Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready took the stage with his side project group The Rockfords at the historic Seattle venue, the Shoxbox, on Saturday (July 29). There, McCready played an unreleased song, “Crying Moon,” for his fallen friend, former grunge musician Chris Cornell of Soundgarden.
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McCready posted the video on his Facebook page. The clip begins with him talking about the singers who have died in Seattle, from Cornell to McCready’s former Mad Season bandmate, Layne Staley (of Alice in Chains).
“I wrote this song for my friend Chris Cornell, the late, great,” McCready said from the Showbox stage. “It’s kinda how I have to process. A lot of the singers have died in this scene. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I get the drug aspect of it, but it’s such a horrible cliche. But Chris was such a sweetheart to me, he let me play on the Temple record, and that was a huge intro to my new life at the time, and I’ll always love him for that.”
McCready, whose birthday is April 5, which is the same day that both Staley and Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain died, though eight years apart, said to process Cornell’s death he wrote the song, “Crying Moon.” In the video, which you can see here, he played it solo acoustic.
On his musician Facebook page, McCready added a note. He again thanked Cornell for inviting him to play in the group Temple of the Dog, which was an homage band for Cornell’s former roommate, grunge singer Andrew Wood of Mother Love Bone, who died of a drug overdose in 1990.
“This is a song I wrote as a goodbye to my friend Chris Cornell,” McCready wrote on Facebook. “Crying Moon is part of my process in dealing with his death. Chris opened up my world to new heights when he let me play on Temple Of The Dog. When he agreed to sing on Mad Season as part of the Sonic Evolution show with the Seattle Symphony, I literally jumped for joy! The Temple Of The Dog reunion at that show inspired us to tour, which was amazing. Playing War Pigs live with Chris was a dream. I love and miss him…”
Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic
