Everybody Loves Our Town

by Mark Yarm

  XANA LA FUENTE I used to slap him around because I’m pretty big and he’s small. And then one time, he started fighting back, and I was like, Damn, he’s pretty strong. And I was like, Never mind. I stopped. It would be more like wrestling—it wasn’t serious. I never felt like a victim of domestic violence.

  KEVIN WOOD It was very weird having two grown people clawing each other’s skin and screaming at each other and fighting violently. Weird.… Come to think of it, maybe I didn’t see them actually exchanging blows, but I did see scratch marks and evidence of physical fighting.

  RODERICK ROMERO (Sky Cries Mary singer) I was working at Raison d’Être, which was the first pretentious restaurant/café in all of Seattle. Andy Wood was a dishwasher guy, and Jeff Ament was the espresso dude. We all had to be there early in the morning to get that place up and running. It was awesome. We’d fight over what music to play before we had to open up, ’cause then we had to play jazz. Andy would want to play Kiss or Elton John, and Jeff would want to play Aerosmith, and I would want to listen to Bauhaus. Usually, we all settled on one thing we were all fine with, which was Southern Death Cult, before they became the Cult. But Jeff ran the scene. In the end, whatever he wanted to listen to, we listened to. He’d just look over at you and smile, and you’re like, “Okay, you’re right, let’s do that.” He has this way, this charisma that is undeniable.

  JEFF AMENT Stone and I had known Andy a long time before we were in a band with him.… But I kind of saw a lot about his personal life and what was going on with it, and so when Stone first said, “Hey, you know, maybe we should try to start a band around Andy,” I was like, “No way.” It’s like, “I don’t want to be in a band where I’m gonna have to babysit anybody.”

  And then I went and saw Stone play an acoustic show with Andy at this gay bar that was like three blocks down the street, and he was just so frickin’ great at the show. I could totally hear a couple of the songs that they played that night kind of over the top of a rock band. And so we gave it a go …

  GREG GILMORE I had split—went to Southeast Asia with a one-way ticket and a pocketful of traveler’s checks—for about five months. The very day I came back to town, I was walking on Broadway and ran into Stone, who I didn’t really know well, and he asked me if I wanted to come down and play sometime.

  REGAN HAGAR Green River and Malfunkshun shared practice spaces for a few years. Andy and I started playing with Jeff and Stone a lot for fun, doing covers. We did a few shows together as Lords of the Wasteland, which was essentially Mother Love Bone. When Green River came back from tour, they called Andy and me and said, “Green River’s breaking up. We’re parting with Mark and Alex, and we need a new singer and drummer. You guys wanna make a go at it?” And so we’re like, “Sweet, let’s do it.” But we didn’t break Malfunkshun up; it just was never even a thought to me.

  We still had the same practice space, so Malfunkshun—Andy and Kevin and I—were going there on what was supposedly a day off for Mother Love Bone or Lords of the Wasteland or whatever the band was called then. The three of us walk in and there’s Stone and Jeff, and they’re playing with Greg Gilmore, who I knew from 10 Minute Warning and always kind of worshipped.

  It was like, Whoa. Everyone looked at everyone else. We didn’t say anything, and we turned around and left.

  KEVIN WOOD I remember that quite vividly. Me and Regan were heading over to meet Andy to do a Malfunkshun rehearsal. Andy was up on the bandstand, playing with all those guys—the Green River guys, plus Greg. Absolutely nothing was said. Regan appeared visibly shaken. At that point, I knew Regan was on the outs, too. I was already on the outs with them. I’d kept saying, “Hey, why don’t you pull me into this mix? I could play some guitar with you guys.”

  We waited for them to stop, then it was our turn to play. So we got up and did our set, but I don’t really remember much more about it.

  GREG GILMORE I had no idea what was going on because I did not know that they had been playing with Regan. Yes, it was awkward.

  BRUCE FAIRWEATHER It was around Christmas, and I was gone. When I came back, Jeff and Stone were like, “Hey, we practiced with Greg Gilmore.” I was like, “Really. Did you talk to Regan?” They were like, “Well, he walked in when we were practicing.” I guess it didn’t go down real well.

