Temple of the Dog Reunites, Headliners at Last on a Mini-Tour
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/07/arts/music/temple-of-the-dog-soundgarden-pearl-jam.html
By MIKE RUBIN NOV. 6, 2016
Photo .. From left, Stone Gossard, Jeff Ament, Chris Cornell, Matt Cameron and Mike McCready of Temple of the Dog, at the Tower Theater in Upper Darby, Pa. Credit Jessica Kourkounis for The New York Times
UPPER DARBY, Pa. — Last Thursday afternoon, at the Tower Theater outside Philadelphia, the five members of Temple of the Dog were onstage grappling with a common problem faced by men in their early 50s: trying to remember just how they did things in their 20s. The next night, the roughly 3,000-seat hall would be packed, the rock band’s first headlining concert appearance since, well, pretty much ever, but in rehearsal the band’s only audience was stagehands and lighting techs. After plowing through the crunching riffs of “Pushin Forward Back,” however, something didn’t sound quite right.
“I don’t think we go into that long of a breakdown on the record,” said the guitarist Stone Gossard, noting the extended solo by his fellow guitarist, Mike McCready.
“I’ll solo all night,” Mr. McCready admitted.
After a brief discussion, the musicians set down their instruments and huddled in front of the drummer Matt Cameron’s kit, listening over a smartphone to the song as it appeared on their million-selling 1991 album, “Temple of the Dog.” Memories refreshed, they returned to their stations, and resumed pushing “Pushin Forward Back” to its conclusion.
Not that the band members are unfamiliar with one another: Mr. Gossard, Mr. McCready and Mr. Cameron, along with the bassist Jeff Ament, are all longtime members of Pearl Jam, while the singer Chris Cornell is known primarily for his work leading Soundgarden. Rather, it was the material that was somewhat alien, Mr. Gossard said during a conversation in the theater’s dressing room, describing the challenge of “learning songs that we literally played maybe 10 times 25 years ago.”
Despite the rust, tickets for the group’s first tour, eight shows in five cities (including Madison Square Garden on Monday night), sold out in minutes, all the more remarkable for a band, as Mr. Cameron points out, “that doesn’t exist.”
Temple of the Dog was originally convened a quarter-century ago, in tribute to their friend and colleague Andrew Wood, lead singer of the Seattle bands Malfunkshun and Mother Love Bone, who died in March 1990 of a heroin overdose shortly before the release of Mother Love Bone’s debut album, “Apple.” At the band’s inception, Soundgarden was preparing for its second major label album and Pearl Jam was just beginning to coalesce. To help deal with his grief, Mr. Cornell had written two songs, “Say Hello 2 Heaven” and “Reach Down,” in which he tried to channel Mr. Wood’s influence.
“I thought, well, this is one thing that I can do to remind myself and maybe other people of who this guy is and was and keep his story and in a way his life with us,” Mr. Cornell said.
He made demos of the songs, and approached Mr. Ament and Mr. Gossard, both of whom had been in Mother Love Bone with Mr. Wood, about properly recording them. The project soon evolved into an entire album, with the trio joined by Mr. Cameron, Soundgarden’s drummer, and Mr. McCready, a childhood friend of Mr. Gossard’s.
“I think that was a healing process for us all and you can certainly still hear it in the record,” Mr. Cameron said.
The name Temple of the Dog came from a lyric by Mr. Wood in the Mother Love Bone song “Man of Golden Words” (also on the set list for the current tour). The group played two short opening sets in Seattle in 1990, and has occasionally performed Temple of the Dog songs with Mr. Cornell at Pearl Jam concerts, but otherwise the band has never played together live since recording the album.
Every week, stay on top of the latest in pop and jazz with reviews, interviews, podcasts and more from The New York Times music critics. Coming soon.
Receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services.
“It was never intended to be like a big promoted rock record,” Mr. Cameron said.
A&M released the self-titled album in April 1991 and 70,000 copies sold that year, but not until 1992 did sales explode. After the post-Nirvana success of Pearl Jam’s debut, “Ten,” and Soundgarden’s “Badmotorfinger,” A&M reissued “Temple of the Dog” and promoted the video for “Hunger Strike,” featuring the band and the Pearl Jam vocalist Eddie Vedder.
“It didn’t really get that broad attention,” Mr. Cornell said, “until someone at MTV put it together that ‘Oh, there’s this one video that we have that has members of both bands in it; let’s play it all day!’”
“Hunger Strike” shot up the charts and the album went platinum, but a tour for Temple at the time would have been “impossible,” Mr. Cornell said, given the busy road schedules of Soundgarden and Pearl Jam. “You had to be out there beating the drum all the time,” he said. “Now it’s sort of a luxury. It’s a different world and a different time in the life spans of our respective bands, where we’ve written our own tickets, we sort of do whatever we want, so we’re fortunate that we can do this now.”
