Alice in Chains

by David de Sola

  “Get Born Again” and “Died” were the last songs Layne recorded with Alice in Chains.

  * * *

  In the late summer or early fall of 1998, songwriter/producer Matt Serletic and Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello were putting together a supergroup called the Class of ’99 to record a cover of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” for director Robert Rodriguez’s forthcoming sci-fi/horror flick The Faculty. “My thought was, How do you take a quintessentially English track—from production to the English schoolkids to everything about it, the dark English thing—and make, like, a dark American version of it?” Serletic said.

  They decided they wanted the rhythm section from Jane’s Addiction—Martyn LeNoble on bass and Stephen Perkins on drums—with Serletic on keyboards. The four musicians met at Conway Studios in Los Angeles to record their parts. Nine Inch Nails front man Trent Reznor assisted with some of the keyboard programming. Sony sent a crew to the studio to film the recording of the song. As far as Serletic knew at the time, the footage was for a documentary about the making of the song, but it would ultimately be used for a music video.

  They still didn’t have a singer, so Morello and Serletic were asking themselves, “Who can sing this?” A few names were floated, including Zack de la Rocha of Rage Against the Machine. “What about Layne Staley?”

  Serletic doesn’t recall who exactly proposed Layne but thinks it might have been Morello. Everyone in the band was a fan of his, and, in Serletic’s words, “It was kind of an instant yes if he’s up for it, if he can do it.”

  Serletic contacted Sony Records to act as a conduit between them and Layne and relay his proposal. Serletic eventually heard that Layne wanted to do it. By this point, the band was up against a tight deadline and had only about three days to finish the song, which was still missing Layne’s lead vocals and the children’s choir vocals. Serletic went to Seattle to record Layne on a Friday, bringing with him an engineer and a ProTools editor. Layne was supposed to arrive at the studio at nine o’clock—supposed to. He thinks Layne finally showed up at around one in the morning, brought to the studio by Todd Shuss, one of Susan’s employees.

  “This is the first time I’ve ever met Layne. I didn’t know what to expect, but he looked rough,” Serletic recalled. “At this point, he had lost most of his teeth. He was incredibly shy. It was kind of a shock to see him.”

  Susan was also struck by the change in his appearance. “I hadn’t seen him maybe since I went to his apartment to tell him that his girlfriend died,” she recalled years later. “I wouldn’t have recognized him. He looked different—he didn’t look like himself anymore. But he had the same sparkling wit. Looking at him, thinking, ‘My God, he’s physically changed,’ and just as sweet, just as funny—quoting lines off silly Nick at Nite TV shows.”19

  According to Serletic, “He heads up to the lounge upstairs and has a bag of cheeseburgers from McDonald’s. He’s in the lounge, sitting in the corner, really timid. I say hello. He’s chewing his cheeseburger. He really doesn’t engage much, but basically he sits there for about two hours. So now it’s like two or three o’clock in the morning, something like that, when he finally comes out of his shell after I talked to him for a minute. We kind of just small-talked. ‘Oh my God, he’s a great vocalist. I’m excited to work with him,’ anything to make him comfortable.”

  Layne didn’t want anybody else around for the session. Complicating things from Layne’s perspective, according to Serletic, was that this was one of the first times he would be working with people he hadn’t worked with in the past. Serletic and his team tried to make it as comfortable as possible for him, and he finally came down to sing at three or four o’clock in the morning. Serletic had his engineer hide under the console to work the preamp and microphone levels as he ran ProTools, “to kind of make it more of a one-on-one direct experience so he didn’t feel like he was being watched and being judged.”

  Serletic said, “You can only know what you know about the voice you’re so familiar with from radio and albums and so on. It was still there, but at first especially, it was very papery, kind of a whisper, a ghost of himself. It got stronger as he got comfortable with the track and got his headphone mixes right.”

