Alice in Chains

by David de Sola

  “When she died, that was it. He was done,” Randy Biro said.

  “After she did pass, I just remember thinking, ‘Oh, no.’ You could almost see the writing on the wall, because that was Layne’s soul mate,” Jeff Gilbert said. “Whenever I saw them together, they had that bond, so I thought that’s not going to be good.”

  “I think it’s very likely he used her death as an excuse to throw in the towel, because that’s what we do. The addict is always looking for excuses to use, and that’s a pretty good one,” Michelle Ahern-Crane said.

  If this generally held opinion is accepted and presumed correct, then her death triggered an irreversible downward spiral in which Layne would take his drug use to lengths that few could imagine or sustain.

  PART IV

  1996–2001

  Layne doesn’t want to tour. I’d like to tour, but for obvious reasons Layne fell out of being in the public eye. Everybody knows what those reasons are.

  —Sean Kinney

  Chapter 23

  If I use heroin again, I will die.

  —JOHN BAKER SAUNDERS

  IN 1996, DAN GALLAGHER and his wife moved into the house next to the small two-room house that John Baker Saunders had been living in near the Crown Hill area. They would hear Saunders playing bass at night. “All I remember is it was very melodious. It was bass, so it was very deep and you could feel it as much as you could hear it and it was just beautiful,” Gallagher said. Saunders played late—often starting at around eleven o’clock at night and sometimes ending at three in the morning.

  After making formal introductions, Saunders admitted it was his music. They discovered they both had common ties to the same general area on the north side of Chicago and several common interests. At the time, Gallagher had left his law firm to work from home while raising his firstborn daughter, Rachel, so his wife could continue her career as a scientist. Saunders and Gallagher began spending a lot of time together. “He was just a really sweet guy, just a really nice guy,” is how Gallagher described him. “Kind of introverted, a … very sensitive person, very intelligent, and a great sense of humor, really funny, really sarcastic, very dry sense of humor, and loved to laugh.” Gallagher and Saunders would often take Rachel to the beach. Baker would occasionally go to Gallagher’s house and would “eat a jar of candy in about ten minutes, and then leave.”

  When Saunders told him about his background and the different bands he had played with, Gallagher didn’t have a clue who any of them were. “I think he liked the fact that I wasn’t a fan or that I wasn’t really very familiar with his work,” Gallagher said. Occasionally, he would be over at Saunders’s home and ask him to play, and he would improvise something. Gallagher didn’t listen to Above until about a year after he met Saunders.

  Although Gallagher wasn’t privy to all the details of Saunders’s personal life, he did know he would hang out with musician friends in Seattle. Saunders mentioned visiting Layne, although these visits may have taken place before he met Gallagher. He would jokingly tell Gallagher that he was proud of his self-control and willingness to stay sober despite being around drugs at Layne’s home. “There’s a big pile of heroin sitting right in front of me and I didn’t even try and steal it,” he told Gallagher. Gallagher added, “That’s how well he thought he was doing in rehab that he could just … It could be sitting right in front of him, and he wouldn’t use it.”

  Eventually, Layne stopped answering the door and wouldn’t let Saunders in. He was worried about Layne, Gallagher said, but at the same time would respect people’s privacy. “If that was Layne’s position and what he wanted to do, I think he would just say, ‘Hey, that’s his decision,’ and just respect it.”

  After the success of Above, Saunders had some money and was eager to continue working on Mad Season. When it came time to do a follow-up album in 1996, Saunders, McCready, and Martin wrote and recorded instrumental tracks for seventeen songs. The idea was to continue what they had done on the first album, but there was a significant problem: Layne and Mark Lanegan never showed up to the studio. According to Krisha Augerot, “I think he [Layne] was pretty much MIA at that point. During the second Mad Season album, Layne couldn’t even come in and sing, he was so fucked up.”

  McCready’s initial plan was to have Lanegan take over as singer and rename the band Disinformation, but, according to Martin, Lanegan never showed up.1 With Mad Season in suspended animation, Saunders began to feel a strain on his finances. According to his brother, he had received a $50,000 advance for the second Mad Season album but, because it was never finished, the label began withholding his royalties from Above to recover the advance money.

