TEMPLE OF THE DOG Reunion Among Surprises At PEARL JAM Benefit Gig
- Oct. 29, 2003
PEARL JAM were joined by a host of famous musical friends on stage last night (Oct. 28) in Santa Barbara, Calif., at a benefit for the Louis Warschaw Prostate Cancer Center at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Among the guests appearing on stage during the performance were PEARL JAM's former drummer Jack Irons, singer/songwriter Jack Johnson, veteran guitarist Lyle Workman, RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS guitarist John Frusciante, and AUDIOSLAVE frontman Chris Cornell (ex-SOUNDGARDEN) for a rare reunion of TEMPLE OF THE DOG.
Cornell was reportedly granted a two-song solo acoustic set of "Can't Change Me" and AUDIOSLAVE's "Like a Stone" before proceeding to reprise his duet with PEARL JAM singer Eddie Vedder on TEMPLE OF THE DOG's "Hunger Strike" and a nearly 10-minute version of the group's "Reach Down".
The Santa Barbara show capped a week-long, four-show run of acoustic charity concerts in Seattle and outside San Francisco.
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COMMENT | SO COOL posted by : kukken 10/29/2003 6:22:46 PM
I wish they made another album, I love these guys
COMMENT | cool! .... but ID RATHER SEE A MAD SEASON REUNION posted by : AXL's Farts Don't Stink 10/29/2003 6:36:39 PM
GUESS THAT MIGHT BE HARD WITH 2 DEAD MEMBERS???
OH WELL
COMMENT | who posted by : Buffcode18 10/29/2003 6:47:09 PM
i havent heard much about this group. who are the dead members?
COMMENT | Help posted by : Yambag 10/29/2003 6:51:18 PM
I can't find my pants
COMMENT | Dead? You're confusing your dead junkies posted by : TYLADOG 10/29/2003 6:52:56 PM
TEmple of the dog dont have any dead members. It was done in tribute to Andrew Wood, DEAD lead singer for Mother Love Bone.
COMMENT | fuck posted by : triad 10/29/2003 6:56:41 PM
these guys rocked. that temple of the dog album is one of the most emotional albums ever. extremely touching stuff
COMMENT | posted by : molotov 10/29/2003 7:10:54 PM
COMMENT | Mmmm posted by : Maiweed 10/29/2003 7:13:12 PM
Mad Season.. I know Layne Staley is dead, but who's the other (dead) one?
COMMENT | Ill tell you what would be a surprise posted by : CorkyTheRetard 10/29/2003 7:18:58 PM
a fucking NIRVANA reunion
COMMENT | HOLY FUCK posted by : Fuck Off 10/29/2003 7:36:10 PM
That is fucking awesome!!! Temple Of The Dog renuion!!! FUCK!! AWESOME!!! SHIT!!! FUCK YEAH!!! Well Temple Of The Dog are Pearl Jam's lineup now + Chris Cornell. I hope to god this somehow ends up on video somewhere!!!! FUCK!!! Here is a good website to get you all up to speed on the band. \m/ http://www.reachdown.com/
COMMENT | who was in the original TOTG line up? posted by : You Don't Know Me 10/29/2003 8:34:03 PM
i'm pretty damn sure that John Frusciante wasn't in the original line up.
but who else was in the original line up? all i know is Vedder and Cornell.
COMMENT | I believe the line up was posted by : bc5 10/29/2003 9:01:55 PM
Vedder Cornell Ben Shepard Mike McCready Matt Cameron
Say hello to heaven is a fucking awesome song
COMMENT | my bad posted by : bc5 10/29/2003 9:04:57 PM
Stone gossard Jeff Ament no ben sheapard, but he can play some bad ass bass
Man this would have been great to see. Its odd, usually all the anti Eddie Vedder assholes have posted lots of ignorant comments by now.
Eddie rules, as does Chris
COMMENT | THIS WAS THE SOLO-LESS STUFF THAT DISPLACED METAL. posted by : rob mckillop 10/29/2003 10:02:33 PM
MOST OF MY EX-METAL-LISTENING FRIENDS FOUND A COMFORTABLE HOME WITH THIS TEMPLE OF THE DOG BAND WHEN METAL WAS DYING DURING THE EARLY 90'S. I DIDN'T GET IT, REALLY. YES, CORNELL HAD A GREAT VOICE, BUT I NEVER UNDERSTOOD THE APEAL OF THE BAND. I MISSED THE TECHNICAL MUSICIANSHIP AND GUITAR SOLOS OF METAL, NOT TO MENTION THE MINOR SCALE VOCAL MELODIES AS OPPOSED TO THE BLUES.
