Alice in Chains

by David de Sola

  “When we found him, I walked into the dining area of his home. I walked over and I asked the police if I could move things off the couch, and they said, yes, I could,” McCallum would tearfully recall years later. “And I sat down with Layne, and I talked with him, and I told him I’m so sorry it turned out like this, because I always believed because he was smart, and he had the money, and he had the time, and he knew he’d been to treatment thirteen times, he’d been in the emergency [room] three times, he’d died three times—I knew he had what it took. And still it took him out.”10

  According to Elmer, “We saw Layne on the couch and the needle in his leg, and he was certainly deteriorated in color. And Nancy went outside and just caved in to the corner of the room, and she was just devastated, as you can expect. I said my last good-byes to Layne, told him that Demri was waiting for him, and that was that.”

  Chapter 27

  What could I have done? What could we all have done?

  —KEN ELMER

  WITH THEIR WORST FEARS confirmed, Jim Elmer and Nancy Layne McCallum began the process of notifying Layne’s relatives, friends, and bandmates. Jim spoke with Susan and wound up leaving messages for Liz and Jamie.

  Jamie Elmer was in a movie theater in Santa Monica, California. After the movie was over, she saw her parents had called several times. Her mother left a voice mail saying, “Honey, you need to call me and your dad.” The fact that they were together was a sign that something was wrong, because they had been divorced for nearly fourteen years.

  “I knew that it was the phone call I had thought about getting for years,” Jamie said. She called her mother back, who calmly told her, “Layne’s passed away.” Jamie flew up to Seattle the next day. “We were all obviously just incredibly sad and heartbroken, but also relieved. Because I think we all knew that Layne was suffering so much, to see him physically so sick and just not well. I would say that most of us all felt some relief, for sure, to know that he wasn’t suffering anymore,” Jamie recalled.

  The consistent reaction to Layne’s death from friends and family was that although tragic, the outcome was not surprising. “When somebody’s in that position for years and years, you know what the end result is, so that was not a surprise. Was it still a shock? Of course it was, but it was something that you would expect,” Jim Elmer said.

  Ken Elmer was at home when he got the call from Jim. “Dad called fairly quickly after it happened. I don’t think he wanted me to see it on the news. He was in shock, but it was one of those ‘We knew this day was coming’ type of shocks,” Ken said. He had not seen Layne since the late 1980s or early 1990s and was blown away. “Over the next twenty-four hours, it was, ‘What could I have done? What could we all have done?’”

  “I loved him and will always love him,” Susan told Charles R. Cross. “He was like a brother to me. He was this little broken but gentle spirit. We did everything we could think of to help him choose life, but sadly the disease won instead.” Jerry and Sean told Cross they hadn’t spoken with Layne for at least two years.1

  Mike Inez had just returned to his home in Big Bear Lake, California, from his former Ozzy Osbourne bandmate Randy Castillo’s funeral in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He got a phone call from Sean telling him Layne was dead. Mike was in disbelief.

  “Are you sitting down? Layne’s gone.”

  “Oh, my God, you’re kidding.”2

  Johnny Bacolas got a call from Nancy Layne McCallum or Jim Elmer and spoke to both of them. “It’s going to be on the news very soon. Layne’s gone; he passed away,” he was told. Bacolas turned on his TV, and within twenty minutes it was breaking news.

  James Bergstrom was driving across the Tacoma Narrows Bridge when he found out. He thinks he heard it on the radio or got a call from Johnny Bacolas. “It hurt deep, because that’s part of your childhood,” Bergstrom said. “We all knew the direction his life was headed. We’d pray for him, but still, when you hear that news, things go into reflection instantaneously. My mind just relapsed. I just remember for a long while that I just listened to his music, and that voice, every time I hear it my eyes well up, and tears would come out for a long time. They still do.”

  Someone tried to contact Nick Pollock at his mother’s house. This person told his mother what happened, and she immediately got in touch with her son before he found out through the media. “I was devastated by that news and was not in a good state upon hearing the news. Probably for a number of hours I was extremely distraught. And so it was good to hear it from her. It was good to hear it from my mom instead of getting it from the news, because I don’t want to fall apart when I’m at work or school or whatever I was doing at the time,” Pollock said.

  Toby Wright and his wife were halfway to the Burbank Airport, en route to Seattle to record Layne’s vocals. He got a call from Susan saying Layne had passed away. They all cried. Wright told her he was already on his way, and she told him to come for the memorial service. “Spacey”—the song Layne was supposed to sing vocals for—did not make the cut for Welcome or any subsequent Taproot release, although the band has performed it live in its original instrumental form.3

  Dave Jerden heard about Layne’s death on the news and started getting phone calls and e-mails. “I was crushed, of course—I still am. I felt terrible. All I heard about was in the news. It was just a really sad thing. The world lost a major talent. That’s what heroin does. That’s the reason I hate drug dealers—[Layne’s dealer] who came in and told me to change the mix. He didn’t get that mix changed, but he changed Layne, that fucker. That guy should die.”

