Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [75]
BRUCE FAIRWEATHER The day we had the final meeting with Michael Goldstone where we said we were going to sign with them, Andy didn’t show up. The meeting was down at the Market, and we ran into Xana there, and she had a black eye. And we’re like, “Oh, God, what’s Andy going to look like?” I think Kelly took Xana aside, and I don’t know if Michael ever saw what was going on.
DAN PETERS Me and Andy were messengers together at this company called ABC Messengers. Xana didn’t want him being around any bad influences, and I think she looked at me as one, since I was a musician. I lived in an apartment close to work, so me and Andy would bug off during lunchtime and smoke pot. Xana would come by and meet him after work so he’d go directly home. She was just really protective, for obviously good reasons. I didn’t know Andy all that well, but I could tell he was a man with not a whole lot of self-control.
XANA LA FUENTE When he was a messenger, Andy would try to write on his breaks but he knew he had another calling and he felt like it was really taking away from that. So I told him, “I can pay for everything. Your job is just going to be to stay home and write music.”
He wasn’t allowed to write about drugs. I used to go through Andrew’s notebooks with a red pen and cross stuff out: “No.… No.… No.…” He let me do it.
KEVIN WOOD When Mother Love Bone was taking off, I had some resentment, sure. No, I never talked to Andy about it. He lived in Seattle and was doing his own thing. I was doing my own thing on Bainbridge. So I never saw the guy. And there was no reason to hang out, either, because we weren’t in a band anymore. And when I did see him at a family gathering, it was always the Andy Show, and he would be his normal jocular self. There was no room to get serious and say, “What the fuck?”
XANA LA FUENTE We went to Andy’s dad’s every weekend in Bremerton. It was his dad, his stepmom, his little brother, who was maybe six years old. All they wanted to hear about was the record deal. I had a bruise on my neck from a fight about drugs, and I was like, “See this? He’s not gonna have a deal if he’s dead.” We were close—I was closer to him than my own dad—but he just would ignore it. I guess they were in denial.
GREG GILMORE We would be in the studio and Xana would come around and she’s got Andy off in the corner and they’re bickering. “Oh, fuck, what is she doing here?” There always seemed to be a lot of drama when Xana would be around. Probably because of that it was tough to hear the part of her message that was real, that Andy has a problem. It was just, Ugh, be gone.
BRUCE FAIRWEATHER The only time we toured, we were opening for the Dogs D’Amour. We were in Toronto, and the guys from the Cult, Ian Astbury and Billy Duffy, were there in the crowd. During the show, Andy went running around in the crowd and came back onstage totally smiling. And he just went to all of us, holding the microphone down, saying, “The Cult’s here! The Cult’s here!” Afterwards, we met those guys, and Andy’s running around behind them, jumping up and down, smiling. He was super-excited about stuff like that.
MICHAEL GOLDSTONE (PolyGram Records/Epic Records A&R executive) When Andy got to a city, he would pick up a newspaper before he got onstage and try to find the most outlandish thing that he could come up with just to catch the crowd off guard. In Boston, he came onstage one night, and at the time, Michael Dukakis was running for president. Andy did the classic, “How ya doin’, Boston?” Followed with, “I was just out drinking shots with Kitty!” And people didn’t even know how to respond,