  As was Layne’s trademark, they stacked his vocals. “We stacked it up; we did the harmonies underneath. When you start doing those harmonies, that’s when that great Alice in Chains sound starts really emerging,” Serletic said. It took him a while to get his vocals warmed up, but once he did, he nailed his takes. “Once he got past that, he was in control. I wasn’t having to direct him. He was like, ‘Hey, let me do a double,’ ‘Okay, let me try a harmony now.’ He knew how he liked to approach vocals, and he was still very much cognizant enough to be a pro.”

  Layne’s lisp was apparent, so Serletic had to redo some of the material where the letter s was especially pronounced. “I think even on the final, we did some significant s removal on a couple of things to make it not jump out of the track.” They finished at around 4:30 in the morning. “He seemed fairly excited about it. He had settled into a little more of a comfort zone. He liked the track. He seemed to be excited being part of it. Sad to say, he got paid to be on the record, so there might have been a financial concern as well, to make some money. But I think he was pleased from what I could tell by the time we finished,” Serletic said. For Layne’s scenes in the music video, Sony/Columbia used file footage from Mad Season’s Live at the Moore.

  As soon as the session was over, Serletic went straight to the airport because the children’s choir was recording their vocals in Los Angeles a few hours later. While on the way, Serletic called Don Ienner, president of Columbia Records, telling him, “You’ve got to help this guy.” In Serletic’s words, “You could tell he was not in good shape.”

  According to Serletic, Ienner’s response was “‘We’ve tried. We have. We put him on the corporate jet several times to rehab.’ I’ll always remember this: he said something to me to the effect of ‘You can’t help people if they don’t want to help themselves.’”

  In retrospect, Serletic said, “I think there’s a ghostly quality to the final vocal that he delivered that I think is really haunting and moving in its own right. From a production standpoint, he was a guy that had lost all his teeth; he was not in good shape. It was really sad.”

  Asked years later about working with Layne on the Class of ’99, Morello tweeted, “Mostly sad. He was not well bless him.” There are two things worth noting about this session: first, this was probably Layne’s last studio recording—it’s unclear whether this session or the Music Bank sessions happened first; and second, it was the last time Susan saw him.20

  * * *

  After the Metallica tour, Jerry scheduled a U.S. headlining tour that would run through October, ending with a Halloween homecoming performance at the Showbox in Seattle.21 Layne went to the show but kept a low profile. According to Jimmy Shoaf, Layne watched the performance from backstage and possibly from the audience. He did not perform. During the after-show party, Layne, Shoaf, and a third person posed for a picture together, which surfaced on the Internet several years later. This is one of the last photos of Layne known to exist. That night was the last time Shoaf saw Layne.22

  * * *

  On July 19, 1999, Jerry, Sean, and Mike were scheduled to appear on the nationally syndicated radio show Rockline to promote their greatest hits compilation and box set. Jerry and Mike were in the studio, while Sean was participating by phone from Albany, New York. There was a surprise twist midway through. Layne, who was listening from home, called in the middle of the show and stuck around for the duration of the program.

  Asked about the possibility of the band regrouping to record new material besides the two new songs, there was a bit of a disconnect. Jerry said, “We’ll let you know.” Layne responded, “Okay,” without hesitation.

  “Layne, what’s your attitude toward that? Are you ready to record?” the host, Bob Coburn, a
sked.

  “Sure, I’d do it anytime.”

  A caller asked, “I want to know who Alice is and how does she like being in chains?”

  Jerry deferred the question to Layne, noting he had never asked that question. “That story is basically a bunch of drunken guys who had plans to start a death metal band who dressed in drag. The band never was formed, and so I took the name,” Layne said. There is no evidence of Layne ever making plans to start a death metal band with anyone, according to his former Alice ’N Chains bandmates Johnny Bacolas and James Bergstrom. “No, we were never going to start a death metal band. Probably him trying to sound cool instead of saying he was in a glam band,” Bacolas wrote in an e-mail. There is photographic evidence of at least one early Alice in Chains show where the four founding members took the stage wearing what Mike Starr described as “bad 70s dresses.”23 Only Layne would know how and why he turned all of this into a story about a death metal band that dressed in drag.

