* * *
After the conclusion of Shitty Cities, the band opened for Ozzy Osbourne for about a month in the fall of 1992. There was a noticeable difference in the crowd’s reaction to Alice in Chains compared to two years earlier. “By then, ‘Man in the Box’ had hit, and Dirt was out. So as a rock fan, if you didn’t have it already, you went out and bought it after that,” Jimmy Shoaf said.
There were two mishaps during the tour. Mike drank a water bottle full of bleach by mistake and had to be hospitalized, leading to the cancellation of a few shows. The bleach was used to clean out syringes. According to Randy Biro, “It looked like some water. Poured it down his throat. And before he could realize what the taste was, it pretty much had gotten into his system.” Biro thinks Mike was using heroin at this point. “I could see him doing heroin, because he really looked up to Layne. And if Layne was doing it, he would be doing it.”
In September 1992, Layne was at a state fairground somewhere that had a racetrack where people were driving trikes or three-wheeled ATVs, which caught his interest. According to Randy Biro, “People were saying, ‘You shouldn’t ride those things. They’re dangerous.’” Layne dismissed the concerns and took one for a spin.
“He ends up going … I don’t know how far—not that far—and he puts his foot down to make a turn, like you would a motorcycle, and the back wheel runs over his foot.” His left foot was broken, and he would be in a cast and on crutches for several weeks. He kept performing, on crutches or sitting in a wheelchair or on a couch onstage. When asked about it later, he said, “I didn’t break my neck, so there’s no excuse not to play.”4 Mike noted that Layne stage-dived with his foot still in the cast.5
* * *
The subject matter on Dirt left Layne open to legitimate questions from journalists about drugs. Layne told Rolling Stone, “The facts are that I was shooting a lot of dope, and that’s nobody’s business but mine. I’m not shooting dope now, and I haven’t for a while … I took a fucking long, hard walk through hell. I decided to stop because I was miserable doing it. The drug didn’t work for me anymore. In the beginning I got high, and it felt great; by the end it was strictly maintenance, like food I needed to survive. Since I quit doing it, I tried it a couple of times to see if I could recapture the feeling I once got off it, but I don’t. Nothing attracts me to it anymore. It was boring.”6
During a November 1992 interview with Canadian TV channel Musique Plus, the host asked Layne, “When you have a problem with heroin, does it automatically make you think about death because you’re playing with your life a lot?”
“Yeah, I suppose that comes with the territory. Flirting with death … That’s probably what’s most attractive about it at first, is the danger, you know?” Layne answered. “But I beat it, I beat death! [Layne cheers.] I’m immortal!”
Later in the interview, the host asked, “What’s the hardest part when you’re trying to get over that?”
“The cravings, probably.”
“Has it been an excuse for creativity?”
“No. I never created anything when I was in that state of mind. It was only when I stopped that I could create.”7
The persistent questioning bothered Layne. He told SPIN about a French journalist who accused him of being on heroin during their interview. “I asked him if he was on heroin,” he recalled. “The guy got all offended. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘now you know how I feel.’”8
Drug and heroin references were part of the band’s live act on this tour. Layne introduced one song as being “about a hopeless fucking junkie” at a show in Dallas in October 1992. During a performance of “God Smack” at the same show, Layne repeatedly jabbed his arm with the microphone while scooting around onstage in a wheelchair. “I really like the wheelchair effect,” Mike said. “I don’t know, it somehow makes Layne seem more … evil.”9 According to Biro, Layne was sober during this tour.
When the tour came to New Orleans, Layne and Mike appeared as guests for an edition of Headbangers Ball. At one point, Layne was sitting on a stool, with his crutches and the cast on his foot visible to the camera. Riki Rachtman asked, “If you see people walking around with crutches, it doesn’t mean they hurt their leg. They might just be using Layne Staley as a role model, and that’s why crutches have become a fashion statement, is that correct?”
“Well, what it is … my foot isn’t injured. I use this to get pity dates,” Layne responded. The episode had segments filmed at the Historic Voodoo Museum and at a cemetery. The most memorable thing about this shoot happened off camera. According to Randy Biro, Layne and Mike were being escorted by New Orleans police officers. They gave the cops autographed T-shirts in exchange for a couple of police badges and a bag of speed.
