It’s hard to believe that 30 years ago this year, Mother Love Bone’s only full-length album Apple was released. 30 fucking years. At 46 years old, everything feels like it was ten years ago, but 30 years ago, I was an awkward, long-haired metal dork that had a hunger for music at all times. I was like a sponge. When I heard a song I loved, I wanted the album. Then I wanted all the records, all the bootlegs (VHS and cassette), the posters, and anything else I could get my grubby little mitts on.
My dad worked at Southlake Mall in Morrow, GA, so during the summer to earn a little extra cash during and after the Christmas season, I would hang out at the jewelry store that my dad managed. I would fetch lunch, clean display cases, vacuum floors, shit like that. I would take some time to stroll up to the top level of the mall to Record Bar. I really liked the cranky record store dude there (who I would become life long friends with). He would hook me up with posters, promo CDs, and sometimes make small talk.
One January day, I just happened to be in there browsing through the few records that were still left as CDs were starting to take over the world. I heard a song playing (I think it was “Stardog Champion”), and I was drawn in right away. I looked behind the counter where they had the “Now Playing” stand, and it was an album called Apple by a band called Mother Love Bone.
I found a copy of the record (which is now very rare to find, so I hear), and I brought it up to the counter. Chris, the cranky record store dude, smiled and said, “Good choice, dude.” I took Apple home, and for the next months, I played the living fuck out of that record. I had never heard anything like this before.
Mother Love Bone seemed to know no boundaries, and this is what makes them such a unique band. Mother Love Bone was a magical band that combined everything I love about music, and there was a little bit of everything for everyone. It was hard rock; it was glam rock, it was sleazy, it was beautiful. Every song was as good if not better than the other. From the stoner rock-tinged “Stardog Champion” to the heart-melting “Gentle Groove.”
Lead vocalist Andrew (L’Andrew) Wood had all of the charisma of an arena rock vocalist ala David Lee Roth and oozed with ambiguous sexuality that never left a dry seat in the house. The cheeky “Half-Assed Monkey Boy,” the beautifully introspective “Man of Golden Words” and the sad, moving, and resolving “Crown of Thorns” (which would become Andrew’s title song of sorts) scratched all the itches that would usually take multiple bands to do so.
Apple is a timeless collection of songs. Whenever I listen to Apple , I always wonder what would have Mother Love Bone had in store for us. Would they have been as big as Pearl Jam? Would they have gone out on the road opening for bands like Warrant? Would they have been a Lollapalooza band? It will always be a mystery. So many “what ifs.”
There are so many questions as to what Mother Love Bone would have become; what kind of music they would have given us. While I love to think and imagine a present and future with Mother Love Bone, I still look at Apple as an album that captured lightning in a bottle. It captured the love, the passion, and fire of a young band from Seattle with a singer/lyricist who was and always will be a shining star way too bright for this world to contain.
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