Album of the Day — October 12
Album of the Day — October 12
Mother Love Bone — Apple
Mother Love Bone — Apple
12.October.2020
Mother Love Bone
Apple
1990
By now, many of us have heard Pearl Jam’s origin story.
It was the death of “Mr. Faded Glory,” Mother Love Bone lead singer Andrew Wood, that allowed Pearl Jam to rise from its ashes.
However, for a brief period in the late 1980s, Mother Love Bone was king shit on the Seattle music scene.
The band was:
Bruce Fairweather — lead and rhythm guitar
Stone Gossard — rhythm and lead guitar
Jeff Ament — bass
Greg Gilmore — drums
Andrew Wood — vocals
It was lead singer Andrew Wood, who galvanized the Seattle scene in that pre-grunge era. Wood was a good lead singer. He was a top-notch performer, on par with Tyler, Plant, Roth, almost any of the greats.
Wood’s showmanship helped the band land a major label record deal — becoming one of the first bands in Seattle to do so.
Sadly, Mother Love Bone’s life span — from formation to record deal to collapse — was only two years, 1988–1990.
But just like all the great bands, this band wasn’t a one-person show …lead singers don’t sell albums, songs do.
And Mother Love Bone’s only album, Apple, is loaded with great rock songs.
While all the music is attributed to the band, the primary composers were Andrew Wood (who wrote the lyrics), Stone Gossard, and Jeff Ament. While it can be argued, “it’s only rock and roll,” these guys were in their early 20’s, and the songs they wrote were pretty sharp. Arguably not complex, but solid fucking rock songs.
What made Mother Love Bone unusual is that they took all of their influences and mashed them all together. On each of the songs on Apple, you hear elements of so many different genres:
“Holy Roller” owes as much to T. Rex as it does to Led Zeppelin.
“Bone China” sounds like could’ve easily landed on a Black Sabbath album …the lyrics, on the other hand, a little too saccharine for Ozzy.
“Come Bite the Apple” is a little Badfinger with a touch of Aerosmith.
“Captain Hi-Top” is a high point and indicates the direction that the Seattle music scene was headed, but with a feather boa.
“Crown of Thorns” is the crown jewel on the album. This would be a song any band would be happy to hang their hat on — (the intro “Chloe Dancer” can be found on the EP Shine). This is one of those career-making songs.
Apple represents the best of the amalgam of genres that made up the Seattle music scene at the time. Like modern politics, music and music fans were much less fragmented and divisive. It was fine, even encouraged, to like TSOL & Black Flag as well as Led Zeppelin & The Beatles in addition to The New York Dolls & T. Rex.
It’s that cross-pollination of influences blended to create the genre that would light the world on fire for much of the 1990s.
And while it didn’t start with Mother Love Bone, they were one of the bands that helped Seattle raise their freak flag and say “Listen to this!”
Shortly after forming, the band signed to Mercury/PolyGram Records indie label, Polydor Records. And they even somehow managed to get Mercury to start a boutique label for the band, Stardog Records.
Mother Love Bone was one of the first bands signed to a major label (this was a big deal in those days), and by March of 1989, the band had released one EP, Shine. See what happened was …Shine sold well enough that it made the label big wigs in Los Angeles take note (Alice in Chains would be signed to Colombia Records the same year).
Unfortunately, just as it was Wood’s dynamism that catapulted Mother Love Bone so quickly, it would be his demons that caused the band's demise.
In March of 1990, just days, DAYS(!), before Apple was set to be released by Mercury/Polygram Records, Andrew Wood overdosed on heroin. After a few days in the hospital comatose, Andrew Wood died …taking Mother Love Bone with him.
Mercury/Polygram would eventually release Apple in July of 1990 to a world that mostly shrugged.
But by the end of 1991, the offspring of Mother Love Bone could be found in Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, et al.
We know that story.
As a result of the rabidity that the world had for all things Seattle in the early 1990s, Apple would eventually chart on Billboard in 1992, peaking at #32 on the Top Heatseekers Chart and:
In 2005 Rock Hard Magazine place Apple at #462 of the 500 Greatest Rock & Metal albums of all time.
In 2019, Rolling Stone ranked it #50 on its 50 Greatest Grunge Albums.
Wood’s grief-stricken friend and roommate, Chris Cornell of Soundgarden, got Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament (from their new band then called Mookie Blaylock) and their new singer Eddie Vedder together and formed Temple of the Dog. The band recorded a heartfelt tribute album (and surprising hit) to their friend.
In a cover story for Rolling Stone in 1993, Eddie Vedder tipped his hat to Andrew Wood saying:
“There’s one song of his that I’d be proud to sing. I won’t tell you which one. But there was one song of his that always got to me. Someday I’m going to sing it.”
In October of 2000, on Pearl Jam’s tenth anniversary of their first show, Eddie Vedder kept his word — Pearl Jam performed “Chloe Dancer/Crown of Thorns” for the first time.
CRITICS:
David Browne, upon the release of the album in 1990, wrote in the New York Times: “Despite the band’s tendency to skimp on songwriting, Apple may be one of the first great hard-rock records of the ’90s. ‘Stardog Champion’ and ‘Capricorn Sister’ pack an anthemic wallop, and just when the band starts sounding pedestrian, out comes a contemplative ballad, “Gentle Groove,” which reveals a surprising hint of delicacy.”
In Rolling Stone, Kim Neely said: “Seattle’s Mother Love Bone — deals in the sort of rumbling mysticism that can be traced back to Zeppelin. Apple, Mother Love Bone’s debut album, succeeds where countless other hard-rock albums have failed, capturing the essence of what made Zep immortal — dynamics, kids! — and giving it a unique Nineties spin. Apple is nothing short of a masterpiece.”
It’s challenging not to look at Mother Love Bone through the lens that came after Wood’s death and the band’s collapse. It’s impossible, really, because two of its members would go on to form one of the biggest rock bands of the era.
Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament formed Pearl Jam.
Either directly or indirectly, the children of Mother Love Bone would go on to change the face of music, quite literally, forever. It’s a shame that Andrew Wood couldn’t stick around long enough to see what he had helped create.
In the documentary Malfunkshun: the Life of Andrew Wood, he states emphatically the goal he had for Mother Love Bone — he wanted to be a rock star.
Apple is proof positive that Andrew Wood was a rock star.
Impossible to speculate what would be different had he lived, but I think Mother Love Bone would’ve been playing arenas worldwide if he had.