“You can f*** off”: the song Chris Cornell used to piss off his record company
Any record label tends to feel like the enemy of any up-and-coming rock band. Sure, they might be able to give you a larger audience than you had thought of, but they’re also the people who try to cheapen your sound by getting you to play the most basic songs possible to make sure that everyone can appreciate it. Chris Cornell never exactly liked going along with the program like that, though, so when putting together Temple of the Dog, he ensured that any single potential he had would go to the most uncommercial song he could think of on ‘Reach Down’.
If you know the backstory behind Temple of the Dog, nothing about it was supposed to be a cash grab. The entire basis of the album came together after the tragic passing of Mother Love Bone frontman Andy Wood, so anything that they would play afterwards was going to be from the heart rather than a sure-fire single.
For Cornell, he lost a friend rather than a bandmate. Wood had been his roommate for years before he passed away, and Cornell started pouring all of his grief into the first demos for the group, which became pieces like ‘Say Hello to Heaven’ and ‘Pushin Forward Back’. These clearly didn’t sound like Soundgarden songs, so the most logical thing would be to record them with the surviving members of Mother Love Bone.
Putting together the group with Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard, Cornell began work from the original demos that he had lying around. In addition to Gossard’s riffs, Ament ended up bringing down a friend of his named Mike McCready, who was a recovering hair metal fan who suddenly got up to a serious fixation with Stevie Ray Vaughan.
When it came time to make ‘Reach Down’, McCready remembered that Cornell wanted something deliberately uncommercial, telling Rolling Stone, “I remember Chris was like, ‘Hey, let’s make a super long song that’s the first song on the record that will piss off the record company. Let’s make it the first single.’ There’s a guitar part that follows his vocal, [so] I wanted to emulate that.”
Soundgarden already had more of a seniority level among Seattle bands, so Cornell probably had his fair share of conversations with slimy business types. Considering how much the Seattle scene took from punk rockers, leading off a record with the longest song that eclipses 11 minutes feels like it’s ripped straight out of Neil Young’s wheelhouse.
Cornell wasn’t shy about it, either, recalling in Twenty, “‘Reach Down’, which is the first song that I wrote for the Temple of the Dog, I wanted it to be a long Neil Young song that was mostly guitar solos. And that’s going to be the first track on the record, and you can fuck off”. For a piece that’s supposed to be a middle finger to the label, ‘Reach Down’ earns every bit of those 11 minutes.
Compared to the rest of their incessant jamming, McCready is wailing his brains out throughout the entire track, playing as if he’s got absolutely everything to prove. While the idea of continuing as a full band wasn’t in the cards, McCready quickly became one of the foundations of Pearl Jam, formed after studio guest Eddie Vedder duetted with Cornell on the song ‘Hunger Strike’. Cornell may have been known for his laid-back demeanour offstage, but he could still be cheeky when he wanted to.