  REGAN HAGAR I went home and within an hour or two the phone rang, and it was Stone. He was apologizing: “This isn’t how I wanted this to happen, but we’re gonna start playing with Greg now.” At that point, Stone and I were always together. Andy and I used to be that way, but by then Andy had a live-in girlfriend and I didn’t see him as much. Stone was very good with me on the phone. He’s a Spock-type personality. He helped you remove emotion from your decisions and really think logically about what’s going on. He let me know that I was loved, and this was probably the best thing for this group of guys.

  KEVIN WOOD When what turned into Mother Love Bone became real, people were coming up to me, “Hey man, sorry to hear about your band breaking up.” And that was news to me.

  REGAN HAGAR I didn’t believe that Malfunkshun was ending, so it wasn’t a huge thing. I honestly thought, and I still carry with me, this feeling that we were the greatest band ever. We were the loudest, best band Seattle had to offer.

  At the last Malfunkshun show, which we didn’t necessarily know to be our last, Kurt Cobain approached Kevin and asked him to join Nirvana, which Kevin laughed off: “Who are these kids?”

  KEVIN WOOD Kurt was at Malfunkshun’s last show, in Tacoma. Chad Channing was a buddy of mine, and Chad asked if I wanted to jam with Nirvana. It wasn’t an invitation to join the band, just to jam, because Kurt was looking for other guitar players to join and make it easier for him. I said I wasn’t really interested because I was planning some different things, a different direction. Nirvana at the time was playing an old-school punk kind of thing that I felt like I had grown out of already.

  KELLY CURTIS (Mother Love Bone/Pearl Jam manager; Heart tour manager; Ken Deans’s business partner) I saw the Beatles in Seattle on my 10th birthday. I met Nancy Wilson shortly after that. I wanted to get guitar lessons after seeing the Beatles; our parents went to the same church, and they hooked me up with her to get lessons. She was like 12. I’d never met a girl that could sing and play guitar and was cool. We became fast friends.

  When I was 17, Nancy asked me to go with her as a roadie for Heart. So I dropped out of high school and went with her. I started off driving a truck for them and hauling gear around. I was with them for eight or nine years, and I worked my way up to being their tour manager. I quit Heart in ’84, then tour-managed a Japanese heavy-metal band called Loudness and lived in L.A. for a bit before coming back to Seattle in 1987.

  KEN DEANS (production manager; Kelly Curtis’s business partner) Kelly and I started a production company with the explicit purpose of not managing bands. After Kelly left Heart, we managed a New Wave band called Maurice and the Clichés and spent stupid amounts of money trying to get them signed, to no avail.

  We set up an office in Pioneer Square, and we would eat lunch oftentimes across the street at the Grand Central Bakery, where Stone Gossard worked. One day, Stone handed me a tape. It was a very poorly recorded tape, but I took it back and I listened to it and went, “Wow, there’s some really great songs.” So I played it for Kelly, and he goes, “You know what, I don’t hear it. It sounds like crap. We’re not into management.”

  ANNA STATMAN (Geffen Records/Slash Records A&R representative) I thought Green River was just fantastic. I met them at a show in L.A. when I was at Slash. When I got to Geffen, Jeff called me up and said, “I’ve got this new band!” And I said, “Okay, let’s do a demo.” I liked it and thought we should sign them. And they were still technically under a demo deal with me when Kelly Curtis—whom I introduced to the band via my secretary Rose, who used to be in a band that Kelly managed—shopped the deal behind our backs.

  KEN DEANS Why did we change our minds about management? Geff
en had started talking about a real record deal. So now it’s starting to look like maybe we could do this. Maybe there’s enough money to do this. And then the rest of the interest started happening. We decided Kelly would handle the management side of the company, and I would handle the production side of the company.

  NANCY WILSON (Heart/the Lovemongers singer/guitarist; Ann Wilson’s sister; Cameron Crowe’s ex-wife) One of our very oldest, dearest friends, Kelly Curtis, was working with Mother Love Bone. We were like, “Hey, this is authentic stuff,” outside of the MTV kind of disposable, flaked-and-formed thing that we were wrapped up in at the time. The record labels were pressuring us to do other people’s songs as our singles or they wouldn’t promote the album. The image had to be bigger, bigger, bigger. More hairspray.