COMMENT | Temple of the Dog posted by : ThrashMaster 10/29/2003 10:47:34 PM
The one album these guys made was better than anything by Soundgarden or Pearl Jam.
give my left nut to have seen this. What a sweet dvd this would be.
COMMENT | Mad Season posted by : rooster21 10/29/2003 11:25:54 PM
The dead members of Mad season are: 1. Layne Staley - lead singer of Mad Season and Alice in Chains. Died of a drug overdose in April 2002. 2. John Baker Saunders - bassist. Died of a heroin overdose in January of 1999.
If you haven't gotten the "Above" album my Mad Season, you're definitely missin' out on some great music. One of my favorite albums of all time.
COMMENT | correction posted by : rooster21 10/29/2003 11:26:33 PM
"by" Mad Season
COMMENT | TOTG was decent. posted by : EmoHolocaust 10/30/2003 1:06:16 AM
but Mad Season was better IMHO. McCready and Staley had something there, I just wish they would've released a sophomore album.
COMMENT | posted by : Fuck Off 10/30/2003 2:08:28 AM
I want to show you something, like joy inside my heart Seems I been living in the Temple Of The Dog Where would I live if I were a man of golden words Or would I live at all Words and music - my only tools - Andy Wood, "Man of Golden Words"
Temple Of The Dog. The project is almost legend now in the histories of Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, and the name inspires respect and a kind of awe from fans of both those bands. It's also been a project to which many misconceptions and misunderstandings are attached; how, who, and when will there be another album, another reunion. Most of us came on board after the fact, when Temple had already become a commodity. Lots of us came on board much later, and only know the legend. Temple was a labor of love, a tribute to a dead friend, an outgrowth of the mourning process. It wasn't intended to be the commodity that it was later forced to become. This is an exploration of the project's genesis, motivation and creation, as well as its aftermath.
The story begins with aspiring "Freddie [Mercury] prodigy," Andrew Wood. People give Stone and Jeff shit about wanting to be rock stars, selling out, the usual bullshit. Those people obviously never knew anything about Andy Wood. The saying is that Andy always played to the balcony, even if there were only 10 people in the room. His idols were Freddie Mercury of Queen and Marc Bolan of T.Rex, and Andy seemed to be one of those people destined for stardom.
"L'andrew, mythical love child from Olympus, now resides in Seattle where he fronts a band called Malfunkshun..." - from early Malfunkshun show posters The Seattle music scene has a reputation for being incestuous. There's a good reason for that: it is. Everyone either ends up playing or working with everyone else. Andrew's first real project, Malfunkshun, included his brother Kevin, as well as fellow Bainbridge Island neighbor Regan Hagar (later of Satchel and Brad).
At the same time, the infamous Green River was at its peak. For those not keeping a scorecard, Green River consisted of Mark Arm and Steve Turner, who would later go on to form Mudhoney, and Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament, who, well, you know. Bruce Fairweather, a bandmate of Jeff's from his metal project Deranged Diction, also joined to replace Steve Turner. Stone, funk denizen that he is, often jammed with Andy and Malfunkshun. Jeff used to work with Andy at the same day job. Green River breaks up, Malfunkshun packs it in, and the three of them (plus Bruce Fairweather) get together to form their own project, Mother Love Bone.
From the start, Mother Love Bone thought big time. Wanted to be big time. They wanted to be rock stars, and their dedication paid off in the form of a record contract with Polygram, signed by Michael Goldstone, who would later bring Pearl Jam to Epic Records. "We wrote more songs and dreamed big dreams," says Jeff Ament in the Mother Love Bone compilation liner notes. They recorded the Shine EP in November of 1988, and the record was released a few months later, in March of 1989. The project toured, received critical acclaim (and critical bashing).
Mother Love Bone spent the summer and fall of 1989 recording their first album, Apple. It was during this time that the band realized that Andy's struggle with his demons was a serious one. He was persuaded to enter a rehab program, and completed it successfully. Shortly afterwards, the band played The Rocket's (Seattle's local music paper) 10th anniversary party in late December, and by all accounts were the stars of the show. Mother Love Bone was, by anyone's reckoning, on the verge of making it big, of achieving all the dreams its members had for years.
Then disaster struck. Two weeks before Apple was due to be released, Andy Wood was found comatose in his apartment, the result of a heroin overdose. He remained in a coma for several days, and never recovered. Andy Wood died on March 19, 1990.
His death hit the Seattle music scene hard; very hard. Not only for his bandmates, but for his friends, his coworkers, his housemates, one of which was Soundgarden's Chris Cornell. Trying to find an outlet for his enormous grief, Chris penned a few songs in tribute to Andy, which were "Reach Down" and "Say Hello 2 Heaven." He decided to ask Stone and Jeff, Andy's friends and bandmates, if they'd like to record them, for a possible single release. At the time, Soundgarden had yet to become superstars, and Stone and Jeff were just beginning the painful work of putting a new vehicle together, following the untimely demise of Mother Love Bone. Chris recruited his Soundgarden compatriot Matt Cameron, who coincidentally at that time was working with Gossard, Ament and a new co-conspirator, one Mike McCready.
