Alice in Chains

by David de Sola

  Rocky Schenck shot the cover in his dining room on September 8, 1993. “The band had come up with the idea for the title and wanted the cover to be a young boy looking into a jar filled with flies. I remember they asked me to use ‘crazy colors’ in the shot, so [I] utilized lots of different color gels over the lights to achieve the final look,” he wrote. Schenck’s assistant made several trips to a nearby stable to collect hundreds of flies with a butterfly net.

  Released on January 14, 1994, Jar of Flies was an immediate success, debuting at the top of the Billboard album chart. It was the first EP ever to reach number 1, a feat that has been matched only once—by Jay-Z and Linkin Park’s Collision Course—in the twenty years since its release as of this writing.

  * * *

  In March 1994, Kurt Cobain was in trouble. Courtney Love had already seen him overdose on heroin a dozen times by the time he tried to kill himself by taking sixty Rohypnol pills in a Rome hotel room with a three-page suicide note clutched in his left hand.3 Despite the history between them, Susan got a panicked phone call from Courtney Love.

  “You have to help me—Kurt’s going to kill himself. What should I do?” she asked. Susan put Nirvana’s manager in touch with Dr. Lou Cox, a New York physician who had worked with Aerosmith and was working with Alice in Chains at the time. Susan told Greg Prato that they agreed to do an intervention but chose a different interventionist, and not everybody showed up.4

  On April Fools’ Day 1994, Cobain went AWOL from the Exodus Recovery Center in Marina del Rey, California, two days after checking in. A week later, his body was found in the greenhouse in his home. He had killed himself by a self-inflicted shotgun blast to the head after shooting up a lethal dose of heroin. He was twenty-seven years old.5

  Susan helped organize a private service for Cobain at a church as well as the public memorial at Seattle Center, both scheduled at the same time out of concern that fans or the media might try to go to the private service. After it was over, Susan felt “the same sort of overwhelming compassion” for Courtney Love as she did for Yoko Ono after the murder of John Lennon. Susan walked up to Love to offer her support. When she was about ten feet away, Love saw her approaching, turned her back, and walked away.6

  “I saw all the suffering that Kurt Cobain went through,” Layne would recall. “I didn’t know him real well, but I just saw this real vibrant person turn into a real shy, timid, withdrawn, introverted person who could hardly get a hello out.”7 Layne’s private views were skeptical of the official story. “Layne was a little more vocal on the Kurt issue, because he never thought Kurt would take his own life,” Jim Elmer said. “He mentioned that multiple times, about that issue, that he never did believe it. And so this was not right after he died, this was years after, too. He still remembered that and just thought that was not characteristic of Kurt.”

  A few weeks after Cobain’s death, Jim Elmer got a call from Courtney Love. She had been trying to get ahold of Layne and somehow got Elmer’s phone number. According to him, they spoke twice. “The gist of the conversation was that she was looking for Layne because she knew Layne and Kurt were friends and wanted to find out what had happened the last few days, that she intimated to me that she was not happy with the outcome that it was a suicide. She thought there was more to it than that, and she wanted to chase down Layne and have a discussion with him.”

  Love was probably assuming that because Cobain and Layne ran in the same social circles—musicians, drug users, and drug dealers—he might have seen Cobain or have some knowledge of his final days. Whether Layne saw Cobain during his final days is not known, but there is evidence of at least one mutual drug connection.

  Cobain confidant Rene Navarette told Nirvana biographer Everett True about an encounter with some of Seattle’s highest-profile musicians in the spring of 1993, who all coincidentally found themselves at the same place at the same time trying to procure drugs. “When Courtney went to England, that was the first time me, Kurt, Dylan [Carlson, guitarist from the band Earth], and Cali [DeWitt, Frances Bean Cobain’s nanny] had a few days to mess around without her … We had too much fun. We would go into town, walk into a drug dealer’s living room: Kurt, Dylan, Mark Lanegan, and Layne Staley coincidentally walking into the same basement at the same time. It was pretty amazing. Everyone had mutual admiration for each other. Now, looking back on it, there were all these great talented guys who were tainted forever because of their drug use.”8