* * *
The second leg of the Alice in Chains/Gruntruck tour kicked off in Fort Lauderdale on November 13, 1992, and ran for about five weeks. The Screaming Trees would join a little later, and would tour with Alice in Chains into 1993. Layne developed a preshow ritual on that tour with the Screaming Trees’s sound engineer, Martin Feveyear. “He would have some whiskey, and he would pass it to me, and I would check it for him to make sure that it was all okay and find a drink and hand it back to him,” Feveyear said. “It was just our way of sharing a moment before, or maybe him relaxing a little bit before he went onstage.” He added, “He was a real gentle, sweet man. He was quietly spoken. He was attentive to me—I’m not quite sure why—and he was delicate and funny, and we would laugh.”
There was a noticeable difference in the size and choice of venues between the first and second legs of the tour, as well as the quality of transportation and hospitality. “The other one was like vans and crappy little hotels. Small places in crappy little towns. This was like the Roseland and bigger rock venues in major metropolitan areas with three buses and a semitruck full of gear and full road crews,” Rockwell explained.
Another story comes from Screaming Trees drummer Barrett Martin, which he told during Layne’s memorial service: “[Layne’s] guest list … was not for friends or elite patrons of the rock circuit; it was for kids who couldn’t afford to buy a ticket.”10 Rockwell had a similar recollection, saying, “I remember something along those lines, where Layne was like, ‘Yeah, this fucking jackass from a record label wants to get in. Fuck him. He’s an industry guy. You don’t have to come to me for this shit, and if you do, you ain’t shit.’”
The other noticeable difference was that Susan hired bodyguards to try to keep Layne in check and to keep him away from people who might try to pass him drugs.11 According to Rockwell, the bodyguard’s job was to be Layne’s handler and chaperone at the same time. Although the exact nature of his relationship with Demri at this point is not known, Feveyear saw Layne in the company of other women at shows and hotels.
* * *
Following the success of Pearl Jam’s landmark music video for “Jeremy,” Mark Pellington’s representative was approached by Alice in Chains in late 1992 asking if he’d be interested in directing a video for “Rooster.” “This is a little different,” Pellington was told. “This is very personal, because it’s kind of about Jerry Cantrell and his dad. Would you talk to him?”
Pellington agreed. The two bonded about the conflicted relationships they had with their fathers. At the time, Pellington was making a documentary about his father’s struggles with Alzheimer’s disease.
Pellington’s treatment called for three elements: a performance video with front and rear projections made of precut footage; hallucinatory color re-creations and stock footage of combat scenes in Vietnam; and black-and-white, present-day, documentary-style footage of Jerry’s father living in Oklahoma. Because of the success of “Jeremy,” Pellington was given a great deal of free rein. Pellington hadn’t made any films yet, but his thinking at the time was “I need to make it like a movie,” he recalled. “You’re really trying to stretch the ambitions of it, and you had the resources in those days with videos to shoot three or four days and really pu
t a lot on the screen.” He had a budget of about $250,000 to make his vision happen.
Pellington traveled to Oklahoma for two days to shoot footage and interviews with both Cantrells. For the video, he worked with Hank Corwin, who edited Oliver Stone’s JFK, and John Schwartzman, who would later work as a cinematographer for Michael Bay. Oliver Stone’s military consultant, Dale Dye, was hired to assist with military training and the combat sequences, which were influenced by Stone’s film Platoon. Casey Pieretti, an amputee, played a soldier who steps on a land mine and loses his leg.
Pellington had a day to shoot the performance scenes. Layne was high and wanted to wear a cowboy hat. “He looked pretty fucked up, and I was well aware of his addictions,” Pellington said. He told the label rep or manager with them he didn’t think the hat was a good look for the video, but that it was their decision. Pellington offered a solution: “Layne, I think the sunglasses actually look cool because it’s more sinister, and the song is kind of evil and you guys are fucked up and evil.” Pellington’s talk worked, because Layne wore the sunglasses in all his scenes. Layne also wore an earring with a peace sign, which Pellington said was a coincidence.
