Temple Of The Dog (Double Gatefold LP)

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."