  JEFF GILBERT Ann and Nancy Wilson were nothing but huge supporters of the local music scene. Kelly brought Ann down to the Central to see Andy play. Andy got a can of beer, took a big swig out of it, and just shook it up and threw it on Ann. Doused her in beer. She got this horrifically shocked look on her face, and looked up as if to say, “What the hell?” And Andy just smiled at her and winked. She got the biggest grin on her face.

  REGAN HAGAR Andy did a show at the Ditto. I think he did it without Malfunkshun, where he was just master of ceremonies. He poured himself some Cocoa Puffs, added the milk, had a couple bites, and then he turned the bowl and just threw it on the audience. In celebration of the cereal. People applauded and cheered. Andy could throw anything on anybody—and they would be happy to have it on them.

  NILS BERNSTEIN In Malfunkshun, Andy was very clearly being a character. And with Mother Love Bone it was like, Oh, wait a minute, this is a commercial rock band with aspirations. They’re doing the Landrew rock-star shtick, but it didn’t have the cool, underground feeling of Malfunkshun. It was like instead of playing a rock star, he was being a rock star.

  ANNA STATMAN I really don’t know why it took Geffen so long to try to sign Mother Love Bone. By then, it was already out of my hands because I had turned the project over to Tom Zutaut, who was A&R.

  BRUCE FAIRWEATHER Tom Zutaut was the guy who signed Guns N’ Roses. We met him in the lobby at the Four Seasons in Seattle. When I went to take a leak, he followed me into the bathroom. He was trying to find the ins and outs of the band, but in a creepy kind of way. Like, “So, Andy’s into drugs, huh?” Or “Jeff’s into drugs, huh?” He was just throwing it out to see if it would stick. He was trying to go to everybody to find out dirt about everybody else, and we were like, “That was a bad meeting. Man, screw that guy.”

  KEN DEANS We actually backed off of Geffen because there was so much interest from the other labels starting to happen. So we end up at a point where we’re going to have a showcase at the Central Tavern, which was down the street from our offices at the time. There’s five or six labels that are coming to see Mother Love Bone. I remember standing in front of the door to our office, and all these record executives are coming out of the Central and coming up to Kelly and making offers on the street: “Okay, we’ll do a two-record guarantee, $500,000 advance,” and back and forth. And it’s really getting kind of crazy. We were actually laughing.

  And after two or three hours of this kind of circus event going on, we went back up to the office with Michael Goldstone from PolyGram. It was really more about the quality of the deal, rather than the financials. Who was going to champion the band? Who was going to really stick by the band? And really, Michael just laid it out. So it was pretty much decided that night that we were going to go with PolyGram. I’m pretty sure it was Kelly, myself, Stone, Jeff, Greg, maybe Bruce there. I pretty much know Andy wasn’t hanging out.

  BRUCE FAIRWEATHER The day we had the final meeting with Michael Goldstone where we said we were going to sign with them, Andy didn’t show up. The meeting was down at the Market, and we ran into Xana there, and she had a black eye. And we’re like, “Oh, God, what’s Andy going to look like?” I think Kelly took Xana aside, and I don’t know if Michael ever saw what was going on.

  DAN PETERS Me and Andy were messengers together at this company called ABC Messengers. Xana didn’t want him being around any bad influences, and I think she looked at me as one, since I was a musician. I lived in an apartment close to work, so me and Andy would bug off during lunchtime and smoke pot. Xana would come by and meet him after work so he’d go directly home. She was just really protective, for obviously good reasons. I didn’t know Andy all that well, but I could tell he was a man with not a whole lot of self-control.

  XANA LA FUENTE When he was a messenger, Andy would try to write on his breaks but he knew he had another calling and he felt like it was really taking away from that. So I told him, “I can pay for everything. Your job is just going to be to stay home and write music.”

  He wasn’t allowed to write about drugs. I used to go through Andrew’s notebooks with a red pen and cross stuff out: “No.… No.… No.…” He let me do it.

  KEVIN WOOD When Mother Love Bone was taking off, I had some resentment, sure. No, I never talked to Andy about it. He lived in Seattle and was doing his own thing. I was doing my own thing on Bainbridge. So I never saw the guy. And there was no reason to hang out, either, because we weren’t in a band anymore. And when I did see him at a family gathering, it was always the Andy Show, and he would be his normal jocular self. There was no room to get serious and say, “What the fuck?”

