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I found this article from the early 90's
PJ History 101
Deranged Diction/Mr. Epp and the Calculations/Limp Richards/the Ducky Boys/March of Crimes
Once Upon a Time, in Missoula Montana, where Big Sandy native Jeff Ament was then living, his band Deranged Diction was formed in 1982 by a group of basketball playing skate punks from the University of Montana. At one point, the group had the distinction of being the only non-Top 40 band in the area.
Tom Kipp first saw them at their third or fourth gig, and Diction was in serious trouble. Being a hardcore band, they had run through their entire set at an embarrassing pace, a miserly 20 minutes. A quick thinker, Kipp (previously vocalist with another Missoula band, the Renobs) made his way to the stage, and offered to sing "Johnny B. Goode" and "No Fun" with the band, two songs they all knew. " And in the aftermath of that very brief performance," Kipp recollects, "they decided to immediately throw out the singer they had, although they didn't get around to telling him for a month or two."
Aside from Ament and Kipp, Deranged Diction also featured drummer Sergio Avenia and guitarist Bruce Fairweather, himself a newcomer to Missoula. From a military family, Fairweather had been living in Hawaii and later in California, before finally making his way to the University of Montana. With a repertoire whose influences included California hardcore, Ament's personal love of Boston hardcore and Kipp's predilection for Flipper, Diction amassed a small local following.
With Diction already planning a move to Seattle to pursue fame and fortune, Kipp bowed out of the band. A replacement singer, Tim Healy, was brought in for their final Missoula gigs. By June, Diction was on their way west.
Once in Seattle, the band went through an amazing transformation. In the early days after their arrival, Ament occasionally appeared on stage in a kilt. As time went on, he would grow his hair, although the eyeliner he first sported in Montana remained. "In Missoula we wouldn't have survived the night with any more make-up," Kipp states.
And then there was the music. Gradually, Diction shifted from hardcore into something else entirely. Daniel House, now head of the Seattle C/Z label, refers to them as "a pretty cool punk band," but not all of Seattle was so keen. Dale Crover, drummer for Aberdeen, Washington thoroughbreds the Melvins, recalls, "Jeff Ament was a Venom fan; we used to make fun of him."
Mark Arm (now of Mudhoney) adds, "Diction was one of the fastest bands around, then they became the slowest band on earth ... and the weirdest." "They sounded like Paranoid-era Black Sabbath," concludes Tom Kipp. Deranged Diction folded in June 1984.
When Ament moved to Seattle, it was still just a dot on the northwest corner of the map, and most everybody who considered themselves hip was into the Stooges, local legends the Sonics and hardcore. Or so Ben Sheppard (now bassist with Soundgarden) remembers: "Seattle was a guitar town. Kids would rather buy guitar strings or books than clothes."
Dale Crover agrees. "We were into obscure bands like the Stooges and Queensryche (which Jeff Ament really liked). Mark Arm was also into Ted Nugent."
For Mark McCullough (now Mark Arm), it began by, “hopping around with a broomstick to Beatles songs when I was six.” Pushing the fast forward button, we arrive at his first band, Mr. Epp and the Calculations.
Mr. Epp and the Calculations underwent several line-up changes; according to vocalist/guitarist Smitty, however, the "definitive" Mr. Epp comprised himself, Arm (guitar and a couple of lead vocals), bassist Todd Why and drummer Darren Mor/x (now a member of Steel Pole Bathtub). The band's greatest influences, says Arm, were Flipper and Minor Threat.
The Limp Richerds were based in the suburban town of Federal Way, and boasted, as Arm delicately puts it, "the spazziest, freaked out singer you could imagine, Dave Middleton." The Richerds' band logo, appropriately, took the medical symbol for mate, custom drawn to include a decidedly droopy arrow.
Bob Wittaker (who graduated from working at Sub Pop to managing Mudhoney, and has a further convoluted connection as his mother once dated Pearl Jam's Stone Gossard's dad!) remembers the Limp Richerds as a weird band, playing "spasmodic music." Soundgarden's Ben Sheppard recalls that they were "a little more structured than Mr. Epp, and a little more jokey, whereas Mr. Epp were way wigged-out Pere Ubu, loud, cleverly stupid, really weird." It remains Mark Arm proudly boasts that "Mr. Epp were the worst band in Seattle.”
Arm says, "We kind of enjoyed the fact that people thought we were the worst band in the city,"
Matt Cameron (of Soundgarden) insists, "Limp Richerds were pretty bad, but they were trying to be bad. The worst bands were those new wave bands that were around at the time, those really weird new wave bands that I really liked to laugh at.”
"I always thought that Mr. Epp sounded pretty tight and techno. I thought they were the Seattle version of Kraftwerk!" Then again, Cameron never saw the band live.
Another future Mudhoney member, Steve Turner, considered the Limp Richerds and Mr. Epp his favorite bands, even if the Richerds did "look like suburban nerds, and the punks would yell 'art fags' at Mr. Epp."
In 1982, while Turner was still a junior in high school, a school friend, Alex Shumway, introduced him to the older Arm. Turner himself would join both Mr. Epp and the Richerds in 1983; prior to that, he formed his own band, the Ducky Boys, with another friend, Stone Gossard. (Stone is his real name, incidentally; his sisters are Shell and Star.)
It was to be a short-lived project, lasting around six months; when it was over, Shumway offered Turner a spot in his band, Spluii Numa. "But then Mark asked me to join Epp, and they sounded a lot better." One assumes he means as a proposition, not musically.
Turner also joined the Limp Richerds just in time to catch the band's death throes. Three months later it was history; Turner never even performed live with them.
As for Mr. Epp. Their sound was changing. "They played really fast, and they didn't know how to play," remembers Turner. "But when I joined, Mark was learning, and it began to sound more like rock 'n' roll."
Arm is more dismissive. "When Steve came in, he was just another guitarist that couldn't be heard over the bass, either." By 1984, Mr. Epp, too, had bitten the dust.
With the collapse of their bands, it was inevitable that Arm, Turner and Alex Shumway (Now operating under the name Alex Vincent) would start thinking about putting together another group to terrorize the neighbors. But there was one thing that both Arm and Turner demanded; a bass player with a distortion box, "like the guy we had in Mr. Epp but preferably one that could actually play."
A certain individual from Seattle fit that bill, and according to Arm, "he jumped real high." He was former Deranged Diction bassist Jeff Ament.
There was only one problem, as Turner explains. "I got a job where Jeff worked and I talked to him about the band. But he didn't like Mr. Epp. He thought we were horrible! He didn't want to be in a band with us!" So they just kept hounding him and finally, their persistence paid off. The seminal Green River (named for a notorious local serial killer) was born during the summer of 1984.
Since the demise of the Ducky Boys, Gossard had moved briefly into March of Crimes, formed by a group of Bainbridge Island musicians (Gossard himself was from Seattle's Capitol Hill). Crimes' bassist Ben Sheppard labels March of Crimes as "speed core". Daniel House adds "metal influenced hardcore punk" to the mix.
Matt Cameron, now playing alongside Ben Sheppard in Soundgarden, adds, "They were fucking awesome! They sounded extremely raw, inspired punk-rock. It was high school kid punk-rock that's onto something. They were very abrasive sounding."
But Gossard's involvement was to be short-lived as Sheppard recalls, "I brought him in because he was a great guitarist but he just didn't get on with the others." Soon after Gossard's arrival, the rest of the band fired him. At loose ends, he was ripe to fall into a new band.
Green River
Green River, comprising Ament, Arm, Turner and Vincent, debuted at a party on Seattle's 12th Ave., a slot Ament arranged through the headlining PMA's guitarist, who worked alongside Turner and himself. The band played several more gigs as a four-piece over the next six months, but with Arm having given up playing guitar to concentrate on his vocals, the band's sound needed filling out. Finally, Green River recruited a second guitarist, ex-Ducky Boys axe-man Stone Gossard.
It should be noted that Gossard was heavily influenced by Kiss. Before he joined Green River, Bob Whittaker recalls Gossard taking a pair of Capezzios and by nailing 2x4s to them, creating his own platform shoes. "I don't know if he ever wore them outside the house though!"
Stone was in good company. According to Tom Kipp, "Jeff had really huge, billowing hair, and with the scarves and his facial structure he really did look like Jon Bon Jovi." Photos of Green River also bring the New York Dolls and Hanoi Rocks to mind, admittedly with a much lighter touch in make-up.
Gossard made his Green River debut at the Gray Door in Seattle. Chris Friel (then a member of Shadow, alongside future Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready) remembers, "I was pretty blown away. I was the only Green River fan in Shadow. I told the rest about the gig, and they all started laughing."
In October 1984, Green River opened for the Dead Kennedys at Seattle's Moore Theatre. Their reception was mixed: half the crowd seemed to enjoy it, the rest pelted the band with popcorn, ice and shoes.
Two months later, in December 1984, Green River entered Crow Studios with producer Chris Hanzsek, to record their debut album, the six-track Come On Down, for the independent Homestead label.
Come On Down was to remain in the can for a year, finally appearing in late 1985. In the meantime the band took another shot at a large audience, when it opened for Sonic Youth and local heroes the U-Men, at Gorilla Gardens (an old Chinese theater in Seattle's International District). It then continued working the northwest in readiness for its first U.S. tour, scheduled for early fall. It was on the eve of this outing during the August of 85' that Steve Turner announced he was leaving the band.
Unlike Ament and Vincent, Turner had never been into hardcore or metal. His tastes ran towards the Pebbles compilations of raw '60s garage band music. And while it was one thing to have friends with diverse musical tastes, it was quite another to be in a band with them. As far as Turner was concerned, Green River was becoming far too metallic for his liking.
"Stoney and Jeff," Turner relates, "were like heavy metal kids. They were into Motorhead, and Stoney was really into Kiss. I was into the California hardcore, but I also liked the Clash, Devo and 999."
Turner returned to school for two years, attending Western Washington University and working part-time "at such high-powered jobs as parking cars." Former Deranged Diction member Bruce "Bootsy" Fairweather was quickly drafted in to replace him, and in October 1985, Green River embarked on a disastrous tour.
