Temple Of The Dog

Few musical genres can boast a history as tragic as grunge. With the deaths in recent years of Chris Cornell, Mark Lanegan and Taylor Hawkins, adding to the already numerous losses of the '90s, the Seattle scene has no rivals left when it comes to heroes to mourn and glorify. Looking closer, though, the sense of tragedy and community that runs through the movement has actually been there since its earliest days.

Thanks partly to the friendship that bound - and in the luckier cases still binds - so many grunge figures together even before the music did, the genre has watched its bands swap members, throw themselves into countless side projects, and lend a hand on each other's records right from its very first stirrings. In such a fluid, supportive environment, the formation of a so-called "supergroup" could even happen at the very same time as the birth of one of the bands that made it up. That's exactly the case with Temple Of The Dog, whose first, only, self-titled album came out just a few months before another landmark record, the essential debut by Pearl Jam titled "Ten" (Epic, 1991).

Temple Of The Dog lasted very little - about two years and just one album - which, beyond its enormous musical worth, was the first to reveal the extraordinary stature of a community of people even before that of musicians. They lasted so briefly because they had a tribute to pay, one of love and esteem for a friend and active member of the local scene - before any spotlight had ever been turned on Seattle - who had died far too soon.

In 1990 Andrew Wood, former member of Malfunkshun and frontman of Mother Love Bone, died of a heroin overdose at twenty-four. Along with Mark Lanegan and Mark Arm, Wood had been one of the main inspirations behind the grunge wave that would soon sweep the whole world. The death of the musician from Columbus, Ohio, shook the underground community of Washington State to its core. Some of his closest friends came together under the moniker Temple Of The Dog, a name taken from a line in Wood's own "Man Of Golden Words", to dedicate to him one of the most precious requiems in the history of American alternative rock.

During the wake for Wood, the desire to celebrate that special union of musicians active in the Pacific Northwest also sparked in music journalist and filmmaker Cameron Crowe – husband of Nancy Wilson of Heart – the idea of making the film "Singles" (1992), a comedy set within the Seattle scene and shot around its clubs, for which Chris Cornell wrote a new song and in which Mother Love Bone, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Mudhoney, Smashing Pumpkins and Alice In Chains took part, shortly before the latter's consecration with “Dirt” (Columbia, 1992); the soundtrack also features original music composed by Paul Westerberg of The Replacements.

The band's formation was set in motion by Cornell, Wood's roommate and lifelong friend, already active for a good five years with Soundgarden but still far from the worldwide success that would soon arrive first with “Badmotorfinger” (A&M, 1991) and then with “Superunknown” (A&M, 1994). Cornell wrote two songs in memory of Wood: the opening track of the eponymous album, “Say Hello 2 Heaven” – with that riff that would become so recognisably Soundgarden after the band's massive 1994 breakthrough – and “Reach Down”. His original intention was to release it as a single, and to make it he brought in Mother Love Bone's bassist and guitarist, Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard respectively. Paired together since their time in Mark Arm's Green River, the two had only just started a new project that would likewise go on to make grunge history: Pearl Jam.

The chemistry between the three of them and their shared love for Wood immediately gave rise to new ideas for new songs, for which the musicians recruited Matt Cameron, drummer of Soundgarden (and currently also of Pearl Jam), and Mike McCready, Pearl Jam's other guitarist. They had also just been joined by singer Eddie Vedder, who was accordingly enlisted for backing vocals and as Cornell's exceptional co-lead voice on “Pushin' Forward Back”, “Your Saviour” and “Four Walled World”, while on “Hunger Strike” the two swapped roles, with Cornell gradually ceding the lead vocal to Vedder before stepping in to back him up.

Given all this, it's clear why Temple Of The Dog are regarded by most as a supergroup. And in a way they were, though unwittingly so. As far as Cornell, Ament, Gossard, Cameron, McCready and Vedder knew at the time they made “Temple Of The Dog”, they were simply a group of friends united by grief over the loss of a fellow traveller and by their belonging to a scene that had not yet racked up big commercial numbers and (nor could they have imagined how many it would rack up) shaken an entire generation, the so-called Generation X.

Despite excellent critical reception, “Temple Of The Dog” did not sell exceptionally well upon release, settling at around 70,000 copies in the United States in 1991. That changed only a year later, when A&M capitalised on the runaway success of “Ten”, “Nevermind” (DGC, 1991) and “Badmotorfinger” to relaunch it on the market: by the time Temple Of The Dog could rightfully be called a supergroup in every sense, the album climbed into Billboard's Top 100.

Stylistically, the album can't help but sound like a cross between Pearl Jam's youthful grunge and Soundgarden's obsessive heaviness, albeit with fewer metal leanings. Yet, to purge his grief and exorcise the loss of his brotherly friend, Cornell dresses his funeral songs in warm soul shadings, which come through clearly in the album's many ballads. At the same time, McCready and Gossard betray, as they would on numerous occasions throughout their main band's career, a thoroughly blues-rooted penchant for long, unbridled guitar rides.

