music

Mother Love Bone..

"You ever heard the story…?" - by Matt Despres

Like most bands emerging from the great Northwest as the eighties gave way to the last decade of the 20th century, Mother Love Bone was another Washington-based band groomed in the 'Shelley Monster' mold- bits and pieces taken from here and there, a singer exhumed from the group Malfunkshun, and two musicians - Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard - plucked from the dry banks of Green River. Together, the band was set to make waves.

Athough most accounts point to Wood as the focal point of the band - and as a colorful, over the top singer in the vein of all that is rock, he was the magnetic center - the underbelly and musical concious of the band forged ahead on the strong wheels of Gossard and Ament.

Gossard and his bandmates signed a seven-record deal with Polygram Records in November of 1988. One album later the deal was off, however, and so was the band: Wood, the consumate rocker, had died of a heroin overdose.

Though the tragic death of Wood split the upstart group, Ament and Gossard continued to ride the music and stay afloat; they'd find guitarist Mike McCready and drummer Dave Krusen en route to their next group, along with a singer riding his own wave: Eddie Vedder. The rest, as they say, is Pearl Jam.