Rolling Stone Australia - May 2016

Rolling Stone | 64 | May, 2016

Contributor Paul Brannigan wrote
about Refused in RS 765.

PEARL

JAM

Terry Date, their destiny as rock’s next big

thing seemed pre-ordained. That dream

wasblownapartonMarch16th,1990,

when Andrew Wood was found uncon-

scious in the apartment he shared with his

girlfriend. The singer had overdosed after

shooting up heroin. On March 19th, three

days after lapsing into a coma, Wood’s life

support system was unplugged. He was 24

years old, andApple, the album that was

settomakehimasuperstar,wasjusttwo

weeks from release.

“Andrewwasourrockstar,”saysAment.

“HewasFreddieMercuryandDavidLee

Roth and Gary Numan and Marc Bolan

rolled into one, a super-talented, really

unique guy. He walked a funny edge, half

taking the piss and half living out his hopes

and dreams fronting the band. Andy made

us believe that we could do this. And we

wanted to be a success with him because

he wanted it so much.”

On March 24th, a memorial service was

held for the singer at Seattle’s Paramount

Theatre, with members of Soundgarden

and Alice In Chains joining fans, fami-

ly and the surviving members of Mother

Love Bone to pay their respects. A hush fell

upon the theatre as Wood’s father David

addressed the congregation.

“You guys in the band, well, I bet you

feel like you’re sold out,” David Wood said

quietly. “But Andy didn’t do this to you.

He had everything in the world to live for

and he wanted to live for you. I want you

guys to go on and be the biggest stars you

can be. I want to see you guys on TV. But

if you’ve got to get another singer, don’t get

a junkie.”

“But that was that,” says Ament today.

“It was over.”

W

ith ‘apple’ still a few

weeks of from its delayed

release date of July 19th,

1990, Ament insists he

didn’t feel betrayed or hurt

to discover, second-hand,

that his friend and bandmate Stone Gos-

sard was writing new music without him

in the summer of 1990.

“I wasn’t 100 per cent sure I wanted to

play with Stone again and I don’t think

Stone was 100 per cent sure he wanted to

play with me,” he recalls.

For the surviving members of Mother

Love Bone, the idea of replacing Andrew

Wood was never seriously discussed. But

while Ament mulled over the possibility

of returning to his native Montana to

finish the graphic design course he had

abandoned seven years earlier, Gossard

sought comfort in sound, spending the

months following his bandmate’s death

recording music in the attic of his own

parents’ home in Capitol Hill.

“I’d been writing music for three years

and I liked it so I wasn’t just going to stop,”

he recalls. “I was so ex-

cited by the idea that you

could go into your bed-

room and start working

on something and piece

together an arrangement

of two or three different

parts that kinda worked

together, and if you had

a singer and some lyrics a

few weeks later you’d have

a song that didn’t exist

before. Still to this day I

think that’s the coolest

thing in the world. And even after Andy

passed away I was just really gung-ho. I

didn’t know how it was going to work out

or what the possibilities were, but I knew

that the process was just driving me. It

was cathartic.”

To add meat to the bones of the new

material he was sketching out, Gossard

sought out a musical collaborator.

“As a guitar player I sucked, except that

I could put some rif s together,” he says.

“But I knew Mike McCready could play.. .”

At that point, 24-year-old Florida-born

Mike McCready was back in his adopt-

ed hometown of Seattle following a frus-

trating 18-month spell chasing his rock

& roll dreams in Los Angeles with his

band Shadow. Acquaintances since mid-

dle school, he and Gossard had reconnect-

became somethingofasportforamused
insiders.
It was common knowledge that these
blow-ins were in town to view only one
band. Drawn together from the rem-
nants of GreenRiver,TenMinuteWarn-
ing and Malfunkshun, flashy but soulful
hard rockersMotherLoveBonehadbe-
come a ‘buzz’ band in the L.A. music in-
dustry since word leaked that Gefen had
stumped up$5,000forthequintettore-
cord a demo. Though the band had trav-
elled to Los Angeles in July ’88 to meet
with Gef en President Ed Rosenblatt, they
had yet to ink a deal with the company,
and amid persistent ru-
mours that A&R execu-
tive Tom Zutaut – the man
who signed Guns N’ Roses

• remained unconvinced
  of their potential, talent
  scouts from Atlantic, Is-
  land, Capitol, A&M and
  Polygram sensed an op-
  portunity to stage an elev-
  enth hour coup.
  Representatives of no
  fewer than 15 diferent la-
  bels visited Seattle that
  summer to schmooze MLB’s fl amboyant,
  charismatic frontman Andrew Wood and
  bandmates Stone Gossard, Bruce Fair-
  weather, Jef Ament and Greg Gilmore.
  At each dinner meeting, the fi nancial in-
  ducements laid before the quintet grew
  more bloated, swelling from $150,000 of-
  fers to deals in excess of $400,000 – seri-
  ous money for young men then washing
  dishes in restaurants and working in cof-
  fee bars to pay the bills. It was, Ament re-
  calls, a “crazy, ridiculous time”. In Novem-
  ber ’88, the band put paid to speculation
  by inking a seven-album deal with Poly-
  gram, and as they set to work upon their
  debut album in California with producer

“I WASN’T SURE I WANTED TO

WORK WITH STONE AGAIN,” SAYS

AMENT, “AND I DON’T THINK

STONE WAS SURE HE

WANTED TO WORK WITH ME.”

n the summer of 1988, the tight-knit seat-

tle rock community began to notice unfamiliar faces

in its midst. Even in ill-lit dive bars such as The Vogue

and the Central Tavern, strangers were easy to spot,

especially when they lingered alone by the bar at gigs,

at a safe remove from boisterous mosh pits. Following

local heroes Soundgarden and Screaming Trees sign-

ing to popular independent label SST Records, national

interest in the Emerald City’s music scene had intensi-

fi ed, but now identifying Hollywood A&R reps at shows