  XANA LA FUENTE We went to Andy’s dad’s every weekend in Bremerton. It was his dad, his stepmom, his little brother, who was maybe six years old. All they wanted to hear about was the record deal. I had a bruise on my neck from a fight about drugs, and I was like, “See this? He’s not gonna have a deal if he’s dead.” We were close—I was closer to him than my own dad—but he just would ignore it. I guess they were in denial.

  GREG GILMORE We would be in the studio and Xana would come around and she’s got Andy off in the corner and they’re bickering. “Oh, fuck, what is she doing here?” There always seemed to be a lot of drama when Xana would be around. Probably because of that it was tough to hear the part of her message that was real, that Andy has a problem. It was just, Ugh, be gone.

  BRUCE FAIRWEATHER The only time we toured, we were opening for the Dogs D’Amour. We were in Toronto, and the guys from the Cult, Ian Astbury and Billy Duffy, were there in the crowd. During the show, Andy went running around in the crowd and came back onstage totally smiling. And he just went to all of us, holding the microphone down, saying, “The Cult’s here! The Cult’s here!” Afterwards, we met those guys, and Andy’s running around behind them, jumping up and down, smiling. He was super-excited about stuff like that.

  MICHAEL GOLDSTONE (PolyGram Records/Epic Records A&R executive) When Andy got to a city, he would pick up a newspaper before he got onstage and try to find the most outlandish thing that he could come up with just to catch the crowd off guard. In Boston, he came onstage one night, and at the time, Michael Dukakis was running for president. Andy did the classic, “How ya doin’, Boston?” Followed with, “I was just out drinking shots with Kitty!” And people didn’t even know how to respond, since Kitty Dukakis obviously had an alcohol problem.

  DAVE REES I was at a Mother Love Bone show at the Central Tavern before they recorded Apple, and Andy had a little ladder that he used to get his piano that was stashed up in the rafters. He sat down at the piano and started singing “Crown of Thorns.” And I actually called him after the gig and asked him about some of the lyrics, like “He who rides the pony must someday fall.” He said the lyrics were plain as day if you listened to the song. I tried going deeper, but he wasn’t really willing to go there with me. He had told me that he’d gone to rehab and how hard it was to stop. But he said he was doin’ good.

  KEVIN WOOD I did rat Andy out once, just because I was concerned. Actually, my mother was giving me a hard time about drinking, and she always worshipped Andy as this perfect golden boy. So I blurted it out: “Why don’t you quit ragging on me about m
y drinking? Andy is shooting fuckin’ heroin!” And then I realized, Oh, shit. But it felt good, because somebody had to know.

  XANA LA FUENTE Andrew and Kevin took acid one night, and Andrew cried in the bathroom on the floor in a fetal position for about eight hours. His eyes were swollen like he had been beaten. And that’s the night that Kevin quit drinking. It was one of their birthdays. Kevin didn’t freak out, but Andrew was like, “I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die. I saw my future. I know I’m gonna die.”

  Every time he used he would come and tell me. He would cry. I never saw tracks on his arm, I never saw him dope sick. He never took money from me to use.

  BRUCE FAIRWEATHER I didn’t realize how involved he was in it until he went into treatment. He was definitely doing some bonehead things. He was sleeping in parks when he and his girlfriend were fighting. But when we were recording Apple down in San Francisco—that was when that huge earthquake hit—he was super-present. In the downtime between recording and getting ready to do the tour, I think he may have got more heavily into doing drugs.

  XANA LA FUENTE The rehab place was an hour or two away. I used to drive out there every night and sneak him food. I’d be outside the window handing him pizza through the window, bringing him salads with feta cheese and sun-dried tomatoes.

  BRUCE FAIRWEATHER When he was going through treatment, the band went and visited him, and that’s when I started realizing that this is serious. We had meetings with him and his counselor. Andy would go, “I can’t be around you guys if you’re drinking or smoking or doing anything.” We were planning on going on a tour, and we were like, “… Okay.” It was hard. Not what you want to hear when you’re 26 or 27.