Andrew Wood would be Born to a close knit family in columbus, mississippi in 1966. Throughout his
childhood his family moved around a lot as his father was in the military. They would live
in san antonio texas in the mid 70’s before relocating to bainbridge island in the 80’s,
which is a short ferry ride away from Seattle. In his youth, Wood would find solace in Elton John,
Kiss, and T-Rex a sign of what was to come in his musical career.
By the time he was in elementary school Andrew already started dabbling in drugs,
something which would lead to his downfall. Known for his charismatic style,
Andy originally wanted to be a radio DJ even winning a contest in the sixth grade to host
a show on a local seattle radio station KZOK on a program called ‘Your mother won’t like it.” It was
during this show Andy hosted a three hour program where he told stories, jokes and did comedy bits
in addition to playing music. Dave Rees who would be Andy’s bandmate in the band Malfunkshun would
recall in the book Everybody loves our town “i remember talking to andy after that and he seemed
a little disappointed because he wanted to be a dj but he realized that there was no immediate
feedback. There was no audience. And that really bummed him out. He actually told me. Well now i’m
gonna have to be a rockstar. According to Kevin Wood, Andy’s older brother it would be a concert
andy saw in middle school where cheap trick opened Kiss that made Andy want to become a rockstar.
Before we can talk about Mother Love Bone, we have to talk about another band that preceded
it called Malkfunkshun. Andy would form the band with his older brother kevin when he was
just 14 . The brothers would end up recording their first demo tape during easter sunday in
1980 when they were left home alone while their family was at their grandmothers house. The name
for their first band Malfunkshun older brother Kevin used to work as a dishwasher at a restaurant
and remembered seeing a sign above the dishwasher that read ‘report malfunction.' Eventually,
the name got trimmed down to malfunkshun with an alternative spelling. Originally malfunkshun
was a four piece, but was scaled down to a three piece band with Andy playing bass
and doing vocals while his brother kevin played guitar and they enlisted a punk drummer
Regan Hagar. Dave Rees who was Malfunkshun’s original bassist for a short period of time
said in the book Grunge is Dead: “Malfunkshun was the loudest and most entertaining band I’d
ever seen. Yes, they were louder than motorhead.” Andy’s brother Kevin would recall in the same book
“everyone had a good time at a malfunkshun show. It was an open minded sort of feeling.
I was afraid first of offending the sensibilities of the punk rockers.
But they welcomed us with open arms. I think we opened up doors for bands to just come out, be
themselves and play. It’s kind of what started the whole evolution of the punk turns into the rock
While many associate grunge with flannel, one of the earliest so called grunge bands
was Malfunkshun, which didn’t wear flannel. Wood would model his stage persona after theatrical
performers including Marc Bolan, Freddie Mercury, Elton John and Prince. Each member would take a
different stage name L’Andrew The Love Child while his brother would take on the name Kevin stein and
their drummer Regan Hagar would become THundarr. Unlike a lot of his peers Andy wanted to be a
rockstar star, perform in arenas and create music that appealed to the masses. Andy was so single
minded in his pursuit of success that according to Kerrang he said he would even open up for Warrant.
Andy’s on stage persona became the stuff of legends in seattle,
telling jokes in between songs, with one story had him even making a sandwich on stage.
Another story involves nirvana’s kurt cobain going to a show tired and falling asleep only
to wake up and find Andy singing to him.. Despite his on stage persona Andy had a very dark side.
He would go to rehab in 1985. Krisha Augerot who was pearl jam’s Kelly Curtis assistant,
would recall in grunge is dead “he reminded me of John Belushi constantly made everyone laugh. He
was a total showman. He wanted to be as over the top as he possibly could And i think in real life
he was insecure; Unfortunately like most of these kinds of artists like that, they have a dark side
and he was an addict. Scott Crane who was the owner of soundhouse recording studio in seattle
in the same book would say “In probably 86 Andy’s drug problem started to get bad….He broke down and
started crying. This is one of the rare times you get to see the heart of Andy. He told me
how he was a drug addict and he needed money for drugs.” He’d been just 12 when he started
drinking and smoking pot. Three years later at age 15, he had graduated to psychadelics and. By his
early twenties, he was dabbling in heroin.. The same year malfunkshun would appear on the
legendary deep six compilation which also featured green river, soundgarden and the melvins. The
founder of C/Z Records Chris Hanczek would reveal what happened during the recording session of the
album recalling “Everytime he’d show up and record vocals for the deep six compilation
he’d be in full costume. Some brand new pair of sunglasses, a funky hat, a giant scarf, and funny
coat and I remember thinking this is the studio you don’t have to dress up. But he did, i think
that’s what got him into character" he'd say. By the mid 80’s andy soon started living with
Chris Cornell of soundgarden. To his bandmates it brought them relief as they knew Andy was
struggling with drugs and Chris Cornell at that time was on the straight and narrow. Soon enough
Andy would meet the love of his life a woman named Xana La Fuente who worked at a vintage clothing
store. She would soon move into Andy and Chris . By 1987 though things for Malfunkshun changed.
