Did you know there are at least 15 rock and metal songs that were written in tribute to late grunge musicians?
The Seattle music scene that formed in the late ’80s was a tight-knit community of bands from the Pacific Northwest that all went to each others’ shows and supported one another.
In 1990, that community suffered its first big loss — Mother Love Bone frontman Andrew Wood.
It’s often said by key members of that scene that Wood would have become a huge star if he hadn’t died so young. His stage presence, his confidence and his musical talent influenced his peers and so his death affected them deeply. Many of them turned to music to channel their pain, thus a great deal of songs were written about Wood by musicians both inside and outside of the Seattle music scene.
The same thing happened a few years later with Kurt Cobain, whose tragic 1994 death was publicized on a much grander scale since Seattle was in the spotlight of the rock world at the time — and Nirvana were in the dead center of it.
It happened again in the early 2000s after Layne Staley lost his battle with addiction. And again later on.
READ MORE: The Best Ballad by 13 Big Grunge Artists
There is a lot of speculation about whether certain songs were written about certain musicians, thus we opted to only include songs where the performing artist confirmed they were written about someone. Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Tearjerker” is widely believed to have been written about Cobain, but Anthony Kiedis hasn’t actually said that it was, for example.
Grunge may have only been at the forefront of the music scene for a couple of years, but the impact the icons from that scene had will last until the end of time. Keep reading to learn about songs that were written as tributes to late grunge musicians.
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1
Temple of the Dog, ‘Say Hello 2 Heaven’
Chris Cornell was inspired to start the Temple of the Dog project after his close friend and roommate, Mother Love Bone vocalist Andrew Wood, died at the age of 24 in 1990 from a drug overdose. Therefore the entire album — which he worked on with Jeff Ament, Matt Cameron, Stone Gossard, Mike McCready and Eddie Vedder — was technically a tribute to Wood. “Say Hello 2 Heaven” and “Reach Down” are the two tracks that were actually written about Wood’s death, though.
The former references Wood’s fiancee Xana La Fuente in the lyrics, “Poor Stargazer / She’s got no tears in her eyes,” as “Stargazer” was a nickname Wood had given her and the title of a song he wrote about her for Mother Love Bone (which mentions her name in the lyrics).
“[Andrew] was kind of like this beam of light above [the Seattle scene]. To see him hooked up to machines, that was the death of the innocence of the scene,” Cornell once said in an interview.
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2
Alice In Chains, ‘Would?’
Jerry Cantrell wrote Alice In Chains’ hit “Would?” after Cameron Crowe asked him to write a song for a movie he was working on at the time about Seattle. The track was inspired by the death of Wood, as several others on this list were, because the late singer had also been good friends with Cantrell.
“I was thinking a lot about Andrew Wood at the time. We always had a great time when we did hang out, much like Chris Cornell and I do,” the guitarist wrote in the liner notes for Alice’s 1999 compilation Music Bank.
“There was never really a serious moment or conversation, it was all fun. Andy was a hilarious guy, full of life and it was really sad to lose him. But I always hate people who judge the decisions others make. So it was also directed towards people who pass judgments.”
The song appeared on the soundtrack for Crowe’s film Singles and also on Alice’s 1992 album Dirt, though Cantrell later revealed in another interview that they didn’t initially intend to include it on the album because it wasn’t recorded during the sessions for it.
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3
Faster Pussycat, ‘Mr. Lovedog’
Wood’s death impacted people outside of the Pacific Northwest too — Faster Pussycat’s “Mr. Lovedog” from their 1992 album Whipped! was written as a tribute to the late singer.
The song features lyrics such as, “The star dog left the mother bone” and “This is goodbye to Captain Hi-Top /
Hope your Pearl Jam can keep it strong.”Although the media often paints hair metal and grunge as having a rivalry back in the early ’90s, that wasn’t necessarily the case.
“I met Andrew a few times,” Faster Pussycat vocalist Taime Downe told Alabama publication Al.com.
“[I] was friends with Chris Cornell, Layne from Alice in Chains, Mike Starr the bass player, a lot of people that are gone. I’m friends with Jerry, with all the Chains guys. Mike and Layne, I knew the best.”