  Layne’s sense of humor was firing on all cylinders. A female caller asked, “Out of all your CDs and songs, what do each of you consider your most successful work?”

  “No, baby,” Layne interjected. “What do you consider my most successful work?” The other band members and host Bob Coburn were cracking up.24 This was the last interview Layne ever did.

  * * *

  At some point in the late 1990s or early 2000s, Layne made a rare social appearance at a party at Ann Wilson’s home. In the Wilsons’ memoir Kicking and Dreaming, she wrote, “He wasn’t quite the recluse he would become in the months before he died in 2002, but it was still rare enough to see him that his presence was the talk of the party.”

  After the other guests had left, it was just Layne and Wilson, and Wilson decided she wanted to go for a swim. Layne followed her to her pool but did not jump in. He sat in a lounge chair looking at the sky and drinking a beer while Wilson was swimming. He told her that as a kid, he had excelled at swimming and diving. “I loved to dive into water,” he told her, adding that it was a whole “different world.”

  “Suddenly, a huge meteor went over us,” Wilson wrote. “It looked like a bright piece of burning coal, and for a second it lit up Layne’s face. He looked young again, like a kid who loved nothing better than to dive into water. In that moment, there was nothing dark in his life.”

  “Did you see that?” Layne asked with great excitement, according to Wilson’s recollection. “How close do you think that was to us, Ann? Do you think that almost hit us, Ann? How lucky are we to have seen that?”

  “It was really beautiful,” Wilson said.

  “Do you have any idea … how rare it is for a meteor that big, and that bright, to come that close to us? We are really, really lucky people, Ann. You and me.”

  That was the last time she saw Layne.25

  * * *

  By late 1999, Susan was in what she called “my own private hell” dealing with her husband’s addiction. She was also undergoing fertility treatments and eventually got pregnant. Jerry had new management and was dealing with his own addiction issues during this period. During this period of inactivity, there was a major milestone in Susan’s life. On June 28, 2000, she gave birth to a daughter, Lillian Jean Cornell, the couple’s first and only child.26

  * * *

  About a week after the end of the Boggy Depot tour, Jerry started writing material for a follow-up album. “In ’98, I locked myself in my house, went out of my mind and wrote 25 songs. I rarely bathed during that period of writing, I sent out for food, I didn’t really venture out of my house in three or four months. It was a hell of an experience,” Jerry said in his official biography for Roadrunner Records.27

  Degradation Trip was originally conceived as a double album, with potentially as many as thirty songs for a triple album—Jerry had been given a copy of George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass.28 He put together a backing band consisting of the former bassist for Suicidal Tendencies, Rob Trujillo, and the former drummer for Faith No More, Mike Bordin. At the time, both of them were the rhythm section for Ozzy Osbourne’s band.

  Nearly a year after the Music Bank recording session, Jerry decided to work with Jerden again for Degradation Trip. According to Jerden, Jerry and his band arrived at the studio, set up their gear, and tested levels on the first day. By that point, it was getting late, and Jerden said, “We’ll come back tomorrow. We’ll start fresh, and we’ll start recording.” When Jerden came back the next morning, they were still there, having recorded as many as seventeen songs overnight.

  “What the fuck is going on, Jerry?”

  Jerry played him some of the material, and Jerden didn’t like it. “It was horrible. It was all out of time, the songs went on for, like, I don’t know how long. They were like really bad jam sessions,” he said. “We got to do this right. You and I both worked together before.”

  “No, I like it.”

  At that point, Jerden said, “Jerry, this isn’t going to work,” and effectively ended his role in the project. With Jerden having bailed out, his manager—who also owned the studio—called Elan Trujillo and gave him explicit instructions not to do or record anything with Jerry. Trujillo knew something had gone down but was not privy to specifics. At one point, he was alone in the control room with Jerry in the studio, saying, “Come on! Let’s fucking record this, man! Roll the tape, dude!” Though it pained him because he very much wanted to, Elan had to tell Jerry he couldn’t do it on his boss’s orders. Jerry was furious and stormed out of the studio. Jerry later said, “I started with Dave Jerden. I worked with him for one day, and then I fired him!”29

  In retrospect, Jerden said if Jerry liked the material so much, he should have been producing it himself, which is what happened. He also said they have since patched things up. “Jerry and I have discussed it since then and there’s no hard feelings. I will never say anything bad about Jerry Cantrell. Jerry Cantrell is a great guy.”

