07/19/2025
ON THIS DAY, July 19th, 1990, MOTHER LOVE BONE released their only full-length studio album, Apple, through Stardog/Mercury Records. Apple was the bridge that linked the end of the hair metal scene and the beginning of grunge. It’s also forever associated with tragedy. On March 16th, 1990, days before the album was scheduled for release, frontman Andrew Wood was found unconscious by his fiancé X**a La Fuente, having overdosed on he**in.
Wood was taken to Harborview Hospital in Seattle. After three horrific days, his family decided that his life-support system should be turned off. His band-mates and fiance surrounded his bed with lit candles and played “A Night At The Opera,” Andrew’s favourite Queen album. He was pronounced dead at 3:15 p.m. that day, thus effectively bringing Mother Love Bone to an end. He was just 24 years old.
Andrew Wood’s death profoundly affected the tight-knit music scene of the Pacific Northwest, and Seattle in particular. His passing radically altered the trajectory of future events, causing musical permutations to be forever changed, lost, and reborn. After his death, those close to him were inspired to create some stunning works. Songs and albums of breathtaking scale and emotional power were born.
These tributes attempted to deal with losing one of Seattle’s brightest young stars. After Wood’s death, Mercury Records delayed the album’s release until July 19th, 1990. It’s hard not to overstate how different the ’90s rock music scene would have been if Mother Love Bone had been able to tour and promote Apple and go on to make a second album.
Their combination of Pacific Northwest grunge and runny mascara glam sounded like it had one foot planted in what was and another in what was to come. Also, had the tragedy of Woods’ death not occurred, Pearl Jam would not exist, nor would Temple Of The Dog. Jerry Cantrell may have never written Would? His tribute to his fallen friend. The what-ifs go on and on.
Mother Love Bone rose from the break-up of three bands. Stone Gossard, Bruce Fairweather and Jeff Ament left Green River on Halloween 1987. Around the same time, Andrew Wood called time on Malfunkshun, a band that drew much attention around the Pacific Northwest rock music scene, mainly due to Wood’s larger-than-life on-stage persona.
After the legendary Seattle punk band Ten Minute Warning broke up in 1984, Duff McKagan and Greg Gilmore left the Emerald City for Los Angeles. Gilmore eventually grew sick of LA and returned home; McKagan stayed in the City of Angels and joined a new band of reprobates called Guns N Roses.
Mother Love Bone’s origins began in 1987 with cover band Lords of the Wasteland, which featured Wood, Gossard, Ament and Malfunkshun drummer Regan Hagar (Brad/Satchel). By early 1988, the band had added Fairweather, replaced Hagar with drummer Greg Gilmore and changed its name to Mother Love Bone. The new line-up quickly set about recording and playing shows and, by late 1988, had become one of Seattle’s more promising bands. In November 1988, the band signed to Polygram subsidiary Polydor and recorded their debut EP Shine. Things were moving fast.
The band recorded Apple at The Plant, Sausalito, California, in the fall of 1989 and at London Bridge Studio, Seattle, Washington, in the winter of 1989. Fresh off producing Soundgarden’s 1989 opus Louder Than Love, Terry Date was behind the desk with Tim Palmer mixing the album at Soundcastle in Los Angeles and Swanyard in London.
Producer Terry Date recalls recording with Wood: “I remember several things we did with Andy during that record. I’d set him up in this old ’70s room when we were doing his vocals. Andy always had his keyboard set up in front of him because he felt comfortable having his hands on it as he sang or hit a key for a note occasionally. I put him in a little corner alcove with his keyboard and a microphone, and he always had candles set up on the keyboard for a vibe. Andy’s vocal style was somewhere between David Lee Roth and Freddie Mercury, and his personality was too.”
Date elaborates: “I think more than his singing voice, my memories are of his personality and charisma. He had this “little kid” quality that was really magnetic. I remember during a particular song; we were sitting in the control room listening to vocals, deciding which parts of which takes were the best, when suddenly he jumped up and ran out of the room. I was thinking, “What the f**k?” He ran into the vocal booth, and three-foot flames were coming off the carpet! One of his candles had fallen over, hit the carpet, and started on fire, so we had a bonfire underneath his keyboard.”
