Artist Spotlight

When I was in high school, one of my all time favorite songs was the Mother Love Bone tune, “Chloe Dancer/Crown of Thorns.” One of those absolutely perfect rainy day angst-ridden tunes. To this day it remains at the top of my favorite song list. In fact, recently I’ve been on an MLB kick, and it’s got me thinking back to the whole Seattle music scene in general. Being a teen in the early nineties, on top of being from the Bay Area, where there was always a constant stream of people moving to and from Washington, the Seattle scene truly ruled my music world for a time.

It was some friends from Seattle that tuned me onto MLB, and educated me about the influence the band had on the Seattle scene, and in turn on the American music landscape as a whole. I truly believe that Mother Love Bone would have gone on to find major fame if Andrew Wood had not died at age 24 from a heroin overdose in 1990, shortly before their first album, Apple.

Out of the ashes of Mother Love Bone, you can find connections to bands like Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Nirvana, Alice in Chains, and countless others. How can you deny the impact of a band, and a man who’s inspired numerous tributes? Chris Cornell even formed a separate band, Temple of the Dog, as a tribute to Andrew Wood.

Alice in Chains’ classic song “Would?” was written by Jerry Cantrell (who would later lose his own bandmate, Layne Stanley to heroin) for Wood. Candlebox, The Cult, MGMT, and Faster Pussycat all have songs dedicated to Wood’s memory and Cameron Crowe used a Mother Love Bone tune on the Singles soundtrack as a nod to the fallen star.

With so many artists paying tribute to Andrew Wood, it makes you realize just how strong an impact he had on contemporary music. While it’s less obvious to the mainstream than ones left by Jimi Hendrix or Kurt Cobain, there’s no denying that he has helped to lay the foundation for an entire genre of music – grunge.

Although he died way too young and never got to experience the success that his peers would eventually enjoy, at least there’s a small, but powerful body of work left behind from Mother Love Bone (as well as Wood’s other band Malfunkshun). No matter what anyone says, whenever I’m digging on Alice in Chains, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam, I will always hear a little bit of Andrew Wood in the background. Because it’s in the success of those bands that Andrew Wood will always have a voice in music.

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