Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [74]
ANNA STATMAN (Geffen Records/Slash Records A&R representative) I thought Green River was just fantastic. I met them at a show in L.A. when I was at Slash. When I got to Geffen, Jeff called me up and said, “I’ve got this new band!” And I said, “Okay, let’s do a demo.” I liked it and thought we should sign them. And they were still technically under a demo deal with me when Kelly Curtis—whom I introduced to the band via my secretary Rose, who used to be in a band that Kelly managed—shopped the deal behind our backs.
KEN DEANS Why did we change our minds about management? Geffen had started talking about a real record deal. So now it’s starting to look like maybe we could do this. Maybe there’s enough money to do this. And then the rest of the interest started happening. We decided Kelly would handle the management side of the company, and I would handle the production side of the company.
NANCY WILSON (Heart/the Lovemongers singer/guitarist; Ann Wilson’s sister; Cameron Crowe’s ex-wife) One of our very oldest, dearest friends, Kelly Curtis, was working with Mother Love Bone. We were like, “Hey, this is authentic stuff,” outside of the MTV kind of disposable, flaked-and-formed thing that we were wrapped up in at the time. The record labels were pressuring us to do other people’s songs as our singles or they wouldn’t promote the album. The image had to be bigger, bigger, bigger. More hairspray.
JEFF GILBERT Ann and Nancy Wilson were nothing but huge supporters of the local music scene. Kelly brought Ann down to the Central to see Andy play. Andy got a can of beer, took a big swig out of it, and just shook it up and threw it on Ann. Doused her in beer. She got this horrifically shocked look on her face, and looked up as if to say, “What the hell?” And Andy just smiled at her and winked. She got the biggest grin on her face.
REGAN HAGAR Andy did a show at the Ditto. I think he did it without Malfunkshun, where he was just master of ceremonies. He poured himself some Cocoa Puffs, added the milk, had a couple bites, and then he turned the bowl and just threw it on the audience. In celebration of the cereal. People applauded and cheered. Andy could throw anything on anybody—and they would be happy to have it on them.
NILS BERNSTEIN 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.
ANNA STATMAN I really don’t know why it took Geffen so long to try to sign Mother Love Bone. By then, it was already out of my hands because I had turned the project over to Tom Zutaut, who was A&R.
BRUCE FAIRWEATHER Tom Zutaut was the guy who signed Guns N’ Roses. We met him in the lobby at the Four Seasons in Seattle. When I went to take a leak, he followed me into the bathroom. He was trying to find the ins and outs of the band, but in a creepy kind of way. Like, “So, Andy’s into drugs, huh?” Or “Jeff’s into drugs, huh?” He was just throwing it out to see if it would stick. He was trying to go to everybody to find out dirt about everybody else, and we were like, “That was a bad meeting. Man, screw that guy.”
KEN DEANS We actually backed off of Geffen because there was so much interest from the other labels starting to happen. So we end up at a point where we’re going to have a showcase at the Central Tavern, which was down the street from our offices at the time. There’s five or six labels that are coming to see Mother Love Bone. I remember standing in front of the door to our office, and all these record executives are coming out of the Central and coming up to Kelly and making offers on the street: “Okay, we’ll do a two-record guarantee, $500,000 advance,” and back and forth. And it’s really getting kind of crazy. We were actually laughing.
And after two or three hours of this kind of circus event going on, we