Date added, “I remember once, after a Mother Love Bone rehearsal, my wife and I were driving, and we saw Andy walking down the street with his keyboard under his arm. We slowed down, and I told him, “Andy, rehearsal ended two hours ago. You’re just now leaving?” He replied, “Yeah, I stayed a little longer because I wrote another album.” That’s the way he was. He was so prolific; he lived for it.”
As the decade ended in late 1989, Mother Love Bone had a great album, a groundswell of hype, and a major label backing. The possibilities seemed endless as the band looked forward to Apple’s proposed March 1990 release date.
The album begins with thirty seconds of reversed tape sounds and percussion, building in intensity before exploding into the main riff of “This Is Shangri-La.” The song’s main riff is, in hindsight, unmistakably a Stone Gossard jam. Greg Gilmore’s propulsive drum swing and Jeff Ament’s powerfully melodic bass groove support its sweeping, energetic guitar riff. Wood sings, “Get me to the stage / it brings me home again / This is Shangri-La.”
“Stardog Champion” follows. It’s another classic Gossard guitar riff. Slower in tempo with a wrecking ball swing. The sheer weight of the groove is monumental. Wood’s voice is in commanding form. The song’s bridge turns to an ominous wah-drenched guitar riff, all cascading octaves, minor intervals and whirlpool intensity, before rising from the depths for one more chorus.
“Stardog Champion” is a minor-key epic filled with menace yet laced with hope. That spirit is embraced like a shard of light as the tone and chords become brighter during the song’s lofty outro. Wood leads a children’s choir in a “na na na na” refrain, which really shouldn’t work, but it does, in spades.
“Holy Roller” opens with a peal of feedback and a blistering Zeppelin-like riff. Its middle eight is a half-time dream-like sequence with Wood freely intoning the virtues of his brand of Love Rock to those in attendance. “I tell ya people / Love rock awaits ya people / Yeah lo and behold, lo and behold.”
One of Mother Love Bone’s strengths was the quality of their slower songs. Even though the influence of the ’80s rock can be heard in their sound, they never fell foul to the saccharine, power ballad tropes so prevalent in that scene. Instead, their more reflective songs are genuinely moving, profound and aurally gorgeous. Songs like “Bone China,” “Man Of Golden Words”, “Gentle Groove”, and “Crown Of Thorns” (released on Apple without its companion piece “Chloe Dancer”) all display the depth and unaffected beauty of later songs like Pearl Jam’s “Black” and numerous Temple Of The Dog tunes. These stand-out songs add a dynamic counterpoint to the straight-up rockers and hint at a new approach.
“Bone China’s” gentle elliptical rolling guitar patterns are hypnotic and profoundly moving. Wood’s vocal delivery is beautifully realised as he ups the emotional stakes throughout. “Come Bite The Apple” sounds like a distant cousin of Pearl Jam’s “Dissident” from their 1993 album Vs. It’s less strident than “Dissident”, with a more gliding, languid guitar motif. The song’s verses are heavy with groove-laden riffs and gang vocals before a wide-open chorus as Wood begs, “So bring me an apple / I’m crying / I’ve been persecuted like a dying man.”
The mandolin blues of “Stargazer” opens with a campfire intimacy, gradually unfolding toward an emotive outro as Wood’s impassions pleas bounce scat-like across a dreamy soundscape. “Heartshine” bursts with a wicked groove and swagger. Goose-bump-inducing guitar licks lap against a steady rhythm section. “Captain Hi-Top” exudes more Led Zeppelin thunder as Wood delivers lines of tongue-in-cheek braggadocious bluster, “Captain Hi-Top, the love commander / I’m the ego star forever after / I’m Captain Hi-Top, the love commander / Hide your mom, control your sister.”
The beautiful “Man Of Golden Words” is a sombre, reflective ballad in which Wood implies he has only music. Still, because he has music in his life, he has everything, “Words and music – my only tools / Communication / Let’s fall in love with music / The driving force in our living / The only international language / Divine glory, the expression / The knees bow the tongue / Confesses.”
