(Photo credit: Raymond Flotat)
On Tuesday September 29th, 2015, Chris Cornell played a concert in his hometown of Seattle, Washington, in support of his solo album, Higher Truth. At the concert, he brought out Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready, and the two musicians tackled two beloved grunge classics, “Hunger Strike” and “River of Deceit.”
“Hunger Strike” was made famous by Temple of the Dog, the band that first brought McCready and Cornell together in the early 1990s. Then, “River of Deceit” is a song that was made famous by Mad Season, another grunge-era super group that featured McCready, which Cornell has worked with in recent years. So, this show was a reunion for the two men.
Check out fan shot video clips of McCready and Cornell performing “Hunger Strike” and “River of Deceit”, below.
In a previous article, we traced the origins of Temple of the Dog, the super group that was comprised of members of Soundgarden and Pearl Jam, which came together in the wake of Mother Love Bone and Malfunkshun vocalist Andrew Wood’s untimely death at age 24.
The group released their self-titled debut album in April of 1991. Temple of the Dog contained the iconic “Hunger Strike,” which is a duet featuring Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell and Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, but how did the collaboration really happen?
Loudwire reported that Chris Cornell addressed the duet, stating that “[Eddie] was at one of our rehearsals for Temple of the Dog because he had flown up here. It was the week he was trying out for [Pearl Jam] I guess, and he told me afterwards that he really liked that song and the thing about that song among a couple of others that were stylistically the vocals really weren’t anything that I had done before, on a record anyway. It wasn’t really the way I was used to singing, and I thought his voice suited that song really well and I thought it would be a great duet … He sang half that song not even knowing that I’d wanted that part to be there and he sang it exactly the way I was thinking about doing it, just instinctively.”
Once the members’ main bands achieved notoriety, separately, Temple of the Dog’s debut became a hit, as well. And, several years after the members of Temple of the Dog went their separate ways, another super group – Mad Season – formed in Seattle.
Mad Season’s original lineup brought together members of Pearl Jam, The Walkabouts, The Screaming Trees, and Alice in Chains. And, while their 1994 origins were in times of creative success for all of the members’ individual bands, the super group still encountered tragic losses.
Mad Season came together in 1994, after Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready met bass player John Baker Saunders in a Minneapolis drug rehabilitation program. Following completion of their treatment, the two returned to Seattle, forming a band with Skin Yard and Screaming Trees drummer Barrett Martin and vocalist Layne Staley of Alice in Chains. Originally, the men billed themselves as The Gacy Bunch – after Chicago serial killer John Wayne Gacy and the family oriented 1970’s sitcom The Brady Bunch, according to Allmusic – but, they soon changed their name to Mad Season.
In 1995, the group went into a Seattle studio to begin work on their debut album, Above, which was later released on Columbia records. After a spring tour that same year, the members put Mad Season on hiatus to return to working with their main bands, and Saunders joined The Walkabouts.
Despite attempts to revive the original lineup of Mad Season in 1997, the group did not reunite, and Staley, who was in declining health and battling drug addiction, left the band, as he did not want to participate in any future material. So, Mad Season was without a vocalist, until they recruited Mark Lanegan of The Screaming Trees, permanently. He had previously guested on the band’s album with Staley. However, instead of continuing as Mad Season, although they had changed frontman, the group adopted the name Disinformation.
Although work had begun on a Disinformation project, the band members struggled to navigate everyone’s schedules and this made finding studio time difficult, as such Disinformation gradually grew apart and never put out a recording.
In January of 1999, the band was dealt the first of two tragic losses, when Saunders passed away from a heroin overdose at age 44. And, just three short years later, Mad Season’s former vocalist – and founding Alice in Chains member – Layne Staley was found dead on April 19th, 2002, of an apparent cocaine and heroin overdose. He was 34.
The surviving two members of Mad Season – McCready and Martin – reunited onstage for a special concert with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra on January 30th, 2015. They were joined by former Guns N’ Roses member Duff McKagan and Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell.
Blabbermouth reported that Cornell told The Pulse Of Radio how he felt about that particular experience, and spoke about the possibility of future vocal work with Mad Season.
The Soundgarden frontman said:
“Once I was onstage and we were doing it, then it kind of hit me that I’m standing up there with these guys, all of which I’ve known for years and years, and I’ve been good friends with, but I’ve never been on a stage with them like that,” he said. “And it was pretty great, it was pretty moving. Unfortunately, I always have so many things going on that, you know, it doesn’t seem like something that would happen anytime in the near future. But it definitely was an amazing moment.”
For his part, McCready addressed Cornell stepping up to sing with Mad Season that evening in Seattle, in a recent interview, according to Blabbermouth.
“When I heard he wanted to do that, I literally jumped for joy, I couldn’t believe it,” McCready said. “He brought his take to it, and did it beautifully, and I think Layne would have been proud.”
Lastly, McCready, McKagan, and Martin are reportedly in the studio working on Mad Season’s long awaited sophomore album, but a vocalist for this incarnation of the band has yet to be announced.
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