Mother Love Bone Frontman Remembered In Film

To some, Seattle band Mother Love Bone is best known as the precursor to Pearl Jam, as both bassist Jeff Ament and guitarist Stone Gossard were members. But the focus is on late frontman Andrew Wood in the new documentary "Malfunkshun: The Andrew Wood Story," which was directed by Scot Barbour and features interviews with a host of Seattle musicians. Wood, who also fronted Seattle band Malfunkshun, died in 1990 of a drug overdose.

The film features "interviews with friends and family, and it's interspersed with archival live footage, candid family-type videos, and it's got computer animated graphics that go on during the interludes where there's music going on," the singer's brother Kevin Wood tells Billboard.com. "You hear this awesome music going on during the whole movie, and you can get sidetracked listening to the music, and not listen to the interviews, because the music in the background is so good. Then the music will all of a sudden get louder, and it'll be far out, psychedelic computer graphics."

Among the other musicians that gave interviews for the project include Soundgarden's Chris Cornell and Kim Thayil, Mother Love Bone's Bruce Fairweather and Greg Gilmore and Malfunkshun/Brad member Regan Hagar.

"Malfunkshun" will be screened Oct. 11-12 at the FAIF Film Festival in Hollywood, Calif., the first screening of which will also feature a Q&A with Barbour. According to Wood, the DVD may wind up featuring "some solo material that Andy did, and some re-released Malfunkshun and Mother Love Bone. It's supposed to come out [as a CD] with the DVD of the movie."

Beyond the film, Kevin is doing his best to keep his brother's memory alive through music. "I play Malfunkshun material in my current band, Hippie Glitz," he says. "I'm talking to the guys in Brad about going with me to Italy to do some Malfunkshun material, like we did for the premiere event [in Seattle in June]. We got together -- me and Stone, Regan, Shawn [Smith, vocals] and Mike [Berg, bass], and we rehashed some of the old Malfunkshun numbers. It turned out really cool."