Amazing Songwriters

One of my New Year’s resolutions was to post here more, and I think I’ve achieved that. This my 33rd blog entry for 2007; not too bad. Going along with that post, this one will be about music as well.

It’s no secret that Pearl Jam is my favorite band. I’ve loved them ever since Ten was released in 1991 while I was in junior high. Sometime in 1990, Chris Cornell of Soundgarden wrote a couple tunes in memory of Andrew Wood of Mother Love Bone who had recently passed away from a drug overdose. Not wanting to lose the songs’ meanings in the hard rock sound of Soundgarden, Chris Cornell enlisted the help of a couple of his Soundgarden bandmates as well as Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament. Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament were members of Mother Love Bone with Andrew. Instead of simply recording those two songs, the group began writing some tunes and ended up with an album’s worth of material. The self-titled album was released under the band name Temple of the Dog which was taken from the lyrics of Mother Love Bone’s song Man of Golden Words.

Now on to my point after that little background synopsis.

Stone Gossard had written some tunes that he, Jeff Ament, and Mike McCready had recorded in hopes of finding a singer for their new band (Pearl Jam). Eddie Vedder received one of those tapes and wrote lyrics to the instrumentals. He named one of those songs Footsteps.

At the same time, Chris Cornell heard the instrumental and began writing his own lyrics and rearranging the music a bit to fit his lyrics. What came out of that was Temple of the Dog’s Times of Trouble.

So what we’re left with is two songs with the same (basic) music track with differing lyrics: Footsteps and Times of Trouble.

It amazes me that two songwriters/singers can interpret the music in different ways and compose lyrics that both sound “right” in their own separate ways. Even in the 30 second iTunes snippets, you can tell that the music is the same.

And yes, this post is littered with iTunes links. But hey – I’m passionate about music and especially the Pearl Jam “family tree” and related bands. If you have some time and money, check out the tunes.