Rocktrospectiva: The One-Album Wonder "Temple Of The Dog" Turns 35

Released on 16 April 1991 "Temple Of The Dog" was the only studio album by the US rock band Temple of the Dog, the album was 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 spawned two singles "Hunger Strike" & "Say Hello 2 Heaven".

 

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. 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".

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. 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. 

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". Gossard described the recording process as a "non-pressure filled" situation, as there were no expectations or pressure coming from the record company. Gossard later said it was "the easiest and most beautiful record, that we've ever been involved with". 

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." 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".

The recorded material was mostly slow and melodic; much different musically from the aggressive metal-influenced sound Cornell had been doing with Soundgarden. The songs bear the street-rock flavor of Mother Love Bone's music indeed the whole record sounds like a bridge between Mother Love Bone's theatrical '70s-rock updates and Pearl Jam's hard-rocking sound, so the accessibly warm, relatively clean sound of Temple of the Dog was somewhat shocking, and its mellower moments are minor revelations in terms of Cornell's songwriting abilities."

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. 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"

Critics were mixed and relative goog by praising the album due its mournful, elegiac ballads, but thanks to the band's spontaneous creative energy and appropriately warm sound, it's permeated by a definite, life-affirming aura." Temple of the Dog deserved immortality; said others cause those songs were the proof that the angst that defined Seattle rock in the 1990s was not cheap sentiment, at least in the beginning. And you can't help but love the irony of an album, made in great sadness, kick-starting the last great pop mutiny of the twentieth century." In 2022, Stuart Berman and Jeremy D. Larson of Pitchfork included the album in their list of "The 25 Best Grunge Albums of the '90s" and in 2025, Em Casalena of American Songwriter included the album in the site's list of "4 Grunge Albums That Are Way Better Than Nevermind".

 

Temple Of The Dog Track List:  

 

1. Say Hello 2 Heaven

2. Reach Down

3. Hunger Strike

4. Pushin Forward Back

5. Call Me A Dog

6. Times Of Trouble

7. Wooden Jesus

8. Your Saviour

9. Four Walled World

10. All Night Thing