Temple Of The Dog CD

Temple Of The Dog: Chris Cornell (vocals, banjo, harmonica); Stone Gossard, Mike McCready (guitar); Jeff Ament (bass); Matt Cameron (drums, percussion).
Additional personnel: Eddie Vedder (vocals); Rick Parashar (piano, organ).
Producers: Temple Of The Dog, Rick Parashar.
Recorded at London Bridge Studios, Seattle, Washington from November to December, 1990.
Personnel: Chris Cornell (vocals, banjo, harmonica); Mike McCready, Stone Gossard (guitar); Rick Parashar (piano, organ); Matt Cameron (drums, percussion); Eddie Vedder (background vocals).
Recording information: London Bridge Studios, Seattle, WA (11/1990-12/1990).
Featuring members of Soundgarden and what would soon become Pearl Jam, Temple of the Dog's lone eponymous album might never have reached a wide audience if not for Pearl Jam's breakout success a year later. In turn, by providing the first glimpse of Chris Cornell's more straightforward, classic rock-influenced side, Temple of the Dog helped set the stage for Soundgarden's mainstream breakthrough with Superunknown. Nearly every founding member of Pearl Jam appears on Temple of the Dog (including the then-unknown Eddie Vedder), so perhaps it isn't surprising that the record sounds like a bridge between Mother Love Bone's theatrical '70s-rock updates and Pearl Jam's hard-rocking seriousness. What is surprising, though, is that Cornell is the dominant composer, writing the music on seven of the ten tracks (and lyrics on all). Keeping in mind that Soundgarden's previous album was the overblown metallic miasma of Louder Than Love, the accessibly warm, relatively clean sound of Temple of the Dog is somewhat shocking, and its mellower moments are minor revelations in terms of Cornell's songwriting abilities. It isn't just the band, either -- he displays more emotional range than ever before, and his melodies and song structures are (for the most part) pure, vintage hard rock. In fact, it's almost as though he's trying to write in the style of Mother Love Bone -- which makes sense, since Temple of the Dog was a tribute to that band's late singer Andrew Wood. Not every song here is directly connected to Wood; once several specific elegies were recorded, additional material grew quickly out of the group's natural chemistry. As a result, there's a very loose, jam-oriented feel to much of the album, and while it definitely meanders at times, the result is a more immediate emotional impact. The album's strength is its mournful, elegiac ballads, but thanks to the band's spontaneous creative energy and appropriately warm sound, it's permeated by a definite, life-affirming aura. That may seem like a paradox, but consider the adage that funerals are more for the living than the dead; Temple of the Dog shows Wood's associates working through their grief and finding the strength to move on. ~ Steve Huey
On the eve of up-and-coming Seattle rockers Mother Love Bone's full-length major label debut (1990's APPLE), singer Andrew Wood succumbed to a drug overdose. Longtime friend Chris Cornell, the singer of Soundgarden, wrote several songs in Wood's memory. These were rooted more in classic rock than his full-time band's metallic sound. Cornell recorded them with ex-members of Mother Love Bone guitarist Stone Gossard and bassist Jeff Ament, Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron, and then-unknowns Mike McCready and Eddie Vedder, in a project called Temple Of The Dog.
The project's self-titled 1991 debut fell on deaf ears. While such songs as the sullen album opener "Say Hello 2 Heaven" and the epic jamfest "Reach Down" have lyrics that deal with Wood's passing, most of the tracks deal with other topics, such as the album's high point "Hunger Strike," as well as the organic-sounding "Wooden Jesus," the hard rocker "Your Saviour," and the drowsy album closer "All Night Thing." A year after its initial release, the Seattle rock scene exploded and the massive success of the members of Temple Of The Dog prompted A&M to re-Rolling Stone (12/21/00, p.175) - 4 stars out of 5 - "...One of the 1st smash hits of the Seattle explosion....it codified, with heart and muscle, the heavy angush of the Puget sound....proof that the angst that defined Seattle rock inthe 1990s was not cheap sentiment..."
Musician (7/91) - "...offers a potent distillation of Seattle's sonic sludge, with plenty of slow-mo riffing and louder-than-life guitar. It backs that sound with songs so potent and emotional that they tower over most of today's hard rock. Well worth hearing..."
Kerrang (Magazine) (p.51) - "[I]n 'Hunger Strike', a duet featuring then-unknown vocalist Eddie Vedder, they produced one of the most touching and emotional songs of the '90s."