  Saunders eventually joined the Seattle band the Walkabouts. In 1997, the Walkabouts did two European tours. The band was performing at a festival in Belgium in September, where a Belgian graduate student named Kim De Baere was in the audience. The two met and hit it off, and she traveled with him for about a week on that tour, which led to a long-distance relationship.

  A few months later, Saunders invited her to visit him in Seattle for two weeks during the Christmas holidays, after which she had to go back to school. He visited her in the spring of 1998, and, after finishing her exams, she visited him in Seattle from June until nearly October—the maximum length of time she could stay on a tourist visa. She still had to write her dissertation, so she went back to Belgium and made arrangements to get a student visa that would allow her to stay in the country longer; she returned in November. He took her to Chicago, where his mother lived. He took her to venues he had performed and places where he used to buy heroin. Saunders had told her he was a recovering heroin addict, and De Baere never saw him use any. However, around Christmas, she made him quit the pills he was taking. She doesn’t know what they were but said he went through withdrawals. She also said he had been fired from the Walkabouts but did not know why.

  With no regular source of income, Saunders discovered eBay and quickly realized its potential application. He told Dan Gallagher that Eddie Vedder had given him a box of rare Pearl Jam 45s and started selling them on eBay. “He’d be like, ‘You know, I figured out you can’t put on ten of those at once, or the value goes way down. You can only put on one or two at once, and then people will pay fifteen dollars or whatever for a forty-five,’” Gallagher recalled. “He would spend his time doing that, marketing the forty-fives and making enough to buy his food and stuff.”

  When he was short on cash, he would stop by Evan Sheeley’s store, Bass Northwest, to pawn gear or instruments. Each time he did this, he raised a few hundred dollars. Sheeley said, “I don’t think he really cared about having some big mansion and a fancy car and all the stuff like that. He just wanted to be recognized as a good bass player in a good band. He wasn’t getting the recognition. It was the other guys who were getting the recognition. He really was the odd guy out in that band. So that’s basically—whenever he and I would hook up and we would talk at my store, that’s more or less what we’d talk about.”

  In late December 1998 or early January 1999, Johnny Bacolas went over to Saunders’s home. He remembers Saunders being stressed over his financial situation because the second Mad Season album wasn’t happening. That was the last time he saw him.2

  On the morning of January 15, 1999, Saunders drove De Baere to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Though she had originally planned to stay for six months, De Baere decided to go back to Belgium to finish her dissertation. The relationship was ambiguous, but De Baere said they had not broken up. “I don’t know if he believed me, but the plan was definitely like, ‘See you soon,’” De Baere said.

  De Baere noticed he had instruments in the trunk, not knowing of his plans for later. She had an eerie feeling at the airport. “I knew when we said good-bye … When I got on the plane, I almost got out because—I don’t know—something got me very worried the way he walked. I will always have that vision in my head of him going down the automatic stairs, our last kind of look.” That wa
s the last time she saw him.

  Later that day, Saunders went to Bass Northwest to pawn a black Fender jazz bass guitar, which he told Evan Sheeley had been given to him by his parents when he was a teenager. “He said that he had to sell it because he needed money for rent, or else he was more or less going to be evicted, which is kind of the same story he gave me every time,” Sheeley said. He wrote Saunders a check for $800 to $850. The bank that the store kept its account with was a block away. Saunders walked over and cashed the check. This was the last time Sheeley saw him.

  Barrett Martin, who lived close to Saunders, would often have him over for breakfast. That evening, Martin called him to suggest that they meet for breakfast or lunch the next day at a restaurant instead of at his house. Saunders agreed. Martin said he was the last person to speak with him.3

  According to the medical examiner’s report, Saunders spent “the majority of his day with his friend, Mr. Christopher Williams.” They had been drinking beers, and at approximately 9:00 P.M. they shot up. Williams described Saunders to authorities as being very high, and Williams noted that Saunders had “quit using drugs for a long time until this incident.” Saunders became “lethargic and unresponsive” before collapsing on the kitchen floor. Williams tried reviving him by pouring cold water and placing ice cubes on him before calling 911. Medics arrived on the scene and declared him dead on arrival. He was forty-four years old.4