The current tour is accompanied by the recent release of a “25th Anniversary Mix” of the album, available in several permutations, including a four-disc CD, DVD and Blu-ray collection. Also arriving this week is a Mother Love Bone box set, “On Earth as It Is: The Complete Works” (on the Pearl Jam-founded Monkeywrench label), offering a new opportunity to examine the talents of Mr. Wood, a flamboyant figure in the Seattle scene who idolized Freddie Mercury, Paul Stanley and Elton John.
“He had this way of looking at life that just made you laugh while you were around him,” Mr. Gossard said.
Mr. Cornell was Mr. Wood’s roommate for about a year during the late 1980s in a dilapidated two-bedroom house in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle perched right over Interstate 5. The freeway noise was so loud it permitted Soundgarden and Malfunkshun to rehearse in the living room.
“We had bands that were influenced by each other,” Mr. Cornell said, “and there was kind of a rivalry between us as songwriters, but literally like five feet apart — through the doors to the bedrooms we could hear each other.”
In the lyrics to “Reach Down,” Mr. Cornell depicted Mr. Wood “wearing a long white leather coat/ Purple glasses and glitter in your hair.” “There was an aspect of him that was always performing all the time,” Mr. Cornell said. “He had sort of invented himself as this character. The first time I ever saw him he had this entourage. He was a rock star, really, because he was; it didn’t have anything to do with anything else.”
The idea of a Temple reunion began percolating around five years ago, during Pearl Jam’s 20th anniversary festival, after Mr. Cornell joined the other musicians onstage (Mr. Cameron having signed up as Pearl Jam’s drummer in 1998) to play five Temple songs. It took a while to coordinate schedules, but time has finally been set aside.
“I always think about where Andy would want these songs to be played,” Mr. Ament said. “The Garden and the Forum were like the two places he probably wanted to play more than anywhere, so from that standpoint it’s awesome.”
Mr. Cameron hopes the reissues and the tour can elevate Mr. Wood’s presence in the legacy of Seattle’s music scene. “He wasn’t a footnote in our history,” Mr. Cameron said. “He was a real big influence for us all.”
By MIKE RUBIN NOV. 6, 2016
Photo .. From left, Stone Gossard, Jeff Ament, Chris Cornell, Matt Cameron and Mike McCready of Temple of the Dog, at the Tower Theater in Upper Darby, Pa. Credit Jessica Kourkounis for The New York Times
UPPER DARBY, Pa. — Last Thursday afternoon, at the Tower Theater outside Philadelphia, the five members of Temple of the Dog were onstage grappling with a common problem faced by men in their early 50s: trying to remember just how they did things in their 20s. The next night, the roughly 3,000-seat hall would be packed, the rock band’s first headlining concert appearance since, well, pretty much ever, but in rehearsal the band’s only audience was stagehands and lighting techs. After plowing through the crunching riffs of “Pushin Forward Back,” however, something didn’t sound quite right.
“I don’t think we go into that long of a breakdown on the record,” said the guitarist Stone Gossard, noting the extended solo by his fellow guitarist, Mike McCready.
“I’ll solo all night,” Mr. McCready admitted.
After a brief discussion, the musicians set down their instruments and huddled in front of the drummer Matt Cameron’s kit, listening over a smartphone to the song as it appeared on their million-selling 1991 album, “Temple of the Dog.” Memories refreshed, they returned to their stations, and resumed pushing “Pushin Forward Back” to its conclusion.
Not that the band members are unfamiliar with one another: Mr. Gossard, Mr. McCready and Mr. Cameron, along with the bassist Jeff Ament, are all longtime members of Pearl Jam, while the singer Chris Cornell is known primarily for his work leading Soundgarden. Rather, it was the material that was somewhat alien, Mr. Gossard said during a conversation in the theater’s dressing room, describing the challenge of “learning songs that we literally played maybe 10 times 25 years ago.”
Despite the rust, tickets for the group’s first tour, eight shows in five cities (including Madison Square Garden on Monday night), sold out in minutes, all the more remarkable for a band, as Mr. Cameron points out, “that doesn’t exist.”
Temple of the Dog was originally convened a quarter-century ago, in tribute to their friend and colleague Andrew Wood, lead singer of the Seattle bands Malfunkshun and Mother Love Bone, who died in March 1990 of a heroin overdose shortly before the release of Mother Love Bone’s debut album, “Apple.” At the band’s inception, Soundgarden was preparing for its second major label album and Pearl Jam was just beginning to coalesce. To help deal with his grief, Mr. Cornell had written two songs, “Say Hello 2 Heaven” and “Reach Down,” in which he tried to channel Mr. Wood’s influence.
“I thought, well, this is one thing that I can do to remind myself and maybe other people of who this guy is and was and keep his story and in a way his life with us,” Mr. Cornell said.
