What is Temple of the Dog?
Following the untimely death of Andrew Wood to a heroin overdose in 1990, his roommate Chris Cornell composed two songs in tribute to his memory. He invited Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament, bandmates of Wood’s in Mother Love Bone, along with Matt Cameron, to record the songs with him. Mike McCready and Eddie Vedder soon joined the ranks and once it was given a name – Temple of the Dog, a lyric from Man of Golden Words by Mother Love Bone – the band was complete. Originally to be released as a single, Chris’ two songs quickly grew to a round ten and were ultimately released through A&M. Chris explains “It was initially my idea because of a couple of songs I recorded, 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.” (Reflex,
