Pearl Jam have paid tribute to their late friend Chris Cornell by sharing some funny memories.
The Soundgarden frontman died by suicide at the age of 52 in 2017 and Pearl Jam guitarists Mike McCready and Stone Gossard revealed that he was a prankster who loved to play jokes in the studio.
Soundgarden and Pearl Jam teamed up for supergroup ‘Temple Of The Dog’ in 1990 and 2016 and the bands frequently used the same studios for recording.
Gossard reminisced on a time when Pearl Jam had left a human dummy nicknamed ‘Safety Man’ behind at Studio Litho after working on 1996 album ‘No Code’ when Soundgarden arrived at the studio to record ‘Down On The Upside’.
He explained in a Reddit AMA: "People had been using Safety Men to cheat in the SUV lanes by having in passenger seat.
"Long story short, safety man had been on the couch the whole time SG record and one day [engineer] Matt Bayles arrived and was getting ready to record and as he turned around Safety man stood up and scared the sh*t of him… Chris has snuck in and put on all of safety mans clothes and sat there for 20 mins waiting… so funny."
McCready also revealed that Cornell’s death affected their new album ‘Gigaton’.
He said: "There were lots of starts and stops with touring, Chris [Cornell]’s death, etc etc. But it was freeing to just record with the mindset of, let’s do whatever comes to our minds.
"The first single ‘Dance of the Clairvoyants’ is the best example of letting go of any preconceptions I had of how a Pearl Jam song should be."
Pearl Jam reminisce about Chris Cornell