  * * *

  Tool was performing at KISW’s Rockstock concert held at Kitsap County Fairgrounds on May 28, 1994, when Layne made a surprise appearance and joined them for a performance of “Opiate.” According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Layne “looked sickly and wore a wool ski mask to hide his face.”9

  That summer, Alice in Chains had plans to tour with Metallica. They were also on the bill for Woodstock ’94, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the seminal concert festival, scheduled to take place in Saugerties, New York, that August. Layne had just returned from another stint in rehab and had relapsed, while Sean was struggling with a drinking problem.10

  Sean later told Rolling Stone that the final straw was when Layne showed up for practice high the day before the start of the Metallica tour. He threw down his sticks and vowed he would never play with Layne again, a sentiment shared by Jerry. Shortly after, Susan issued the following statement: “Alice in Chains has withdrawn from the Metallica summer tour, as well as an appearance at the Woodstock ’94 festival. This decision is due to health problems within the band. Alice in Chains apologizes to their fans and appreciates their support and concern. The band hopes to resolve the situation in privacy. The members look forward to returning to the recording studio in the fall.” The tour was canceled and—according to Rolling Stone—the band broke up for six months. Candlebox got the band’s slots on the Metallica tour and at Woodstock.11

  Jimmy Shoaf had made plans to tour with Alice in Chains that summer and had spent some money in anticipation of getting paychecks from the tour. He was sitting on a plane about to take off when a stewardess approached him.

  “We’re pulling your bags off. Kevan Wilkins called. He told us not to let you fly.”

  “I was like, ‘Shit!’ That was when I learned my lesson: don’t spend your money before you make it,” he recalled.

  Metallica weighed in on the Alice in Chains situation during the tour. They would play the opening bars of “Man in the Box” with their front man James Hetfield doing Layne’s opening wail while mockingly rubbing and smacking his left arm in a shooting-up-heroin gesture.

  “I can’t tour. I can’t tour,” Hetfield moaned. Drummer Lars Ulrich and lead guitarist Kirk Hammett also made the shooting-up gesture with their arms. Ulrich pressed one of his drumsticks into the vein on the inside of his left arm, so it stuck out like a giant wooden syringe.12

  Sean later said of this period, “Nobody was being honest with each other back then. If we had kept going, there was a good chance we would have self-destructed on the road, and we definitely didn’t want that to happen in public.”13 During this hiatus from Alice in Chains, Layne tried to kick heroin again and found another musical outlet for his creativity.

  Chapter 19

  I’m not going to be like this forever.

  —LAYNE STALEY

  IN THE LATE SPRING or early summer of 1994, Michelle Ahern-Crane was living in Seattle’s Queen Anne neighborhood. She had heard Layne was living in the area but hadn’t seen him in several years. One night she had a very vivid dream about him.

  “I had this epic dream that I was walking around this sixties motel, the kind that every motel room has its own door and you walk on the outside on the railing,” she recalled. “I was walking by all these motel rooms and each door was open; in each room there was a totally different scene going on. I walked by one door and look in and Layne is in the motel room. There’s a kitchenette and there’s a pot on every burner of the stove, they’re boiling over and he was really perplexed and like
, ‘Aaah … the stuff’s boiling over!’ Kinda chaotic. I go in and take his hand, I’m like ‘Let’s get out of here.’”

  The next thing she remembered was “We’re in this gymnasium running around like kids, just having fun, laughing, running, playing like kids.” At that point, her phone woke her up. It was her aunt, Lisa Ahern Rammell, who had introduced her to Layne several years earlier.

  “Guess who I saw last night?”

  “Layne.” Michelle correctly guessed.

  Ahern Rammell said she had been out with another girl the night before when they saw him. Layne gave the other girl a big hug, thinking she was Michelle, and was embarrassed when he found out it wasn’t. Michelle told her about her dream. After their conversation, Ahern-Crane was walking along Queen Anne Avenue. A car drove by and she noticed the passenger. “I just see these huge blue eyes and I just knew it was him. And I look and it’s like, ‘Whoa! That’s so weird, the dream and my aunt saw him last night, and I think that was him that just drove by.’”

