Stone Gossard was 24 years old, and not ready to give up. In March 1990, Andrew Wood, the singer of Gossard’s band, Mother Love Bone, died of an overdose, just weeks before they were supposed to release their major-label debut. That summer, Gossard and his bandmates, including bassist Jeff Ament, were left mourning and adrift. Mother Love Bone had experienced the kind of instant success that made other local bands furious, signing a record deal after playing fewer than 10 shows. What were the odds of winning that lottery twice? “I didn’t know what was going to happen,” Gossard said. “But I knew I wanted to make more demos and make more songs. I felt like I could do it again.”
He was, of course, correct. Within a few months of Wood’s death, Gossard composed an album’s worth of extraordinary songs, or at least the bones of them, minus vocal melodies and lyrics. “I’m pretty persistent,” said Gossard, who maintained a calm, prescient certainty that he would find another worthy band, another great singer. He was encouraged by the surge of Seattle rock around him, from Mudhoney, fronted by Gossard and Ament’s former Green River bandmate Mark Arm, to Soundgarden, whose next album would be Badmotorfinger. “I knew there was more out there,” said Gossard. “Andy was special, but I knew that there were other artists and other people out there that had a completely different thing.”
