Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [71]
REGAN HAGAR I saw Xana working in this used-clothing store on the same block as the Showbox. She looked like Cher: big nose, kind of Greek features, long dark hair. And Andy loved Cher. So I brought him to the store, and he was crazy about Xana. She was getting off work, so we followed her for a couple blocks to the bus stop. She stopped and said, “Why are you following me?” I remained silent, and Andy went and talked to her and they exchanged numbers. And, I mean, within days they were living together.
XANA LA FUENTE (Andrew Wood’s fiancée) I’d never even been with a blond. I wasn’t really attracted to Andrew at first. I’m six feet tall—I used to carry him around on my back—but it was his personality. I mean, he had me laughing constantly. He would do Joe Cocker imitations onstage, he wasn’t afraid to make a fool out of himself. He had tattoos, he had his ears pierced, he wore a Cowboys baseball hat and his hair up in a bun, and he would wear my skirts around the house.
JACK ENDINO Andrew was the only heavy-metal stand-up comic in Seattle grunge history. Always had me rolling on the floor, laughing the whole time.
MATT LUKIN I remember one time the Melvins were playing with Malfunkshun in Olympia. They were setting up the sound check and Andy didn’t have a cord to plug his bass in. I lent him one and said, “You came all the way down here, you got your amp and your guitar, but you didn’t have a cord?” He goes, “We used to be musicians dabbling in drugs. Now we’re druggies dabbling in music.”
XANA LA FUENTE At the time I met him, he had been in rehab, he was clean. I know he had hepatitis, he had gotten yellow. I was 16 when I met him. I had no idea about addiction. It was not a concern at all. I was so naive.
REGAN HAGAR Chris Cornell opened the door to Andy, and let him in as a roommate when he needed to find a place away from the drugs. Chris was straight at that time, so it was thought of as a good thing.
CHRIS CORNELL He was going to live on the island with his parents, where he grew up. I thought that would be harder for him. Most of the time it was me watching him struggle not to shoot up, not to drink. It wasn’t like observing Andy’s high; it was more like experiencing him squirming.
XANA LA FUENTE I moved in about a week later. I told Chris, “I’ll be Mom.” I remember the day I moved out, I told Chris, “You never washed a single dish.” And he’s like, “Well, you said you wanted to be Mom.”
Around the time I moved in, Chris had just got laid off from being a fish cook at Ray’s Boathouse, and he was going through a depressed time. He would sit there and drink Jack Daniel’s and black coffee and stare out this picture window—you could see all downtown. Then he started writing music on his own, doing his solo stuff, and he would lock himself in this little boiler room off of the kitchen.
LANCE MERCER (photographer) When I was leaving high school, I finally got a photo shoot with Malfunkshun. Unfortunately, Kevin didn’t show up. So we used Xana for Kevin, which, looking back, was not a good idea. Kevin was pissed. But at the same time, I just wanted to photograph Andy. I was so used to taking pictures of musicians that pretended not to want to have their photo taken. Bands like Skin Yard, where it was four guys against a brick wall. Andy would come into this character of Landrew, and he was all about getting his photo taken.
Later, I shot just Andy and Xana together. It was more subdued. He was with this woman that he loved, and it was definitely a lot more emotional because he wasn’t being Landrew. Andy loved Xana; he was totally infatuated with her. There’s a shot I took where she’s sitting on a stool behind him, and he’s on the floor and her legs kind of tower over him, kind of spider-legged around him. That photo, for me, embodies what their relationship was like. She