Hunger Strike by Temple of the Dog reached number one on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart in 1992 and stands as one of the most significant recordings to emerge from the Seattle grunge scene, featuring a vocal duet between Chris Cornell and a then-unknown Eddie Vedder.
Cornell wrote and produced the album as a tribute to Andrew Wood, his friend and roommate who died of a heroin overdose in March 1990, bringing together musicians who would soon form the core of Pearl Jam and Soundgarden.
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| Song | Hunger Strike |
| Artist | Temple of the Dog |
| Album | Temple of the Dog (1991) |
| Written by | Chris Cornell |
| Produced by | Rick Parashar |
| Released | 1991 (charted 1992) |
| Genre | Grunge, Alternative Rock |
| Chart Peak | #1 US Billboard Mainstream Rock |
Table of Contents
Background and History
Chris Cornell was the vocalist of Soundgarden and had been living with Andrew Wood, the vocalist of Mother Love Bone, in the years before Wood’s death.
Wood died of a heroin overdose on March 19, 1990, three days before Mother Love Bone’s debut album Apple was scheduled for release.
Mother Love Bone’s lineup included Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament, who would go on to form Pearl Jam later that year with Eddie Vedder, Mike McCready, and drummer Dave Krusen.
Cornell assembled the Temple of the Dog project as a personal response to Wood’s death, writing all the songs himself and recording the album over ten days with the musicians who had known Wood most closely.
The album was produced by Rick Parashar at London Bridge Studio in Seattle, the same studio where Pearl Jam would record Ten in the months that followed.
Hunger Strike and the Andrew Wood Tribute
It was the only song on the Temple of the Dog album not written directly about Andrew Wood, though it shares the album’s emotional context of grief and loss.
Cornell has said he wrote the song partly from a place of survivor’s guilt, addressing the gap between those who have enough and those who have nothing.
The lyric’s social dimension, its address to the condition of those who go without, gave Hunger Strike a scope that extended beyond the personal loss at the album’s center.
Eddie Vedder’s contribution to the song came spontaneously during the recording sessions, when he entered the studio and added a harmony vocal that Cornell immediately recognized as essential to the track.
Vedder was in Seattle at the time to audition for what would become Pearl Jam, and his involvement in the Temple of the Dog sessions occurred in the same weeks he was forming that band.
The Recording Story
Hunger Strike is built on a guitar riff from Mike McCready and Cornell’s original melody, with Rick Parashar’s production keeping the arrangement spacious enough to let the vocal duet function as the primary instrument.
The contrast between Cornell’s higher register and Vedder’s deeper, rougher voice creates a tension that gives the song its emotional weight without requiring lyrical complexity.
The interplay between the two vocalists was largely improvised during the tracking session, a spontaneity that the final mix preserves.
Vedder has said he barely knew Cornell at the time of the recording and that the vocal chemistry that developed in that session was unexpected even to the participants.
The recording connects to the same post-grunge alternative landscape that Nirvana and Alice in Chains were building simultaneously, while occupying a more explicitly emotional register than most recordings from that scene.
Hunger Strike and the Charts
The Temple of the Dog album was released in April 1991 and initially sold modestly, as neither Soundgarden nor Pearl Jam had yet achieved mainstream commercial success.
When Pearl Jam’s Ten broke nationally in late 1991 and Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger followed, interest in the Temple of the Dog project surged retroactively.
This song was released as a single in 1992 and reached number one on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart, nearly a year after the album’s original release date.
The album was certified platinum in the United States by 1993 and has continued selling steadily, with periodic reissues finding new audiences each time one of the participating bands returned to public attention.
The commercial arc of the recording, from overlooked tribute album to certified platinum chart-topper, mirrors the broader Seattle scene’s trajectory from regional phenomenon to global commercial force between 1991 and 1993.
Lasting Legacy of Hunger Strike
Hunger Strike is the Temple of the Dog recording most frequently cited when the project is discussed, and its vocal pairing of Cornell and Vedder became one of the defining images of the Seattle scene’s peak moment.
Cornell’s death in May 2017 brought renewed attention to the Temple of the Dog recordings, and Hunger Strike was played widely as part of the tribute responses to his passing.
The song remains the clearest audio document of a specific historical moment in Seattle, when the musicians who would define the early 1990s rock landscape were working in the same rooms and on the same recordings before any of them were famous.
Its combination of two distinctive voices, each shaped by very different musical histories, produced a sound that neither Cornell’s solo work nor Vedder’s work with Soundgarden contemporaries Pearl Jam replicated in quite the same way.
More than thirty years after its release, Hunger Strike stands as the essential document of the personal and musical bonds that defined the Seattle scene at its origin.
Watch the Official Video
Frequently Asked Questions
FAQ
- Who was Temple of the Dog?
- Temple of the Dog was a one-off project assembled by Chris Cornell as a tribute to his friend Andrew Wood, the vocalist of Mother Love Bone, who died of a heroin overdose in March 1990. The lineup included Cornell, Eddie Vedder, Stone Gossard, Jeff Ament, Mike McCready, and Matt Cameron.
- Who is Andrew Wood?
- Andrew Wood was the vocalist of Mother Love Bone, a Seattle band formed by Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament after the dissolution of Green River. His death from a heroin overdose in March 1990, three days before Mother Love Bone’s debut album was released, prompted Cornell to assemble the Temple of the Dog project.
- How did Eddie Vedder end up on Hunger Strike?
- Vedder was in Seattle to audition for what would become Pearl Jam when the Temple of the Dog sessions were taking place. He entered the studio during the recording and spontaneously added a harmony vocal that Cornell recognized immediately as essential to the track.
- Why did the album chart a year after its release?
- The Temple of the Dog album was released in April 1991 when neither Soundgarden nor Pearl Jam had yet achieved mainstream commercial success. When Pearl Jam’s Ten broke nationally in late 1991, demand for the project surged retroactively, and Hunger Strike was released as a single in 1992, reaching number one on the Mainstream Rock chart.
- What is the song’s name a reference to?
- The phrase “temple of the dog” appears in Andrew Wood’s song “Man of Golden Words,” and Cornell used it as the project name as a direct tribute to Wood. The album’s name and the project itself are dedicated entirely to Wood’s memory.
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Recorded as a ten-day tribute to a dead friend and delayed in its commercial impact until the musicians involved became famous, Hunger Strike stands as the definitive document of the Seattle scene’s founding bonds and the moment when Chris Cornell and Eddie Vedder shared a microphone before either of them had changed rock music forever.