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4
Candlebox, ‘Far Behind’
Candlebox were a few years younger than the core grunge bands, which is why they’re often categorized as post-grunge. Regardless, frontman Kevin Martin had developed a friendship with Wood, Cornell and many of the other musicians from the early grunge scene once he moved to Seattle. His band’s smash hit “Far Behind” was actually written about Wood’s death.
“Andy is the guy who inspired the songs. Every night I sing ‘Far Behind,’ it’s about him. It will always be that way for me. Andy was massive inspiration for me. He actually gave me the time of day,” Martin told Medium in 2017.
“I wasn’t on speed dial on his phone, but we were friends. Like [David] Bowie or Elton John are for some people, Andy was that way for me. There was something really special about him, the way he sang and the way he wrote songs that keeps me going back to who he was.”
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5
R.E.M., ‘Let Me In’
Like Wood, quite a few songs were written about the death of Cobain in 1994. One of them was by R.E.M., as Michael Stipe was close friends with the Nirvana frontman. He wrote the song “Let Me In” in response to Cobain’s death.
“It’s all Kurt and it was completely unedited. It fell out of me so quickly,” Stipe recalled to SiriusXM. “It’s about wanting so desperately to help someone who’s in such a dark place and feeling completely helpless and feeling that hopelessness of, ‘No matter how much I can offer up myself, it’s not going to be enough.'”
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6
Neil Young + Crazy Horse, ‘Sleeps With Angels’
Neil Young never met Cobain, but the two praised each other’s music in interviews in the ’90s. Young told The Guardian in 2002 that he tried to reach out to Cobain the week that the singer died in April of ’94, but never got a hold of him.
“I read something and someone told me a few things that made me think he was in trouble that week,” Young remembered.
Cobain quoted Young’s lyrics “It’s better to burn out than to fade away” from “Hey Hey, My My” in his suicide note. Young was deeply affected by it and wrote the song “Sleeps With Angels” in response.
“I like to think that I possibly could have done something,” Young told The Guardian.
“I was just trying to reach him. Trying to connect up with him. It’s just too bad I didn’t get a shot. I didn’t get a shot. I had an impulse to connect. Only when he used my song in that suicide note was the connection made. Then I felt it was really unfortunate that I didn’t get through to him. I might’ve been able to make things a little lighter for him, that’s all. Just lighten it up a little bit.”
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7
Pearl Jam, ‘4/20/02’
Pearl Jam’s tribute to Layne Staley is a hidden track within the song “Bee Girl,” which appears on their 2003 compilation album Lost Dogs. The tribute is titled “4/20/02” because that’s the day Vedder heard of Staley’s death. The vocalist performs the track alone with an acoustic guitar.
“It was a real personal song Vedder wrote the night we all found out Staley died,” Gossard told Billboard of the song. “He stayed in there, didn’t work on anything else and worked this song up.”
“He wrote it in the ukulele tuning, so it had this weird vibe to it and it was sad,” McCready added.
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8
Cold, ‘The Day Seattle Died’
Cold’s Scooter Ward wrote “The Day Seattle Died” about both Cobain and Staley, as they died on the same day (April 5) eight years apart. He told Song Facts that he chose the title because the two losses were, in his opinion, the day Seattle died.
“I had met Layne Staley before when he was really sick. We were on tour with Jerry Cantrell and Jerry knew I was a giant fan of Alice in Chains,” Ward remembered.
“He came backstage with me and it impacted me so deeply to see him in that condition because he was one of my biggest idols of all time. We opened a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and drank it and I just talked to him about everything for a long time. But the condition that he was in at the time affected me deeply — to see him look years older than what I thought he was. I knew when he left that night, that was the end — that he was going to go. I’m so thankful I got to spend that time with him.”
Ward dedicated the song to Cobain as well because the Nirvana vocalist was also one of his influences
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9
Mark Lanegan, ‘Way to Tomorrow’
Mark Lanegan worked with Staley during the sessions for Mad Season’s sole album Above and appeared on a few of the tracks. They developed a close friendship, which actually led Lanegan to write two songs about the troubled singer.
The first, “Last One in the World,” came out in 1998, four years before Staley died. The lyrics essentially served as a premature tribute to the Alice In Chains frontman: “Within your lonely room / I hear you whisper see you soon /
I sense a dying spark / I watch you falling through the dark.”Unfortunately, Lanegan had another reason to pen a track for Staley a few years later when he died — “Way to Tomorrow.” The song was recorded for his demo album Houston Publishing Demos 2002, which was released in 2015.
