By Brian Ives
There’s been a legal battle brewing over the master tapes of the classic 1991 album Temple of the Dog, by the supergroup of the same name that featured Soundgarden‘s Chris Cornell and Matt Cameron and Pearl Jam‘s Stone Gossard, Jeff Ament and Mike McCready (and on a few tracks, Eddie Vedder).
According to the Seattle Times, A&M Records, the label who released the album in 1991 (they’re now owned by Universal Music), filed a lawsuit in a U.S. District Court in Seattle against Rajan Parashar, the co-founder of London Bridge Studios in Seattle, where the album was recorded. Parashar is in possession of the master tapes and is, apparently, refusing to give them to the record company.
His brother, Rick Parashar, was the co-owner of the studio and also produced the album (as well as Pearl Jam’s debut, Ten).
Related: Chris Cornell Perform ‘Homegrown’ & ‘Heavy Is the Head’ with Chris Cornell on ‘SNL': Watch
According to the lawsuit, Rick Parashar, initially produced Temple of the Dog on a verbal agreement with the band. The lawsuit said that a deal was signed in 1993, in which A&M alleges Rick Parashar agreed to turn over the master tapes and all rights to them for $35,000. Rajan Parashar’s lawyer, however, says that his client was not part of any agreement between his brother and A&M.
The record label “believed the artists to be in possession of the master recordings” until May 2013, when “a representative of the artists contacted A&M and informed A&M that [Rajan Parashar] and Rick Parashar” had them.
Rick Parashar died in August of last year.
Cornell tweeted his response to the lawsuit, saying, “It’s sad when something you hold sacred becomes the object of a desperate money grab,” and linking to a news article on the subject from the Associated Press.
It's sad when something you hold sacred becomes the object of a desperate money grab tinyurl.com/mt66bkg
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Chris Cornell (@chriscornell) April 14, 2015Added Cornell in a statement: “A&M Records paid for the recordings and the use of the studio,” he said. For Parashar “to pretend he has a right to keep the recordings makes no more sense than the owner of a laundromat claiming he owns the clothes you washed in his washing machine.”
Next year marks the 25th anniversary of the album’s release, and it’s likely that Universal would be planning some sort of reissue (both Pearl Jam and Soundgarden have released reissues of their seminal albums in the past few years). While the group has only performed one full-length concert, Cornell has played Temple of the Dog songs at his solo shows and has also joined Pearl Jam on stage to perform TOTD songs (Matt Cameron now doubles as the drummer for both bands). In February, Cornell, Gossard, Ament, McCready and Cameron performed a few Temple of the Dog songs at an all-star concert in Seattle in February.