He made demos of the songs, and approached Mr. Ament and Mr. Gossard, both of whom had been in Mother Love Bone with Mr. Wood, about properly recording them. The project soon evolved into an entire album, with the trio joined by Mr. Cameron, Soundgarden’s drummer, and Mr. McCready, a childhood friend of Mr. Gossard’s.
“I think that was a healing process for us all and you can certainly still hear it in the record,” Mr. Cameron said.
The name Temple of the Dog came from a lyric by Mr. Wood in the Mother Love Bone song “Man of Golden Words” (also on the set list for the current tour). The group played two short opening sets in Seattle in 1990, and has occasionally performed Temple of the Dog songs with Mr. Cornell at Pearl Jam concerts, but otherwise the band has never played together live since recording the album.
Every week, stay on top of the latest in pop and jazz with reviews, interviews, podcasts and more from The New York Times music critics. Coming soon.
Receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services.
“It was never intended to be like a big promoted rock record,” Mr. Cameron said.
A&M released the self-titled album in April 1991 and 70,000 copies sold that year, but not until 1992 did sales explode. After the post-Nirvana success of Pearl Jam’s debut, “Ten,” and Soundgarden’s “Badmotorfinger,” A&M reissued “Temple of the Dog” and promoted the video for “Hunger Strike,” featuring the band and the Pearl Jam vocalist Eddie Vedder.
“It didn’t really get that broad attention,” Mr. Cornell said, “until someone at MTV put it together that ‘Oh, there’s this one video that we have that has members of both bands in it; let’s play it all day!’”
“Hunger Strike” shot up the charts and the album went platinum, but a tour for Temple at the time would have been “impossible,” Mr. Cornell said, given the busy road schedules of Soundgarden and Pearl Jam. “You had to be out there beating the drum all the time,” he said. “Now it’s sort of a luxury. It’s a different world and a different time in the life spans of our respective bands, where we’ve written our own tickets, we sort of do whatever we want, so we’re fortunate that we can do this now.”
The current tour is accompanied by the recent release of a “25th Anniversary Mix” of the album, available in several permutations, including a four-disc CD, DVD and Blu-ray collection. Also arriving this week is a Mother Love Bone box set, “On Earth as It Is: The Complete Works” (on the Pearl Jam-founded Monkeywrench label), offering a new opportunity to examine the talents of Mr. Wood, a flamboyant figure in the Seattle scene who idolized Freddie Mercury, Paul Stanley and Elton John.
“He had this way of looking at life that just made you laugh while you were around him,” Mr. Gossard said.
Mr. Cornell was Mr. Wood’s roommate for about a year during the late 1980s in a dilapidated two-bedroom house in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle perched right over Interstate 5. The freeway noise was so loud it permitted Soundgarden and Malfunkshun to rehearse in the living room.
“We had bands that were influenced by each other,” Mr. Cornell said, “and there was kind of a rivalry between us as songwriters, but literally like five feet apart — through the doors to the bedrooms we could hear each other.”
In the lyrics to “Reach Down,” Mr. Cornell depicted Mr. Wood “wearing a long white leather coat/ Purple glasses and glitter in your hair.” “There was an aspect of him that was always performing all the time,” Mr. Cornell said. “He had sort of invented himself as this character. The first time I ever saw him he had this entourage. He was a rock star, really, because he was; it didn’t have anything to do with anything else.”
The idea of a Temple reunion began percolating around five years ago, during Pearl Jam’s 20th anniversary festival, after Mr. Cornell joined the other musicians onstage (Mr. Cameron having signed up as Pearl Jam’s drummer in 1998) to play five Temple songs. It took a while to coordinate schedules, but time has finally been set aside.
“I always think about where Andy would want these songs to be played,” Mr. Ament said. “The Garden and the Forum were like the two places he probably wanted to play more than anywhere, so from that standpoint it’s awesome.”
Mr. Cameron hopes the reissues and the tour can elevate Mr. Wood’s presence in the legacy of Seattle’s music scene. “He wasn’t a footnote in our history,” Mr. Cameron said. “He was a real big influence for us all.”
0
Comments
2010: Newark 5/18 MSG 5/20-21 2011: PJ20 9/3-4 2012: Made In America 9/2
2013: Brooklyn 10/18-19 Philly 10/21-22 Hartford 10/25 2014: ACL10/12
2015: NYC 9/23 2016: Tampa 4/11 Philly 4/28-29 MSG 5/1-2 Fenway 8/5+8/7
2017: RRHoF 4/7 2018: Fenway 9/2+9/4 2021: Sea Hear Now 9/18
2022: MSG 9/11 2024: MSG 9/3-4 Philly 9/7+9/9 Fenway 9/15+9/17
www.headstonesband.com
Love the pic, though.
- Mitch Hedberg
Usually when ALL their social media pages are active, something is coming. For TOTD, they have been posting daily.
PS .. on a desktop PC. All video clips are disabled when viewing on a mobile device.
I have to see this band.
www.headstonesband.com