Mark Arm provides the details, "while Steve was safely in school we were stuck in the midwest. We had seven shows altogether; it was kind of like a vacation. We all worked jobs and saved up money for the tour. The problem was, no one knew anything about us. [Scheduling problems had pushed the release of Come On Down back] so we didn't have any records out. We did two shows opening for Big Black, they had records, but there was still only 30 or 40 people there. We headlined CBGB, playing to six people: four Japanese tourists and two people that worked there. I guess they liked us, all six stayed for the entire show. Maxwell's, in Hoboken New Jersey was pretty good as well. But Detroit was the worst. We opened for Sam Haig (now of Danzig) on Halloween, and everyone had this bad-ass attitude. We’re thinking it’s going to be great. Yeah, the Stooges, MC5. But these people just wanted everything fast. Jeff was wearing a pink tank-top with 'San Francisco' in purple letters and with his hair, well you can imagine. This one girl kept spitting at me, and Jeff put his foot out to block the spit. But this guy thought he was kicking her in the face. He was huge, and pulled Jeff right into the crowd. In the past, I’ve been pulled into the crowd, and Jeff rescued me, so now was my chance to help him out. But Jeff is a big guy, and I’m not. Still, I jumped in. The guy was a seven-foot-tall brick of a man, the only thing that saved our asses was an armed policeman."
So, the tour wasn't a great success. But its very occurrence was, for Green River was one of the few Seattle bands to actually make it out of the area. "Back then," reminisces Daniel House, "even going to Portland was a big deal. The first two bands to go on tour were the U-Men and Green River, and they got full stories in The Rocket (Seattle's premier music paper). They had big going away shows!"
Come On Down finally made it into the stores just in time for Christmas 1985; The Rocket described it as "a mixture of Metallica and Lynyrd Skynyrd with Henry Rollins as lead singer." Early pressings of the album appeared on a now very collectible green vinyl. More recently, Come On Down has been made available on CD.
Green River celebrated by organizing their second U.S. tour. Once again they played CBGB, and this time there was more than a handful of people present, including Aerosmith's Joe Perry. Immediately, rumors flooded the Seattle scene that he would produce their next record. But the Dry As A Bone EP, recorded in June 1986 (but, characteristically, not released for another 13 months) found Sub Pop’s resident producer Jack Endino, not Perry, behind the control board.
There were two new Green River releases during 1986. First, the C/Z label included "10,000 Things" on Deep Six, a limited 2,000 edition vinyl compilation album which also featured Soundgarden, the Melvins, Skin Yard, the U-Men and Malfunkshun. This was followed by a single coupling Green River's own "Together We'll Never" with the Dead Boys' classic "Ain't Nothin' To Do," released on the band's own ICP label. Recorded eight months earlier, in March 1985, "Together We'll Never" appeared in a limited edition of 800 green vinyl copies, which were given away at the record's release party at the Vogue.
Green River continued to play locally, including a show with Agent Orange on August 8th, then embarked on their third and final tour. But it was their Seattle shows that ensured the band's legacy would live on.
During one memorable gig at the Central, for instance, the audience threw spam and bread at the band. Lunch may have been served, but the gunk also got stuck in the monitors, and not only was Green River fined, they were banned from the club. In retaliation, the band started throwing things at the audience: cooking oil was Nils Bernstein's (publicity director at Sub Pop Records) favorite projectile.
July 1987 brought the release of Dry As A Bone, the five-track EP recorded with Jack Endino a year previous. This record is of particular interest, both to Green River fans and students of the Seattle scene in general, as it marked the first individual band release on the now legendary Sub Pop label. (Earlier issues, dating back to label founder Bruce Pavitt's days as a fanzine editor, were nationwide compilations.)
Well received locally, Dry As A Bone made little impression elsewhere. But that did not stop Sub Pop from wanting more, and in August 1987 Green River set to work on what would become the Rehab Doll EP. Before this could be released, however, Sub Pop had to reconstitute itself: between them, Dry As A Bone and the debut release by Soundgarden (the Screaming Life EP) had all but bankrupted the label. It was to be another year before Sub Pop was ready to start releasing records again, by which time Green River was no more.
The band's run of bad on-the-road luck showed no sign of abating, coming to a head at a gig in LA. In an interview with Rocket editor Grant Alden, Arm explained, "We went down to LA, and had a guest list of 10 people, all of whom were from major labels. Only two of them came. Meanwhile, I wanted to get my friends in and they [the band] said 'No, it's really important that we get these industry people in.' But these people didn't give a shit about us; I'd rather have had my friends come in for free."
Musical clashes, too, haunted Green River. "They were trying to play Guns N' Roses and the brand new Aerosmith," Arm shudders. "None of them had any interest in the tape I wanted to play, rockabilly and Thee Milkshakes."'
The crunch came on Halloween 1987, when Arm went down to practice. He already knew that the rest of the band had been working casually with Malfunkshun's vocalist, Andy Wood. It was apparent that the relationship was casual no more. "They said, 'This is the end.' I said, 'Okay, cool.' I could see it coming for a long time."
Rehab Doll was released in June 1988 close to nine months after Green River disintegrated. For a band with so little recorded history behind it, it would seem that Green River was just another local band that never made it to the big time. However, although they may have had little influence nationally, they would have a profound impact on the Seattle scene.
At the time in Seattle, only Soundgarden could rival Green River's fame. The Rocket called them "a throbbing sonic unit. Their hardcore/metal/greasy rock fusion is a double-barreled attack of audio destruction, and their on-stage ferocity is legendary."
Mudhoney
With the break-up of Green River, the members would finally split down musical lines. Jeff Ament, Stone Gossard and Bruce Fairweather would continue playing together in a new project. Mark Arm would rejoin Steve Turner to form the seminal Mudhoney. Alex Vincent would leave music behind altogether, eventually moving to Japan.
No sooner had Green River run dry than Arm and Turner were piecing together Mudhoney, with ex-Melvins bassist Matt Lukin and Bundle of Hiss drummer Danny Peters.
Signing, perhaps inevitably, to Sub Pop, Mudhoney made their vinyl debut in August 1988, with the ‘Touch Me I'm Sick’ single. Further 45s, the ‘Superfuzz Bigmuff’ EP, and two full albums, ‘Mudhoney’ and ‘Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge’ were released over the next four years.
Malfunkshun/Lords of the Wasteland
Jeff Ament, Stone Gossard and Bootsy Fairweather, meanwhile, were about to embark upon a remarkable career of their own, one which would see them hook up with two of the most important names on the Seattle scene, drummer Greg Gilmore and Malfunkshun's bassist/vocalist extraordinaire Andrew Wood.
"The first time I saw Malfunkshun," says Dale Crover, "there was this girl in a furry coat. She was walking up to the front of the stage, and people were trying to pick her up. I was looking at her, and she was pretty huge. Then she got on stage and started playing bass."
"She" was Andrew Wood.
Malfunkshun's story begins on Easter Sunday, 1980, when Andrew and his oldest brother Kevin bowed out of a family dinner, at their Bainbridge Island home, and joined drummer David Hunt for their first practice/ recording session.
Dave Reese soon joined on bass, but Malfunkshun played only one show as a four-piece, at a party. By summer, 1980, Reese and Hunt had quit (they went on to join Skindiver); Andrew took over bass duties (he was also the singer); Kevin remained on guitar, and Andrew's school friend, Regan Hagar, joined as drummer.
The new-look Malfunkshun's first show was Bainbridge Island's Blackberry Jam festival in August 1980. At the time, remembers Kevin Wood, the group was still learning how to play, and their sound was "pure punk rock with lots of screaming and loud chords, total hardcore."
Soon Malfunkshun started playing around the "local Seattle dives," as Kevin puts it, although, at the time, options were severely limited, particularly for bands like Malfunkshun, with under-age members. There was only a handful of clubs operating on the circuit; parties and high school dances aside, the only other alternatives were renting out halls (a favorite among the hardcore set), and bars, which limited audiences even further.
During Malfunkshun's early days, Andrew created an on-stage persona, "Landrew the Love Child." Clad in white face makeup and a flowing cape, Landrew was the antithesis of the multitude of metal bands that bedecked their songs and album jackets with satanic references. "We were an anti-666 band," explained Landrew in The Rocket in 1986, "because that's when the Satan thing was becoming really big. So we were a 333 band and did anti-devil songs.
In 1985, Andrew entered a rehab program. The band was put on temporary hold until his return, then swung back into action when Malfunkshun made its recorded debut.
Although Malfunkshun was constantly making tapes of their music, it was Daniel House who would first record them for posterity, on C/Z's Deep Six compilation (alongside Green River, et. al). It was an album which left Kevin, at least, dissatisfied., "We just had a few hours in the studio (a restriction that applied to all the bands included), but we pulled it off."
Malfunkshun also performed on a now near-legendary billing, alongside the U-Men, Soundgarden and Skin Yard. Perhaps the greatest line-up ever, though, was a, Tacoma gig, around 1986-87, that also featured Red Cross, Green River and Soundgarden.
Part of the reason for the band's live popularity was Andrew's dynamic stage presence. "We'd be on stage," Kevin explains, "and everybody would be looking at Andy, paying attention to every little thing he'd do, even Regan and I."
"We were the big flamboyant concert in a small club setting," Hagar relates. "We were really tongue-in-cheek; people found us amusing. I think people came to see Andy as much as to hear the music."
Even so, the band would only headline a grand total of four or five times, all at local Seattle clubs like the Vogue and Gorilla Gardens. Their audiences never got above a couple of hundred people, depending upon the opening act, but the group was gaining a small but loyal following. Still, there were other problems. The band never owned a PA and was reduced to borrowing Green River's (they also shared Green River's practice space on and off for many years.)
Landrew the love child was living in Seattle and hanging out with Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard. It wasn't long before the three were jamming together and writing songs and as time went by their friendship deepened, leading to the eventual dissolution of both Green River and Malfunkshun.
In early 1988, under the name Lords of the Wasteland, which included Ament, Gossard, Wood and Hagar started playing occasional shows in between their regular band commitments. The first two or three gigs took place in the basement of Luna, — a Seattle shoe store.
The Lords' entire repertoire comprised covers; Hagar remembers performing the Stones' "Stray Cat, Blues," Led Zeppelin's "When The Levee Breaks," and the James Gang's "Funk 49." The early gigs, he says, "Were just a novelty, these people from different bands playing in a shoe store." Eventually, however, it would become something else entirely. By the time of their final show, both Green River and Malfunkshun had folded, and Bruce Fairweather had joined the Lords.
(Coincidentally (or otherwise) one week after the Lords' final gig Mark Arm and friends played a show under the name of the Wasted Landlords. "I think the concept was the key," Bob Wittaker delicately suggest.)
Andy Wood originally intended working with both bands, but it was not to be. The Lords were taking up too much of his time. Malfunkshun struggled on for another show or two, before playing their final gig, supporting Skin Yard at Tacoma's Community World Theatre in 1988.
Like Green River, the numbers belie the splash that Malfunkshun had created in the Seattle area. Kevin recalls a small group of loyal fans, but in reality, the group seemed to be a "band's band."
