“Andy was that sort of big precursor to all of those later worries about heroin and drug addiction. He was the first major blow that had happened, that sort of realization that there is a dark side to all of this,” Jacob McMurray explained.
“Andy dying was a huge blow. And unfortunately, it wasn’t a wake-up call,” Deans lamented. “And a funny thing—at that time, nobody was, other than some occasional binge drinking or some cocaine here and there, nobody was out of control.”
“It’s difficult to articulate it, but up to that point, I think life was really good for us as just a group of musicians in a scene making music,” Cornell said during an interview for the Pearl Jam Twenty documentary. “You know, the world was sort of our oyster, and we had support, we supported each other, and he was kind of like this beam of light sort of above it all. And to see him hooked up to machines, that was, I think, the death of the innocence of the scene. It wasn’t later when people surmised that Kurt [Cobain] blowing his head off was the end of the innocence. It was that. It was walking into that room.”16
In death, Wood proved to be as influential as in life, if not more so. His loss inspired Cornell to write “Reach Down” and “Say Hello 2 Heaven,” songs that eventually led to Temple of the Dog. Candlebox’s “Far Behind” was also a tribute to Wood.17 Alice in Chains would dedicate Facelift to his memory and that of Gloria Jean Cantrell. In time, they would pay their own musical tribute to Wood as well.
* * *
Not long after finishing Facelift, Jerden offered Bryan Carlstrom a job as his engineer. Carlstrom happily accepted, even though it meant taking a pay cut. “It was like, ‘Wow, it’s going to be like the Wild West. I’m going to be working with a guy who works on the records that I like.’ He’s probably my favorite producer at that time. It was an amazing opportunity to go work with him and get that kind of experience and those kinds of credits engineering,” Carlstrom said. He would play a key role in the recording sessions for Dirt.
On April 6, 1990, Alice in Chains met with artist, photographer, and video director Rocky Schenck. They made a good pairing. “I had listened to Alice’s music before the first meeting, and it definitely made a strong impression on me. To be honest, it was darker than anything I had heard previously in my music-listening experience, and I didn’t know quite how to react when I first heard it,” Schenck wrote. “Creatively speaking, I had already been walking down a rather dark road myself for many years before I met these guys. I think the band picked this up when they first viewed my photography portfolio and looked at my previous videos, and that’s why we connected so naturally and quickly. Like minds, I suppose.
“I thought what I had to offer visually and creatively would complement what they were creating musically. And looking back on the work we created together, I think it did.”18
They discussed several ideas for the album art. For one of the photographs, the band came up with the idea of making it appear as if they were emerging from an eyeball, so the conversation focused on how that could be created. The record label didn’t give the band a large budget for this photo shoot, but Schenck liked them so much, he was willing to make it work. He took a budget scarcely enough for a one-day shoot and stretched it out over three days.
The first shoot took place on the afternoon of Wednesday, May 2, 1990, at the swimming pool of the Oakwood Apartments in Burbank. To execute the idea of their emerging from an eyeball, the pool was covered with a thin piece of plastic. The band members had to swim under the plastic, rise to the surface, and breathe in as they emerged. “The plastic distorted their faces, and I got some great, ghoulish band shots with the very first roll of film,” Schenck wrote. They experimented with several ideas, including a shot of Layne wrapped in plastic with the other members holding him that was used as the cover for the “We Die Young” single.
They spent the next day and night at Schenck’s Hollywood studio. “I had been experimenting with in-camera multiple exposures, where I would create a distorted image by exposing different parts of a single frame of film one exposure at a time. I had been utilizing this technique in videos and in my art photography for years, and it was perfect for this assignment,” Schenck explained. In his portfolio, the band members had seen “experimental multiple-exposure black and white portraits of haunted, distorted faces,” and asked that he duplicate the technique. Schenck didn’t want to duplicate the original photo, which was in black and white, so he tried the same technique in color using photos of each band member’s face. A photo of Mike was chosen for the album cover. Upon seeing the photo, they decided to name the album Facelift. The original concept for the cover was to have all four members’ faces “superimposed into one startling expression,” which appeared years later in the Music Bank box set.19
“What I enjoyed about this process is that I could never quite predict how the final image would look with this technique, but it usually resulted in an image that was somewhat bizarre and twisted—perfect for Alice,” Schenck wrote. “We spent many hours creating distorted portraits of each band member, lighting each of their features individually with a single gelled spotlight and creating the portrait one exposure at a time.”
