it was one of the most personal things he had ever written, inspired by seeing himself in a mirror in beachwear while feeling miserable.[1] [2]
• Soundgarden helped change video games by agreeing to put their music in Road Rash in 1994. The label was hesitant, but the band loved the game and played it on the tour bus. Their yes brought in other A and M bands, and the game is credited with transforming licensed music in games.[1] [2]
• Kim Thayil bought his main guitar, a Guild S 100, for two hundred and fifty dollars when he was eighteen. He liked that he could blow or speak into its pickup to make weird feedback. After two failed attempts over the years, a signature model finally appeared in 2023.[1]
• Kim Thayil has synesthesia, seeing colours and shapes in words and letters. In his 2026 memoir he explains that he sometimes argued for arrangements based on the colours a musical passage evoked. He told Salon the word Pose looks very blue.[1]
• Ben Shepherd's main Soundgarden bass once belonged to Andrew Wood's family. He bought the heavy black Fender Jazz Bass, nicknamed Tree, from the Wood brothers for his audition. Andy Wood had played it in Malfunkshun.[1]
• In 2008 thieves took every instrument Ben Shepherd had used in Soundgarden, and he quit music to work as a carpenter's assistant. Two finished records went with the gear. He was eventually coaxed back to make a solo album and rejoin Soundgarden.[1]
• In the mid 1980s Chris Cornell also played in a satirical Western swing band called the Center for Disease Control Boys. He was a member from 1986 to 1987, at the same time Soundgarden was building its reputation in Seattle.[1]
• Chris Cornell's ashes rest beside a memorial statue of his friend Johnny Ramone at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. The Ramones guitarist's own ashes were kept by his widow, so the statue is a cenotaph.[1]
• Garbage's song Fix Me Now was originally titled Chris Cornell. Shirley Manson said she was obsessed with Cornell around the time of Black Hole Sun, and a demo has her singing his name.[1]
• Jim Carrey was given Chris Cornell's Fender Telecaster after Soundgarden played Saturday Night Live in 1996. Carrey had insisted on them as musical guests. He told the Hall of Fame crowd in 2025 that the guitar was his most prized possession.[1] [2]
• Chris Cornell was director Cameron Crowe's first choice for Matt Dillon's role in Singles. Soundgarden's busy schedule made it impossible, so Cornell ended up with a cameo and a performance of Birth Ritual instead.[1] [2]
• At the Hall of Fame, Hiro Yamamoto spoke about his parents being held in American prison camps for Japanese Americans in World War Two. He said the story affected his life greatly and urged the audience not to let history repeat. It was his first time onstage with the band in thirty six years.[1] [2]
• Telephantasm went platinum on its first day because a million copies were bundled with a Guitar Hero game. Thayil said the title meant a ghost from afar, fitting for a band that had been silent for thirteen years.[1]

Disputed stories

These stories are told often but the accounts don't agree. Here are the versions and who says what.