TEMPLE OF THE DOG - FEATURING CHRIS CORNELL, STONE GOSSARD, JEFF AMENT, MIKE MCCREADY, AND MATT CAMERON - REUNITE TO TOUR FOR FIRST-TIME EVER
SPECIAL 25TH ANNIVERSARY REISSUE COLLECTION TO BE RELEASED
BY UME ON SEPTEMBER 30TH
July 20th, 2016 - (Los Angeles, CA) - Temple of the Dog -
the Seattle supergroup featuring Soundgarden's Chris Cornell, Pearl Jam's Jeff
Ament, Stone Gossard, and Mike McCready, and drummer Matt Cameron (who plays
drums with both Soundgarden and Pearl Jam) - has reunited and will tour for the
first time ever since forming in 1990. The band will play five cities, Philadelphia, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles,
and Seattle, in
November. A special ticket pre-sale for fans signed up to the Ten Club,
Soundgarden, and Chris Cornell email lists begins immediately and runs through
July 27th. Tickets will go on sale to the general public at 12:00 PM local time
on Friday the 29th. $1.50 from each ticket sold will benefit the Chris and
Vicky Cornell Foundation and an additional $1.50 will benefit Pearl Jam's
Vitalogy Foundation.
The tour marks the 25th anniversary of the release of Temple of the Dog's first
and only album, a self-titled set that was released by A&M Records on April
16th, 1991. "We wanted to do the one thing we never got to do ... play
shows and see what it feels like to be the band that we walked away from 25
years ago," Cornell says of the 2016 tour.
On September 30th UMe will release a special Temple of the Dog 25th
anniversary reissue collection of their landmark album, newly mixed by Brendan
O'Brien. The collection will be available in four configurations, including a
four disc Super Deluxe, a double LP, a two CD Deluxe, and a single CD. Physical
pre-orders are available today along with a detailed list of the contents of
each configuration HERE.
Temple
of the Dog came together from the ashes of Mother Love Bone following the death
from a drug overdose of its frontman Andrew Wood, Cornell's close friend and
roommate. Cornell wrote future TOTD songs "Say Hello 2 Heaven" and
"Reach Down" to help process his grief, "but the songs didn't
have any destination," he says. "I was compelled to write them and
there they were - written in a vacuum as a tribute to Andy. My thought was that
maybe I could record these songs with the remaining members of Mother Love Bone
and that maybe we could release them as a tribute."
Mother Love Bone's Gossard and Ament began playing with
McCready, and they brought in Soundgarden's Cameron to drum on demos. Because
this was a collaboration, and a tribute, there was no commercial expectation
for the Temple
of the Dog album. It would be, Gossard would later observe, "the easiest
and most beautiful record that we've ever been involved with." Adds
Cornell: "Temple
was about making an album simply for the joy of doing it. We weren't concerned
what anyone outside of our group of friends would think of it. It was the first
and maybe only stress-free album that we all made."
Gossard, Ament, and McCready were also simultaneously
forming a new band, which more than six months later would be known as Pearl Jam. A singer
from San Diego named Eddie Vedder, who was vying
to lead the project, came into the studio to sing background vocals on three of
the Temple
songs. When Cornell thought another song, "Hunger Strike," needed a
duet, Vedder was enlisted. "Hunger Strike" became a hit single,
peaking at No. 4 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Tracks chart.
Temple of the Dog performed
live only a handful of times, most notably in Seattle, in November and December of 1990.
Those shows have become some of the most legendary Seattle concerts of all-time. Their 2016
shows mark the first time the band has ever toured. (Cornell joined Pearl Jam
in 2014 at the Bridge School show and for two nights at PJ20 in Alpine Valley,
WI, and the Temple line-up played "Reach Down" and "Call Me a
Dog" at Seattle's Benaroya Hall in January 2015.)
"This is something no one has ever seen," Cornell
says of the official reunion. "We wanted to stop and recognize that we did
this and pay homage."
Temple
of the Dog's upcoming tour dates are as follows:
11/04 Philadelphia, PA Tower Theater
11/07 New York, NY Madison Square
Garden
11/11 San Francisco, CA Bill Graham Civic Center
11/14 Los Angeles, CA The Forum
11/20 Seattle, WA Paramount Theater
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