Mother Love Bone - Apple [CD]

Andrew Wood overdosed on heroin in March 1990, days before Apple was scheduled to come out. He spent his last days in a coma, and the album that was supposed to make Mother Love Bone the biggest band out of Seattle finally arrived on August 14, 1990, with no one left to tour it. Chris Cornell wrote Temple of the Dog about him. Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard formed Pearl Jam out of the wreckage. Apple is the only full-length the band ever made.

It sounds nothing like what grunge became. Wood was a glam kid at heart, all theatrical swagger and genuine sweetness, and Apple leans into dynamics the way Led Zeppelin did rather than the flat sludge that dominated the years after. "This Is Shangrila" and "Stardog Champion" open the record with swing and outrageous confidence, "Stargazer" and "Captain Hi-Top" show the band's flamboyant streak, and "Man of Golden Words" and "Crown of Thorns" are the ones that break your heart, especially now. Terry Date produced with the band, Tim Palmer mixed, and Bob Ludwig mastered.

Reviewers at the time called it one of the first great hard rock records of the nineties. The reputation has only grown: it turns up on essentially every serious grunge list, was ranked among the greatest one-album wonders ever made, and gets argued for regularly as better than most of what followed it out of Seattle.

This remastered CD edition presents all thirteen tracks with the bonus cut "Lady Godiva Blues," fully remastered for the first time since 1990. The great what-if album of the entire era.