Mother Love Bone
Andrew Wood's charismatic glam-metal-meets-grunge band was poised for stardom when Wood died of a heroin overdose in 1990. The surviving members—Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament—formed Pearl Jam, and Wood's death became a dividing line in Seattle's scene. Greg Prato chose it as the breaking point in his oral history Grunge Is Dead: 'Everything leading up to that moment was a slow build up of momentum. What followed was an explosion.' The year after Wood died saw Facelift, Badmotorfinger, Ten, and Nevermind—some of the greatest records in rock history released in quick succession. Before Nirvana, according to Mark Yarm's Everybody Loves Our Town, alternative rock was 'consigned to specialty sections of record stores.' After Nevermind, everything changed. Wood didn't live to see it. His death was the tragedy that catalyzed everything: Pearl Jam's formation, the emotional weight of Ten, the sense that success could be snatched away at any moment. Eddie Vedder, who replaced Wood in what became Pearl Jam, sounded uncertain when a journalist caught him three weeks after Ten came out. 'Even when I feel good… it seems like every time I start to feel good, something really awful happens,' he said. Wood's overdose was the something awful that had already happened. The music that followed carried that weight.