In Kim Thayil’s upcoming memoir, the guitarist sheds light on a rather “Superunknown” fact about his band Soundgarden and the genesis of Seattle’s grunge scene — it all started in the Chicago suburbs.
“While Seattle is where Soundgarden began, the true roots of the Seattle Sound and the grunge story can be traced to a suburb of Chicago — Park Forest,” writes Thayil in “A Screaming Life: Into the Superunknown with Soundgarden and Beyond,” (out June 9 from HarperCollins Publishers). “I have a lot of pride in what I consider to be my hometown.”
Across nearly 300 detailed pages, co-written with Adem Tepedelen, the book traces Thayil’s journey growing up in the south suburb as the son of immigrant Indian parents (who bought him his first guitar at Sears) to becoming one of the most iconic figures in the ’90s rock milieu. And it’s in large part due to the community established here first.
“It was a town whose culture had an emphasis on education. And that meant liberal arts, sciences, education itself. I don’t know how many teachers came out of that town that were born of teachers. And I think there was an emphasis on that,” Thayil told the Sun-Times about the fertile environment. In fact, the village’s motto, “Live. Grow. Discover.” is something he still identifies with, using it as the name of the first chapter in the book. “Park Forest Rock City” is another chapter.
Thayil’s alma mater Rich East High School was an incubator for what was to come. It’s where he met fellow Park Forest native, Hiro Yamamoto, Soundgarden’s original bassist. Both were enrolled in a progressive curriculum called The Active Learning Process School (ALPS) alongside more of Seattle’s future luminaries. There was also Stuart Hallerman, behind Pacific Northwest’s Avast! recording studio (where Soundgarden, Bikini Kill and The Gits would lay down tracks) and Bruce Pavitt behind the highly influential Sub Pop Records, which gave rise to grunge after issuing early releases from Soundgarden, Nirvana and Mudhoney.
When Pavitt and Hallerman moved to Seattle after high school, Yamamoto and Thayil followed in 1981. Soon after, they met Chris Cornell and set on a journey that led Soundgarden to becoming one of the most influential rock groups of the era behind uber hits like “Black Hole Sun” and “Spoonman.” In 2019, Thayil was honored by the town of Park Forest with a memorial plaque in the downtown district’s Artist Walk, commemorating many of his achievements.
As Thayil recalled, the move to Seattle felt necessary after hitting several roadblocks to his music ambitions in Chicago. “There are two things that were missing in Chicago pop culture in the late ’70s and early ’80s,” he shared with the Sun-Times. “The first was cable TV because of the long litigation about rights and access that went on for years in the city. And the other thing was an independent music scene, because you had to be in the union.” Thayil is referencing a time in the ’70s and ’80s when the Chicago Federation of Musicians had a lot of sway when it came to who got consistent gigs. “It didn’t seem accessible for a young kid with the band that’s playing out of the garage,” Thayil added.
Still, he fondly remembers the scene that was bubbling up locally in the underground, sharing in the book how his early band Identity Crisis worked with Evanston imprint Cirkle Records, alongside North Shore teen punk act Epicycle.
“Bruce Pavitt really liked them,” Thayil said. “And I remember Naked Raygun were just starting out because I liked their name,” he added, throwing out some other bygones of the era like art school band Immune System (formed at the School of the Art Institute) and early punk band Tutu & the Pirates.
“Around the time we left, I remember starting to hear about The Effigies and Articles of Faith and Rights of the Accused and the kind of hardcore punk scene that was growing.”
In “A Screaming Life,” Thayil fills the pages with other homegrown memories like loving Chicago sports teams (and an awkward encounter with Mike Ditka), meeting the Obamas and even starting an unintended fight with Billy Corgan over astrology.
One passage that stands out, though, is when Thayil returned home in 2010 as a newly reunited Soundgarden headlined Lollapalooza and the guitarist realized how much of an impact the band had made. “It turned out to be such a huge gig with so many people there! It surprised the f— out of me,” he writes in the book. “It was a hot summer night and it reminded me of the hot summer nights of Chicago growing up. I had so many feelings of nostalgia being in the hometown I grew up in. … I feel like in some way I’d underestimated the band and myself until I saw the reaction when we got back together again.”
He could recapture that feeling soon; Thayil confirms in “A Screaming Life” that he and bandmates Matt Cameron and Ben Shepherd are working on Soundgarden’s final album, utilizing vocal parts that Cornell recorded before he passed in 2017.
“This is the final chapter of our legacy, something that’s important to all of us,” Thayil writes in the book, always remembering how it started here first.