He wrote of “Way to Tomorrow”: “A song I wrote and recorded my last night in town [Houston] upon receiving the devastating news that Layne Staley had died” [via Unmask.us].
Sadly, Lanegan is no longer with us anymore either.
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10
Staind, ‘Layne’
Aaron Lewis wrote “Layne,” which appeared on Staind’s 2003 album 14 Shades of Grey, in honor of Staley after his passing because he was deeply influenced by the late singer’s work with Alice In Chains.
“The perspective I took on it was how it just kind of seems like it kind of came and went without all that much to do about the fact that he had passed away,” Lewis said in 2002 [via Blabbermouth].
“It’s just, ‘I won’t forget who you were’ and what he did for me. And how basically the words he was singing — I wasn’t doing heroin but I could still relate and it helped me through times that it seems like my music has helped other people through.”
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11
Black Label Society, ‘Layne’
Another song titled “Layne,” released by Black Label Society, was written by Zakk Wylde about the life and death of the Alice In Chains singer.
“I wrote is as a tribute to Layne, wondering what was going on in his head. I’ve never done heroin in my life. It must be a really dark fucking place, man,” Wylde told Sea of Tranquility.
“I like drinking fucking beers and we go out and get fucking blitzkrieged. That whole drug thing … I’ve never done it. I just put myself in Layne’s headspace when I wrote lyrics for that thing.”
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12
Alice In Chains, ‘Black Gives Way to Blue’
Seven years after Staley’s death, Alice In Chains released Black Gives Way to Blue, their first album with vocalist William DuVall. Cantrell wrote the title track about the grief he and his bandmates felt after they lost their good friend. He told Guitar World that in the months prior to writing the song, he developed some sort of unidentifiable illness.
“They never could find anything wrong with me. I felt I was puking up all this undigested grief in losing Layne,” Cantrell recalled, adding that once he started writing “Black Gives Way to Blue,” the illness subsided.
“It is one of the heaviest songs I’ve ever written,” he described of the song. “And that’s fucking heavy.”
The guitarist sent a demo of the track to one of his heroes, Elton John, and called it “a song from the heart for Layne.” The Rocket Man ended up playing piano on the song in his honor.
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13
Metallica, ‘Just a Bullet Away’
Staley’s death was actually the main inspiration for Metallica’s entire 2008 Death Magnetic album, but one of the tracks they recorded for it, “Just a Bullet Away,” was written specifically about the Alice In Chains singer’s life and death.
The band decided not to put the song on Death Magnetic and eventually released it in 2011. A few years prior to its release, James Hetfield told Rolling Stone [via MetalUnderground.com], “I know Jerry Cantrell quite well and learned about Layne through him… I could see some of the things Jerry went through to keep that band together.
“I started writing a song around a Layne Staley type — a rock ‘n’ roll martyr magnetized by death. Why did he choose that path, someone with such talent?”
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14
Alice In Chains, ‘Never Fade’
Alice In Chains have turned a lot of pain and grief into beautiful songs — “Never Fade” from 2018’s Rainier Fog being one of them. DuVall told Kerrang! [via Blabbermouth] that he was thinking about a couple of people that died when he wrote the lyrics for it.
“I was thinking about my grandmother, who’d just died a few months earlier; thinking about Layne Staley, thinking about Chris Cornell, who’d just passed a month before — just letting it wash over and at the end, I walked out into the dawn and felt I’d had a significant spiritual experience. It couldn’t have happened anywhere else.”
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15
Mike McCready, ‘Crying Moon’
There isn’t an official studio recording of this song just yet, but we felt it was necessary to include as Cornell’s death is one of the more recent of the bunch. McCready wrote it for the late vocalist and debuted it live in August of 2023.
“I wrote it for my friend Chris Cornell,” the guitarist told the audience the night he first played it. “It’s kind of how I’ve had to process a lot of the singers that 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 fucking horrible cliche.”
He said that Cornell was a “sweetheart” to him and acknowledged their time working on the Temple of the Dog album.
“That was a huge intro to my new life at that time. And I’ll always love him for that.”
