Brian McCollum | Detroit Free Press

Four months after Chris Cornell’s death in a Detroit hotel room, Kim Thayil was still emotionally wrestling with the loss of his longtime friend and Soundgarden singer, uncertain of his next career move.

Then, like a sign from somewhere, came the fortuitous phone call: Wayne Kramer was assembling a band for a 2018 tour to mark the anniversary of the MC5’s debut album, “Kick Out the Jams.” The run would climax with a late-October stand in Detroit — 50 years after the MC5’s iconic record was captured live in front of hometown fans.

Would Thayil be interested in joining the MC50 on guitar?

Thayil is emotional as he remembers the call in September 2017. Here, amid his grief, was a chance to go on the road playing the music of his favorite band since high school. Had it been anyone else calling, Thayil says, he would have declined.

“There was something unbelievable about this specific offer — the nature of the tour, the dates,” he says. “Everything about it was just compelling.”

This week, Thayil will be with Kramer and the MC50 as they arrive in Detroit for three “Kick Out the Jam” shows: Friday at Saint Andrew’s Hall, Saturday at the Fillmore Detroit, and Tuesday at Third Man Records, where the performance will be recorded to acetate in Jack White’s back-of-house vinyl operation.

It’s Thayil's first visit to Detroit since that unexpectedly grim night in Detroit — May 18, 2017 — when Cornell was found dead in his MGM Grand hotel room after Soundgarden’s Fox Theatre show. His death was ultimately ruled suicide by hanging.

The return to Detroit comes with "complicated and dark" emotions, Thayil says.

“There certainly seems like there’s an offering of closure. I doubt that it will happen. But it seems available," he says. "There’s also an element of irony to be asked by Wayne to play on a tour with my favorite band, which is from Detroit, that would culminate in a Detroit show. The poetic irony and the opportunity for closure were not lost on me.”

Thayil and other Soundgarden members were already en route to Columbus for the band's next date when they got word that Cornell had died back in his Detroit hotel room.

AP

There had been no signs anything was particularly amiss that night, he says — "nothing that would have allowed us to anticipate what would happen."

"There were a few minor difficulties (early) in the show that I felt adjusted themselves within a few songs," Thayil says of Cornell's Fox performance. "And then the rest of the show went pretty well."

Thayil's tone sharpens with anger when he references "the cockamamie ideas floating around out there" — conspiracy theories that hit the web after Cornell's death, such as speculation the singer was murdered because he was about to expose a pedophile ring.

"The fact of the matter is there was nothing that would suggest this outcome," he says.

Reiterating what he's said in recent weeks, Thayil says Soundgarden is finished as a performing and recording band, although he'll continue to tend to the band's catalog and merchandise interests. Already he's digging through unreleased material, including live recordings and studio work going back to the Seattle band's Sub Pop days, in anticipation of special releases.

Also in the works is a deluxe reissue of 1989's "Louder than Love," which will demo material and live cuts with then-bassist Jason Everman.

For now, the focus is on MC50 and "Kick Out the Jams," an album the teenage Thayil once desperately sought out after seeing it regularly referenced within the rock culture he was immersed in during the mid-'70s.

"I expected to like it because of the descriptions from those bands, and the music I already liked — the hard rock, classic rock, heavy metal type of stuff," says Thayil, who at last tracked down the LP at a used record store near his suburban Chicago home.

"The whole thing was just perfect, timing-wise: my age when I was learning to play guitar, when FM radio started taking off, when the used record market was taking off, and when punk rock started happening. It all just fell in line."

Just as Thayil was turned on to the MC5 and Stooges by the bands of his day, so it was for young rock fans in the early '90s who heard the names frequently invoked by Soundgarden and their Seattle contemporaries. Having lingered on the fringes of rock history for two decades, the old Detroit bands had a new, valued spot on the map.

With Soundgarden, "we were always somewhere between Rush and 'Kick Out the Jams,' " Thayil says. "There was a progressive tightness required because of our time signatures and odd tunings, but there was a loudness and wildness that was brought by Ben (Shepherd) and I, and before that Hiro (Yamamoto) and I."

Thayil has known Kramer since a serendipitous meeting in Royal Oak in the early '90s: Both Soundgarden and surviving members of the MC5 had been tapped to make handprint impressions for the Rock Walk of Fame outside the now-defunct Metro Music Cafe.

The two guitarists exchanged numbers and stayed in touch, occasionally linking up onstage. That included a Seattle stop on 2009's Justice Tour, when Thayil, Shepherd and Matt Cameron joined Kramer and Tom Morello for "Kick Out the Jams" and other tunes — helping prompt Soundgarden to reunite after 13 years.

In MC50, Thayil is essentially handling the role of the late Fred (Sonic) Smith, playing alongside Kramer, singer Marcus Durant (Zen Guerilla), bassist Billy Gould (Faith No More) and drummer Brendan Canty (Fugazi). Onstage, they're playing "Kick Out the Jams" in its entirety and filling out the set with other MC5 classics.

Thayil says the guitar interplay with Kramer is crucial, and the MC5 veteran helped break down the reality of Fred Smith's parts in a way that's no so apparent on the records.

"It was all news to me, because I learned these songs from playing the vinyl in the '70s," Thayil says. "That's how I heard them. What I come to learn is some of the things I was hearing are amalgams of what Fred and Wayne were playing together. He showed me some of Fred's parts and it started to make sense."

Still, MC50 is no mere cover band: Kramer has given the players freedom to inject their own musical personalities, eliciting the "chaotic and wild elements of abandon" found on the album, Thayil says.

"We had to learn the songs and play them somewhat tight, but we're not going to just imitate them," Thayil says. "We have to be teetering on the edge at the same time."

Contact Detroit Free Press music writer Brian McCollum: 313-223-4450 or bmccollum@freepress.com.

MC50

8 p.m. Fri.

Saint Andrew’s Hall, 431 E. Congress, Detroit

313-961-6358

$35

7:30 p.m. Sat.

The Fillmore Detroit, 2115 Woodward, Detroit

313-961-5450

$24 and up

7:30 p.m. Tue.

Third Man Records, 441 W. Canfield, Detroit