Ben Sheppard says, "Most musicians in Seattle were Malfunkshun fans. Sometimes they were great, sometimes they weren't. They were cavemen on acid. Kevin used to solo the whole time, and Andy used to do his hair out, add glitter, and don a trench coat." Matt Cameron echoes the sentiment. "Malfunkshun frightened me; they were so good, so heavy and trippy, they had the whole fucking insane element going. They were one of my favorite bands."
Chris Friel, whose own band, Shadow, was playing Seattle around the same time as Malfunkshun, adds, "Malfunkshun was awesome. If you play them alongside Green River, you definitely see who has the upper hand!"
Journalist Richard White, now head of the Washington Music Industry Coalition, continues: "Malfunkshun was like nothing you've ever seen before, a cross between Kiss, T. Rex and Cheap Trick. Those were Andy's influences, and he wore them on his sleeve."
But Dale Crover of the Melvins, Kurt Cobain’s original drummer and close friend, sums them up best. "They were the godfathers of grunge!"
Mother Love Bone
For the Lords of the Wasteland, everything was about to fall into place, as Greg Gilmore came walking up the street. He ran into Stone Gossard, who asked him if he wanted to come and jam with Jeff Ament, Bruce Fairweather, Andrew Wood and himself. Intrigued, Gilmore agreed. For now, Gilmore's role was merely to help the rest learn the songs. "I'd not played for so long, it was kind of weird dealing with it." More rehearsals followed over the next few days, until one afternoon after a practice, Regan Hagar showed up. Gilmore was totally unaware that Hagar had also been playing with the group, but sensed that something was wrong: "All of a sudden everyone got real quiet." No one said a thing at the time, but eventually Hagar learned the truth, as did Gilmore, who took virtually two months to realize he was in the band.
By February 1988, the newly christened Mother Love Boan was in Reciprocal Studios, recording their first demo. Jeff Ament, acting as the band's manager, sent this first demo out to try to get some shows. Mother Love Bone returned to Reciprocal to record another demo. This demo, as well as cassettes combining songs from both sessions, were not only used to get more gigs, but were also sent around to record labels. Anna Statman, who Ament had met when she worked at Slash Records, but who was now at Geffen, was particularly impressed, so much so that she convinced the company to finance yet another MLB demo. In July, Mother Love Bone visited LA to meet with Geffen Records. The meeting with Geffen had gone well; the label wanted to sign them, and the contract was meant to go off that week. So they waited all through the summer.
Meanwhile, their telephones were ringing off the hook. Somehow one of their demos had found its way to a host of other record companies. Gilmore says, "It took six months for a contract to arrive, and when it did, it was from another label entirely. When Geffen finally did make an offer, so had a lot of other labels."
"We loved the band so much that we actually bought the Stardog label to get them," was how PolyGram touted its new signing. In reality the company Created Stardog specifically for the band, to give the EP that important ‘underground’ feel.
On Thursday, March 15th, Andy Wood did an interview with Seattle journalist Michael Browning. Reading it today, there's not a hint that anything was wrong. One gets the impression, as Wood talks about his drug problem, that for the moment he had it licked. The following evening, Wood's fiancé came home around 10:30. She found Andy collapsed on their bed; he was rushed to Harborview Hospital and immediately put onto a life support system. But the damage caused by lack of oxygen meant that recovery was out of the question. On March 19th 1990, the machines were turned off, and one of Seattle's brightest lights was extinguished forever. Wood was 24 years old.
On March 24th, the Paramount Theater hosted a memorial service for Wood. A beautiful Memorial program was produced, featuring numerous photos of Andy, plus reproductions of pages from his notebooks.
In the chaotic days following Wood's death, PolyGram proved itself to be a corporation with a heart. It gave the band time to think things through, as Gilmore remembers. "PolyGram was pretty cool; they sat back and asked us what we wanted to do."
The easiest decision was the fate of Apple. There was no question here; the band and label wanted the album to be released. Everyone had worked so hard on it, if nothing else, Apple would stand as a testament to Wood's talent. It finally appeared later that same year.
When Gossard announced he did not want to continue, Mother Love Bone ceased to be. It would be left to their recorded legacy to continue the band's name. Having lain dormant since its original release, Apple was reactivated in 1992 (It included their Shine EP and other additional tracks) following Pearl Jam's breakthrough, re-titled simply, Mother Love Bone.
"Everything Soundgarden didn't want to be!" is how MLB drummer Gilmore laughingly opines. Then continuing on a more serious note, "Mother Love Bone was definitely groove conscious. Live though, we were inconsistent. On a good night we could be just incredible."
Kelly Curtis echoes this sentiment. "To me, Mother Love Bone was great songs and the cool '70s thing, not glam rock, but Bowie. They could be amazing, and they could be not amazing as well. They were a very young band."
Chris Friel on the other hand, had no doubts, "I am still a huge MLB fan, and I still think they're one of the greatest things ever to come out of Seattle. I think the fragility of the whole band was what made them so great. If they'd all been best friends, I don't think they'd have been such an incredible band. You could feel the energy on stage."
Andy’s brother Kevin Wood comments, "A good rocking band that probably would have gotten as big as Pearl Jam. You've got to hand it to Stone and Jeff for keeping the ball rolling."
Other people, of course, automatically compared Mother Love Bone to Andy’s earlier band Malfunkshun. Ben Sheppard states, "Mother Love Bone was a little more refined and their guitarists were a little more structured." Matt Cameron adds, "It wasn't as good or as appealing as Malfunkshun live, it just seemed kind of standard."
Warrior/Shadow/the X-Men/Love Chile/Luv Company
It was in question if Mother Love Bone would continue playing together following Andrew Wood's death. While waiting for the answer, Gossard spent the summer playing guitar with an old friend, Mike McCready. Like Gossard, McCready was a big Kiss fan. Chris Friel remembers that the day he met McCready, they had watched Kiss take off their make-up live on MTV.
McCready's first band was Warrior, which formed somewhere around 1978-79. Originally a four-piece, the band also included Chris Friel and his brother Rick, and vocalist Danny Newcombe. Chris was a few years younger than the rest, being only eight or nine at the time! Inevitably, the band played lots of Kiss covers. "We tried to write originals, but how do you write lyrics that young?" Chris asks.
Sometime around 1982-83, Warrior became Shadow, and the foursome was augmented by Rob Weber. "We were a good band, I was really proud of it," says Chris. "We were hard rock, but we had pop chords. We hated hardcore! Our look was somewhere between braces and spandex. To us, Kiss was everything. Mike was the tongue (as in Kiss's Gene Simmons). At rehearsals he would stick out his tongue and run around naked."
Mark Arm compares Shadow to early Def Leppard in that "they were really, really young. (The Rocket called them Seattle's Menudo) “Their big thing was hoping to get signed, like Def Leppard were, at an early age. Stoney used to hang out with that scene as well; it wasn't really metal, it was like '80s pop-psychedelic-metal, not trying to be like Van Halen, trying to be like Quiet Riot."
Dave Krusen's only recollection of Shadow was their old promo picture. What struck him was the Band's make-up and outfits. "Elvis Costello meets Menudo in slick new wave outfits!"
Although Stone Gossard was indeed hanging out with the band during the early 1980s, Chris points out, "It was as a friend, not necessarily as a fan. At that point, he was learning how to play guitar. He was learning 'Dr. Love' by Kiss; that was the first song I ever heard him play!"
Early on, Shadow mostly played roller rinks, aiming for the all-ages crowd. That changed in October 1984, when the Moore Theatre hosted a Headbanger's Ball, with a bill that included Culprit, Overlord and Shadow. Suddenly, Shadow found themselves opening in front of a packed house, and received an amazing response.
The following year, Halloween 1985, on a bill with TKO and Metal Church, Shadow was booed for not being heavy metal. Still, says Chris, "It was the pinnacle for us."
It was also the end of an era. Newcombe and Weber left following the second Headbanger's Ball, and Rick Friel took over the vocals. On New Year's Eve 1985, Shadow officially became a three-piece.
By this time, Shadow had moved onto the bar circuit and found themselves opening for Green River at Gorilla Garden, noting that Gossard seemed finally to have come to grips with ‘Dr. Love.’
Between 1983 and 1986 Shadow made four visits to the Kay Smith studio (now the Heart sisters' Bad Animals complex) to record some demos.
As a three-piece Shadow gained a harder edge, adding an infusion of energy and thrash. "Previously," Chris explains, "We'd been into being super tight. We'd practice at my mom and dad’s house five or six times a week, driving the neighbors crazy. As a three-piece we were having fun, and we definitely were not as perfect."
Visually, they were exhibiting an equally precocious, side. Shadow's original glammy look had now been replaced by "t-shirts, scarves and braces," according to Chris, while Mike McCready had created a new stage act, bringing baby dolls on stage and smashing them.
Shortly after the completion of their fourth demo, Shadow relocated to Los Angeles. At the time, they thought it would help their career. They secured a manager and it seemed they were heading for the big time.
"Our sound and attitude was so different from everything else going on down there," Chris relates, "we really thought we'd make our mark. But we'd tell people we were from Seattle, and they'd say, 'Where's that? Is that an Indian village or something?'
Shadow stuck it out in LA for 13 months. They returned to Seattle in 1988 and resumed playing the local scene. Less than six months after returning home, McCready left the band, at which point Shadow ceased to be. (The original five-piece reconvened for a reunion gig at Seattle's Hollywood Underground later that year.)
The split was more than amicable, says Chris. "Mike gave Rick one of his old, custom guitars. 'I can't do it anymore, you guys still have the energy, go for it."'
Shadow never released anything, although Rick Friel reports that Mike McCready recently encountered a Shadow bootleg in San Francisco apparently drawn from an early demo.
Following the demise of Shadow, Mike McCready left music behind him and returned to the community college he'd been attending on and off over the years. But it was impossible for him to abandon it forever and under the aegis of friend Russ Reidner, he eventually returned to the musical fold.
Early 1989, Reidner (who is now in the Cheap Ones, alongside former Shadow Danny Newcombe), Mark Patterson and McCready started playing together. The band had neither a drummer nor a name; rather, they would just select whatever felt right at the time. Chris Friel played one show with them, for instance, as the X-Men. The rest of the time, they just jammed and demoed in nameless, percussion-less isolation.
Around this time, McCready also started playing bluesy, Stevie Ray Vaughn style music with another unnamed and short-lived group of friends, before forming Love Chile, a psychedelic blues band. "Muddy Waters meets Jane's Addiction," as Chris Friel puts it.
Love Chile only played two shows, both times supporting Jangle Town. One was at the OK Hotel, and Chris remembers Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament both being there. "That was the night," he recalls, "that they were reminded Mike could really play guitar. That night was probably the greatest I've ever seen him play, he was just on fire."
Gossard and McCready started working together almost immediately. Ament joined in later that summer and soon the three were compiling new songs. A band was slowly evolving.
