“Some Call Me Landrew”: Malfunkshun and Mother Love Bone

Today is 35 years since Andrew Wood left us, and so we’re going to take a look at both albums we have on The List from him: Malfunkshun’s Return to Olympus and Mother Love Bone’s Apple. Below I include a few quotes from Mark Yarm’s fantastic Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge (2011). I’d highly recommend checking out the rest of the book; Chapters 3, 13, and 21 in particular focus on both bands, Andrew, and his impact on the Seattle scene in the 1980s/90s and beyond, via interviews with those who knew and loved him including his bandmates, fiancée Xana La Fuente, and roommate Chris Cornell.

Malfunkshun – Return to Olympus (1995, US)[1]

Formed in 1980 by brothers Andrew and Kevin Wood (then 14 and 19 years old, respectively) in Bainbridge Island (a suburb of Seattle) first under the name “Report Malfunction” with Dave Hunt on drums and Dave Rees on bass, the original era of Malfunkshun saw them settle as a trio with Regan Hagar on drums. For anyone who has heard Mother Love Bone but not its precursor, Malfunkshun’s sound is perhaps not too far away with one foot firmly in glam punk/rock and the other in that nebulous space often referred to as “grunge”, but often heavier, louder, with more metal tinges and big guitar solos.

Tom Price (U-Men/Cat Butt/Gas Huffer guitarist): The thing that always cracked me up about Malfunkshun – and the thing I loved about them – was that they would come to the end of the song and Andrew or Kevin would jump in the air to signal, Okay, the song ends here. Boom! But nobody would stop playing – the band would just keep going and going and going. Every show they did was one big, long song with a monster guitar solo all over it.

Regar Hagar: I feel like – and, of course, I probably romanticize things – Malfunkshun changed the sound of the city by putting metal into punk, which was such a taboo for a band like the Fartz, who would never, ever have a guitar solo.[2]

From an early age, Andrew had a class clown, theatrical, ‘I’m going to be a rock star’ personality, and he brought this with full force to Malfunkshun. Andrew’s amazing, big-arena-vibes stage presence that became more widely known through Mother Love Bone can already be clearly heard in the Malfunkshun recordings. Andrew would label their sound “Love Rock”, and used 333 (i.e., the opposite of black metal’s 666) to represent them numerically. Strongly influenced by KISS, each member of the band had their own character, with backstories at least partially created by Andrew:

Hagar: Andy had the band on paper. He had notebooks full of drawings, descriptions, histories, all made up. In the beginning, my character was Thundar…I’m Nordic. I have this love of Vikings, and I was thunderous. Andy got his name, Landrew the Love God, from an episode of Star Trek – there was a character who spread love and was this omnipresent love person.

Kevin Wood: I originally was calling myself Ded Springsteen, as a protest against Bruce Springsteen…And then I changed into Kevin Stein…I just wanted to have a different last name…

Hagar: [Andrew]’d regularly speak to the balcony – and there wouldn’t be a balcony. He’d do typical rock banter: “How you doing’ tonight?” “Let me hear ya in the balcony!” Lots of “Hello, Seattle!”s. It sounds almost too cheeky, but the way he delivered it was just great. He brought big rock to a small-punk ethic.[3]

While Malfunkshun was very active and loved as a live band, the band’s only releases in this original era were on two compilations put out by C/Z Records, namely two tracks on the holy grail that is Deep Six (1986), as well as another two on the also fantastic but often ignored Another Pyrrhic Victory (1989). In other words, Sub Pop really screwed up by not signing this band. The album we look at here, Return to Olympus, consists of recordings from 1986 to 1987 (including both APV tracks), released 5 years after Andrew’s death on Hagar and Stone Gossard’s label, Loosegroove.

Malfunkshun was essentially shelved as a project around 1987/88 when Andrew and Hagar started jamming with Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament (then of the fabulous Green River, who were in the midst of breaking up), which eventually resulted in Mother Love Bone. Kevin Wood would go on to form/join a number of bands (often with other Wood brother Brian), including The Fire Ants, Devilhead, Satchel, and Brad.