THe band grew frustrated. Despite influencing so many bands in the Seattle’s music scene, the local
press largely ignored them, record labels showed no interest and other bands including Green River
and Soundgarden drew larger crowds. Kevin Wood would cite two factors asworking against the band
saying they should have done a better job shopping around their demos and that the band should have
held on a bit longer. While Malfunkshun never officially broke up Andy and Regan started
jamming with the former members of Green River whose band had just broken up at the same time.
Green River for their part would feature future mudhoney and pearl jam members Mark Arm,
Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament. While Green River had a sizeable following in Seattle,
Frontman Mark Arm was at odds with guitarist Stone Gossard & bassist Jeff Ament over their
aspirations to sign with a major label describing them as i quote “careerists.” Mike Larson who
worked as the manager for Green River would reveal in the book everybody loves our town that when he
became the manager of the band he saw a write up in the local paper the rocket stating that the
band was in the studio with Joe Perry of Aerosmith working on their next album. Of course the story
wasn’t true, but Larson would suspect it was Ament planted the story to create buzz around the band.
Green River’s drummer Alex Shumway’s would reveal in the same book mark Arm wanted to
keep the band down to the earth and the other guys wanted it to become something bigger. He
would recall ‘hey let’s move down to LA & make it down there. That was jeff and stone’s idea.
It was more of something that was thrown against the wall. Mark was like hell no."
But bassist Jeff Ament would fire back in the same book saying- there was some shit
talking afterwards about how me and stone being careerists, which is what cobain adopted later.
I was the only guy in the band who didn’t have a trust fund. I guess if not wanting to work at
a restaurant for the rest of my life made me a careerist then that was probably true he'd
say. By the way guys i've done a whole video on the feud between Pearl Jam and Nirvana
you can check it out in the link below. Arm in the same book would claim that
he had no problem being in a successful band, but he didn’t want to get vocal lessons or
sound more commercial just for the sake of being successful. Also adding to the rift
between him and his bandmates was that he was starting to dabble in drugs by the late 80's
The former members of malfunkshun and green river including Andrew Wood,
Stone Gossard, Jeff Ament and Regan Hagar formed a short lived cover band called Lords of Wasteland.
By the following year in 1988 the group added guitarist Bruce Fairweather of Green River
&it was at the same time that Hagar had a falling out with Ament and was replaced by
drummer Greg Gilmore from Ten Minute Warning. The members of malfunkshun initially thought
that when andy joined up with the members of green river that he would split his time
between both groups and Mother Love Bone would possibly open up more doors for Malfunkshin,
but almost immediately mother love bone started attracting a lot of attention.
It probably helped that Green River by the time they had broken up was attracting
some pretty big crowds which seemed to spill over to mother love bone's shows.
For the former members of Green River teaming up with Andy Wood was a huge change.
THeir previous singer Mark Arm was cynical, serious and an anti-rockstar type while Andy
wanted to be a rockstar and didn’t take himself too seriously with local producer and engineer
Jack Endino calling Wood and i quote "the only stand-up comedian frontman in Seattle"
Mother Love Bone’s style of music shared more with LA’s sunset strip than the band’s
who dominated Seattle’s so called grunge scene. Ament would compare both green river and mother
love bone in everybody loves our town saying - it was so different. Mark had such a heavy,
cynical thing going on and andy’s thing was pure comedy. I’d never been around anybody
like Andy. Playing four quarter notes over and over starteed to get old- we were starting
to develop groove. We were aspiring to mutate beyond just the hardcore/super-up tempo things.