  Dan Gallagher had been worried about Saunders because he had been very withdrawn and because he was taking De Baere to the airport that day. At the same time, he had a four-month-old daughter who had a severe cold or flu. “I wanted to go check on him that night, but I literally was [with] two sick kids, and I was trying to keep the baby alive, basically.” He kept walking to the back door to check on Saunders’s house and noticed flashing lights from police cars and an ambulance. He walked over. The EMTs eventually filed out, unsuccessful in their efforts. Knowing they were there for Saunders, Gallagher asked if he had made it. They told him he hadn’t. Gallagher was on the porch when Williams came out. “Here he was on the porch and he looked pretty upset, kind of strung out as you might expect. I actually told the cops, ‘You should arrest that guy. He’s the one that brought the shit over there.’

  “Then we went back and forth. I was yelling at him, and he was yelling at me. A lot of fuck-yous and accusations.”

  Police asked Gallagher to identify the body. “He was laying on his back on the kitchen floor with a mask from a respirator … still on. He was gone at that point. I looked at him and it was Baker but it wasn’t Baker. He was gone.”

  At about three or four o’clock in the morning, Florida time, Joseph H. Saunders woke up to a phone call from Gallagher informing him of the bad news. Joseph called his mother and sister to tell them. “It was shocking and heartbreaking and it made sense, because he had not been communicative, and I know that when he wasn’t communicative, that meant something was wrong,” his sister, Henrietta Saunders, said of her reaction.

  She had normally spoken with her brother about once a month, but noted that in the final months of his life, he had become more difficult to get ahold of. “He was very unhappy in the last few months of his life, and he was casting about for meaning, in my view,” she recalled. The last time they spoke was during the Christmas holiday of 1998.

  “I think there’s an aspect of suicide in Baker’s death,” Henrietta said, citing the uncertainty of his relationship with De Baere, the financial pressures, and Mad Season’s being on hiatus. She noted that at some point in the early 1990s, he had told her, “If I use heroin again, I will die.” There is no evidence Saunders intentionally committed suicide. He had plans to meet Barrett Martin the next day. His sister acknowledges there was an element of self-destruction in his decision to use heroin again.

  Kim De Baere was at home in Brussels when Dan Gallagher called. De Baere had occasionally worked as a nanny for Gallagher’s children. Because, in her words, “I’m not good at good-byes,” and because she had every intention of returning to Seattle, she had not said her farewell to Gallagher before she left town. When he got her on the phone, the first thing he told her was “Hey, you didn’t say good-bye.” After some lighthearted conversation, he told her Saunders had died. De Baere was shocked. “My first reaction was disbelief and anger. Shortly after, I realized it had to be true, because no one in the world would make a sick joke like that, especially not Dan,” she wrote. “[I] did stay angry, first at Baker but mostly at myself, for not seeing that coming and feeling like my departure was the main trigger (of several other triggers) for what he did, not that I think he wanted to die. I think he just wanted some relief.” In the days after getting the news, she was hoping to get a letter from Baker. No letter ever came.

  Evan Sheeley was at his store when he got a phone call from somebody asking, “Have you heard about Baker?” Sheeley didn’t even know he had a drug problem and thought back to the events of the previous day. “It was the money, unfortunately, and I’ve always carried this a little bit heavy on myself. It was the money that I supplied to him that ended up paying for the heroin overdose that killed him,” he said.

  Barrett Martin went to the restaurant the next day to meet Saunders as planned, but he never came. “When Baker died, that was it. The band was done,” he told Mark Yarm.5 His brother, Joseph, and his mother went to Seattle. Joseph assumed responsibility for taking inventory of Baker’s things and clearing out his house. He and his mother also met with Williams.

  “We tracked down the guy that he was shooting heroin with and met with him to find out about what happened. The guy was kind of a younger guy and he said, ‘Oh my God.’ The guy called 911, so they came, but the guy said, ‘Baker was like the most experienced amateur pharmacologist I’d ever seen, so I totally trusted him with the dosages, quality, and everything, and I couldn’t believe that this happened,’” Joseph recalled. He and his mother wanted to talk to him because he had been with Saunders at the end. He described Williams as a “misguided young kid” who may have “idolized” Baker as a musician.

