The grunge veterans were among the 2023 nominees announced on Wednesday morning.
Soundgarden‘s Kim Thayil was caught unawares when he learned about the band’s second Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nomination on Tuesday (Jan. 31
It was not no my radar,” Thayil, who co-founded the group during 1984 in Seattle, tells Billboard. “I hadn’t been thinking about it, so it’s a very pleasant surprise. Very cool.”
- The nod comes three years after Soundgarden’s first nomination, in 2020, and Thayil says that taught him — along with surviving bandmates drummer Matt Cameron and bassist Ben Shepherd — about the regard and relevance the band enjoys nearly four years after it ended in the wake of frontman Chris Cornell‘s suicide following a concert in Detroit.
What was cool about (2020) was just the recognition of the acknowledgement,” Thayil explains. “If you’re involved with your bandmates and fellow musicians in your peer group, you can sometimes get isolated from the general historical context of how the band has evolved and became part of the broader community of music and musicians. So I think that acknowledgement and that recognition was a reminder that, hey, they work that you did with your partners was part of a continuity and a history of music. That’s kind of cool.”
Thayil adds that it was Cornell who helped Soundgarden get some appreciation of the Rock Hall after he inducted Seattle rock precursors Heart in 2013. “He lived the experience and said the enthusiasm of the fans was eye-opening for him, and understanding how important that was… And Matt seconded it. And I think that’s always been a context in which Soundgarden would understand its work; we always wanted to be the kind of band for our fans that we looked up to and inspired us. We wanted to be that kind of band would make decisions with regard to that community that had supported us or that we had worked to build, and I think we did a great job of that.