Regan Hagar who would serve as mother love bone’s original drummer
would reveal in the book grunge is dead how andy, stone and jeff were a match made in heaven “stone
and jeff were determiend businessmen - they were going to make it. Those guys were buckling down,
practicing, making connections and planning tours of their own. So those guys,
mixed with Andy’s charisma and stage presence. It was like a match that sparked and took off.
Chris Cornell would look back at the importance of Mother Love bone in the 2005 documentary
Malfunkshun: The Andrew wood Story saying “What was happening with commercial hard rock was it
was eating itself,” “Nobody cared about songs. You had to look a certain way, sound a certain
way. Mother Love Bone – they fit into this genre. [But] they were real. It was like a band stepping
out of 1976. It was that genuine.” But not everybody counted themselves
fans of mother love bone in seattle’s music scene.. Soundgarden guitarist Kim
Thayil who loved andy’s previous band malfunkshin revealed in grunge is dead i liked every damn
person in mother love bone - i’ve always felt uncomfortable about the union. I think because
i really liked green river and i was a huge fan of malfunkshin. I saw love bone as trying too
hard.Andy’s stage presence with malfunkshun seemed like a good dose of parody and homeage. It was
campy, witty. With love bone the parody seemed to be missing. It seemed more serious, morep
rofessional which would make record companies and management happy. It just didn’t seem right - it
always seemed awkward . it seemed like it was forced like they were trying he'd dsay.
During his time in green river jeff ament developed a lot of contacts in the music business.
When Mother Love Bone started up Ament reached out to those contacts to lineup shows and one of
the women that Ament knew was a women named Anna Statman who used to work at Slash Records before
leaving for Geffen Records. She initially offered to sign the band to a demo deal - basically
giving them a few thousand dollars to record a few songs and see whether the band was worth signing.
Soon enough several other labels were chomping to sign the band. Ament would recall in the
book “Grunge Is Dead” what happened after the demo deal “we did that = it was just on. People
started calling me at work. Within a month there were seven or eight labels that were trying to
get up to seattle to see us play or take us out to dinner. I think it’s what Andy termed “The seattle
dinner tour.” In November of 1988, the band signed a deal with PolyGram subsidiary Polydor/Stardog.
The Stardog Records imprint was created exclusively for the band’s future releases.It
would be famed A&R man at polygram michael goldstone who signed the band recalling to
rolling stone ““Some of my warmest memories were watching [Mother Love Bone’s] Andy Wood play club
shows,” Goldstone says, “because Andy was a rock star even if there were only six people there.
He would talk to the balcony even if there wasn’t a balcony in the club.””
Ronen Givony, author of Not for You: Pearl Jam and the Present Tense
would tell the independent “Interestingly – I’m not sure this is widely known – when Mother
Love Bone signed to PolyGram, in, I believe, 1988, it was the most lucrative signing/deal
for a Seattle rock band, up to that point,” says Givony. At the time, there was clearly a lot of
enthusiasm among the major labels for flamboyant, theatrical, Guns N’ Roses-type heavy metal.”
For Polygram Mother Love Bone released their debut EP, Shine, in March of 1989 – almost a year before
Wood’s death. The EP would be done with producer mark dearnley who had worked with AC/DC. & would
contain one of Mother love Bone’s best known tracks, the eight minute plus “Chloe Dancer/Crown
of Thorns” which would later appear on the Singles soundtrack). By the later part of 1989
the band headed down to California to record at the Record Plant in Sausalito in California. The
same studio where Guns N’ Roses recorded theri landmark record Appetite for Destruction.
It was at the record plant that mother love bone spent several months recording their debut LP
Apple with producer Terry Date who would later go on to work with Pantera in the 1990's. . THey
would survive the 1989 earthquake and the studio nearly burning down with Date recalling in the
book Grunge is Dead “that was a lot of fun working on that record. We all lived in the
same condo - we shared a couple of condos. Andy was a blast, almost burnt down the studio once.
He always leaves candles burning at his keyboard.” But for Bassist Jeff Ament he had some regret over
how the recoridng of Apple was done claiming the studio costs were upwards of $1,000 a day and the
band should have first spent more time rehearsing the songs before going into the studio.