While Gossard and McCready spent their time jamming, Ament was doing his own thing, rounding up another group of friends to play with. Luv Company, as the aggregation was named, was not meant to be a band per se, just a chance for people to play together on a fun level. The gang included Shawn Smith, longtime friend Kim Dijulio (from Lazy Susan), Tom Gunn (of War Babies), Chris Friel, Blind Horse drummer Richard Stuverud (Friel played a couple of shows, Stuverud the rest), and later, McCready, who would replace Tom Gunn. The band's repertoire was exclusively '70s covers; Bad Company and Aerosmith songs were staples. All total, the band performed around five local shows.
Temple of the Dog
It was during this lazy summer of 1990 that Matt Cameron reentered the picture, along with fellow Soundgarden member Chris Cornell. Cornell had been a close friend and former roommate of Andrew Wood. As a release from his grief, Cornell penned two songs in tribute to Wood, "Say Hello 2 Heaven" and "Reach Down," envisioning them as a single. He enlisted Cameron, Ament, Gossard and McCready to help with pre-production, and slowly the single began growing into an album. It was not quite a tribute, but it was certainly inspired by Andy.
Cameron adds “It was just a kind of get-together. There wasn't an agenda as far as what we were going to do. We wanted to try some new songs with a hand-picked group. When we got together for the demos, Stoney, Jeff and Mike were still getting their vibe together, it was really fun to witness. And of course, Jeff and Stone are full-on partners."
Stone, Jeff, and Mike were also busy recording Stone’s newest material in demo form, in the hopes of starting their own band. All told, 12 songs ended up on Gossard demo tape, ten instrumentals with the trio were augmented by Cameron, two featuring Chris Friel (Black and Footsteps).
The Temple project was still underway when with their own demo recorded on tape; Ament, Gossard and McCready began an active search for a singer and drummer.
For once, Gossard and Ament were to look outside the incestuous Seattle scene to make up the numbers, contacting someone they had no personal connection with. One of the people considered was drummer Jack Irons.
The former Red Hot Chili Pepper drummer was certainly a talent worthy of consideration. The day they came knocking on his door, however, Irons was out, but his wife invited them in. She was given a tape with five songs (Soon to became ‘Alone’, ‘Once’, ‘Alive’, ‘Black’ and ‘Footsteps’), and passed on the message, "Give it a listen; if you like it, call and see if you want to come up to Seattle for a little bit. Or if you know any singers, pass it on.”
By now Irons was involved with his own band, Eleven, and had no interest in leaving. But he did have a friend; Eddie Vedder.
Bad Radio
Eddie Vedder first met Jack Irons back in the autumn of 1989 at San Diego’s Bacchanal, when Irons was touring with Joe Strummer's band. A devout Strummer fan, Vedder was backstage, and was equally keen to meet the Peppers' former drummer. A friendship quickly formed, and Vedder would go up to LA to play basketball with Irons on occasions.
And so Irons passed on the tape, telling Vedder, "These guys have been around, they were members of Mother Love Bone. It looks like they've got a deal going, it's a serious thing, so see if there's something there for you."
Vedder took the tape home and listened to it. There was indeed something there for him, so much so that he immediately started writing lyrics for the music (the demo had none), dubbed them onto the tape, mixed it down, and mailed it back to Seattle.
Back in the Emerald City, McCready played Vedder's tape to Friel and asked hit what he thought. "I said it was great. I told him I could hear this guy on FM radio, that he was definitely a great singer."
Originally from Evanston, Chicago, Eddie Vedder’s family fostered seven younger children in a group home. Eventually, the family moved to San Diego, and it was there that Vedder bought his first guitar at 13 or 14. Once out of school, his life revolved around two things: surfing and music. At night he worked at a local club, and when wasn't working or surfing, his time was spent playing in a succession of local bands, including Bad Radio, Surf and Destroy, the Butts, and Indian Style.
The latter three bands faded into obscurity with no recorded history. Bad Radio however, did produce a demo between 1988-89, featuring four songs: ‘What’, ‘Believe You Me’, ‘Answer’ and ‘Better Man’. Eddie took over the managerial work for the group, shopping Bad Radios’s new demo tape around (This has now reportedly materialized on bootleg).
One of those tapes was sent to Marco Collins, a DJ with local 91X out of Mexico. "He used to call and bug me to play his tapes back at 91X all the time. He told me, 'You were the first person to play my voice on the air. I even remember what you said about us, you said we were pretty thumping stuff, man.’"
"Eddie was a contemporary of the heavy rock-funk type of thing." Jack Irons agrees. "He was very serious about making music, he was just younger at doing it. He got to the big leagues really fast."
Vedder spoke with Jeff Ament on the phone and flew up to Seattle shortly there afterwards ( Their newly formed band Mookie Blaylock played their first live show only seven days later.) Vedder arrived in Seattle to find Chris Cornell, Matt Cameron, McCready, Gossard, Ament, and producer/keyboard player Rick Parashar in the process of recording what became the Temple Of The Dog album.
Matt Cameron explains what happened next. "When we started doing Temple, Eddie was just hanging out at the basement rehearsal studio that Jeff, Stone and Mike have. He wasn't totally acclimatized yet, so he was just staying down there, hanging out, listening to the songs we were working on. And then he started singing." Vedder eventually took lead vocals on the track ‘Hunger Strike’, and contributed backing vocals to three other tracks.
Temple of the Dog was recorded over a few weekends in November-December 1990, and was released on Soundgarden's label, A&M, in April 1991. TOTD played only one live show, at the Off Ramp in Seattle; it also convened for a video, shot to accompany the album's first single, ‘Hunger Strike’.
Dave Krusen
With Eddie Vedder now filling their vacant vocalist position, Gossard, McCready and Ament turned their attention back towards a drummer. Tal Goettling, a member of Son of Man, thought he knew someone that would be perfect for the group, his longtime friend Dave Krusen. Goettling knew Gossard and Ament from the days of MLB, as Son of Man used to open for them; when he heard that the group was auditioning drummers, he passed the information on to Krusen. He then auditioned and was given a copy of the demo to take home. Days later, he was asked to join the band.
Although Krusen had been playing locally since 1979, he was a bit of an unknown. Even Greg Gilmore who seems to have played with every musician in town, didn't know of him. At least not at first. "Long ago, I did a gig at a high school, and there was this band of little kids, who opened. Their drummer was this little tiny guy... it was Dave!"
Krusen joined his first band Outrigger in 1979, when he was 13 or 14. Krusen then enjoyed a brief stint in the Boibs, before joining Agent Boy. The band played what Krusen describes as "keyboard rock, progressive dance music." From here, Krusen would go on to play with a variety of people and bands over the years.
Pearl Jam
Dave Krusen joined Ament, Gossard, Vedder and McCready during the fall of 1990, a mere week before the band played its first gig, opening for Inspector Luv and the Ride Me Babies at Seattle's Off Ramp. Shortly after, in November 1990, the group recorded their first demo tape at Seattle’s London Bridge Studios with producer Rick Parashar. The bands first few performances were played under the name Mookie Blaylock, after the New Jersey Nets point guard. It was in this guise that the band embarked on a two-week west coast tour opening for Alice in Chains. The itinerary took them from Vancouver to San Diego and all points in between.
Stone and Jeff coyly opted out of their existing contract with Polygram and signed with Epic Records, whom their initial A&R man now worked along with other ex-Polygram employees. The breech of contract took them years to pay off, as the profits from Pearl Jam’s debut album were still in the pipeline.
Following the Alice in Chains tour, the band changed their name to Pearl Jam for legal or other purposes. They recorded a second demo at London Bridge with Parashar again in tow. Epic Records swiftly released three of the tracks ‘Alive’, ‘Wash’, and a cover of the Beatles ‘I’ve Got A Feeling’ as a very limited promotional single.
Between December 1990 and February 1991, the band spent its time writing new songs, playing local shows and rehearsing. On March 11th, 1991, Pearl Jam entered the studio to start recording what would become their debut album, Ten. (Dave Krusen's son, Micky, was born the following day.) It took a mere month to record the album, as most of the songs included were already written. The band did jam a bunch of new material during the sessions. After a few weeks off in April (at which point the Temple Of The Dog album was released by A&M), Pearl Jam returned to the Off-Ramp in mid-May.
During this time, Seattle was bathing in the spotlight as the location of Cameron Crowe's movie ‘Singles’, with Eddie, Stone and Jeff acting in bit parts. On May 25th, 1991, the company held a wrap party at RKCNDY, to celebrate the end of filming. Entertainment was provided by Pearl Jam. It was the last gig Dave Krusen would perform with them. According to Krusen himself, he was suffering personal problems at the time and knew he needed help. Immediately after the party Krusen checked himself into a drug and alcohol rehabilitation program.
The band was scheduled to leave for England in June to mix Ten at Ridge Farm Studios in Dorking. They also had a video to shoot (again at RKCNDY), to accompany "Alive." Texas-born Matt Chamberlain, whose past credits included the second Edie Brickell album, Ghost Of The Dog, was brought in to fill Krusen’s shoes. Although Chamberlain would not accompany the band to England, he would appear in the video for ‘Alive’. Chamberlain was at a crossroads; he'd also had an offer to join G.E. Smith and the Saturday Night Live band. After just a few weeks with Pearl Jam, he decided to go with the SNL deal. In his stead, he recommended an old friend from Dallas to possibly join the band, Dave Abbruzzese. Dave flew to Seattle and auditioned, impressing the rest of the band. Shortly thereafter, Abbruzzese was given the job.
Ten was eventually released in September 1991. It would take nearly 20 weeks to break into the Top 200, eventually reaching #2 on the charts. Pearl Jam spent much of 1992 on the road, sustaining interest not only with the continued high performance of Ten but also with a string of video/radio hits. From Europe, the band returned to the U.S. and launched straight into another tour. They also made several prestigious television appearances, including MTV Unplugged and Saturday Night Live. "Pearl Jam knew what they wanted to do and they did it," Dave Krusen says without a hint of malice. "They deserve success. Jeff once told me he wanted to make a living at music...and he did.”
Pearl Jam’s sophomore album is set to hit stores soon and a new song entitled ‘Better Man’ is marked for the Green Peace compilation benefit album.
Deranged Diction/Mr. Epp and the Calculations/Limp Richards/the Ducky Boys/March of Crimes
Once Upon a Time, in Missoula Montana, where Big Sandy native Jeff Ament was then living, his band Deranged Diction was formed in 1982 by a group of basketball playing skate punks from the University of Montana. At one point, the group had the distinction of being the only non-Top 40 band in the area.