"It was initially my idea because of a couple of songs I recorded," Chris [Cornell] explains, "but the idea was mainly to do a single as opposed to a whole record. And the thing was, the rest of the guys in Temple, they sort of thought, well, maybe we should make it a little bit longer project, like an EP or something. The more we talked about it, the more songs kept flying out, and it ended up being an album. It didn't feel like a morose project. It felt sort of celebratory." - Reflex magazine, 12/91 The sessions grew into the Temple Of The Dog project. Not all of the songs were directly about Andy; however, they didn't fit into the Soundgarden format, and the "Gossman Project," as it was allegedly called, was strictly experimental at that time. Stone, Mike, Jeff and Matt had recorded some demos together, with the two projects occasionally crossing borders, as demonstrated by the shared relationship between Temple Of The Dog's "Times of Trouble" and Pearl Jam's "Footsteps." ("Times of Trouble" ended up on the demo tape that the project was circulating to potential members.) They were still recruiting members, and during the sessions they ended up auditioning a potential frontman: San Diego surfer boy Eddie Vedder, who first arrived in Seattle in the fall of 1990. The Temple Of The Dog album was recorded during the late fall and winter of 1990; Ament, Gossard and McCready would work with Chris at night, then jam with Eddie in the newly-christened Mookie Blaylock in the afternoons.
The album was released in April 1991, and initial sales were modest at best. The band members were still largely unknowns beyond the Seattle music scene, and no one really expected more to happen with the project than that. The band played one official, full show (as verified by Matt Cameron), at the Off Ramp Café, on November 13, 1990. (Eddie wasn't there; our reckoning is that he had gone back to San Diego to pack his things up and drive back to Seattle.)
Then, in the spring of 1991, Soundgarden entered the studio to begin recording what would become the legendary Badmotorfinger. Pearl Jam were in the studio around the same time, recording their debut album, Ten (equally legendary, of course). The albums were released, the respective bands exploded, and suddenly the media and the fans were desperately hungry for more (pardon the pun). A&M saw the opportunity and struck while the iron was hot, rereleasing and actively promoting Temple Of The Dog to an audience who didn't and couldn't possibly understand the project's spirit and origins. New fans couldn't understand why Eddie was relegated to the shadows in the "Hunger Strike" video, or why he didn't sing on more of the songs. Others were angry at the attention Eddie seemed to be receiving, and didn't understand that he'd been invited to join the project, not that he forced his way in, or was put there by the manipulations of the record company.
Despite the confusion, there were two more semi-reunions for Temple Of The Dog, one in October 1991, at the Foundations Forum showcase (which Pearl Jam and Soundgarden both attended), and another at the last Lollapalooza show of the '92 tour. The first was planned, the second one purely organic, as a result of extremely high energy at the end of an amazing tour. Additionally, rumors flew thick and heavy that there would be another reunion at the end of the 1996 Lollapalooza, and apparently the management of both Pearl Jam and Soundgarden are continually inundated with offers and requests for charity appearances and the like. There's also regular unattributed reports of a second Temple album.
What none of these people understand, and as much as I, or you, or any of us, would kill to see these two bands combine forces again, is the fact that Temple Of The Dog grew out of love, and emotion, and grief, and that it just can't happen again. None of us can personally understand what Chris, Stone and Jeff went through at the loss of their friend, and it's wrong for us to ask them to turn it on and off and treat it as a commodity. Instead, what we can and should do is enjoy, appreciate and respect the fact that they chose to share their grief with us in the best way they knew how: making music.
Aftermath
Mother Love Bone gained some exposure in 1992 when the track "Chloe Dancer/Crown of Thorns" was featured on the Singles movie soundtrack. The Malfunkshun project never saw the light of day, until Stone Gossard and Regan Hagar's Loosegroove Records released the album "Welcome To Olympus" a few years back. The Shine EP and Apple are out of print and have become highly-sought (and rather pricey) collector's items; however, there is a compliation of those projects, simply entitled Mother Love Bone that is readily available.
Bruce Fairweather went on to join various Seattle projects, the best-known of whom is Love Battery; Greg Gilmore has had a few lesser-known projects as well.
