Temple of the Dog (album)
Temple of the Dog is the only studio album by the American rock band Temple of the Dog, released on April 16, 1991, through A&M Records. It is a tribute to Andrew Wood, the former lead singer of Malfunkshun and Mother Love Bone, who died on March 19, 1990, of a heroin overdose. The album has been certified platinum by the RIAA in the United States.
Temple of the Dog
April 16, 1991
November–December 1990
London Bridge Studio (Seattle, Washington)
54:59
Rick Parashar, Temple of the Dog
Background[edit]
Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell, who had been Mother Love Bone vocalist Andrew Wood's roommate, approached former Mother Love Bone members Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament about working on material he had written when he was on tour with Soundgarden in Europe.[1] The line-up eventually included Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron and newcomers Mike McCready (lead guitar) and Eddie Vedder (background vocals). McCready and Vedder were featured on the album due to their involvement with Ament and Gossard's next project, which became Pearl Jam. The name Temple of the Dog is derived from the opening lyrics of the Mother Love Bone song "Man of Golden Words": "Wanna show you something, like joy inside my heart. Seems I been living in the temple of the dog".
Recording[edit]
The recording sessions took place from November to December 1990 at London Bridge Studios in Seattle, Washington. The album was recorded in only 15 days.[1] The group worked with producer Rick Parashar, who also engineered, mixed, and played piano. Two songs on the album, "Reach Down" and "Say Hello 2 Heaven", were written in response to Wood's death, while other songs were written by Cornell on tour prior to Wood's death or re-worked from existing material from demos written by Gossard and Ament.[2]
Ament described the collaboration as "a really good thing at the time" for him and Gossard that put them into a "band situation where we could play and make music".[3] Gossard described the recording process as a "non-pressure filled" situation, as there were no expectations or pressure coming from the record company.[3] Gossard later said it was "the easiest and most beautiful record, that we've ever been involved with".[4]
This was the first recording studio experience for McCready and Vedder. Regarding McCready, Cornell said: "You almost kind of had to yell at him to get him to realize that in the five-and-a-half-minute solo of 'Reach Down', that was his time and that he wasn't going to be stepping on anybody else."[5] The song "Hunger Strike" became a duet between Cornell and Vedder after Cornell was having trouble with the vocals at practice and Vedder stepped in. Cornell later said: "he sang half of that song not even knowing that I'd wanted the part to be there and he sang it exactly the way I was thinking about doing it, just instinctively".[3]
Music and lyrics[edit]
The recorded material was mostly slow and melodic; much different musically from the aggressive metal-influenced sound Cornell had been doing with Soundgarden.[6] The songs bear the street-rock flavor of Mother Love Bone's music. Steve Huey of AllMusic said that the "record sounds like a bridge between Mother Love Bone's theatrical '70s-rock updates and Pearl Jam's hard-rocking seriousness ... 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."[7]
All of the lyrics on the album were written solely by Cornell, and he also wrote the music for all but three of the songs. "Say Hello 2 Heaven" and "Reach Down" were written by Cornell in direct response to Andrew Wood's death.[1] Lyrically, the rest of the songs on the album cover a variety of topics. Cornell stated that the lyrics for "Hunger Strike" express "somewhat of a political, socialist statement".[8]