Tom Kipp first saw them at their third or fourth gig, and Diction was in serious trouble. Being a hardcore band, they had run through their entire set at an embarrassing pace, a miserly 20 minutes. A quick thinker, Kipp (previously vocalist with another Missoula band, the Renobs) made his way to the stage, and offered to sing "Johnny B. Goode" and "No Fun" with the band, two songs they all knew. " And in the aftermath of that very brief performance," Kipp recollects, "they decided to immediately throw out the singer they had, although they didn't get around to telling him for a month or two."
Aside from Ament and Kipp, Deranged Diction also featured drummer Sergio Avenia and guitarist Bruce Fairweather, himself a newcomer to Missoula. From a military family, Fairweather had been living in Hawaii and later in California, before finally making his way to the University of Montana. With a repertoire whose influences included California hardcore, Ament's personal love of Boston hardcore and Kipp's predilection for Flipper, Diction amassed a small local following.
With Diction already planning a move to Seattle to pursue fame and fortune, Kipp bowed out of the band. A replacement singer, Tim Healy, was brought in for their final Missoula gigs. By June, Diction was on their way west.
Once in Seattle, the band went through an amazing transformation. In the early days after their arrival, Ament occasionally appeared on stage in a kilt. As time went on, he would grow his hair, although the eyeliner he first sported in Montana remained. "In Missoula we wouldn't have survived the night with any more make-up," Kipp states.
And then there was the music. Gradually, Diction shifted from hardcore into something else entirely. Daniel House, now head of the Seattle C/Z label, refers to them as "a pretty cool punk band," but not all of Seattle was so keen. Dale Crover, drummer for Aberdeen, Washington thoroughbreds the Melvins, recalls, "Jeff Ament was a Venom fan; we used to make fun of him."
Mark Arm (now of Mudhoney) adds, "Diction was one of the fastest bands around, then they became the slowest band on earth ... and the weirdest." "They sounded like Paranoid-era Black Sabbath," concludes Tom Kipp. Deranged Diction folded in June 1984.
When Ament moved to Seattle, it was still just a dot on the northwest corner of the map, and most everybody who considered themselves hip was into the Stooges, local legends the Sonics and hardcore. Or so Ben Sheppard (now bassist with Soundgarden) remembers: "Seattle was a guitar town. Kids would rather buy guitar strings or books than clothes."
Dale Crover agrees. "We were into obscure bands like the Stooges and Queensryche (which Jeff Ament really liked). Mark Arm was also into Ted Nugent."
For Mark McCullough (now Mark Arm), it began by, “hopping around with a broomstick to Beatles songs when I was six.” Pushing the fast forward button, we arrive at his first band, Mr. Epp and the Calculations.
Mr. Epp and the Calculations underwent several line-up changes; according to vocalist/guitarist Smitty, however, the "definitive" Mr. Epp comprised himself, Arm (guitar and a couple of lead vocals), bassist Todd Why and drummer Darren Mor/x (now a member of Steel Pole Bathtub). The band's greatest influences, says Arm, were Flipper and Minor Threat.
The Limp Richerds were based in the suburban town of Federal Way, and boasted, as Arm delicately puts it, "the spazziest, freaked out singer you could imagine, Dave Middleton." The Richerds' band logo, appropriately, took the medical symbol for mate, custom drawn to include a decidedly droopy arrow.
Bob Wittaker (who graduated from working at Sub Pop to managing Mudhoney, and has a further convoluted connection as his mother once dated Pearl Jam's Stone Gossard's dad!) remembers the Limp Richerds as a weird band, playing "spasmodic music." Soundgarden's Ben Sheppard recalls that they were "a little more structured than Mr. Epp, and a little more jokey, whereas Mr. Epp were way wigged-out Pere Ubu, loud, cleverly stupid, really weird." It remains Mark Arm proudly boasts that "Mr. Epp were the worst band in Seattle.”
Arm says, "We kind of enjoyed the fact that people thought we were the worst band in the city,"
Matt Cameron (of Soundgarden) insists, "Limp Richerds were pretty bad, but they were trying to be bad. The worst bands were those new wave bands that were around at the time, those really weird new wave bands that I really liked to laugh at.”
"I always thought that Mr. Epp sounded pretty tight and techno. I thought they were the Seattle version of Kraftwerk!" Then again, Cameron never saw the band live.
Another future Mudhoney member, Steve Turner, considered the Limp Richerds and Mr. Epp his favorite bands, even if the Richerds did "look like suburban nerds, and the punks would yell 'art fags' at Mr. Epp."
In 1982, while Turner was still a junior in high school, a school friend, Alex Shumway, introduced him to the older Arm. Turner himself would join both Mr. Epp and the Richerds in 1983; prior to that, he formed his own band, the Ducky Boys, with another friend, Stone Gossard. (Stone is his real name, incidentally; his sisters are Shell and Star.)
It was to be a short-lived project, lasting around six months; when it was over, Shumway offered Turner a spot in his band, Spluii Numa. "But then Mark asked me to join Epp, and they sounded a lot better." One assumes he means as a proposition, not musically.
Turner also joined the Limp Richerds just in time to catch the band's death throes. Three months later it was history; Turner never even performed live with them.
As for Mr. Epp. Their sound was changing. "They played really fast, and they didn't know how to play," remembers Turner. "But when I joined, Mark was learning, and it began to sound more like rock 'n' roll."
Arm is more dismissive. "When Steve came in, he was just another guitarist that couldn't be heard over the bass, either." By 1984, Mr. Epp, too, had bitten the dust.
With the collapse of their bands, it was inevitable that Arm, Turner and Alex Shumway (Now operating under the name Alex Vincent) would start thinking about putting together another group to terrorize the neighbors. But there was one thing that both Arm and Turner demanded; a bass player with a distortion box, "like the guy we had in Mr. Epp but preferably one that could actually play."
A certain individual from Seattle fit that bill, and according to Arm, "he jumped real high." He was former Deranged Diction bassist Jeff Ament.
There was only one problem, as Turner explains. "I got a job where Jeff worked and I talked to him about the band. But he didn't like Mr. Epp. He thought we were horrible! He didn't want to be in a band with us!" So they just kept hounding him and finally, their persistence paid off. The seminal Green River (named for a notorious local serial killer) was born during the summer of 1984.
Since the demise of the Ducky Boys, Gossard had moved briefly into March of Crimes, formed by a group of Bainbridge Island musicians (Gossard himself was from Seattle's Capitol Hill). Crimes' bassist Ben Sheppard labels March of Crimes as "speed core". Daniel House adds "metal influenced hardcore punk" to the mix.
Matt Cameron, now playing alongside Ben Sheppard in Soundgarden, adds, "They were fucking awesome! They sounded extremely raw, inspired punk-rock. It was high school kid punk-rock that's onto something. They were very abrasive sounding."
But Gossard's involvement was to be short-lived as Sheppard recalls, "I brought him in because he was a great guitarist but he just didn't get on with the others." Soon after Gossard's arrival, the rest of the band fired him. At loose ends, he was ripe to fall into a new band.
Green River
Green River, comprising Ament, Arm, Turner and Vincent, debuted at a party on Seattle's 12th Ave., a slot Ament arranged through the headlining PMA's guitarist, who worked alongside Turner and himself. The band played several more gigs as a four-piece over the next six months, but with Arm having given up playing guitar to concentrate on his vocals, the band's sound needed filling out. Finally, Green River recruited a second guitarist, ex-Ducky Boys axe-man Stone Gossard.
It should be noted that Gossard was heavily influenced by Kiss. Before he joined Green River, Bob Whittaker recalls Gossard taking a pair of Capezzios and by nailing 2x4s to them, creating his own platform shoes. "I don't know if he ever wore them outside the house though!"
Stone was in good company. According to Tom Kipp, "Jeff had really huge, billowing hair, and with the scarves and his facial structure he really did look like Jon Bon Jovi." Photos of Green River also bring the New York Dolls and Hanoi Rocks to mind, admittedly with a much lighter touch in make-up.
Gossard made his Green River debut at the Gray Door in Seattle. Chris Friel (then a member of Shadow, alongside future Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready) remembers, "I was pretty blown away. I was the only Green River fan in Shadow. I told the rest about the gig, and they all started laughing."
In October 1984, Green River opened for the Dead Kennedys at Seattle's Moore Theatre. Their reception was mixed: half the crowd seemed to enjoy it, the rest pelted the band with popcorn, ice and shoes.
Two months later, in December 1984, Green River entered Crow Studios with producer Chris Hanzsek, to record their debut album, the six-track Come On Down, for the independent Homestead label.
Come On Down was to remain in the can for a year, finally appearing in late 1985. In the meantime the band took another shot at a large audience, when it opened for Sonic Youth and local heroes the U-Men, at Gorilla Gardens (an old Chinese theater in Seattle's International District). It then continued working the northwest in readiness for its first U.S. tour, scheduled for early fall. It was on the eve of this outing during the August of 85' that Steve Turner announced he was leaving the band.
Unlike Ament and Vincent, Turner had never been into hardcore or metal. His tastes ran towards the Pebbles compilations of raw '60s garage band music. And while it was one thing to have friends with diverse musical tastes, it was quite another to be in a band with them. As far as Turner was concerned, Green River was becoming far too metallic for his liking.
"Stoney and Jeff," Turner relates, "were like heavy metal kids. They were into Motorhead, and Stoney was really into Kiss. I was into the California hardcore, but I also liked the Clash, Devo and 999."
Turner returned to school for two years, attending Western Washington University and working part-time "at such high-powered jobs as parking cars." Former Deranged Diction member Bruce "Bootsy" Fairweather was quickly drafted in to replace him, and in October 1985, Green River embarked on a disastrous tour.
Mark Arm provides the details, "while Steve was safely in school we were stuck in the midwest. We had seven shows altogether; it was kind of like a vacation. We all worked jobs and saved up money for the tour. The problem was, no one knew anything about us. [Scheduling problems had pushed the release of Come On Down back] so we didn't have any records out. We did two shows opening for Big Black, they had records, but there was still only 30 or 40 people there. We headlined CBGB, playing to six people: four Japanese tourists and two people that worked there. I guess they liked us, all six stayed for the entire show. Maxwell's, in Hoboken New Jersey was pretty good as well. But Detroit was the worst. We opened for Sam Haig (now of Danzig) on Halloween, and everyone had this bad-ass attitude. We’re thinking it’s going to be great. Yeah, the Stooges, MC5. But these people just wanted everything fast. Jeff was wearing a pink tank-top with 'San Francisco' in purple letters and with his hair, well you can imagine. This one girl kept spitting at me, and Jeff put his foot out to block the spit. But this guy thought he was kicking her in the face. He was huge, and pulled Jeff right into the crowd. In the past, I’ve been pulled into the crowd, and Jeff rescued me, so now was my chance to help him out. But Jeff is a big guy, and I’m not. Still, I jumped in. The guy was a seven-foot-tall brick of a man, the only thing that saved our asses was an armed policeman."
