It took a long time for me to realize that “Hunger Strike” is just the guitar version of this. And by the time Mother Love Bone’s best song, “Chloe Dancer / Crown of Thorns,” showed up on the soundtrack to the movie Singles in 1992, Andrew Wood had already been gone for two years. He carried himself in this glorious 1970s way.” But Andrew Wood’s death further cemented the ’90s antipathy toward the ’70s. Seattle people thought they were cooler than that, but he just didn’t care. I would see him walking around with his scarves and glasses. Talking to Rolling Stone in 2016, Chris Cornell put it like this: “In his mind, he was already a rock star and he was waiting for the rest of the world to figure it out.” Also, Mike McCready said, “Andy carried himself around Seattle like a rock star. Andrew Wood was a hip-swaying snake-charmer guy, an unabashed power-ballad guy, an unabashed guy in general. But Andrew Wood evoked Axl Rose far more than, say, Eddie Vedder did. They had to be indifferent to fame, embarrassed by fame, tortured by fame. What differentiated “alternative rock” from plain old “rock” was that “alternative” rock stars weren’t supposed to act, or for that matter look, like rock stars. This is your periodic reminder that grunge didn’t kill hair metal so much as hair metal just became grunge. They all look like they’re auditioning for the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie 15 years too early. Seriously, Mother Love Bone press photos are a real good time: the long and lustrous hair, the wacky hats, the occasional bandana, the super ostentatious sunglasses. You just hear his voice and like a really intense oversized hat magically appears on your head. He sang like he had, like 30 armadillos stuffed in his trousers. This dude’s plan was to record Led Zeppelins V through XII. Andrew Wood, quite proudly, was not a guy willing to defend himself against the ’70s. This band is the exact moment that torch was passed, with both hands still on the torch. Mother Love Bone are exactly halfway between hair metal and grunge. Andrew Wood was the charismatic lead singer for the hard-rock band Mother Love Bone, whose only album, Apple, came out four months after Wood’s death in July 1990, and featured a couple future members of both Pearl Jam and Temple of the Dog, namely Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament. And maybe part of the reason this song has grown, in my estimation, lately, is that it sure hits a lot harder, nowadays, that the first voice you hear is Chris Cornell’s, and one day we’d be mourning him too.Ĭhris Cornell was the primary songwriter and engine for Temple of the Dog, a band that formed in tribute to his roommate and fellow aspiring Seattle rock star Andrew Wood, who died of a heroin overdose, at 24 years old, on March 19, 1990. It’s a monolith of rock-star grief, and rock-star deification. “Hunger Strike” is one of the great rock-star duets of the 20th century. ![]() Temple of the Dog was a tribute album, mourning a Seattle rock star who didn’t quite live long enough to see Seattle rock stars take over the world. ![]() Why this song, as opposed to “Alive” or “Spoonman” or “Corduroy” or “Outshined” or “Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town” or whatever? Probably it comes down to death. “Hunger Strike” is a pure thunderbolt of nostalgia. Temple of the Dog’s “Hunger Strike” hits me harder now than any one song by either Pearl Jam or Soundgarden, though I still love both those bands dearly, and blast their music in my house, often, to the consternation of my loved ones. ![]() Below is an excerpt from Episode 18, which explores the history of early ’90s Seattle grunge, Mother Love Bone, and the Soundgarden–Pearl Jam supergroup Temple of the Dog with help from writer and professor Eric Harvey. Follow and listen for free exclusively on Spotify. But what does it say about the era-and why does it still matter? On our new show, 60 Songs That Explain the ’90s, Ringer music writer and ’90s survivor Rob Harvilla embarks on a quest to answer those questions, one track at a time. “Wonderwall.” The music of the ’90s was as exciting as it was diverse.
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