  The car pulled over and Layne got out, holding a kitten. She was taken aback by his physical appearance. “He looked really bad. It was pretty shocking because I hadn’t seen him in a long time. It was sad,” she said. He had let his hair grow, and it was his natural brownish-blond color. He had gauze on his hands, which was only partially covered by fingerless gloves. He was wearing a long-sleeve shirt and a leather jacket.

  She told him about the dream and mentioned his running into her aunt and how weird all these coincidences were. Layne told her that he and his mother, who was driving the car, were returning from taking the kitten to the vet.

  “Hey, do you go to AA meetings?” Layne asked her.

  “No, I don’t. I know a lot of people that do. If you want, I could give you somebody’s number, a cool person’s number if you need to do that,” she offered.

  “How about I take your number?”

  She gave Layne her phone number. While flattered by the attention, she wasn’t attracted to him, fully aware of his drug problem. She thought that maybe because of all the coincidences, that might have been a sign she was supposed to help him. She had the impression Layne was interested in her for companionship, not sex.

  Layne began calling her right away. They lived a few blocks from each other and began talking on the phone and hanging out on a regular basis. She would go to Layne’s apartment to watch movies. Although she would often spend the night and they would sleep in his bed, she said nothing sexual ever happened—she never even kissed him.

  “His desire to want to spend time with me without wanting anything but some companionship was nice. Being invited into his rather isolated, private world was intriguing, to say the least. That, coupled with a fantasy that he might get over his addiction, or that I could play a part in him getting over his addiction, was intriguing and even exciting. He was a beautiful person under all of that sickness. But I wasn’t delusional, and I wasn’t about to express these thoughts to him because I guess I had decided rather quickly that ‘to hope’ would be ‘to be disappointed.’ So I remained rather ‘cool’ during our time spent together.”1

  There were visible signs of his drug problem at home, although Layne never offered her any. In the middle of watching movies, Layne would excuse himself to go to the bathroom and stay in there. “Eventually, he’d come out. We’d hang out, talk, watch movies, and then he’d go back into the bathroom again.”

  Layne mentioned the subject of drugs to her twice. During one of the first times she came over, they were watching TV in his bedroom. Layne was sitting on the floor; Ahern-Crane was on the bed. Layne looked up at her and said, “Hey, I want you to know I’m not going to be like this forever. I want to have a normal life, a good life. I want to get married, I want to have kids.”

  Ahern-Crane was surprised. “Okay, that’s good,” was her only response. “Of course I hoped he would have a normal, happy life some day. I want that for anyone. But there was no evidence anywhere that suggested he was serious at that moment.”

  “I thought what he said was sweet, I was flattered because I knew he was saying for my benefit … It was his way of saying to me, ‘I like you.’ ‘If you hang out for a while, I might be able to kick this with your support.’ ‘Give me a reason to stop doing drugs.’ That is what his words meant—at least to some degree. But how can you take someone so loaded on drugs very seriously? He may have thought that in that moment, and he may have considered it from time to time—but the fact is, just as quickly, he was back in the bathroom trying to find a vein.”

  “I found his statement to be simultaneously sweet, flattering, hopeful, and manipulating at the same time.” The second time also happened at his apartment. He invited her into the bathroom, where his music equipment was set up. She walked in and saw Layne sitting on the windowsill. He didn’t say anything, and the two started making small talk. She noticed several plastic bags on a table. She didn’t know what they were at the time, but years later, with the benefit of hindsight, she realized they were full of heroin.

  “I think he invited me back there to see if maybe I wanted to get loaded, but he didn’t offer it,” she recalled. “When he called me into that room and the drugs were in there, I almost feel like that was a test that I passed.”

  Sometimes Layne would play her Mad Season songs he was working on. When they went out, sometimes it was to watch a show by Johnny Bacolas’s band Second Coming. When Ahern-Crane slept over, she remembers hearing knocking on the door at random hours. “Hey, who’s here at one o’clock in the morning?” she asked Layne.

  “Shhhh … Be quiet, don’t answer it,” he said.

  “Layne said it could have been Demri needing a place to crash or wanting to get high. It could have been fans coming over with drugs,” she explained.

