{"id":334654,"date":"2025-12-25T08:51:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-25T08:51:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/334654\/"},"modified":"2025-12-25T08:51:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-25T08:51:09","slug":"the-story-of-chris-cornell-and-temple-of-the-dog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/334654\/","title":{"rendered":"The story of Chris Cornell and Temple of the Dog"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eight months passed between the tragic death of Mother Love Bone frontman Andrew Wood and Chris Cornell, Stone Gossard, Jeff Ament and Mike McCready entering the studio to record their tribute album to the Mother Love Bone<\/a> frontman.<\/p>\n

A lot went on in that time, a stark lesson for these young musicians that even though their world had ended with the death of their friend (and for fellow Mother Love Bone members Gossard and Ament, their bandmate), it certainly kept spinning. It\u2019s for a reason that Cornell, who himself died in 2017, described Wood\u2019s passing as \u201cthe death of innocence\u201d for the burgeoning grunge scene. \u201cThe impossible suddenly was happening irrevocably in front of us,\u201d Cornell recalled in the official Pearl Jam<\/a> biography Pearl Jam Twenty, \u201cand we were all sitting there having really no tools to deal with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Cornell, who shared an apartment with Wood, barely had time to process the whole thing before he had to head out on a European tour with Soundgarden<\/a>. Gossard and Ament, meanwhile, wondered if they even wanted to start another band.<\/p>\n

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When Cornell was away with Soundgarden, though, he channelled his grief into writing two new songs in tribute to Wood. Titled Say Hello 2 Heaven and Reach Down, one a direct tribute and the other creating an imaginary dialogue between him and his late pal, their writing represented a moment of catharsis for Cornell. The problem was he wasn\u2019t sure what to do next.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt like, \u2018Why am I writing these songs and what am I going to do with them when they don\u2019t sound like Soundgarden songs at all?\u2019,\u201d he said. But, thinking about how these songs were about Wood and how the singer\u2019s death had affected his closest friends, Cornell came upon the idea that he could record them with his ex-Mother Love Bone bandmates.<\/p>\n

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\"Soundgarden\n<\/p>\n

Chris Cornell on stage with Soundgarden in 1989 (Image credit: Getty Images)<\/p>\n

By the time Cornell dropped off a cassette of the two songs at his manager Susan Silver\u2019s office to find its way Gossard and Ament, the former Mother Love Bone pair had already begun the process of throwing themselves into a new group, the band that would become Pearl Jam. Silver shared an office space with their manager Kelly Curtis, and when Ament popped in to see him, she passed on the tape.<\/p>\n

\u201cI listened to them and I was like, \u2018These are amazing\u2019,\u201d Ament told YouTuber Rick Beato. \u201cI could tell both songs were about Andy\u2019. They were both really complete demos and I remember saying, \u2018You should put those out\u2019 and he said, \u2018Well, I was hoping I could get you and Stone to play on these songs\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Ament was up for it and initially had the idea that maybe they could turn it into an EP or album by recording some of Wood\u2019s unreleased solo work to go with it. But when that idea was met disapprovingly by some of Wood\u2019s other friends and family, concerned that it might look like they were exploiting the singer\u2019s death, Ament had another idea. Why don\u2019t they write enough material to make their own album?<\/p>\n

And so what would become Temple Of The Dog\u2019s sole album was rolling, Cornell augmenting the material he\u2019d already written with a few more and Gossard and Ament adding a couple of their own \u2013 they were in the middle of a period of fruitful creativity at the time, working with their new band on the songs that would make up Pearl Jam\u2019s debut Ten.<\/p>\n

Gossard insisted that Cornell also bring Pearl Jam\u2019s guitarist Mike McCready into the fold too, whilst their prospective vocalist Eddie Vedder, fresh off the plane from Seattle, was also in and around the sessions. He would end up making a big impression on album standout Hunger Strike, duetting with Cornell on a song that would become a battle of the grunge singer heavyweights. It was his first go at singing on a proper recording.<\/p>\n

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It was a period that demanded some juggling schedule-wise at Galleria Potatohead, a practice space in Seattle, Ament revealed. \u201cWe\u2019d rehearse then take a little break and go eat,\u201d the bassist said. \u201cAnd then we\u2019d have a Pearl Jam rehearsal. Over the course of a week, we were doing both rehearsals.\u201d<\/p>\n

Titling their project Temple Of The Dog, taking the name from a line in the Mother Love Bone song Man Of Golden Words, the band played one show, at the Off Ramp club in Seattle in mid-November 1990, and then got to work on laying down the record over a number of weeks at the city\u2019s London Bridge Studios.<\/p>\n

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\"Temple\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Kevin Mazur\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

For Cornell, it went some way to helping him through the loss of his friend. \u201cWhat came out of a tragedy gave birth to something that was really impactful and hugely positive in my life, which would never have existed if we didn\u2019t have that trust and camaraderie with each other,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Temple Of The Dog would reconvene in 2016 for a series of triumphant US live shows. Cornell would leave us just a year later but here he got to bring the poignant project he\u2019d instigated to honour his friend full circle. \u201cI\u2019ve always had a really difficult time with loss,\u201d he told The Guardian at the time. \u201cI would look out the window and I thought I saw him. It would take me five minutes to update to the moment and realise, \u2018No, he\u2019s actually dead\u2019. This tour, in a sense, is the dealing. It\u2019s facing the reality.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a record that left behind some of the most emotive and epic moments of Cornell\u2019s career.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eight months passed between the tragic death of Mother Love Bone frontman Andrew Wood and Chris Cornell, Stone…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":334655,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,128,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-334654","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=334654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/334655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=334654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=334654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=334654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}