Published on Mar 2, 1998
Maybe because popular music was so unbearably bad, maybe because
poor economic times tend to bring out some of the best music out
there, but the “grunge” movement was bound to happen. Nirvana was a
great band who brought the movement to the mainstream, but the
public appetite was there. If Nirvana only went gold on
Nevermind, Pearl Jam’s
Ten and Soundgarden still would have gone
multi-platinum.
One band was on the verge of becoming superstars. And because of
their demise, Pearl Jam was able to form. For anyone who has bought
a CD from any of these artists, I don’t need to tell you who the
band was:Mother Love Bone. When Mother Love Bone released their
first major label album,
Apple in 1990, with a little marketing, they could have been
huge. At the time, heavy metal was still a marketable, but dying
music trend. People would no longer buy a heavy metal album just
because a ballad was on it, hence the flop sophomoric efforts of
Winger and White Lion. Listeners who wanted something different got
it with Mother Love Bone.
The band still teased their hair, some of the songs seemed
custom made for making out in the backseat of a Honda but their pop
smarts made them true musicians. The radio-friendly merge between
heavy metal and psychedelic was evident on tracks like “This is
Shangrila” and “Stargazer”. Their lyrics were far more mature than
most heavy metal. True, nothing on
Apple matches the complexity of Tool, but singer Andy Wood
knew how to play the singer/songwriter as well as a rock star. The
beautiful ballad, “Crown of Thorns” remains one of the most
touching breaking up ballads made.
Andy Wood was no James Taylor, however. Unlike Kurt Cobain and
Eddie Vedder, Wood pined to be in the spotlight.
“With my crustal sheen guitar/I’m another ego star/so give it to
me, give it to me,” Wood sings on “This is Shangrila”. This song
also contains a line that would tragically not mirror his own life:
“I’m the football who is who/I don’t believe in smack/so don’t you
die on me.”
Guitarist Stone Gossard and Jett Ament would later expand their
talents with Pearl Jam. But with Mother Love Bone, they formed a
tight cohesion. Unfortunately, some elements of
Apple have indeed turned brown nearly a decade later. The
motorcycle imagery of “Holy Roller” and weaker ballads such as
“Gentle Groove” seem to emulate the worst characteristics of
classic rock. I have little doubt that the majority of the flaws on
Apple would have been gone by their third release.
Unfortunately we are left with
Apple and a double retrospective CD. And with the rightful
probability of Andy Wood’s persona eclipsing Kurt Cobain and Pearl
Jam not forming, it is rightful to put Mother Love Bone as one of
the most important artists of the 1990s. Like the lead singer of
Sublime, Andy Wood died of a heroin overdose. And similarly, they
each had a vision of the new trend in music and grasped it, only to
have died and never see their labors rewarded with a huge legion of
fans. Damn.