* * *
While Alice in Chains and the Screaming Trees were touring, Trees’s manager, Kim White, got a phone call from the band’s singer, Mark Lanegan, who was on a cot in a Canadian hospital. It was the first time he did heroin with Layne, and he got blood poisoning. Layne filled in for Lanegan that night.12
Issues arose when Gruntruck’s singer, Ben McMillan, was mimicking Layne’s appearance, to the point it made Layne so uncomfortable that, according to Rockwell, instead of continuing the tour in Europe at the beginning of 1993, Gruntruck wound up opening for Pantera. “I don’t know what happened between them together, but Ben wanted so bad to be a rock star, and he just coveted Layne’s position and stuff that it affected him in a way that I think it worried Layne.”
* * *
According to previously published accounts, Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love sent Susan a Christmas card, addressed to “our favorite inside source,” based on their erroneous belief that she was an anonymous source for a controversial Vanity Fair article alleging Love had used heroin while she was pregnant. She got a phone call from Nirvana/Hole manager Danny Goldberg on the Cobains’ behalf, who said, “They just really want you to stop talking about them.” Susan did not like that Courtney Love was taking shots in the media at other musicians, but she denied talking about them. Love left “a super abusive voice mail” on Susan’s answering machine, which she still has. She was later approached by a British journalist writing a book about Nirvana to ask questions that apparently came from the Cobains’ rumor mill. “At that point, I was pissed. Like, ‘Wait a minute, they’re talking shit about me to other people? She’s leaving me abusive phone messages. She’s having Danny Goldberg calling to basically give me a gag order.’”13
Alice in Chains closed out 1992 by performing at MTV’s New Year’s Eve Party at the Roseland Ballroom in New York City.14 They had achieved new professional, critical, and commercial highs. Regardless, a change was imminent.
Chapter 17
Fucking Nazis die!
—LAYNE STALEY
MINISTRY WAS PERFORMING at Pearl Harbor Naval Station on January 2, 1993, a show Layne attended while Alice in Chains was in town for a show scheduled for January 8.1 “Not all junkies are scumbags—though many of them are. Some are just lost souls, misguided fuckers, or glamour seekers. The vocalist from Alice in Chains, Layne Staley, was the latter,” Al Jourgensen wrote in his memoir. He continued:
He got backstage into the dressing room and saw [Ministry guitarist Mike Scaccia] shoot up. So he asked if he could try. I looked him right in the eye, held up a syringe, and said, “Are you sure you want to do this, man?” And he nodded. I feel really bad about that because we turned him on to needles, and now he’s dead.
I don’t feel responsible, because he was gonna find someone to shoot with; it just happened to be us. He did a dose and passed out and didn’t wake up. He was barely breathing. I don’t know if he was dead or alive. I had to keep checking. Then he woke up, got some more dope, and shot up again. He took to needles like a fish to water, but I could tell he got into it for the glamour. That was a mistake. Other than the fact that he died from drugs, there’s no glamour in being a junkie.2
The account is probably accurate, but there are two details that deserve correction. First is the timing of the Ministry show in Hawaii. Jourgensen thought the show happened during the 1989–90 period. According to a Ministry fan site with a detailed tour history of the band, the show happened in 1993.3 Second is the claim that Ministry introduced Layne to intravenous drug use. By this point Layne had already been using heroin, off and on, for a little more than a year, and Alice in Chains had already recorded and released Dirt. Multiple sources who knew and worked with Layne in the 1989–90 period have said on the record that there is no evidence of Layne using heroin at that time. Ministry was not responsible for introducing Layne to shooting up—he was already doing it on his own.