  Randy Biro was in a San Diego–area prison watching the news when a story was read, with words to the effect of “Rock star dies of heroin overdose,” without identifying Layne. Biro’s initial reaction was “Oh God, no. Please don’t let it be him.”

  “When they came back and they said it was him, I almost passed out. It was probably one of the saddest moments of my life, just looking back at it right now. I remember where I was sitting,” Biro recalled. “I knew he had been dead for a while, but at the time, I’m sitting in prison. You can’t cry over it or anything. So I never got to let it go, never had the opportunity.”

  Randy Hauser was in a medium-security federal prison in Sheridan, Oregon, when another inmate who had been a musician in Seattle approached him privately and told him. “I was devastated,” Hauser said. “I’m crying, and he’s making sure that nobody sees me. I’ve got this reputation to keep up to survive in prison. Here I am crying because one of my kids died.”

  Chrissy Chacos was in the hospital, having just given birth to her second son. She had to remain hospitalized an extra week because she had undergone hernia surgery. “I was watching the news. They said, ‘Body of Layne Staley, Alice in Chains, dada, dada, da.’ I completely lost it, right then and there. I couldn’t believe it.” One coincidence that made Layne’s death hit even closer to home was the fact his body was discovered on April 19—her oldest son’s birthday.

  Ron Holt got a phone call from Dave Hillis. “Two nights later, Raj Parashar and Dave came out to my house in Everett, and we drank my homemade absinthe, and I took Xanax, and we went out and partied in Layne’s honor.”

  Pearl Jam was in the studio working on their Riot Act album when they heard. Eddie Vedder wrote the song “4/20/02”—about Layne’s death—the same night. According to McCready, “He recorded it at, like two or three in the morning, just with producer Adam Kasper. I think he was just so angry and he wanted to get it out.” The song would appear as a hidden track on some editions of Lost Dogs, the band’s B-sides compilation. “I think the reason it’s hidden is because he wouldn’t want it to be exploitative,” McCready explained. “I think he wants it to be hidden so you have to find it and think about it.”4

  Fans gathered to mourn at the International Fountain at Seattle Center at a vigil organized by Cain Rarup, an Alice in Chains fan. The event began at around 6:00 P.M. on Saturday, April 20—approximately twenty-four hours aft
er Layne’s body was discovered. Attendance was estimated at about two hundred people. The three surviving members of Alice in Chains came, as did Mike Starr, along with Susan and Chris Cornell. Jerry hugged friends and fans but didn’t speak much. Sean was quoted as tearfully saying, “My heart is broken. I’ve lost a lot of friends. But this…”5

  Jeff Gilbert attended the vigil. “It seemed like everybody was kind of in a daze. We knew it was just going to be a matter of time for him, but when it happened, you can’t ever prepare yourself for that, and it was wretched.”

  Three days after his body was discovered, the surviving members of Alice in Chains released a statement on their Web site that said they were feeling “heartbroken over the death of our beautiful friend” and described Layne as “a sweet man with a keen sense of humor and a deep sense of humanity” and “an amazing musician, an inspiration, and a comfort to so many.” The statement concluded, “We love you, Layne. Dearly. And we will miss you … endlessly.” The statement also asked that the media honor the privacy of Layne’s family and gave the name and address of a rehab center in Bellevue where people could send donations in Layne’s name.6

  A few days later, Jim Elmer and Nancy Layne McCallum organized a group dinner at the Ruins. Besides Layne’s family, other guests included the other members of Alice in Chains and their management, as well as members of Pearl Jam and Soundgarden and other close friends of Layne’s. Jamie Elmer praised Eddie Vedder in particular, calling him “the nicest, most supportive person there in the whole crowd, and I will never forget that.”

  Jamie said, “He and his girlfriend sat outside with my sister and me, and [he] was just so nice and real, where most of the other people in the band didn’t even talk to us in the family. It was very odd. But he was so warm and nice to us, and was very—he came up to my parents and—he had manners, like coming up and giving parents condolences, and he was just really kind.”