On May 4, Schenck and the band went to a sulfur plant in Wilmington, California, an experience he described as “very intense” because if the wind shifted, the sulfur would get in their eyes, and they would all start crying. There were eye baths located throughout the plant, so they were constantly washing their eyes. At one point, the band was standing in a cactus patch near a mountain of sulfur when the wind shifted and they all started crying. Schenck kept shooting and got what he described as “some odd pictures of the band crying in the cactus.”
After reviewing the proof sheets two decades later, Schenck wrote, “I think this first marathon shoot captured them in a wonderful way. They were in rare form, and I was having the time of my life working with them. I didn’t know at that time if I would be working with them again, but I was hooked.” Schenck and the band were out having dinner when Layne, for no particular reason, started singing “We Die Young” in the style of Broadway actress Ethel Merman. These shoots were the beginning of a professional relationship between Schenck and the band that would continue for years, covering most of their albums and several music videos.
Schenck and the band regrouped on August 9 to discuss ideas for their first video, “We Die Young.” At the time, there had been several fires in the Los Angeles area, and Schenck suggested using a burned-down house and a swimming pool filled with debris as a location. He also wanted to replicate the swimming-pool photos into sequences for the video. Filming began on August 28 at a home in Glendale. Schenck requested the ruins be painted bright red, and they filled the pool with debris found on-site. “I can distinctly remember the looks on the family’s faces who once lived in this home watching us from the sidelines. Their expressions were quietly horrified as we filmed in their once-lovely swimming pool, using their burned furniture and their children’s burnt toys as props,” Schenck wrote.
On September 10, Schenck organized a shoot at a Hollywood studio, where the band’s performance was projected on floating and burning debris. The final cut of “We Die Young” was finished on September 17. “The band and the record company seemed to like it, and I was happy with the way it turned out. The video seemed to fit the music quite well, and I think it utilized a lot of different elements that I had not seen in music videos at that point.”20
The three-song We Die Young EP was released in the summer of 1990, with Facelift shortly after, on August 24—two days after Layne’s twenty-third birthday. Layne had given his mother a cassette copy of the finished album to listen to and asked for her feedback.
“I think there’s a sleeper on that album”—a song that was going to creep up on people—“It’s called ‘Man in the Box.’”
“Mom, I wrote that song.”
“Layne, it’s so beautiful.”
In retrospect, years later, Nancy Layne McCallum sai
d, “I didn’t know he was the man in the box. I’m sure he just kept wanting me to get it.”21
She was ultimately proved correct about “Man in the Box” being a sleeper. But it took a while for it to catch on. First, they had to tour in support of the album.
Chapter 11
Today’s opening act is tomorrow’s headlining act.
—JIMMY SHOAF
ALICE IN CHAINS HIT the road almost immediately following the release of Facelift. They warmed up by playing a few local Seattle shows first—at the annual Bumbershoot festival at Seattle Center, followed by headlining performances at the Vogue and the Central Tavern. At the time, Soundgarden was wrapping up their tour in support of Louder Than Love, so Susan hired that crew to work for Alice in Chains. The crew consisted of a drum tech, a guitar and bass tech, a sound engineer, a merchandise seller, and a tour manager.