So, the tour wasn't a great success. But its very occurrence was, for Green River was one of the few Seattle bands to actually make it out of the area. "Back then," reminisces Daniel House, "even going to Portland was a big deal. The first two bands to go on tour were the U-Men and Green River, and they got full stories in The Rocket (Seattle's premier music paper). They had big going away shows!"
Come On Down finally made it into the stores just in time for Christmas 1985; The Rocket described it as "a mixture of Metallica and Lynyrd Skynyrd with Henry Rollins as lead singer." Early pressings of the album appeared on a now very collectible green vinyl. More recently, Come On Down has been made available on CD.
Green River celebrated by organizing their second U.S. tour. Once again they played CBGB, and this time there was more than a handful of people present, including Aerosmith's Joe Perry. Immediately, rumors flooded the Seattle scene that he would produce their next record. But the Dry As A Bone EP, recorded in June 1986 (but, characteristically, not released for another 13 months) found Sub Pop’s resident producer Jack Endino, not Perry, behind the control board.
There were two new Green River releases during 1986. First, the C/Z label included "10,000 Things" on Deep Six, a limited 2,000 edition vinyl compilation album which also featured Soundgarden, the Melvins, Skin Yard, the U-Men and Malfunkshun. This was followed by a single coupling Green River's own "Together We'll Never" with the Dead Boys' classic "Ain't Nothin' To Do," released on the band's own ICP label. Recorded eight months earlier, in March 1985, "Together We'll Never" appeared in a limited edition of 800 green vinyl copies, which were given away at the record's release party at the Vogue.
Green River continued to play locally, including a show with Agent Orange on August 8th, then embarked on their third and final tour. But it was their Seattle shows that ensured the band's legacy would live on.
During one memorable gig at the Central, for instance, the audience threw spam and bread at the band. Lunch may have been served, but the gunk also got stuck in the monitors, and not only was Green River fined, they were banned from the club. In retaliation, the band started throwing things at the audience: cooking oil was Nils Bernstein's (publicity director at Sub Pop Records) favorite projectile.
July 1987 brought the release of Dry As A Bone, the five-track EP recorded with Jack Endino a year previous. This record is of particular interest, both to Green River fans and students of the Seattle scene in general, as it marked the first individual band release on the now legendary Sub Pop label. (Earlier issues, dating back to label founder Bruce Pavitt's days as a fanzine editor, were nationwide compilations.)
Well received locally, Dry As A Bone made little impression elsewhere. But that did not stop Sub Pop from wanting more, and in August 1987 Green River set to work on what would become the Rehab Doll EP. Before this could be released, however, Sub Pop had to reconstitute itself: between them, Dry As A Bone and the debut release by Soundgarden (the Screaming Life EP) had all but bankrupted the label. It was to be another year before Sub Pop was ready to start releasing records again, by which time Green River was no more.
The band's run of bad on-the-road luck showed no sign of abating, coming to a head at a gig in LA. In an interview with Rocket editor Grant Alden, Arm explained, "We went down to LA, and had a guest list of 10 people, all of whom were from major labels. Only two of them came. Meanwhile, I wanted to get my friends in and they [the band] said 'No, it's really important that we get these industry people in.' But these people didn't give a shit about us; I'd rather have had my friends come in for free."
Musical clashes, too, haunted Green River. "They were trying to play Guns N' Roses and the brand new Aerosmith," Arm shudders. "None of them had any interest in the tape I wanted to play, rockabilly and Thee Milkshakes."'
The crunch came on Halloween 1987, when Arm went down to practice. He already knew that the rest of the band had been working casually with Malfunkshun's vocalist, Andy Wood. It was apparent that the relationship was casual no more. "They said, 'This is the end.' I said, 'Okay, cool.' I could see it coming for a long time."
Rehab Doll was released in June 1988 close to nine months after Green River disintegrated. For a band with so little recorded history behind it, it would seem that Green River was just another local band that never made it to the big time. However, although they may have had little influence nationally, they would have a profound impact on the Seattle scene.
At the time in Seattle, only Soundgarden could rival Green River's fame. The Rocket called them "a throbbing sonic unit. Their hardcore/metal/greasy rock fusion is a double-barreled attack of audio destruction, and their on-stage ferocity is legendary."
Mudhoney
With the break-up of Green River, the members would finally split down musical lines. Jeff Ament, Stone Gossard and Bruce Fairweather would continue playing together in a new project. Mark Arm would rejoin Steve Turner to form the seminal Mudhoney. Alex Vincent would leave music behind altogether, eventually moving to Japan.
No sooner had Green River run dry than Arm and Turner were piecing together Mudhoney, with ex-Melvins bassist Matt Lukin and Bundle of Hiss drummer Danny Peters.
Signing, perhaps inevitably, to Sub Pop, Mudhoney made their vinyl debut in August 1988, with the ‘Touch Me I'm Sick’ single. Further 45s, the ‘Superfuzz Bigmuff’ EP, and two full albums, ‘Mudhoney’ and ‘Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge’ were released over the next four years.
Malfunkshun/Lords of the Wasteland
Jeff Ament, Stone Gossard and Bootsy Fairweather, meanwhile, were about to embark upon a remarkable career of their own, one which would see them hook up with two of the most important names on the Seattle scene, drummer Greg Gilmore and Malfunkshun's bassist/vocalist extraordinaire Andrew Wood.
"The first time I saw Malfunkshun," says Dale Crover, "there was this girl in a furry coat. She was walking up to the front of the stage, and people were trying to pick her up. I was looking at her, and she was pretty huge. Then she got on stage and started playing bass."
"She" was Andrew Wood.
Malfunkshun's story begins on Easter Sunday, 1980, when Andrew and his oldest brother Kevin bowed out of a family dinner, at their Bainbridge Island home, and joined drummer David Hunt for their first practice/ recording session.
Dave Reese soon joined on bass, but Malfunkshun played only one show as a four-piece, at a party. By summer, 1980, Reese and Hunt had quit (they went on to join Skindiver); Andrew took over bass duties (he was also the singer); Kevin remained on guitar, and Andrew's school friend, Regan Hagar, joined as drummer.
The new-look Malfunkshun's first show was Bainbridge Island's Blackberry Jam festival in August 1980. At the time, remembers Kevin Wood, the group was still learning how to play, and their sound was "pure punk rock with lots of screaming and loud chords, total hardcore."
Soon Malfunkshun started playing around the "local Seattle dives," as Kevin puts it, although, at the time, options were severely limited, particularly for bands like Malfunkshun, with under-age members. There was only a handful of clubs operating on the circuit; parties and high school dances aside, the only other alternatives were renting out halls (a favorite among the hardcore set), and bars, which limited audiences even further.
During Malfunkshun's early days, Andrew created an on-stage persona, "Landrew the Love Child." Clad in white face makeup and a flowing cape, Landrew was the antithesis of the multitude of metal bands that bedecked their songs and album jackets with satanic references. "We were an anti-666 band," explained Landrew in The Rocket in 1986, "because that's when the Satan thing was becoming really big. So we were a 333 band and did anti-devil songs.
In 1985, Andrew entered a rehab program. The band was put on temporary hold until his return, then swung back into action when Malfunkshun made its recorded debut.
Although Malfunkshun was constantly making tapes of their music, it was Daniel House who would first record them for posterity, on C/Z's Deep Six compilation (alongside Green River, et. al). It was an album which left Kevin, at least, dissatisfied., "We just had a few hours in the studio (a restriction that applied to all the bands included), but we pulled it off."
Malfunkshun also performed on a now near-legendary billing, alongside the U-Men, Soundgarden and Skin Yard. Perhaps the greatest line-up ever, though, was a, Tacoma gig, around 1986-87, that also featured Red Cross, Green River and Soundgarden.
Part of the reason for the band's live popularity was Andrew's dynamic stage presence. "We'd be on stage," Kevin explains, "and everybody would be looking at Andy, paying attention to every little thing he'd do, even Regan and I."
"We were the big flamboyant concert in a small club setting," Hagar relates. "We were really tongue-in-cheek; people found us amusing. I think people came to see Andy as much as to hear the music."
Even so, the band would only headline a grand total of four or five times, all at local Seattle clubs like the Vogue and Gorilla Gardens. Their audiences never got above a couple of hundred people, depending upon the opening act, but the group was gaining a small but loyal following. Still, there were other problems. The band never owned a PA and was reduced to borrowing Green River's (they also shared Green River's practice space on and off for many years.)
Landrew the love child was living in Seattle and hanging out with Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard. It wasn't long before the three were jamming together and writing songs and as time went by their friendship deepened, leading to the eventual dissolution of both Green River and Malfunkshun.
In early 1988, under the name Lords of the Wasteland, which included Ament, Gossard, Wood and Hagar started playing occasional shows in between their regular band commitments. The first two or three gigs took place in the basement of Luna, — a Seattle shoe store.
The Lords' entire repertoire comprised covers; Hagar remembers performing the Stones' "Stray Cat, Blues," Led Zeppelin's "When The Levee Breaks," and the James Gang's "Funk 49." The early gigs, he says, "Were just a novelty, these people from different bands playing in a shoe store." Eventually, however, it would become something else entirely. By the time of their final show, both Green River and Malfunkshun had folded, and Bruce Fairweather had joined the Lords.
(Coincidentally (or otherwise) one week after the Lords' final gig Mark Arm and friends played a show under the name of the Wasted Landlords. "I think the concept was the key," Bob Wittaker delicately suggest.)
Andy Wood originally intended working with both bands, but it was not to be. The Lords were taking up too much of his time. Malfunkshun struggled on for another show or two, before playing their final gig, supporting Skin Yard at Tacoma's Community World Theatre in 1988.
Like Green River, the numbers belie the splash that Malfunkshun had created in the Seattle area. Kevin recalls a small group of loyal fans, but in reality, the group seemed to be a "band's band."
Ben Sheppard says, "Most musicians in Seattle were Malfunkshun fans. Sometimes they were great, sometimes they weren't. They were cavemen on acid. Kevin used to solo the whole time, and Andy used to do his hair out, add glitter, and don a trench coat." Matt Cameron echoes the sentiment. "Malfunkshun frightened me; they were so good, so heavy and trippy, they had the whole fucking insane element going. They were one of my favorite bands."
Chris Friel, whose own band, Shadow, was playing Seattle around the same time as Malfunkshun, adds, "Malfunkshun was awesome. If you play them alongside Green River, you definitely see who has the upper hand!"
Journalist Richard White, now head of the Washington Music Industry Coalition, continues: "Malfunkshun was like nothing you've ever seen before, a cross between Kiss, T. Rex and Cheap Trick. Those were Andy's influences, and he wore them on his sleeve."
