Stone Gossard Calls Chris Cornell the ‘G.O.A.T.’ + Shares Update on Next Pearl Jam Album
Chris Cornell is often heralded as one of the greatest musicians of his generation, and in a recent interview with Riff TV’s Talkin’ Rock with Meltdown podcast, Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard praised him as such. If that weren’t enough, Gossard also gave new insights into how the next Pearl Jam record is coming along.
As most fans know, Gossard and Cornell – as well as Pearl Jam’s Jeff Ament, Matt Cameron, Mike McCready and Eddie Vedder – worked together on 1991’s self-titled Temple of the Dog album. When asked about the making of the LP, Gossard offered plenty of fond memories of working with the late Soundgarden/Audioslave singer.
The more you listen to Chris and the more you dig in to what he did when he was here, I'm just more and more impressed by him and in awe of his natural talent. We made that Temple of the Dog record and we rehearsed like four times. He showed us the songs, we kind of knew how to play them. Him and Matt Cameron — Matt Cameron was just unbelievable — they just showed us how to make a record in five days. I listen to that record and I don't even remember playing half of it, and it's probably one of the best records I've ever been involved with.
[Cornell] was so generous to give us the opportunity to make a record after we had lost our singer in Mother Love Bone to a heroin overdose. It was a horrible time. He loved Andy [Wood]. He lived with Andy and spent a lot of time with him. He was just like, “Let's make a record together.” He wrote these beautiful, sensitive songs at a time when all of it was heavy. He was like, “I can do a ballad, I can do a love song, I can do this stuff that's outside the genre.” At the time, it was very different.
He's the great...he's the G.O.A.T maybe.
As for Pearl Jam’s follow-up to 2020’s Gigaton (which will be produced by Andrew Watt), Gossard says that a 2024 release date is likely. As transcribed separately by Classic Rock magazine:
The plan is that we're gonna do some more recording, and we're gonna try to finish a record here pretty soon. There's songs that are getting close to being done and there's a bunch that aren't. And we're gonna do something here pretty soon. We've got demos for days. Everybody writes in the band, so now it's really just trying to figure out what's something different for us and what's something exciting. And we're working on that. I think we've got a good start on another record that will be hopefully good. I bet it's gonna be 2024 before the record comes out, is my guess. But we're working on it
You can watch the full interview below.
So, how do you feel about Gossard’s feelings on Cornell? Are you eager to hear the new Pearl Jam album? Let us know!