  The making of Degradation Trip wouldn’t get any easier. Jerry left Columbia Records in the middle of production. “After we realized it wasn’t going to be on Columbia, we just settled accounts and walked away and called it a good ten years,” Jerry said. In order to settle accounts, Jerry mortgaged his house to reimburse Columbia for money already spent and used the rest to finance the album. He signed with Roadrunner Records. Label executives complimented Jerry on his ambitious idea but said they didn’t think the market would be receptive to double albums. The decision was made to trim down Degradation Trip into a single album’s worth of material.

  “It was difficult to make it one album,” Jerry said. “But I was on a new label, and I’d already been through a year of trying to find a fucking company that wanted to put it out. Nobody wanted to do it. So I made a compromise, which was to put it out as a single album first, with the promise that, at some point, it would be released as I intended it.” Lyrically, Jerry described the material as “what I was going through with Alice coming to a stop, looking at a situation where I had to move on, and not really being happy about it.” The album was scheduled for release on June 25, 2002.30

  * * *

  According to sources, Layne had at least four different dealers who supplied him with drugs at one point or another, although not necessarily all of them at the same time. Of these four, only one—Tom Hansen, former guitarist of the Fartz—has admitted it on the record. In his memoir American Junkie, he wrote of going over to Layne’s home to bring him drugs in July 1997. Of Layne and Demri, he wrote, “She’d always wanted him to quit, and he’d always wanted her to quit, and neither of them had ever been able to.” After getting high on heroin and crack, Layne decided to take a spin on his motorcycle, with Hansen along for the ride. He drove to Bad Animals Studio, where they went into a sound booth and Layne put on Above.31

  While it is not known if Layne tried to kick drugs during his later years, that didn’t stop others from trying to help him. Mark Lanegan went to Layne’s apartment to try and talk to him. Krist Novoselic wou
ld go over and leave food for him.32

  Nancy Layne McCallum contacted drug counselor Bob Forrest and asked if he and Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante—both recovering heroin addicts—would be willing to talk to Layne, a request they agreed to.

  “Layne’s got an odd sense of humor,” McCallum told Forrest. “I told him John [Frusciante] had gangrene once. He said, ‘In his arm? That’s terrible, Mom. John’s a guitar player. He needs his hands and arms. Me? I’m just a singer. I can get by without them.’ I know he was joking, but I don’t like to hear stuff like that. Can you try to talk some sense into him?”

  Forrest and Frusciante met with Layne at his condo. According to Forrest, “His mind worked but he was a million miles away.” He was playing a video game the entire time they were talking.

  “Hey, Layne. What’s going on?” Forrest asked.

  “Nothing. I know why you’re here,” Layne said.

  “Your mom’s worried, man. You don’t look too good.” Of Layne’s appearance, Forrest wrote in his memoir, “His skin took on the look of bleached vellum, his weight dropped below ninety pounds … He had entered the end stage of the game.”

  “I’m okay, though. Really,” Layne insisted as he pretended to listen. The two of them eventually left.

  “I don’t think he’ll come out of this,” Forrest told Frusciante.

  “It’s his life, man,” Frusciante replied.33

  PART V

  2001–2002

  Men’s lives have meaning, not their deaths.

  —George R. R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

  Heavy misfortunes have befallen us; but let us only cling closer to what remains, and transfer our love for those whom we have lost to those who yet live. Our circle will be small, but bound close by the ties of affection and mutual misfortune. And when time shall have softened your despair, new and dear objects of care will be born to replace those of whom we have been so cruelly deprived.