About a year after the premiere of the 2005 documentary Malfunkshun: The Andrew Wood Story, Kevin and Hagar would then resurrect Malfunkshun, with Shawn Smith as vocalist and with new songs featuring lyrics written by Andrew. The band has since undergone a few name and lineup changes, eventually returning to the original name with Kevin now the only original member. I’m not sure if the band is still active today, but the Bandcamp has both new era releases (dating up to 2021) and previously unreleased recordings from the original era. The Bandcamp also has the digital version of Olympus Awaits, the fantastic comp of material from the original era that Southern Lord put out for RSD just last year, which includes nearly all of Return to Olympus on the first LP (though oddly missing the great “Until the Ocean”) plus another LP of gems including the two Deep Six tracks.

• Songlink: Malfunkshun – Return to Olympus
• Discogs: Malfunkshun – Return to Olympus
• Bandcamp: Malfunkshun

Mother Love Bone – Apple (1990, US)[4]

Malfunkshun and Green River used the same practice spaces for a few years, and so perhaps it was inevitable that they would start jamming with each other. Beginning as a cover band in 1987 called Lords of the Wasteland with Andrew Wood, Regan Hagar, Stone Gossard, and Jeff Ament, how the Mother Love Bone lineup eventually settled was a bit awkward. By early 1988, Bruce Fairweather (like Gossard and Ament, formerly of Green River) was brought in on guitar instead of Kevin Wood, and Hagar was rather unceremoniously dropped to bring in drummer Greg Gilmore (formerly of 10 Minute Warning). Their final form, however, was magic. It created the perfect platform for Andrew to continue what he had started with Malfunkshun, not just to continue to hone his craft as a frontman, songwriter, and lyricist (the keen ear will pick up some shared lyrics between the two bands[5]), but also to bring his big-stage-vibes Love Rock to the actual big stage.

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

By November 1988, the band had offers from multiple labels and chose to sign with PolyGram. A few months later their debut EP, Shine was released, containing one of the greatest songs of all time, “Chloe Dancer / Crown of Thorns” (the latter part of which will also show up on their LP). A few months after that, the band recorded their debut LP, Apple, slated to be released in March 1990.

Given that Andrew died mere weeks before Apple was to be released, it’s essentially impossible to talk about Mother Love Bone without touching on their tragic end, not dissimilar to that of Joy Division. The band was just getting going, they were on the eve of making it big…and then their charismatic frontman was suddenly gone, ending the band and leaving a giant hole in the tight-knit scene, a loss that profoundly affected those who were there.

Unlike with Joy Division though, I (and I’m sure many others) reach for their music to pick me up, and I do so frequently; it never fails to put a smile on my face. The music is fantastic, the lyrics are often completely ridiculous, and Andrew’s star power and love of the music he is part of comes through the speakers so clearly. Love Rock, indeed. Andrew should still be with us, and Mother Love Bone should’ve had as long a run as they wanted. Thankfully we have the gift that is their only album.

Wanna show you something like the joy inside my heart
Seems I’ve been living in the temple of the dog
Where would I live if I were a man of golden words?
And would I live at all?…

Words and music, my only tools
Communication

Let’s fall in love with music
The driving force of our livings
The only international language
Divine glory, the expression[6]

• Songlink: Mother Love Bone – Apple
• Discogs: Mother Love Bone – Apple

1. Number 192 in The List, submitted by dharmadischarge. ↩︎
2. Yarm, pg. 40. ↩︎
3. Yarm, pg. 38-9. ↩︎
4. Number 63 in The List, submitted by MetalheadDana. ↩︎
5. E.g., the phrase “chartreuse regalia” in Mother Love Bone’s “Capricorn Sister” was originally in Malfunkshun’s “Until the Ocean”, and the last few lines quoted above from Mother Love Bone’s “Man of Golden Words” previously appeared in Malfunkshun’s “Shotgun Wedding”. The “Love Rock” label used for Malfunkshun also shows up throughout Mother Love Bone, e.g., in “Holy Roller”. ↩︎
6. Lyrics from Mother Love Bone’s “Man of Golden Words”, from which Chris Cornell would take the name for his project that was a tribute to Andrew, Temple of the Dog. ↩︎