But Dale Crover of the Melvins, Kurt Cobain’s original drummer and close friend, sums them up best. "They were the godfathers of grunge!"
Mother Love Bone
For the Lords of the Wasteland, everything was about to fall into place, as Greg Gilmore came walking up the street. He ran into Stone Gossard, who asked him if he wanted to come and jam with Jeff Ament, Bruce Fairweather, Andrew Wood and himself. Intrigued, Gilmore agreed. For now, Gilmore's role was merely to help the rest learn the songs. "I'd not played for so long, it was kind of weird dealing with it." More rehearsals followed over the next few days, until one afternoon after a practice, Regan Hagar showed up. Gilmore was totally unaware that Hagar had also been playing with the group, but sensed that something was wrong: "All of a sudden everyone got real quiet." No one said a thing at the time, but eventually Hagar learned the truth, as did Gilmore, who took virtually two months to realize he was in the band.
By February 1988, the newly christened Mother Love Boan was in Reciprocal Studios, recording their first demo. Jeff Ament, acting as the band's manager, sent this first demo out to try to get some shows. Mother Love Bone returned to Reciprocal to record another demo. This demo, as well as cassettes combining songs from both sessions, were not only used to get more gigs, but were also sent around to record labels. Anna Statman, who Ament had met when she worked at Slash Records, but who was now at Geffen, was particularly impressed, so much so that she convinced the company to finance yet another MLB demo. In July, Mother Love Bone visited LA to meet with Geffen Records. The meeting with Geffen had gone well; the label wanted to sign them, and the contract was meant to go off that week. So they waited all through the summer.
Meanwhile, their telephones were ringing off the hook. Somehow one of their demos had found its way to a host of other record companies. Gilmore says, "It took six months for a contract to arrive, and when it did, it was from another label entirely. When Geffen finally did make an offer, so had a lot of other labels."
"We loved the band so much that we actually bought the Stardog label to get them," was how PolyGram touted its new signing. In reality the company Created Stardog specifically for the band, to give the EP that important ‘underground’ feel.
On Thursday, March 15th, Andy Wood did an interview with Seattle journalist Michael Browning. Reading it today, there's not a hint that anything was wrong. One gets the impression, as Wood talks about his drug problem, that for the moment he had it licked. The following evening, Wood's fiancé came home around 10:30. She found Andy collapsed on their bed; he was rushed to Harborview Hospital and immediately put onto a life support system. But the damage caused by lack of oxygen meant that recovery was out of the question. On March 19th 1990, the machines were turned off, and one of Seattle's brightest lights was extinguished forever. Wood was 24 years old.
On March 24th, the Paramount Theater hosted a memorial service for Wood. A beautiful Memorial program was produced, featuring numerous photos of Andy, plus reproductions of pages from his notebooks.
In the chaotic days following Wood's death, PolyGram proved itself to be a corporation with a heart. It gave the band time to think things through, as Gilmore remembers. "PolyGram was pretty cool; they sat back and asked us what we wanted to do."
The easiest decision was the fate of Apple. There was no question here; the band and label wanted the album to be released. Everyone had worked so hard on it, if nothing else, Apple would stand as a testament to Wood's talent. It finally appeared later that same year.
When Gossard announced he did not want to continue, Mother Love Bone ceased to be. It would be left to their recorded legacy to continue the band's name. Having lain dormant since its original release, Apple was reactivated in 1992 (It included their Shine EP and other additional tracks) following Pearl Jam's breakthrough, re-titled simply, Mother Love Bone.
"Everything Soundgarden didn't want to be!" is how MLB drummer Gilmore laughingly opines. Then continuing on a more serious note, "Mother Love Bone was definitely groove conscious. Live though, we were inconsistent. On a good night we could be just incredible."
Kelly Curtis echoes this sentiment. "To me, Mother Love Bone was great songs and the cool '70s thing, not glam rock, but Bowie. They could be amazing, and they could be not amazing as well. They were a very young band."
Chris Friel on the other hand, had no doubts, "I am still a huge MLB fan, and I still think they're one of the greatest things ever to come out of Seattle. I think the fragility of the whole band was what made them so great. If they'd all been best friends, I don't think they'd have been such an incredible band. You could feel the energy on stage."
Andy’s brother Kevin Wood comments, "A good rocking band that probably would have gotten as big as Pearl Jam. You've got to hand it to Stone and Jeff for keeping the ball rolling."
Other people, of course, automatically compared Mother Love Bone to Andy’s earlier band Malfunkshun. Ben Sheppard states, "Mother Love Bone was a little more refined and their guitarists were a little more structured." Matt Cameron adds, "It wasn't as good or as appealing as Malfunkshun live, it just seemed kind of standard."
Warrior/Shadow/the X-Men/Love Chile/Luv Company
It was in question if Mother Love Bone would continue playing together following Andrew Wood's death. While waiting for the answer, Gossard spent the summer playing guitar with an old friend, Mike McCready. Like Gossard, McCready was a big Kiss fan. Chris Friel remembers that the day he met McCready, they had watched Kiss take off their make-up live on MTV.
McCready's first band was Warrior, which formed somewhere around 1978-79. Originally a four-piece, the band also included Chris Friel and his brother Rick, and vocalist Danny Newcombe. Chris was a few years younger than the rest, being only eight or nine at the time! Inevitably, the band played lots of Kiss covers. "We tried to write originals, but how do you write lyrics that young?" Chris asks.
Sometime around 1982-83, Warrior became Shadow, and the foursome was augmented by Rob Weber. "We were a good band, I was really proud of it," says Chris. "We were hard rock, but we had pop chords. We hated hardcore! Our look was somewhere between braces and spandex. To us, Kiss was everything. Mike was the tongue (as in Kiss's Gene Simmons). At rehearsals he would stick out his tongue and run around naked."
Mark Arm compares Shadow to early Def Leppard in that "they were really, really young. (The Rocket called them Seattle's Menudo) “Their big thing was hoping to get signed, like Def Leppard were, at an early age. Stoney used to hang out with that scene as well; it wasn't really metal, it was like '80s pop-psychedelic-metal, not trying to be like Van Halen, trying to be like Quiet Riot."
Dave Krusen's only recollection of Shadow was their old promo picture. What struck him was the Band's make-up and outfits. "Elvis Costello meets Menudo in slick new wave outfits!"
Although Stone Gossard was indeed hanging out with the band during the early 1980s, Chris points out, "It was as a friend, not necessarily as a fan. At that point, he was learning how to play guitar. He was learning 'Dr. Love' by Kiss; that was the first song I ever heard him play!"
Early on, Shadow mostly played roller rinks, aiming for the all-ages crowd. That changed in October 1984, when the Moore Theatre hosted a Headbanger's Ball, with a bill that included Culprit, Overlord and Shadow. Suddenly, Shadow found themselves opening in front of a packed house, and received an amazing response.
The following year, Halloween 1985, on a bill with TKO and Metal Church, Shadow was booed for not being heavy metal. Still, says Chris, "It was the pinnacle for us."
It was also the end of an era. Newcombe and Weber left following the second Headbanger's Ball, and Rick Friel took over the vocals. On New Year's Eve 1985, Shadow officially became a three-piece.
By this time, Shadow had moved onto the bar circuit and found themselves opening for Green River at Gorilla Garden, noting that Gossard seemed finally to have come to grips with ‘Dr. Love.’
Between 1983 and 1986 Shadow made four visits to the Kay Smith studio (now the Heart sisters' Bad Animals complex) to record some demos.
As a three-piece Shadow gained a harder edge, adding an infusion of energy and thrash. "Previously," Chris explains, "We'd been into being super tight. We'd practice at my mom and dad’s house five or six times a week, driving the neighbors crazy. As a three-piece we were having fun, and we definitely were not as perfect."
Visually, they were exhibiting an equally precocious, side. Shadow's original glammy look had now been replaced by "t-shirts, scarves and braces," according to Chris, while Mike McCready had created a new stage act, bringing baby dolls on stage and smashing them.
Shortly after the completion of their fourth demo, Shadow relocated to Los Angeles. At the time, they thought it would help their career. They secured a manager and it seemed they were heading for the big time.
"Our sound and attitude was so different from everything else going on down there," Chris relates, "we really thought we'd make our mark. But we'd tell people we were from Seattle, and they'd say, 'Where's that? Is that an Indian village or something?'
Shadow stuck it out in LA for 13 months. They returned to Seattle in 1988 and resumed playing the local scene. Less than six months after returning home, McCready left the band, at which point Shadow ceased to be. (The original five-piece reconvened for a reunion gig at Seattle's Hollywood Underground later that year.)
The split was more than amicable, says Chris. "Mike gave Rick one of his old, custom guitars. 'I can't do it anymore, you guys still have the energy, go for it."'
Shadow never released anything, although Rick Friel reports that Mike McCready recently encountered a Shadow bootleg in San Francisco apparently drawn from an early demo.
Following the demise of Shadow, Mike McCready left music behind him and returned to the community college he'd been attending on and off over the years. But it was impossible for him to abandon it forever and under the aegis of friend Russ Reidner, he eventually returned to the musical fold.
Early 1989, Reidner (who is now in the Cheap Ones, alongside former Shadow Danny Newcombe), Mark Patterson and McCready started playing together. The band had neither a drummer nor a name; rather, they would just select whatever felt right at the time. Chris Friel played one show with them, for instance, as the X-Men. The rest of the time, they just jammed and demoed in nameless, percussion-less isolation.
Around this time, McCready also started playing bluesy, Stevie Ray Vaughn style music with another unnamed and short-lived group of friends, before forming Love Chile, a psychedelic blues band. "Muddy Waters meets Jane's Addiction," as Chris Friel puts it.
Love Chile only played two shows, both times supporting Jangle Town. One was at the OK Hotel, and Chris remembers Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament both being there. "That was the night," he recalls, "that they were reminded Mike could really play guitar. That night was probably the greatest I've ever seen him play, he was just on fire."
Gossard and McCready started working together almost immediately. Ament joined in later that summer and soon the three were compiling new songs. A band was slowly evolving.
While Gossard and McCready spent their time jamming, Ament was doing his own thing, rounding up another group of friends to play with. Luv Company, as the aggregation was named, was not meant to be a band per se, just a chance for people to play together on a fun level. The gang included Shawn Smith, longtime friend Kim Dijulio (from Lazy Susan), Tom Gunn (of War Babies), Chris Friel, Blind Horse drummer Richard Stuverud (Friel played a couple of shows, Stuverud the rest), and later, McCready, who would replace Tom Gunn. The band's repertoire was exclusively '70s covers; Bad Company and Aerosmith songs were staples. All total, the band performed around five local shows.
