Eddie Vedder – If I Ever Were to Lose You, I’d Surely Lose Myself

1990 – The Seattle grunge movement is on the verge of going worldwide, and Temple of the Dog is formed to produce an album to pay tribute to the lead singer of Mother Love Bone, Andrew Wood, who had passed away earlier that year at just 24 years old. The band consisted of Wood’s former bandmates, Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard, with Mike McCready, and additions from fellow Seattle band Soundgarden – Matt Cameron, and the legendary singer Chris Cornell. The self-titled album Temple of the Dog was built around songs written by Cornell for Wood in the wake of his death, and was a cathartic process for the members in giving them a chance to get back to making new music again.

The final addition to Temple of the Dog would be none other than Eddie Vedder – a relative unknown at the time – who was brought in for a few vocal parts on the album. Without the inclusion of Vedder, we would never have got ‘Hunger Strike’ – a powerhouse of a duet between Cornell and Vedder that would become the band’s biggest song. Not long after Temple of the Dog was made, Cameron and Cornell went back to Soundgarden, and the rest of the band, with Vedder at the helm, went on to produce Ten – Pearl Jam’s iconic debut album. Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, along with the likes of Nirvana and Alice In Chains, saw massive success during the golden age of grunge that followed. In the decades after, Cornell and Vedder would often reunite on stage to sing the fan-favourite ‘Hunger Strike’ together. The last time they had the chance to do so was 2014, before Chris Cornell’s tragic death in 2017. Eddie Vedder has since talked about the devastating impact of the loss of his friend, and throughout his music he’s offered powerful insights into the torment of grief.

‘Future Days’, The final song on Pearl Jam’s tenth album from 2013, Lightning Bolt, is a ballad that Vedder wrote about the loss of his friend, Dennis Flemion, a year prior. With the acoustic guitar in hand, he opens with:

“If I ever were to lose you,

I’d surely lose myself”

It’s perhaps the summary of what the impact of grief is at its core. A testament to how much of a significant part the people we love play in our lives, Vedder highlights how hard it is to reconcile yourself to a different life without those people.

Speaking on stage in London about Chris Cornell in the wake of his death, Vedder opened up about the pain he was dealing with. He discussed wanting to be there to support others close to Chris, whilst struggling with the reality of loss –

“My friend is going to be gone forever and I will just have to…”

It can seem impossible to come to terms with that reality, and it’s a battle that Cornell himself discussed when writing ‘Say Hello 2 Heaven’ for Andrew Wood:

“I, I never wanted to write these words down for you

With the pages of phrases of all the things we’ll never do”

Just the year before Cornell’s death, Vedder’s brother had also passed away in a climbing accident. In a 2020 interview with Howard Stern, he talked about the “dark place” that his brother’s death took him to –

“I seriously didn’t know if I was gonna get out of that one”

He went on to discuss how he found denial to be the only way he could find to deal with the loss of both his brother and Cornell, who he had always “looked up to like [his] older brother” as well –

“I was terrified of where I would go, if I allowed myself to feel what I needed to feel, or what I was instinctively wanting to feel, or how dark I felt like I was going to go.”

It’s so important to remember that there is no rulebook when it comes to grief. It’s a process best gone through with others, with care and support for each other in a time where it’s so easy to feel alone and lost. On the other hand, it’s something that everyone will deal with in their own way, and in their own time. Denial is often such a large part of the grieving process, and three years on from Cornell’s death, Eddie says “I still haven’t quite dealt with it.” In his solo track ‘Brother the Cloud’ from 2022, which can be seen as a song about his brother and Cornell, he perfectly describes the feeling of longing for those he’s lost, showing that it never goes away:

“If I could wish, wish it away

I would bleed out my knees and pray

If I could give all that I have

To bring him back today”

The reality is that grief isn’t something that we ever truly ‘deal with’ – it doesn’t just go away. However, Vedder tells Stern, “I’ll get stronger as time goes”, a reassuring statement that the weight of so much loss can be carried and will become easier to carry. When in London, Eddie spoke to the crowd about the memories that will help to lighten the load as life goes on –

“About two days after the news – I think it was the second night we were sleeping in this little cabin near the water, a place he would’ve loved. And all these memories started coming in about 1:30am, like woke me up. Like big memories. Memories I would think about all the time. Like the memories were big muscles. And then I couldn’t stop the memories, and trying to sleep it was like if the neighbours had the music playing and you couldn’t stop it. But then it was fine, because then it got into little memories. It just kept going and going and going. And I realised how lucky I was to have hours worth of … you know if each of these memories was quick and I had hours of them. How fortunate was I? And I didn’t want to be sad, wanted to be grateful, not sad. I’m still thinking about those memories and I will live with those memories in my heart and I will … love him forever.”

In the Stern interview, he talks about some of these memories with Cornell, of not just making music – but times away from the ‘rockstar’ lifestyle that made him the “older brother” he saw him as. In Pearl Jam’s ‘Come Back’, which he wrote in 2006, Vedder had previously discussed dreams as a way to relive those memories and see those people again:

“And these days, they linger on

And in the night, I been waiting for

The real possibility that I may meet you in my dreams

I go to sleep”

In addition to those shared memories, there are things that will always connect us to the people we’ve lost. Though they can start off as unwelcome reminders of that which is gone, they have the ability to lighten the burden of grief as time goes on. Music is one of them. On November 23rd 2024, Pearl Jam – Now made up of the five remaining members of Temple of the Dog – performed ‘Hunger Strike’ in Sydney on the final show of their Dark Matter tour, with Eddie Vedder taking on the song for the first time since 2014, and for the first time without Chris Cornell. ‘Hunger Strike’, and the connection it gives Eddie Vedder to Chris Cornell, is the epitome of music’s ability to honour and uphold the memory of those who have passed. looking back to ‘Future Days’, it’s really a message of hope in the face of loss:

“All the missing crooked hearts

They may die but in us they live on

I believe

And I believe, ‘cause I can see

Our Future Days

Days of you and me”

It’s a comfort to believe we’ll see those we’ve lost again, whether it’s only in dreams, or somewhere beyond. In the meantime, to celebrate everything we have to remember them by, and to hold onto those things, makes the impossible task of living life without them possible.

Help is available. Here’s a link to a range of support services, including 24-hour helplines, for whenever you need to talk to someone about how you feel.