GARDEN OF STONE : PEARL JAM MAILING
LIST ARCHIVE #40
MOTHER LOVE BONE. Author unknown, City Heat, Seattle, WA., April 1990
Hello and welcome babys! Let me plug you into this feeling known as Mother
Love Bone, whose mission it is to let their love rock energy shine down
on the waiting populace. As many of you are well aware Mother Love Bone
is one of Seattle's prize exports of last and on the eve of the release
of their Polygram LP, Apple, City Heat had the opportunity to speak with
the Bone about their feelings on recording albums, the record itself and
anticipation. So without further ado, who loves you?
Mother Love Bone came about thru friendship and collaboration between
Andrew Wood (then in Malfunkshun with Regan Hagar and Kevin Wood) and
Stone Gossard with Jeff Ament (both in Green River with Bruce Fairweather,
Mark Arm, and Alex Shumway) a year before the conception of MLB. Jeff
Ament uncovers the beginnings, "Andy and their drummer, Regan, and
me and Stone all know each other kind of as friends, so a year before
Green River even broke up, we got together and learned about six covers.
Zeppelin and Aerosmith stuff, just us four, at that point we were called
Lords of the Wasteland. We totally just did it to have fun and do things
we'd never do inside our respective bands. Then when me and Stone were
trying to get something going after Green River...I don't know, things
just kind of fell into place. Within a month we were jamming with Andy
and Regan, and a month after that, we ended up jamming with Greg (Gilmore)
and Bruce. At that point we already had six or seven new songs. Then by
late January, early February (88) we went in and just live...cut five
songs in four or five hours for our demo, purely for us to get shows."
The sticky part was that Green River was officially past tense whereas
Malfunkshun had yet to be discussed. When Wood parted ways with his best
friend and his brother he made a very tough decision. Hagar tell me, "Andy
really felt terrible about replacing me and that's kind of too bad, because
I understood that it was a business decision and the very best one he
could make then." They enlisted the considerable percussive talents
of Greg Gilmore, best known for his work with The Living and Ten-Minute
Warning. Returning from Asia in late 1987 Gilmore says, "The very
day I came back to Seattle, I ran into Stone up on Broadway after being
in town just a few hours. He asked me if I wanted to come play sometime,
I did a couple, three weeks later and that was it." He adds, "At
the time I didn't really know what was going on. The first or second time
I was there and Regan showed up was when I learned that Regan had been
playing with them. Because all of a sudden everybody was very uncomfortable
and silently started to put their guitars away. We were still just in
the 'come down and jam with us' phase, and see what we all think. It was
only the second time and even then it was kinda happening already."
It was that magic in the combination of members that began to manifest
itself in some fantastically creative songs that would soon capture the
attention of everyone who heard them. When recording their first demo
that Ament mentioned earlier, he adds, "...even when we were recording,
I think we knew that it was something pretty special. It was just totally
spine tingling in the studio most of the time. But we just knew what was
happening...it was just...it's cool. Definitely something special."
Now, with a minimum of tribulation, they had cemented their line up and
were getting shows. The next year was spent being courted by labels, looking
at signing with Geffen, only to end up with Polygram in one of the biggest
contracts ever for a band with no release material. I asked Wood about
the reputed seven album, quarter million deal. "I don't really know
the whole logistics of it. I know we got signed for $250,000 and seven
albums, and I know now that we are broke and that we could also get dropped
at any point." He added that depending on the success of this release
they could renegotiate everything anyway so the original deal could still
be pointless. But speaking of the record, let's.
Recorded last fall at the Plant in Sausalito, and completed in January
at London Bridge, Apple is a huge album in sound, style and content. Wood
paints poignant lyrical pictures within Love Bone's distinctive instrumental
fabric. Produced in connection with local session start Terry Date and
mixed by a brit named Tim Palmer, Wood tells us about the finished product.
"It's a really weird album because when we finished it because a
guy named Tim Palmer got to mix it. He's a guy from England, I've never
met, who worked with Robert Plant's Now and Zen record and Tin Machine's
album and he did an amazing mixing job on it. It sounded completely different.
I don't know if Terry was very pleased--it was Terry's baby and he was
like 'what did he do to my project'--but he made it really spacey. It
sounds like I would have mixed it." Others were so glad to just have
it completed finally after spending so much time and money that their
opinions reflect also relief. Gilmore on the final mix, "I don't
know if I'm really happy with it. I'm satisfied. At first I thought, 'that's
fine', I didn't care. Then I started listening to it, first time, I was
'whatever', second time I'm like 'I really don't dig it', now I'm thinkin'
it's alright. It's not what..." I interject, "not the way you
envisioned it?" "Ideally, no. But Tim Palmer was the one guy
that we all agreed on with out hesitation on anyone's part. He happened
to be available, fine give it to him, let's do it. If we don't just go
with this we're gonna end up monkeyfucking the thing until the fall of
1992."
They've spent a lot of time over this past year waiting, waiting for things
to happen. As soon as this does then that will. Before their January show
at Legends--just after Gilmore had cut his hair--I asked about how waiting
and the anticipation was affecting them. Gilmore: "It's been pretty
tedious lately. It's been a lot of waiting." Wood: "A lot of
hurry up and wait." MB: "Is that what caused you to shave your
hair Greg?" Gilmore: "Actually it might have had an effect on
my hairdo." Wood: "Some of us are more anxious than others.
Myself, I'm kind of really happy about this time we have right now before
the tour starts, because I've got things to do as far as getting myself
together. When we got back from Sausalito I went into rehab for 30 days.
So I'm pleased to have time to feel a little more stable in the real world
before we go out and assault. And then others of us are really chomping
at the bit because it is a lot of sitting around." MB: "But
that's really nothing new to you guys is it?" Gilmore: "No,
signing, finding a producer, recording, can take more time than you could
possibly think. The one thing, I can say in our whole career so far, that
happened on schedule was recording the EP, which pretty much went down
on time like we had talked about it. I think we even started on it before
we were signed. But then we waited for the EP to come out, we waited to
go on tour, we started to look for a producer for the LP before the tour
of the EP, before the release of the EP." Wood: "We did that
real cheaply and real fast--in like five days. Now it sounds like we recorded
it in five days." MB: "So is the fact that you recordedShine
in five days and then spent over three months on Apple going to be pretty
noticable?" I think you will find that, yes, definitely." MB:
"Okay!" Wood: "Without question!"
Apple has 13 songs totaling about an hour of music, including newmixes
of two songs from Shine, Capricorn Sister (originally titled Mother Love
Bone) and Crown of Thorns (minus Chloe Dancer.) The other guitar ballad
Stargazer and two piano ballads--Man of Golden Words and Gentle Groove--are
prime examples of Wood's haunting lyrics and immense talent as a songwriter.
While the whole album is compelling, these close glimpses are captivating.
Stardog Champion and Captain Hi-Top provide rich, over-the-top anthems
to sing along with, and Heartshine as well as This is Shangrila are good
tunes just to groove to. April 17 and April 30 have both come up as release
dates, love rock awaits you people. Don't hesitate. Pick up Apple and
give it a listen, and always remember...lover reigns supreme.
I typed this as it is written...misspellings, shitty grammar...everything.
I hope it makes it down the information highway safely. I sent one article
a few nights ago...and it disappeared into never never land, I think.
- Marsha