Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [115]
MIKE STARR I made an ass out of myself for a second there, because I was in my thoughts and I walked into this room and I said, “Who wants to smoke a joint?” All of a sudden, I realized that Chris Cornell was sitting there looking at this photo album of Andy and crying. And I was like, Fuck. Why did I fuckin’ say that shit?
XANA LA FUENTE I had all these Mexican prayer candles and put them on the headboard of the bed in this small room in Kelly’s house. Somebody came up with this idea that everybody leave something for Andy. Chris Cornell left a pin of a silhouette of a girl—like on the back of truckers’ mud flaps—that was on his hat. Ann Wilson left her hoop earrings. Some drunk guy left his cowboy boots. Poems and letters. Unfortunately that became the bedroom where I stayed, so I had to sleep with all that stuff. At one point, I laid down and when I woke up I couldn’t find Andy’s hair, and I was freaking out. I’m like, “Where’s his hair?! Where’s his hair?!”
GREG GILMORE After Andy died, it was “What do we do now?” Despair, confusion, discussions, meetings. The bottom line was whether to go on, and to go on means finding another singer. I was in favor of that at the time, but I don’t remember if anybody else really was.
MICHAEL GOLDSTONE Apple was supposed to be released in March, but was pushed back to July. The possibility of trying to find a new singer was brought up at PolyGram, in marketing meetings. It was in the context of “How do we want to promote this record?” I don’t remember who exactly said it. It was obvious that they didn’t really understand the personality and the aesthetic of the band to think that replacing Andy was even a remote possibility.
ROBERT SCOTT CRANE Seattle absolutely lost its soul when Andy Wood died. But I feel like the soul started to get sucked out of Seattle with the signing of Mother Love Bone. Because although I was really excited for my friend getting signed to a major label, I knew that essentially Mother Love Bone was a sellout that just wanted to be Guns N’ Roses. Coming from Green River and Malfunkshun, they took a huge shift to be a major-label band. They just absolutely sold their souls.
Andy still kept his soul as a person. He was the light, fun part of Seattle, as opposed to the other side, like the Jerry Cantrells—and I would even put Chris Cornell into this—the brooding, quiet, angry types.
XANA LA FUENTE If people think bad stuff about me now, it’s because they knew I started using after that—although I’ve been clean for a long time now. So I lost respect there. After Andy died, I just didn’t care anymore. I wanted to try it right away, but I couldn’t find it. No one would give it to me. I wanted to know what the shit is that’s so great that he had to throw everything away for it.
They knew that I remarried pretty quickly after that, so they felt like … You know, I don’t know how long I was supposed to mourn. Did you know sex is a part of grieving? You become really sexual? I didn’t know that. It’s like a psychological effect, I guess, of grieving. They saw me with some other guys.
Andy dying feels like yesterday. I don’t think it’s ever going to not feel like yesterday. I’ve had my surgeon; I had the cute Spanish model; I had the millionaire in Hollywood, and he spoiled me. And I’ve had a couple other flings. I had Mickey Rourke for a while; he was so young and delicious back then.
But every guy is just playing second fiddle to a dead guy.
KEVIN WOOD For a long time after Andy died, I spent a lot of my time driving a taxi, and I would have conversations with him, in my mind, and I’d dream about him. Once when I was driving the cab, I picked up these Japanese tourists who wanted to go see Andy’s grave. They had no idea I was his brother. I picked them up in Winslow, at the ferry terminal in our hometown, and Andy was buried out in Bremerton, so it was kind of a weird trip. It was a decent fare, too, like $150. These two girls—they were probably in their teens, early twenties—could barely speak English, so they had a hard time telling me where they wanted