Temple of the Dog
It was during this lazy summer of 1990 that Matt Cameron reentered the picture, along with fellow Soundgarden member Chris Cornell. Cornell had been a close friend and former roommate of Andrew Wood. As a release from his grief, Cornell penned two songs in tribute to Wood, "Say Hello 2 Heaven" and "Reach Down," envisioning them as a single. He enlisted Cameron, Ament, Gossard and McCready to help with pre-production, and slowly the single began growing into an album. It was not quite a tribute, but it was certainly inspired by Andy.
Cameron adds “It was just a kind of get-together. There wasn't an agenda as far as what we were going to do. We wanted to try some new songs with a hand-picked group. When we got together for the demos, Stoney, Jeff and Mike were still getting their vibe together, it was really fun to witness. And of course, Jeff and Stone are full-on partners."
Stone, Jeff, and Mike were also busy recording Stone’s newest material in demo form, in the hopes of starting their own band. All told, 12 songs ended up on Gossard demo tape, ten instrumentals with the trio were augmented by Cameron, two featuring Chris Friel (Black and Footsteps).
The Temple project was still underway when with their own demo recorded on tape; Ament, Gossard and McCready began an active search for a singer and drummer.
For once, Gossard and Ament were to look outside the incestuous Seattle scene to make up the numbers, contacting someone they had no personal connection with. One of the people considered was drummer Jack Irons.
The former Red Hot Chili Pepper drummer was certainly a talent worthy of consideration. The day they came knocking on his door, however, Irons was out, but his wife invited them in. She was given a tape with five songs (Soon to became ‘Alone’, ‘Once’, ‘Alive’, ‘Black’ and ‘Footsteps’), and passed on the message, "Give it a listen; if you like it, call and see if you want to come up to Seattle for a little bit. Or if you know any singers, pass it on.”
By now Irons was involved with his own band, Eleven, and had no interest in leaving. But he did have a friend; Eddie Vedder.
Bad Radio
Eddie Vedder first met Jack Irons back in the autumn of 1989 at San Diego’s Bacchanal, when Irons was touring with Joe Strummer's band. A devout Strummer fan, Vedder was backstage, and was equally keen to meet the Peppers' former drummer. A friendship quickly formed, and Vedder would go up to LA to play basketball with Irons on occasions.
And so Irons passed on the tape, telling Vedder, "These guys have been around, they were members of Mother Love Bone. It looks like they've got a deal going, it's a serious thing, so see if there's something there for you."
Vedder took the tape home and listened to it. There was indeed something there for him, so much so that he immediately started writing lyrics for the music (the demo had none), dubbed them onto the tape, mixed it down, and mailed it back to Seattle.
Back in the Emerald City, McCready played Vedder's tape to Friel and asked hit what he thought. "I said it was great. I told him I could hear this guy on FM radio, that he was definitely a great singer."
Originally from Evanston, Chicago, Eddie Vedder’s family fostered seven younger children in a group home. Eventually, the family moved to San Diego, and it was there that Vedder bought his first guitar at 13 or 14. Once out of school, his life revolved around two things: surfing and music. At night he worked at a local club, and when wasn't working or surfing, his time was spent playing in a succession of local bands, including Bad Radio, Surf and Destroy, the Butts, and Indian Style.
The latter three bands faded into obscurity with no recorded history. Bad Radio however, did produce a demo between 1988-89, featuring four songs: ‘What’, ‘Believe You Me’, ‘Answer’ and ‘Better Man’. Eddie took over the managerial work for the group, shopping Bad Radios’s new demo tape around (This has now reportedly materialized on bootleg).
One of those tapes was sent to Marco Collins, a DJ with local 91X out of Mexico. "He used to call and bug me to play his tapes back at 91X all the time. He told me, 'You were the first person to play my voice on the air. I even remember what you said about us, you said we were pretty thumping stuff, man.’"
"Eddie was a contemporary of the heavy rock-funk type of thing." Jack Irons agrees. "He was very serious about making music, he was just younger at doing it. He got to the big leagues really fast."
Vedder spoke with Jeff Ament on the phone and flew up to Seattle shortly there afterwards ( Their newly formed band Mookie Blaylock played their first live show only seven days later.) Vedder arrived in Seattle to find Chris Cornell, Matt Cameron, McCready, Gossard, Ament, and producer/keyboard player Rick Parashar in the process of recording what became the Temple Of The Dog album.
Matt Cameron explains what happened next. "When we started doing Temple, Eddie was just hanging out at the basement rehearsal studio that Jeff, Stone and Mike have. He wasn't totally acclimatized yet, so he was just staying down there, hanging out, listening to the songs we were working on. And then he started singing." Vedder eventually took lead vocals on the track ‘Hunger Strike’, and contributed backing vocals to three other tracks.
Temple of the Dog was recorded over a few weekends in November-December 1990, and was released on Soundgarden's label, A&M, in April 1991. TOTD played only one live show, at the Off Ramp in Seattle; it also convened for a video, shot to accompany the album's first single, ‘Hunger Strike’.
Dave Krusen
With Eddie Vedder now filling their vacant vocalist position, Gossard, McCready and Ament turned their attention back towards a drummer. Tal Goettling, a member of Son of Man, thought he knew someone that would be perfect for the group, his longtime friend Dave Krusen. Goettling knew Gossard and Ament from the days of MLB, as Son of Man used to open for them; when he heard that the group was auditioning drummers, he passed the information on to Krusen. He then auditioned and was given a copy of the demo to take home. Days later, he was asked to join the band.
Although Krusen had been playing locally since 1979, he was a bit of an unknown. Even Greg Gilmore who seems to have played with every musician in town, didn't know of him. At least not at first. "Long ago, I did a gig at a high school, and there was this band of little kids, who opened. Their drummer was this little tiny guy... it was Dave!"
Krusen joined his first band Outrigger in 1979, when he was 13 or 14. Krusen then enjoyed a brief stint in the Boibs, before joining Agent Boy. The band played what Krusen describes as "keyboard rock, progressive dance music." From here, Krusen would go on to play with a variety of people and bands over the years.
Pearl Jam
Dave Krusen joined Ament, Gossard, Vedder and McCready during the fall of 1990, a mere week before the band played its first gig, opening for Inspector Luv and the Ride Me Babies at Seattle's Off Ramp. Shortly after, in November 1990, the group recorded their first demo tape at Seattle’s London Bridge Studios with producer Rick Parashar. The bands first few performances were played under the name Mookie Blaylock, after the New Jersey Nets point guard. It was in this guise that the band embarked on a two-week west coast tour opening for Alice in Chains. The itinerary took them from Vancouver to San Diego and all points in between.
Stone and Jeff coyly opted out of their existing contract with Polygram and signed with Epic Records, whom their initial A&R man now worked along with other ex-Polygram employees. The breech of contract took them years to pay off, as the profits from Pearl Jam’s debut album were still in the pipeline.
Following the Alice in Chains tour, the band changed their name to Pearl Jam for legal or other purposes. They recorded a second demo at London Bridge with Parashar again in tow. Epic Records swiftly released three of the tracks ‘Alive’, ‘Wash’, and a cover of the Beatles ‘I’ve Got A Feeling’ as a very limited promotional single.
Between December 1990 and February 1991, the band spent its time writing new songs, playing local shows and rehearsing. On March 11th, 1991, Pearl Jam entered the studio to start recording what would become their debut album, Ten. (Dave Krusen's son, Micky, was born the following day.) It took a mere month to record the album, as most of the songs included were already written. The band did jam a bunch of new material during the sessions. After a few weeks off in April (at which point the Temple Of The Dog album was released by A&M), Pearl Jam returned to the Off-Ramp in mid-May.
During this time, Seattle was bathing in the spotlight as the location of Cameron Crowe's movie ‘Singles’, with Eddie, Stone and Jeff acting in bit parts. On May 25th, 1991, the company held a wrap party at RKCNDY, to celebrate the end of filming. Entertainment was provided by Pearl Jam. It was the last gig Dave Krusen would perform with them. According to Krusen himself, he was suffering personal problems at the time and knew he needed help. Immediately after the party Krusen checked himself into a drug and alcohol rehabilitation program.
The band was scheduled to leave for England in June to mix Ten at Ridge Farm Studios in Dorking. They also had a video to shoot (again at RKCNDY), to accompany "Alive." Texas-born Matt Chamberlain, whose past credits included the second Edie Brickell album, Ghost Of The Dog, was brought in to fill Krusen’s shoes. Although Chamberlain would not accompany the band to England, he would appear in the video for ‘Alive’. Chamberlain was at a crossroads; he'd also had an offer to join G.E. Smith and the Saturday Night Live band. After just a few weeks with Pearl Jam, he decided to go with the SNL deal. In his stead, he recommended an old friend from Dallas to possibly join the band, Dave Abbruzzese. Dave flew to Seattle and auditioned, impressing the rest of the band. Shortly thereafter, Abbruzzese was given the job.
Ten was eventually released in September 1991. It would take nearly 20 weeks to break into the Top 200, eventually reaching #2 on the charts. Pearl Jam spent much of 1992 on the road, sustaining interest not only with the continued high performance of Ten but also with a string of video/radio hits. From Europe, the band returned to the U.S. and launched straight into another tour. They also made several prestigious television appearances, including MTV Unplugged and Saturday Night Live. "Pearl Jam knew what they wanted to do and they did it," Dave Krusen says without a hint of malice. "They deserve success. Jeff once told me he wanted to make a living at music...and he did.”
Pearl Jam’s sophomore album is set to hit stores soon and a new song entitled ‘Better Man’ is marked for the Green Peace compilation benefit album.
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Anyone have any pics of Diction?
Seattle Key Arena 9-21-2009
Seattle Key Arena 9-22-2009
www.cluthelee.com
www.cluthe.com
My "log in" expired (i had to re-log in to write this post)
Only one post was made since i opened it
and my girl friend who i was on the phone with went to bed...
damn...but worth it...i must say i now know the FULL history of the members of the band (as of then) and how it all evolved into the greatest band ever
I want to hear the Shadow bootleg and see Jeff in his kilt and Stone's nailed together Capizzio platforms!
Thanks Liam!! I'm saving this one to the hard drive!
This is my kind of love...
♥♥♥
10/30/09.10/31/09.5/17/10.9/7/11
EV:boston 1+2.albnay 1.boston 2010
Hmmmm...what's this? Another DarkStar on the board? Shall we have a duel...DarkStar vs Dark Star to see who gets to keep the name? LOL.
Laura...it wasn't me that posted this. Thanks goes to Dark Star...not DarkStar.
ds
And no one makes me close my eyes
So I throw the windows wide
And call to you across the sky....
This is my kind of love...
♥♥♥