That same month, Alice in Chains was starting an extensive touring schedule. By this point, something had to change. There are different and sometimes contradictory versions of the story told by Alice in Chains members and associates, but the outcome in all versions is the same: Mike Starr was out of Alice in Chains, replaced by Ozzy Osbourne’s bassist, Mike Inez. Susan told Mark Yarm the other three band members made the decision to fire Starr on their own and told him—and that it happened in Hawaii, just before two large festival shows in Brazil with L7, Nirvana, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.4
According to Randy Biro, there was talk within the band about dismissing Starr potentially as early as the Ozzy Osbourne tour the previous fall. Whatever the tipping point that precipitated the decision to fire Starr and how it went down, only Jerry and Sean—the two surviving original band members—and possibly Susan would know. Sources have speculated that Mike’s desire for more publishing rights, his attitude, his scalping tickets and backstage passes, his drug use, or some combination of these all were contributing factors to his dismissal. Starr’s friend Aaron Woodruff said he wasn’t showing up for band practice and speculated that was when his addiction was starting to take hold.
Because the band had spent weeks touring with Ozzy Osbourne, they had a replacement in mind. “We made one phone call—we called Mike [Inez]. If we’re going to get another bass player, we’re going to have to at least get another guy with the same name, smokes the same cigarettes, plays the same bass, looks the same!” Jerry explained. According to Sean, no other bassists were called or auditioned.5
“My phone rings and it’s Sean Kinney, and he’s calling me from Hawaii,” Inez recalled during an interview with Behind the Player. “He says, ‘I think our bass player Mike wants to quit the band. Would you consider going to Brazil with us?’
“‘When?’
“‘Get on a plane.’”
Inez was in Nevada at the time mixing Osbourne’s Live and Loud album when the call came. Inez, who was initially under the impression it would be a temporary gig, explained the situation to Osbourne and asked if he thought he should go.
“If you don’t go, you’re going to be in the hospital for about seven days,” was the Prince of Darkness’s response.
“Why?”
“It’s going to take them that long to get my foot out of your ass.”
With Osbourne’s blessing, Inez was ready to hop on a plane to Brazil and perform with Alice in Chains without any rehearsal. He even got vaccinations for the trip. Ultimately, they told him to hold off and meet with the band in London.6 Biro thinks the band may have held off on dismissing Starr until getting a commitment from Inez but isn’t sure. “It was a very weird time for the band. It was a very emotional time,” he said. “They used to live together. They starved together. And one of them was being kicked out.”
He added, “Layne and Starr were buddies. Layne was ne
ver the same after Starr left. He knew Starr had to leave on a business level, but on a personal level, I think it really fucked him up. It fucked all of us up. I felt really bad because there was a part of me, the business side, there is no question Starr had to go. It was sad but he was still family, and once he was out of that band he had nothing.
“[The decision to fire Starr] was brought up in privacy with myself and other crew members. They were looking for our input,” Biro said. “I think they were looking for maybe someone to say, ‘No, that’s not a good idea.’ But I think the label was pushing for it in some ways. I think Susan might have been pushing for it in some ways. It had to be done on a business level.” At one point in Brazil, Layne asked Biro, “Do you think we’re doing the right thing?”
“Unfortunately, I think you are,” he responded.
The fact that Starr’s days with the band were numbered did not make them any easier. Randy Biro was in his hotel room in Brazil when he got a call from Susan. According to Biro, she was “yelling and screaming at me because I was talking shit about Mike Starr. Like calling him a loser for being kicked out of the band to his face.
“I’m like, ‘What the fuck?’” According to Biro, Susan said Starr had told her that Biro was saying mean things to him. “I would never, ever say something mean to the guy, especially when he was just about to be kicked out,” he said. Susan was yelling at him, and Biro was dishing it back. The conversation got so heated and so loud, Biro claims, that Mary Kohl, the band’s associate manager, could hear Susan yelling at him on the phone while standing in the corridor outside the open doorway to Biro’s room.7
Over the years, Mike Starr gave several excuses for why he was kicked out or left the band, some accurate, others outright fiction. “He told me that Jerry didn’t like him and Jerry wanted him out of the band and that he was blackmailed out of the band by Susan Silver,” his close friend Jason Buttino said. The evidence—Susan’s comments that the band made the decision to fire him and her phone call to Biro in Brazil—shows his blackmail claim is false.
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