When we think of grunge music of the early 1990s the bands that are mentioned are normally the four major ones: Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains and Soundgarden. Before any of those broke out, however, there was another band that was on the rise before a dirty habit reared its ugly head again. This week The Beat Marches On to the 19th of March 1990, The day that the original grunge pioneer, Andrew Wood, died.
The odds are that you haven’t heard of the band Mother Love Bone or their charismatic singer Andrew Wood. It’s like this in most cases for music in the majority of genres, the originators get forgotten but the next wave of the genre are the artists that become popular ones.
Formed in 1987 Mother Love Bone quickly became the leader of the grunge music scene at the time. They were dubbed the first supergroup of the scene as they were formed from the ashes of two former locally successful groups, Malfunkshun and Green River.
Andrew Wood the frontman for the band, has been quoted by friends as ‘the only heavy-metal stand-up comic in Seattle grunge history’ he was one of those people who was the centre of attention as he walked into the room. Inspired by the 1970s UK glam rock scene, while on stage he would often dress up in drag and wear make-up. Whenever he was performing, whether it was in front of six people or six thousand he would put 100% into the show.
In 1988 the band signed to Polygram Records, the first band from the area that signed to a major label but due to touring commitments didn’t release anything until the following year.
The band’s first release was an EP. Called Shine, the final track ‘Chloe Dancer/Crown of Thorns’ was the standout track on the record. A double-track medley about how Wood’s partner, Xena La Fuente, supported him (Chloe Dancer) and how his excesses almost broke them up (Crown of Thorns)
The EP gave the band moderate success, enough to warrant a full album from Polygram. Before they went to the studio to record the album, Wood checked into rehab. This wasn’t the first time the singer had ended up there, he had been in and out with substance abuse problems since 1985.
After Wood’s latest stint in rehab, the band went to the studio and recorded a full-length album which included the standout track from the Shine EP among others, but the singer was discontent with the ideas that were suggested. He contacted his brother, who was in the singer’s previous band Malfunkshun, to lay down some solo tracks for a potential album.
Post-rehab by all accounts Andrew was doing well. He was going to the gym to get back in shape and even creating new songs, but all it takes is one slip and you’re back in the gutter again.
On the 16th of March after pulling a sickie to meet the band’s new tour manager, the singer relapsed and overdosed on heroin. He had been sober for nearly four months.
The overdose sent shockwaves throughout the whole Seattle music scene. Although the drug was rampant in the scene, most people saw it as a party drug. No one was addicted to the drug, but the scenesters who used ‘dabbled’ with it. A bad batch was around as it was the fourth reported overdose throughout that weekend. Wood was in a coma for three days until the plug was pulled. During those three days, whilst comatose, anyone who was a musician in Seattle came to visit the singer. Most were in disbelief at what had happened.
The album was due to come out a few days later. PolyGram delayed it until July and mentioned the fact of replacing the singer. The band couldn’t do that. Someone as unique as Andrew Wood could not be replaced.
The funeral was held at the Paramount Theatre, one of Seattle’s biggest arenas. Everyone from the grunge scene was there. Wood’s family gave eulogies as well as his fiancé, Xana La Fuente, and there was a candlelit vigil. Afterwards, the family had a private ceremony.
Chris Cornell was especially upset with the death of Wood as the two had lived together throughout 1989. His band, Soundgarden, was out on tour when the singer died. The band had just had a major record label release themselves. When he got back, he wrote a couple of songs as a tribute to the fallen singer to record with other members of Mother Love Bone.
Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament, the guitarist and bassist of Mother Love Bone had already started to form a new band at this time, recruiting a second guitarist Mike McCready and a singer was on his way up from San Diego. This band would start as Mookie Baylock but eventually changed their name to Pearl Jam but are still in the early stages at this time.
The original idea was just to release a single as a tribute to Wood but the group gelled so well that the single turned into an album. Cornell brought in Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron (who would eventually join Pearl Jam) and the new singer, Eddie Vedder, to do backing vocals and duet on what Cornell thought was a throwaway song called ‘Hunger Strike’ which became the album’s best song.
The band named after a Wood lyric, Temple of the Dog, loved the recording process for this album as they were doing it for the love of music not because a record label had forced them to. It reminded them of the early days of the Seattle sound before the huge labels had grabbed all the big bands out of the area.
It wasn’t all smiles though, some people in the scene thought that Cornell should’ve asked members of Wood’s first band, Malfunkshun, like his brother to play on the album if it was to be a proper tribute.
The album was released in April 1991 and sold okay in the area but didn’t make any waves across the rest of the country. It wasn’t until Nirvana broke towards the end of the year and turned the rest of the music world on its head that it started to pick up the pace. Re-released in the summer of 1992, after Soundgarden and Pearl Jam had their major label breakthroughs, it became one of the top 100-selling albums of that year.
The death of Andrew Wood marked the end of the indestructibility of the grunge scene. The partying drinking and dabbling in hard drugs in Seattle started to take its toll. It gave the idolised rock stars a human look and the realisation that injecting heroin could kill anyone. Although he was the first in the grunge scene to die of an overdose of the drug, we know he wouldn’t be the last.
The Beat Marches On is a music blog written by Jimmy Whitehead. Jimmy has been blogging for six years specialising in Sports (especially American Football). If you want to follow Jimmy on Twitter: @Jimmy_W1987
The Beat Marches On has a Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/The-Beat-Goes-On-Blog-107727714415791 and a Twitter page: @TheBeatGoesOnB1
The websites used for research were:
The Tragic Death of Mother Love Bone’s Andrew Wood | FeelNumb.com
The Tragic Story of Grunge Pioneer, Andrew Wood (nofilter.media)
There’s a documentary on YouTube called Malfunkshun: The Andrew Wood Story.
The book Everybody Loves Our Town: A History Of Grunge by Mark Yarm was also used for research.
If you want to request a story for The Beat Marches On blog, then you can contact jwhiteheadjournalism@gmail.com. We cannot guarantee that the story will be published but will be considered
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