Music

Soundgarden claim every Seattle band but Pearl Jam ripped them off

by Tyler Munro

We already know that Seattle’s scene became legendary in the early 1990s, but more than 20 years later its innovators have started laying claim to the sound. Soundgarden were one of the first bands to really break, and the leaders of the pack when it came to major label backing, and nobody knows that more than guitarist Kim Thayil, who’s come out and claimed that short of Pearl Jam, everybody else in their scene was ripping them off.

That’s rich, of course, coming from a band whose guitar-work and sonic weight was itself heavily adapted from bands like Black Sabbath and Deep Purple, and more ironic still when weighing the influence of fellow Northwesterners the Melvins, but Thayil does have his reasons.

He told Soundwave that Pearl Jam were the only Seattle band that didn’t emulate Soundgarden’s downtuned guitar tones.

“They’re the only ones that didn’t really take or borrow from us,” he said. “They had their own vision about what they were doing.”

And to be fair, Soundgarden’s influence on Nirvana in particular has been well documented. While Kurt Cobain once called Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains “corporate puppets” trying to get on the “alternative bandwagon,” he in that same interview spoke with admiration for Soundgarden’s early work in particular, and their friendship was instrumental in getting Nirvana onto Subpop.

Thayil was, in particular, referring to the band’s love of Drop D.

“I think Drop-D was very friendly and convenient for Nirvana and Alice In Chains and some other bands around the country,” he explained. “When we started doing weird tunings like C-G-C-G-G-E, I think they decided that wasn’t for them.”

So, what do you think, is Thayil being fair? [h/t AltNation]