Temple Of The Dog - Hunger Strike

I just finished reading the book Pearl Jam Twenty and I really enjoyed the part about Temple Of The Dog.  The band was formed by Chris Cornell (of Soundgarden) and Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament (of Mother Love Bone) as a tribute to Andrew Wood, the lead singer of Mother Love Bone, who had recently died of a heroin overdose.  The story of how ‘Hunger Strike’ ended up on the album and how Eddie Vedder ended up singing on it is really cool:

“The song that would become the album’s centerpiece, “Hunger Strike,” was birthed from Cornell’s admitted obsessive-compulsive dislike for odd numbers.  At a certain point during the writing process, there were nine songs completed, “and I hated that,” he says.  “So I had this other song that I whipped up so we could have ten, because I just have to have ten.  And it was ‘Hunger Strike.’

…

On the same day that Eddie Vedder arrived in Seattle to play with his soon-to-be Pearl Jam bandmates for the first time, Cornell had scheduled a Temple of the Dog rehearsal.  Aside from saying a quick hello to Cornell in the hallway, Vedder kept to himself while the group ran through its songs.  But when they started playing “Hunger Strike,” he made a move that would change his life forever.

“So we’re in the rehearsal and I showed them the song, and we get to the chorus,” Cornell says.  “There’s a low part and a high part.  I’m going to sing them both now, so they get it.  It’s the magic of overdubs, and I can do both parts, and it will sound great.  No problem.  So I’m doing it: ‘Going hungry, going hungry, going hungry.’  I’m not doing it good.  The high part’s hard to sing anyway, but I’m doing it.  All of the sudden, I feel this shadowy presence over my shoulder.  And there’s only one mike, and the chorus comes around again, and he sort of moves his shoulder in just to let me know he’s got a plan.  And I don’t know him.  We had said hi.  And it wasn’t in a way that was intrusive or egotistical.  It was literally almost like he had pity on me and was trying to help me through this moment, because I was having a hard time.  So he hit the ‘Going hungry, going hungry, yeah.’  I sang the high part, and then he hit it again.  All of a sudden, a lightbulb went off in my head…