When Mother Love Bone got together, Wood’s new bandmates were aware of his addictions. Stone
Gossard would tell the Independent We knew about Andy’s drug problem when he joined the
band,”. “He had just gotten out of treatment for the first time. There were times when we
were not as responsible as we should have been. There were times that we didn’t take
his problem as seriously as we should have. Chris Cornell would recall in the 2005 Andrew
Wood documentary how Wood was intimidated by his bandmates hyper focus recalling
“He looked at Stone and Jeff as being really organised and knowing what they were
doing,”. “That intimidated and scared him.” Following the recording of Apple Wood on
thanksgiving of 1989 checked into Valley General Hospital in Monroe, located northeast of Seattle.
While his bandmates lended support to him they were focused on touring and releasing their debut
record. By early 1990 Wood would relapse and when his girlfriend notified his bandmates of the news,
she would claim they didn’t pay that much attention.
His girlfriend would reveal in the same 2005 documentary “He was coming home, cry crying
crying… ‘please help me stop, I’m going to die’,”. “I’d tell them [the rest of Mother Love Bone],
‘we need to talk about this’. All they wanted to hear about was the record deal.
It was like the twilight zone. They didn’t want to hear about it” she'd say.
With over hundred days of sobriety On March 16, 1990 several days before the band's debut album
was supposed ot come out Andy Wood would overdose on heroin. The same day Wood was supposed to go
to the gym with Jeff Ament , but the bassist cancelled not feeling well. Wood went back to
his apartment he called up manager Kelly Curtis telling him he couldn’t make it to rehearsals
that night. In the book Grunge is Dead Regan Hagar would point to a man that Wood was hanging
out with from Bainbridge who supplied him with the drugs that night While Curtis or the band
may have thought something was up, it wasn’t clear whether they notified Wood’s girlfriend who was at
work at the time to check on Andy. His girlfriend would find him unresponsive at 10pm that night.
His girlfriend would express some regret in the book grunge is dead “i was at a meeting at work
and couldn’t answer the phone. I don’t know if he had tried to call. I took a couple of friends
from work home and that took about a half an hour of my time. That always bothered me because the
nurses at the hospital were saying “if you had been there ten minutes sooner Because he wasn’t
dead or blue or anything, he was just asleep” Wood would be taken to harbor view hospital where
he was in a coma for 3 days.By March 19th he would be declared dead. It was a deadly week in seattle
as 4 other overdoses occured the same day. H Jeff Ament would recall how much of a shock the
news revealing in the same book “that night kelly curtis, greg and i were talking to a guy who was
going to be our tour manager. That was as big of a punch in the gut as you could possibly have at
that point. Andy was doing so good he was working out everyday, going to meetings, seemed really
stoked about his to live out his rock dreams.” In the same book his brother Kevin Wood expressed
some doubt whether Mother Love Bone would have given Andy a career in rock n’ roll
because it was as he put it and i quote “cliche-ish”, but at the same time revealed
that Andrew was working on a solo album with his brother around the time of his death.
Polygram would posthumously release Apple several months after Wood’s death in July of 1990.
And reviewing the album, the The New York Times stated the record was and i quote “the first of
the big league Seattle rock stars”. The band would do a limited amount
of press to promote the album speaking to the LA Times with Stone Gossard would say
“Mother Love Bone died with him,” going on to say. “I’m just stumbling around in the dark,
trying to do something nobody ever did before. . . . For this to go to some album graveyard would
have been a crime. People should hear Andy. “We could have hired another lead singer
and gone on without him, but Andy was such a big part of the band’s identity
that that didn’t make sense. He was the vocalist, he wrote all the lyrics and some of the music.
He was the image of the Mother Love Bone--to us what Jagger is to the Stones "he'd say.
The album would peak at number 77 on the billboard charts. But who knows
what could have been. The surviving band members would be in debt 100k to Polygram
The news sent ripples throughout Seattle. The innocence of Seattle’s music scene seemed to
have been lost with Andy's death Tributes poured in with Alice in Chains penning the track Would?.
Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell would team up with Ament and Gossard recording a tribute album
under the band name temple of the dog, a line taken from a mother love bone song.
Ament and Gossard would go on to form Pearl Jam with Eddie Vedder and Mike Mcready and
become one of the biggest rock bands of the next three decades, but not everyone celebrated their
success. Andy would tell Another Man Magazine “I remember hearing Ten and feeling cheated because I
know Andy had written at least 25 per cent of the melodies and the songs [with Stone] on there,”.
“It was a weird feeling watching them become the biggest band in the world.
Polygram would release A Mother Love Bone compilation in September 1992
and the same year the band would appear on the singles soundtrack.That does it
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