“We started talking about Black Sabbath, and Buzz goes, ‘You know they did this thing called drop D.’ We said, ‘What’s that?’” Kim Thayil on how Soundgarden took rock guitar into the superunknown – and the unfinished Chris Cornell tapes

Kim Thayil plays live with his Guild Polara.

When Chris Cornell took his life at age 52 in May 2017, the music world mourned the death of the Seattle music pioneer and frontman of Soundgarden, which Cornell co-formed with guitarist Kim Thayil and bassist Hiro Yamamoto in 1984.

The tragedy was all the more trenchant since Soundgarden were on tour and working on the follow-up to their 2012 comeback album, King Animal.