Jimmy Shoaf was Sean’s drum tech during this first tour. In that capacity, he was responsible for setting up and maintaining Sean’s equipment before, during, and after the shows, and he was also running the lights. Susan had given him an advance copy of Facelift. He had never seen the band live before. “I’m listening to it, like, ‘These guys can’t do this shit live. There’s no fucking way. It’s overproduced,’” he said. Shoaf met the band at Mark Naficy’s warehouse after Bumbershoot in early September 1990. In a small rehearsal room, he watched them perform “Sunshine” and was amazed by what he was hearing.
Randy Biro, the guitar and bass tech, who also doubled as a stage manager, was similarly skeptical at first. “To be honest, I didn’t want to. Susan asked me to do it as a favor, because I didn’t like the band at first.” He had first seen Alice in Chains live when they opened for Soundgarden at a show in Portland. His impression at the time: “Wow, these guys are really good.” But for some reason, there was a disconnect between the band he saw live and the band he was asked to work with. Biro had also been given a copy of Facelift. “I thought they were a lame attempt at trying to do Aerosmith, mixed with [Guns n’ Roses].”
The first thing he said to the band after Soundgarden got off the tour bus and Alice in Chains got on was, “Hey, you. This is my bunk. Don’t fucking touch it.” During the first week of the tour, Biro didn’t even know any of their names.
Up first was a monthlong opening slot for Extreme, where they would be performing in clubs ranging from five hundred to fifteen hundred people in support of Facelift and Extreme’s sophomore album, Extreme II: Pornograffiti. It was an odd pairing, one Alice in Chains and their crew weren’t particularly happy with. “Extreme fans were generally little seedy guitar-player-wannabe dudes. I think they were starting to hit with that ‘More Than Words’ god-awful ballad; they took that one to the bank,” Shoaf said.
“It was terrible,” Biro said, adding, “Extreme was, like they really thought they had made it big. And Nuno Bettencourt, the guitar player, he really didn’t belong with them. They were just really, really, really cheesy guys. Their music was exactly like they were.”
As the tour progressed, Alice in Chains began winning over Extreme’s audience. One detrimental factor was the shoddy treatment they were getting from the headliners. “Extreme were from the old school of rock, and that was you pretty much screw over the opening act,” Shoaf said. “You turn down the PA on them, you didn’t give them as much lights as you got, they didn’t get treated necessarily with open arms. Grunge kind of changed that, too. It was more kind of punk rock: we’re all in this together—it’s a smarter attitude. Today’s opening act is tomorrow’s headlining act.”1
In Atlanta, the bands were playing at a venue where the physical space onstage, specifically the lack thereof, became an issue. “They had this cheesy drum riser. They called it their set, and it took up way too much room,” Biro said. The stage was so small, Layne had to stand stage left of Sean, whose kick drum had to be nailed down so it wouldn’t fall off the stage. “They refused to move anything, to make our life a little bit more bearable. And they’d say, ‘You’re just the opening act.’ And thanks to assholes like that, we never treated people bad.”
According to Jerry, “We’d gotten attitude about what we could do, what we couldn’t do onstage, because the singer did his set barefoot. So we drank, spilled shit over the place, smoked. We were like, ‘What are you going to do, kick us off the tour? It’s the last gig!’ And Mike Starr would get a case of the nerves and puke. I think he had some beers in him, so he turned around and puked all over the drum set. That was our last gig with Extreme.”2
There was another incident involving Extreme’s gear. “I remember the bass tech for Extreme freaking out because Mike Starr had gotten drunk and jumped up on Extreme’s bass cabinets, had fallen down and knocked over Extreme’s bass rigs right before Extreme played,” Shoaf said. “Mike’s stuff is in front of theirs. He’s not supposed to be back there on or near their crap. I remember they were pretty upset about it and understandably so. They haven’t done the show yet, and there’s only fifteen minutes technically between Alice in Chains and Extreme. If something’s broke, you’re trying to fix it in fifteen minutes—good luck.”
Further complicating matters was the Extreme crew’s inexperience. According to Biro, except for two members, none of them had ever toured before. “It was like they had hired professional friends.” On top of that, they had no sense of humor. Before Extreme’s homecoming show at a theater in Boston, the Alice in Chains members and crew were walking into the venue when they came across Extreme’s production manager.