  According to Johnny Bacolas, Demri was a semiregular visitor at the house. He declined to comment on any specifics of what happened between them during this period but described their relationship as on-again, off-again.

  Though Ahern-Crane got a small glimpse of his drug use during this period, Layne’s friend Ron Holt heard and saw more, because of their previous friendship and because Holt was also using heroin at the time. They had a mutual dealer. Holt was a regular, but Layne got VIP treatment. Sometimes the dealer wouldn’t let Holt up. One time he heard Layne was at the dealer’s house. Holt sent word upstairs: “Tell him that Ron Holt’s here.” Layne told him to come up, gave him a big hug, and told the dealer Holt was to be respected. “Fucking Ron doesn’t wait,” he said. The two also had candid discussions about their drug habits, which Holt called “junkie talk.” Layne told Holt he was using three grams of heroin a day. Based on that, in addition to roughly the same amount of crack he was using, Holt estimated Layne was spending between $250 and $400 a day on drugs.

  “Every time I saw Layne, I always told him how proud I was of him, and he always treated me like an authority figure. He always treated me like my work meant something,” Holt said. He tried to take advantage of that respect to convince him to kick drugs. “We were having a candid talk about heroin and stuff. I was on methadone at the time, and I was trying to talk him into stopping. He had this thing where he said if I wasn’t meant to be one, I wouldn’t be one.

  “He got mad at me. ‘Don’t bring heroin up. If you’re not going to accept it, don’t try to talk to me about it. Don’t try to talk me out of it.’ That was a bummer to me.”

  * * *

  While tens of thousands of fans were rocking out at Woodstock ’94 in Saugerties, New York—a show Alice in Chains was supposed to perform at and at which, instead, Jerry joined Primus onstage for “Harold of the Rocks”—Layne went on a camping trip near Winthrop, a small town in central Washington. His goal for the trip: to kick heroin. Also on the trip were Johnny Bacolas and two other friends, Alex Hart and Ian Dalrimper. He would try and detox on his own in the wilderness.

  “He was using alcohol to help him with the withdrawal symptoms. During that trip, he w
as very depressed. I’m sure it had a lot to do with the withdrawal, because he didn’t bring any heroin with him,” Bacolas explained. While on a beach along Lake Chelan at two in the morning, Layne broke down in tears, crying on Bacolas’s shoulder.

  “I need help. Would you consider moving in with me and helping me with this? I don’t trust anyone, and I can’t do this on my own,” Layne told Bacolas.

  There was a bigger issue: Layne was suicidal. Bacolas said Layne wanted to jump off a nearby bridge. “He was at a very low point and dope-sick. He wanted to die at that time. I believed him.”

  Shortly after, Layne and Bacolas met up with Hart and Dalrimper and went on a late-night run to a Safeway. “I remember some kid was giving [Layne] shit in the Safeway,” Bacolas recalls. “And Layne just fucking hauls off and clocks the guy.” Layne’s friends grabbed him and ran out of the store before anyone called the police. They wound up driving into a parking lot packed with partying kids. With Layne riding shotgun, Bacolas parked the car next to a pickup truck that was blasting “No Excuses.” Bacolas doesn’t know if this was coincidental or not—there may have been gossip that Layne was in the area. There were three or four kids in the pickup, and another dozen or so standing around nearby gawking at the celebrity in their midst. “They were cranking the song, and everyone’s like ‘No way, that’s not Layne Staley.’” Layne couldn’t resist. “All of the sudden, Layne just starts belting out the chorus of ‘No Excuses’ and nails it,” Bacolas said. “Right when the chorus kicks in, he just belts it, one chorus, and that’s it. It just shut everybody up. There was no question that that’s him now.”

  Michelle Ahern-Crane hadn’t heard from Layne in a few days when she got a message on her answering machine. “Hey, sorry I haven’t been in touch. I went out of town,” she recalls him saying. “I’ll see you as soon as I get back.” Layne didn’t tell her what he was doing or where he was, but Ahern-Crane may have had some idea. “I’m kind of guessing maybe it was some attempt at kicking or something along those lines.” It’s possible the call happened during this camping trip.