“Temple Of The Dog” opens with the song Cornell never wanted to write or sing: “Say Hello 2 Heaven”. He makes this quite clear in the final verse, when he sings:

I, I never wanted

To write these words down for you

With the pages of phrases

Of all the things we’ll never do

Hey, so I blow out, out the candle and I put you to bed

Since you can't say to me now

How the dog broke your bone

There's just one thing left to be said

A'say hello to heaven, to heaven, yeah

And he seems to want to escort Andy Wood all the way up to heaven, soaring so high with his voice – soft as velvet yet strong as a century-old oak – that he reaches G above high C. The rough, rust-tinged guitars can only look on in admiration at this flight from below, weaving their mournful textures into a grunge tapestry that would go on to set a template for others to follow.

The following track takes a decisive turn toward harder, grittier sounds. The second of two songs Cornell wrote in memory of Wood in the two weeks following his fatal overdose, “Reach Down” not only darkens and renders claustrophobic the album's atmosphere, almost as if staging the abyss of drug addiction, but with its sprawling length of over eleven minutes it also takes on the shape of a jam session. The verses and the powerful chorus are two islands in a churning ocean of guitar solos driven by Cameron's thunderous drumming and increasingly psychedelic phrasing. It's here that the future Pearl Jam make clear their blues lineage and their devotion to the cult of Neil Young and Crazy Horse.

The ballad “Hunger Strike”, chosen as the album's single and video, would become Temple Of The Dog's immortal document, an indelible anthem of a generation and a state of mind on a par with “Jeremy”, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “Black Hole Sun”. The few, simple notes of its driving arpeggio have been strummed by thousands of kids around the world, with the idea of living together and sharing a sense of unease, anger and (already) melancholy reiterated in the refrain “I'm goin' hungry”, sung by Cornell and Vedder, which seems to rise above the whole song as its very quintessence:

I don’t mind stealin’ bread from the mouths of decadents

But I can’t feed on the powerless when my cup’s already overfilled, yeah

But it’s on the table, the fire’s cookin’

And they’re farmin’ babies, while slaves are workin’

The blood is on the table and the mouths are chokin’

But I’m goin’ hungry, yeah

It's as if "Hunger Strike" were already, deep down, representing and giving tangible form to everything that would happen, delving into the pain of addiction and unresolved trauma, as in Cornell's case.

The following "Pushin' Forward Back" seems intent on jolting the manifest fragility expressed just before, with another heart-pounding hard-rock riff and Cornell's furious bluesy vocals. The pace slows again, though, and the volume drops with three quieter tracks. With its piano-ballad framework and the solemn tone of a classic-rock anthem, "Call Me A Dog" is one of the most poignant songs on "Temple Of The Dog". Here too Cornell soars, in the heartfelt chorus of a song dedicated as much to his turbulent relationship with Soundgarden's (and Alice In Chains') manager and future wife Susan Silver, as to his irritation at the labels the press was pinning on the emerging Seattle scene — "grunge" chief among them, a term the musician (and other figures of the movement) despised. Called upon here to show real finesse, McCready and Gossard weave sophisticated guitar patterns, while Gossard and Ament supply the relentless drive behind one of the most thrilling crescendos Cornell's voice ever delivered.

The semi-acoustic blues of "Times Of Trouble" and "Wooden Jesus" open out into "Your Saviour", a vitriolic, Led Zeppelin-indebted hard-rock track that packs, into a much shorter runtime of around four minutes, the same seismic jolts of Cameron's drumming and a frantic dance of dry, venomous riffs. In the final minute, though, the guitars and rhythm section seem to break through the walls containing them, spreading their grunge spores into the open air alongside Cornell's metallic howl.

"Four Walled World" readies us for the finale with a leap into psychedelia à la the Doors, all lurching blues slide guitar, a restless soul lamentatio and a wah-wah solo that would go on to become one of McCready's trademarks. Closing the album is another ballad, "All Night Thing", whose passionate piano flourishes and stirring electric organ bring the grunge of Temple Of The Dog closer to soul in a way only Greg Dulli and his Afghan Whigs have dared to attempt. Here too Cornell's lyrics are evocative and passionate, offering multiple layers of meaning, overlapping a couple's night of passion with Andy Wood's last night on earth: "I walked along, feeling at ease/ And falling like rain uh uh".

Just as Dave Markey's film "1991: The Year Punk Broke" did, the Temple Of The Dog project hands down the image, attitude and spirit of the grunge scene before the global success that upended those musicians' lives and turned Seattle into the center of the world, a pilgrimage site for record executives and fans, TV crews and journalists. "Temple Of The Dog" is its requiem, played and sung "for those who remain", in memory of Andy Wood and all the other musicians who would go on to leave this world.

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25/06/2023