You were in fourth grade - all right, maybe seventh if you're a senior - and your head was full of sugary cereal and flashing lights and the myth of summer vacation. You didn't pay attention to music on the radio, you didn't own a tape deck (unless it was one of those deadly, heavy Playskool versions that you could crack other kids' heads open with), and you certainly didn't know who Andrew Wood was, even when he died of a heroin overdose in 1990.
So through sheer indifference, you missed out on one of the first and finest Seattle grunge bands: Mother Love Bone. Your older brother who drove you to school in the morning might have been a fan of the group and its album, Stardog Champion, but you certainly weren't paying attention at the time. And even if you don't remember the music, you can't help but love a band that calls itself Mother Love Bone.
The group started out in the late '80s with bassist Jeff Ament, guitarists Stone Gossard and Bruce Fairweather, drummer Greg Gilmore, and vocalist Andrew Wood. Seattle was home to some of the biggest names in early '90s rock, including Nirvana, Mudhoney, and Alice in Chains. In fact, Mother Love Bone became a sort of legendary ancestral band - an essential link if one were trying to play something like "Six Degrees of Soundgarden." After Wood died, Gossard and Ament went on to collaborate with various other Seattle artists - including Chris Cornell, Matt Cameron, and Eddie Vedder - for Temple of the Dog, a tribute to Wood's memory, and then formed Pearl Jam to great success.
The beginning of grunge stardom, however, came with Mother Love Bone, despite Wood's early death. The twirling guitar patterns and rich, harmonic bass survived through into Pearl Jam's work, and the band's initial furious success opened the door for other groups that have proven more permanent in the public mind. Andrew Wood's distinctive voice may have been the ostensible frontispiece for the group, but it was Ament and Gossard that made the sound so forceful.
Songs like "This is Shangrila" especially showcase Gossard's tearing, humming chords and his ability to quickly build from a silent start to a burning verse. Much as Mother Love Bone was a seminal band, Wood had a tendency to overshadow the rest of the group - to its extensive detriment. Wood may have had a perfect voice for garage grunge, but Gossard and Ament were just too talented to ignore. Some of the finest songs on Stardog Champion, including the title track, are credited to one of the two, explaining the improved blend of vocals and music found therein.
Some of the tracks blend together a bit after the first five - songs like "Half Ass Monkey Boy" and "Thru Fade Away" recycle a bit of the admittedly catchy sound already used. However, the group's masterpiece has to be "Chloë Dancer/Crown of Thorns," an eight-minute epic that swings from melancholy to anger and uses the full expressive range of Wood's voice. The piano vamp used for the first two minutes of the song offsets the ethereal vocals, but as the piano recedes so does the gentleness of lyrics and melody. It's a slow-building classic with some well-paced, thoughtful guitar solos. It's also the most recognized of all the group's work today, probably due in no small part to its inclusion on the soundtrack to Cameron Crowe's 1992 film, Singles.
One has to wonder what would have happened if Wood hadn't died when he did... and whether the music world would have come out the better for it. The potential for more work and fame was certainly there, but Pearl Jam wouldn't have come about as it did. Given Eddie Vedder's contributions to modern rock through Pearl Jam, it's hard to decide whether his gain outweighs Wood's potential. Wood's tendency towards pomposity didn't quite fit with the honest, "untainted" ideals of Seattle grunge.
At the same time, however, it was his desire to "sell out" and hit the big time that carved out an audience for the bands to follow. By 1991, Pearl Jam's Ten and Nirvana's Nevermind had hit the streets, and Seattle bands couldn't market themselves too quickly.
Whatever Wood's flaws - and however much Gossard and Ament eventually improved and matured within Pearl Jam - Mother Love Bone's work was still an incredible step towards modern rock, and Stardog Champion was still an album that anyone would have killed to have recorded themselves. As Wood's hisses in a spoken, mock-sermon in "Holy Roller," "Those boys in Mother Love Bone, I tell you, they know what's right for you... they're good for you." However poisonous the rock scene turned out to be for him, Wood was right: Mother Love Bone was good for us, and those boys certainly knew what they were doing.