  A memorial service was held in Seattle, attended by approximately two to three hundred people. Representing the family were his brother, mother, and stepfather. Joseph spoke first, followed by Mike McCready, who wrote an editorial for The Rocket in his friend’s memory.6 Dan Gallagher spoke next. Barrett Martin was the final speaker. According to Gallagher, Martin lamented the demise of Mad Season in his speech. Layne did not attend the service.

  Saunders’s body was cremated, and the ashes were interred at the Crown Hill Cemetery, located a few blocks from the house where he spent the final years of his life. “Really little, tiny, out-of-the-way cemetery that I think he had mentioned [liking] to his mom … He used to go there and just chill by himself,” Dan Gallagher explained.

  On the tomb is a series of small plaques listing the names and dates of all the people whose remains are contained there. Midway down the list of names on the right-hand side, one plaque reads, BAKER SAUNDERS 1954–1999 with a bass clef symbol next to the year of his birth.

  Chapter 24

  Layne was still inside that shell. The humor and his wit were in there.

  —JIMMY SHOAF

  IN APRIL 1997, an entity known as the Larusta Trust bought a three-bedroom, fifteen-hundred-square-foot, fifth-floor condominium at a building in Seattle’s University District for $262,000. A review of the property records, when cross-referenced with Alice in Chains’s album liner notes and other public records, shows that the Larusta Trust shared the same Bellevue address as VWC Management, a business management and accounting firm that has counted Alice in Chains among its clients in the past. Larusta is named for John Larusta, the alias Layne was using at the time, according to Ken Elmer. The property was acquired through this roundabout mechanism, presumably to keep Layne’s name off any public records associated with the transaction. This condo would be Layne’s home for the final five years of his life.1

  At some point aft
er Layne moved in, Toby Wright set up a home-recording studio for him. Wright described it: “I think he had some [Alesis Digital Audio Tapes] up there, a small console. I set up guitar paths. I set up a couple of vocal paths, and I think I had a keyboard path as well and some multiple things where he could just go in, hit a button, and record … He had a little drum machine and that kind of thing he used to do demos.”

  Jerry seemingly confirmed the existence of Layne solo recordings or demos during a 2010 interview, saying, “I’d fucking go over to his place and he’d be playing me shit he’d be writing all the time. I would, too. He’d play me stuff, I’d play him stuff, vice versa.” He did not specify the period when he heard these recordings, if they were from the period when Alice in Chains was still active, or if they were from Layne’s later years. Jerry also said in the same interview that there are no more unreleased Alice in Chains recordings with Layne’s vocals, although Sean did not entirely rule out the possibility. “If there is, it’s nothing that we would want, or he would have wanted released.”2

  Jamie, Jim, and Ken Elmer are unaware of any solo demos Layne might have recorded during his later years, though he had the means to do so. The one person who would know for sure is his mother, who declined to be interviewed for this book. Layne did at least one confirmed guest recording from this period. His friend Jesse Holt—known as Maxi when he was the singer and guitarist of Second Coming—was working on a new project under the moniker the Despisley Brothers—the name presumably a play on the R&B group the Isley Brothers. Layne rerecorded his guest vocal for the chorus of the song “The Things You Do,” which is musically different from an earlier version he recorded with Ron Holt in 1988.

  There are at least two recorded versions of this song, the first from the spring or summer of 1996, the second dated November 3, 1997. Musically and lyrically, the two later versions are the same. Stylistically, Layne’s vocals sound very different from any of his previous work. The difference is that in the 1997 version, he sounds indifferent, with no real power or feeling in the performance. Jason Buttino, who has recordings of both versions, attributes the change to the fact that the second version was recorded more than a year after Demri’s death. Buttino also said Jesse Holt—who declined to be interviewed for this book—had to boost the level on Layne’s vocals in the 1997 version because his voice was so soft and quiet.3