Temple of the Dog is one of those records that sounds different once you know when it was made.
Not when it became famous.
When it was made.
Chris Cornell started the whole thing after Andy Wood died in March 1990.
Andy had been his friend and roommate, and Chris wrote “Say Hello 2 Heaven” and “Reach Down” while he was trying to deal with losing him. At first I think the idea was just to record those songs with Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament, since they’d been in Mother Love Bone with Andy.
Then it turned into a record.
Matt Cameron came in on drums. Mike McCready played lead guitar.
And somewhere in the middle of all this, there was this new guy from San Diego hanging around.
Eddie Vedder.
That part still gets me.
Stone, Jeff and Mike were putting together another band at the same time, and Eddie had just come up to Seattle to see if that was going to work. He sang some background vocals on the Temple sessions, then Chris was having trouble figuring out how he wanted to sing “Hunger Strike.”
Eddie stepped up to the microphone.
You know the rest.
Except nobody knew the rest yet.
That’s what I love about this record.
Pearl Jam didn’t exist yet, at least not as Pearl Jam. Soundgarden hadn’t made Badmotorfinger. Nobody had heard Ten. Nobody was talking about Seattle like it was the center of the fucking universe.
It was just a bunch of friends making a record because somebody they loved was gone.
Temple of the Dog played one full show at the Off Ramp on November 13, 1990.
Two hundred and ninety-nine people.
Think about that lineup for a second.
Chris Cornell. Stone Gossard. Jeff Ament. Mike McCready. Matt Cameron.
In a room with 299 people.
I was still in Queens.
Of course I was.
Great timing again, Nate.
The album finally came out on A&M in April ’91.
And basically nobody cared.
That’s another thing people forget now.
Temple of the Dog wasn’t some giant Seattle supergroup record when it came out because there was no giant Seattle supergroup to advertise. Most of those names didn’t mean much outside this part of the country yet.
Then everything happened.
Badmotorfinger.
Ten.
Nevermind.
By the time I moved out here in ’92, A&M had figured out what they were sitting on. They pushed the record again, made a video for “Hunger Strike,” and suddenly Chris Cornell and Eddie Vedder singing together was on MTV.
The record took off.
It’s probably one of the strangest second lives an album ever got.
I bought my copy around then.
“Hunger Strike” was the obvious one, but “Say Hello 2 Heaven” is the song that really got me.
Still is.
“Reach Down” is ridiculous too. Eleven minutes and somehow I almost never skip it.
And then there’s “Times of Trouble.”
If that guitar part sounds familiar, there’s a reason.
Stone had already written the music, and Eddie used the same piece for “Footsteps.” Same bones, completely different song.
Again: family tree.
Except this time you can actually hear the branches growing.
People sometimes call Temple of the Dog the bridge between Mother Love Bone and Pearl Jam.
I understand why.
Stone and Jeff are there. Mike is there. Eddie walks into the picture. Andy is the reason everybody is in the room in the first place.
But I think calling it a bridge makes the record sound like its only job was getting everybody from one band to another.
It wasn’t.
Temple of the Dog belongs to Chris as much as anybody.
Maybe more.
He started it because his friend died.
Everything that happened afterward — Pearl Jam, MTV, platinum records, the whole Seattle circus — came later.
That’s why I try not to hear it backwards.
Put the record on and forget what all those people became.
It’s late 1990.
Andy is gone.
Eddie is the new guy.
Pearl Jam doesn’t have a name yet.
Nobody knows what happens next.
That’s the record.