In June of 1997, a director by the name of Scott Barbour was in Seattle, interviewing Chris Cornell and Stone Gossard for a forthcoming documentary on Andy Wood. The OK Hotel, venue for the very first Mother Love Bone show, hosted a night of music filmed for the documentary; among the bands appearing were Macaw, a new project for Ben Shepherd, formerly of Soundgarden, and Devilhead, which features Andy's brothers Brian and Kevin Wood.
The music, connections, love and friendships that were the foundations for Mother Love Bone and Temple Of The Dog continue.
COMMENT | Well I know what someone posted by : coloradorocker 10/30/2003 2:19:20 AM
Was saying once " And i Don't Have a Gun" Guess you did after all when they found you with a hole in your head u took the Easy way out !!!
Yes Mad Season album is one BAD MOTHERFUCKER maybe the best of the Seattle stuff alice and Mad Season THE REST SUCKS ASS!!! EDDIE IS A LOSER
COMMENT | Mother Love Bone posted by : Shkalnakh 10/30/2003 2:47:41 AM
Were the best of all bands mantioned above (parhaps with the exception of AIC). Much better than Temple OF The Dog. Honor Andy by getting the album he actualy sang on instead.....
COMMENT | I would love a new TOTD album posted by : Fuzhi 10/30/2003 3:31:07 AM
even though I also like Mad Season even more. BTW didnt the members of Mad Seasons - Layne Staley actually record a instrumental album, which never was released ? I think I have heard so, anyway perhaps they could finish it with Mark Lanegan, just a thought.
COMMENT | i saw it all.... posted by : kitten 10/30/2003 4:56:17 AM
what a great show this was. i had perfect seats right in the middle, up just far enough to still see the dark roots of eddies blonde locks. chris was explosive and couldn't have looked better! jack johnson and eddie were tight , with eddie playing a ukelele, and jack with his acoustic guitar. the renunion was breathtaking and i wouldn't have missed this show for the world. bravo boys......
COMMENT | Another Line-Up Needed posted by : FH 10/30/2003 7:19:27 AM
Cornell, Cantrell, Inez, and Kinney
COMMENT | posted by : illyae 10/30/2003 7:39:14 AM
I 'm suprised so many here liked TOTD, great band. Love Mad Season, and Mother Love Bone also. That show would have been cool to see.
COMMENT | Chris Cornell posted by : TYLADOG 10/30/2003 8:04:11 AM
TOTD was maybe Chris Cornells greatest vocal performence. If not the greatest, damn close.
COMMENT | Kitten is lucky, i'm jealous posted by : dethryde 10/30/2003 8:22:17 AM
I would have loved to seen this. I've got a shitty live show, supposedly the only one on tape, but Eddy isn't there. While I'd like to hear a new TotD album, I know it won't happen. Mad Season was/is great, wish they would have done another album. Say Hello 2 Heaven is an awesome tune, and this album in my opinion is Cornell at his best.
COMMENT | I TELL YOU =THE GRUNGE ERA WAS BETTER THAN NU-METAL SHIT posted by : 100% USDA T-BONER=(theORIGINALchoice) 10/30/2003 8:47:56 AM
I liked all the bands in the 90s so-called GRUNGE era ....
It was a bit doomy/druggie/DEPRESSY type music(+even dead singers to prove it) HOON,LAYNE,WOOD,COBAIN... But the era and the movement rocked ....
Today is NU- N' RAP metal and that bullshit music maks me miss the grunge era so much .
T.B. = DEATH TO ALL NU-METAL
COMMENT | a reunion? posted by : anonymous 10/30/2003 10:35:26 AM
they played only in seattle, wake me when they finally do a full fledged tour...
COMMENT | posted by : molotov 10/30/2003 10:47:36 AM
really? i thought grunge was better than GNR and hair metal, Priest, Maiden and Ozzy's run in the 80s........
MESHUGGAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
COMMENT | the mainstream sucks posted by : el rodeo 10/30/2003 11:32:00 AM
grunge or whatever you want to call it,never died .it just got t o big and this music was not supossed to get big so most bands pulled away and are still here making music,some people say it just got re named stoner rock
COMMENT | All i can say is... posted by : MONSTA 10/30/2003 2:32:52 PM
Mother Love Bone made some of the coolest, most listenable, music i've ever heard. Andy was on his way to being a star.
R.I.P "I'M A STARDOG BABY, I AIN'T GONNA LET YA DOWN"
COMMENT | CHRIS CORNELL posted by : ALICEINCHAINS2 10/30/2003 4:33:53 PM
GREAT SINGER, COOL GUY, YUMMY LOOKING
CHRIS YOU ARE ALMOST AS COOL AS MR. MOJO RISING
COMMENT | Temple Of The Dog posted by : Metallideth 10/30/2003 7:18:18 PM
I can only say I've heard one song by TOTD, and that was Hunger Strike, which I loved.
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