The song’s opening verse inspired Chris Cornell to name the band and album he put together after Andrew Wood’s death: “I want to show you something / like joy inside my heart / Seems I’ve been living in the Temple Of The Dog.” “Capricorn Sister” returns to the love-rock strut. Leaning harder into the ’80s rock sound and feel. The song name-checks one of Wood’s heroes, Freddie Mercury.
The stunning “Gentle Groove” follows. Wood’s piano perfectly complements the band’s spacious, cinematic feel. The song promotes the idea and strength of love and how it can inspire and empower a person to be their best self. Wood sings the line, “Until kingdom come / Thy work is done / On Earth as it is in Dallas”, a play on words from the traditional Christian prayer “Our Father” that reads “On Earth as it is in Heaven.”
“Mr Danny Boy” is a dark-driving anthem steeped in a menacing funky vibe. Fairweather and Gossard’s guitars weave and glide agilely around the rhythm section. Which leads into the album closer, “Crown Of Thorns.”
The decision to remove the “Chloe Dancer” opening section of the “Chloe Dancer/Crown Of Thorns” epic that graced the band’s debut Shine EP in 1989 is curious. Both pieces complement each other on a grand scale. But alas, Apple was left with the “Crown Of Thorns” section of the song as a stand-alone piece. Even though it’s shorn of its evocative sister piece, it still packs a devastating emotional punch.
It’s perfection personified—a highwater mark for a music scene yet to explode. “Crown Of Thorns” is a trancelike epic that manages to be blissfully melancholic and soaringly uplifting. It’s the Generation X “Stairway To Heaven.” Director Cameron Crowe used the song in his 1989 film “Say Anything…” but it didn’t make it onto the film’s accompanying soundtrack release.
Crowe rightly corrected this three years later when he made “Chloe Dancer/Crown Of Thorns” the centrepiece of the soundtrack to his 1992 film “Singles.” Of course, Wood didn’t experience his city and friends’ astonishing global impact on the world in the coming years, but through the inclusion of this song on that soundtrack and the incredible success of Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament’s Pearl Jam, Mother Love Bone found a whole new audience around the globe.
When Apple was finally released in July 1990, it was met with acclaim and positive reviews, although the jubilation was clipped and dampened by Wood’s tragic passing. Stone Gossard said in 1991, after the album’s release, “Sometimes it makes me sad, and we talk about Andy daily. We still laugh about him, his jokes and what he would do. Not like, ‘I really miss him.’ We talk about Andy-isms. A lot of times, I catch myself thinking I see him…”
Chris Cornell of Soundgarden was Andrew Wood’s best friend and one-time roommate. He spoke about Wood’s loss in 2015, “I don’t know if you can ever take him out of my heart and soul. There was a period when Andy would sit in his bedroom across the hall from mine, and we would have these duelling four-track demos and songs. He wasn’t doing it for Malfunkshun, and I wasn’t doing it for Soundgarden; it had nothing to do with that. It was us just having fun.”
“We were always kind of neck and neck,” Chris continues, “We were very different in our approach. Andy was very free and didn’t necessarily have a critical voice while he was in the process of writing a song. He would do anything. On the other hand, I have a critical voice; I have an editorial staff in my head, and what that creates is something completely different.”
“He would do these amazing free things that felt so – almost to the degree of just being dangerous because it was so free and unself-conscious,” Cornell reminisced. “I would think ‘How do you do that?’ We would always observe each other. That’s what I would equate to early college years; that doesn’t go away. Those experiences never stop being a part of who you are and how you think.”
The death of Andrew Wood was a pivotal moment for the burgeoning Seattle music scene. Out of his tragic passing grew so much life-affirming music. Wood himself never got to experience the astonishing global impact his city and friends had on the world just one year after his death.
Andrew Wood was a crucial part of why that scene came packing the heat that it did.
It’s easy to get caught up in a game of what-ifs. No one should lose sight of the fact that Mother Love Bone was an incredible young band. And Apple is a testament to their talents and abilities. What came next was the stuff of legend, and even though Wood was gone, so many new fans around the world found Mother Love Bone and L’Andrew The Love Child, aka Andrew Wood.
Essential…!