“Wow. You ever been in a room this big?” the production manager said to Biro.
Biro, a veteran crew member who had played large and small venues before, looked at Sean and facetiously asked, “Wow, is this as big as a stadium?”
“Fuck you,” the production manager said, and walked away.
Jerry was happy to be there performing on that first tour, Shoaf said, but he was also his own biggest critic. “I think Jerry was a little hard on himself and a perfectionist. Like after a show, he’d think he fucked up here or he fucked up there. He would take his own CD after the show, put a set of headphones on, and practice getting better.”
Regarding Sean, Shoaf said, “He can play anytime, anywhere. He knew the songs backwards and forwards. Generally, when the drummer knows the songs backwards and forwards, he’s a great drummer. He’s one of the nicest guys you could ever hang out with, unless he’s got twenty-four beers in him, and he just doesn’t pass out.”
One of Shoaf’s most vivid memories of this tour was when Layne made him a Neil Diamond fan. They were at a truck stop and heard an elevator-music version of “Love on the Rocks.” While walking out, Layne did a pitch-perfect imitation of Diamond’s vocals on that song. Shoaf bought a cassette copy of Diamond’s greatest hits at the next truck stop.
“He’d sit there and make jokes. And he would sing anything,” Biro said. “He used to make fun of Styx songs, but he did it so well. The guy was just an incredible singer. He was ridiculing it, but it was so good that it was perfect. I don’t know what it was. But his sense of humor—that band was constantly, constantly, constantly, twenty-four hours, joking around.”
Shoaf remembers Jerry working on new material backstage or on the bus. “Hey, Jimmy—what do you think of this?” It was the beginnings of what would eventually become “Rooster.”
“I’m like, ‘Fuck, dude…’ I remember them doing it at sound check, going, ‘Holy shit, another one…’ because of the vocal part. Layne busted that shit out at sound check in front of me and six other people. He’s singing that stuff, and I’m like, ‘Holy moly…’ I was ready for that second record by October of 1990.”
After a show in Denver, Biro saw a girl get on the band’s tour bus, which he and Shoaf were following in a rented Ryder truck full of gear. By the time Biro and Shoaf arrived at the hotel where both Extreme and Alice in Chains were staying, someone had a video camera and was filming what Biro characterized as a sex tape in that pre-Internet era.
Members of Extreme were in the hotel room watching the mayhem. According to Biro, “They were watching, and the video camera got them a few times. They waved at the video camera, laughing—you know, showing a beer, being, ‘Yeah, we’re cool. We’re one of the guys.’”
A day later, they approached the Alice in Chains crew, begging them to get rid of the tape. “They didn’t want anything of them being in those situations going public, ever,” Biro said. They didn’t do anything on the tape, Biro said, beyond possibly posing with the girl. Not long after this incident, Alice in Chains was doing an interview with Z-Rock, the Dallas-based syndicated radio station. The band was taking questions from callers on the air.
“Hey, I met you guys once in Denver,” a female caller said, according to Shoaf’s account of the conversation.
“Yeah, really?”
When she mentioned the debauchery that had taken place in the hotel room, the station cut her off and hung up on her.
* * *
While the band was on tour, Susan celebrated a personal milestone in her life. After five years together, she and Chris Cornell got married on September 22, 1990, during a ceremony at their Seattle home, according to a brief mention in The Seattle Times. They went to Victoria, British Columbia, for a short honeymoon before Cornell had to go back to work on Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger album.3
* * *
For the next leg of the tour, Alice in Chains would be supporting Iggy Pop and playing in small theaters with a capacity of one to three thousand. There was a noticeable improvement in the relationship between the headliner and the opening act. “They were much more welcoming. They treated us a lot better on ego stuff. We got cut back on lights somewhat, but it’s Iggy’s show, and the sound was boosted up a little better,” Shoaf said.
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