Malfunkshun
The Andrew Wood Story

March 16, 1990: at 10:10 AM Xana La Fuente calls 911. She found Andrew, her boyfriend, sprawled on the bed from a heroin overdose.

10:34 AM: Andrew is pronounced dead by the 911 personnel.

12:40 PM: once arrived at the hospital, Andrew is declared alive again and put in intensive care.

March 17, 8:00 AM: Andrew is declared in a coma.

8:00 PM: Andrew stabilizes and shows small signs of improvement.

March 18, 2:00 PM: Andrew returns to the room.

March 19, 11:20 AM: Andrew is hit by an aneurysm that nullifies all brain functions.

The doctors advise disconnecting the machines keeping Andrew alive. All the family and friends gather, enter the room one by one for a final farewell, Xana La Fuente plays "A Night At The Opera" by the Queen (Andy's favorite band), the wires are disconnected. Xana hugs her boyfriend's body.

It's 3:00 PM. She listens to his heartbeat. For fifteen minutes. It takes fifteen minutes for it to stop beating.

It's 3:15 PM. Andrew Wood is officially pronounced dead.

Only twenty-four years had passed (three years too soon to officially join the "27 Club" alongside Jimi, Jim, Jonis, and many others) when Andrew Wood's artistic flame was extinguished. Too little to proclaim the new Freddie Mercury, but enough to notice a pure talent among those approximately thirty songs he left us.

This box set took ten years of work by director Scot Barbour, who gathered an hour of footage on the accompanying DVD consisting of interviews with family and friends, musicians and non-musicians, video recordings made by Andrew himself, concert clips, and a reconstruction of the events culminating in the tragic end.

The film part is accompanied by the musical part on two discs: the first features "Return To Olympus" by the Malfunkshun, while the second assembles interview clips with tracks recorded by the singer on self-made audio cassettes.

This latter collection arouses little interest given the low quality of the tracks, except perhaps for "Island Of Summer" sung by Chris Cornell, with vague anticipatory reminiscences of "Seasons" that will end up on the "Singles" soundtrack. The meat and soul of this release should therefore be sought in the first CD and the film.

Images and music show us a young boy capable of being a clown, a poet, a genius, a hysterical fool, but aware of being destined to become a rockstar. Hence the birth of his alter ego: Landrew the Lovechild, with his all-feather and sequin look. Landrew takes the stage and preaches the word of Loverock, alongside his brother Kevin on guitars and brotherly friend Regan "Thundarr" Hagar (later in Brad and Satchel) on drums. The three play the music of love, ironically opposing the devil's music by using 333 instead of 666. From a malfunctioning tape on which they recorded their first demos comes the name Malfunkshun: it's 1981, during the Easter holidays, and out of four or five friends gathered to jam, only they three remain.

Thus begins the story of a predestined. The music of Malfunkshun will not see the light for several years since Andy, besides his problems with alcohol, heroin, and cocaine addiction, will leave the group to join the Mother Love Bone in 1988, after meeting Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard. It will be the latter, in 1995, to finally take upon editing "Return To Olympus". Eight demos of the time and four tracks recorded by Andrew Wood make up a fascinating setlist, where on one side emerge the seeds that will kick off the Seattle epic, and on the other already show stadium potential and ambitions, even more evident later in Mother Love Bone. Landrew's voice, with its falsettos and histrionics, scratches and caresses without continuity, bass and drums pound hard, while the brother's guitar, with its fast metal scales, distances the group's sound from the typical grunge style, despite the various distortions. It is impossible not to look back and not think of Marc Bolan while listening, as well as looking forward when "Winter Bites" plays and not thinking of the lesson imparted to Jane's Addiction. But in every track, however naive, imperfect, or derivative, one must focus on that moment when a chorus, a refrain, a melody strikes. At that very moment, you forget the rest and are enthralled by pieces like "Until the Ocean", "Luxury Bed", and "Jezebel Woman". Then you realize that they were all written by a minor, and then you understand that it's all a joke, that this album counts very little compared to the dozens of masterpieces he could have written in maturity. That there are few born like Freddy Mercury, but maybe more have died than we think.