  A second vigil at Seattle Center was organized for Friday, April 26, promoted through fan sites and word of mouth. Despite rainy weather, about four hundred people came out. Layne’s parents, stepfather, and sister talked to people, gave hugs, and accepted condolences.7

  Layne’s body was cremated, his ashes in the possession of his mother. A private memorial service was held at Kiana Lodge on Sunday, April 28. Located on Bainbridge Island along the shore of Puget Sound, the property is often booked for events like weddings, receptions, or proms. This is the same venue where Layne and Demri were supposed to be married several years earlier.8

  As the preparations were being completed, Nancy Layne McCallum called Kathleen Austin the day before and said, “Kathleen, I just want to prepare you, there’s going to be a lot of pictures of Demri.”

  Austin explained, “Because Layne basically became a recluse after Dem died, a lot of the stories about Layne ended when Demri died. So the people that got up and talked, a lot of the stories were ‘Layne and Demri and I,’ and there were photographs of her I’d never seen before. It was like being at a memorial service for my daughter six years later.” As people walked into the room, there was a large bulletin board where guests could display their photos. Jamie Elmer estimated that about half of the photos included Demri.

  There was a small wooden stage in the middle of the room for people to speak. Jim Elmer’s father, the Rev. William Elmer—a minister in the Evangelical Church of North America—spoke. Jim Elmer, Nancy Layne McCallum, and Liz Coats also spoke. According to Jim, “I had made comments to the effect that if there was one thing to remember Layne by it was his courage to be himself, and he was no phony. That was the word that I typically thought of, of Layne, not as a little child—I mean, as a little child, he had courage. As he grew up, he knew what he wanted to do somewhat, but he had the courage to go for it, and that was my word of the day; that’s how I’ll always remember him.”

  “Looking back on it, a number of us obviously [mentioned] Demri when … speaking at the service. I think that most people had the sense, like, ‘Well, at least now they’re together,’” Jamie Elmer said.

  Ken Elmer didn’t speak, but he took solace in childhood memories of his stepbrother: family vacations, playing together, private moments from long before fame or drug addiction had entered Layne’s life. “At the funeral, I was very anti–wanting to give that Layne up. And that’s still the Layne that I know in my head, and I am very content with that,” he said.

  After Layne’s family spoke, there was an open microphone. Barrett Martin wrote the eulogy.9

  Jerry and Susan both spoke, according to multiple sources who were present, none of whom recall the specifics of what they said.

  Johnny Bacolas was having a difficult time. “That day was like a bad nightmare for me. I was pretty much in shock. I wanted to speak, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t get up there. I literally felt like I was frozen, almost. Like I just went through the motions, somehow got there, experienced it, and got back home.”

  For Nick Pollock, who had stepped away from the public eye and kept his distance from his musical past, this was the first time he had seen many of his friends from the music scene, including Bacolas and Bergstrom. “It was still kind of surreal to be going through that. I still can’t believe this is happening and we’re doing this.”

  Chris Cornell joined Ann and Nancy Wilson for a cover of the Rolling Stones’s “Wild Horses.” They also performed “Sand,” a song the Wilsons had originally recorded for the Lovemongers album Whirlygig. The song was written several years earlier for Ann’s gardener, who died of AIDS.10

  Alice in Chains was done, for the time being.

  PART VI

  2002–2014

  Here’s what I believe. Shit fucking happens. That’s rule one. Everybody walking the planet knows that. Rule two: things rarely turn out the way you planned. Three: everybody gets knocked down. Four, and most important of all: after you take those shots, it’s time to stand up and walk on—to continue to live.

  —Jerry Cantrell

  The real glory is being knocked to your knees and then coming back.

  That’s real glory. That’s the essence of it.

  —Vince Lombardi

  Chapter 28

  Hey, Officer, have you heard of Alice in Chains?

  —MIKE STARR

  ON THE NIGHT he got home from Brazil after being fired from the band, Mike was in his mother’s basement when he called a friend. “Alley, man, I need you here now.” Steve Alley hadn’t spoken with Mike in a long time but drove over. Mike brought a copy of the twenty-four-track Alice in Chains demo that got the band signed, and they sat in his car until five o’clock in the morning, talking and listening to the demo. “He wanted to listen to it again and again, and he’s like, ‘Hey, man, what do you think about that bass line?’” Alley recalled. “He was trying to grab on to everything that was our past, kind of. He was just trying. He was drawing at straws for bringing back the innocent times.”

  At some point in early 1993, Bryan Carlstrom was pulling into the parking lot of El Dorado Studios. There was an alcove in the front of the building right off Sunset Boulevard, and he saw Mike standing there. “Hey, Mike, what are you doing?” he asked.

  “He walks over to my car, and he had the bottom of a can, and obviously had been cooking heroin in it there in that little indentation of the building, and he didn’t recognize me. He didn’t even know that he was standing in front of the studio that he had once been recording a record at. He didn’t even know where he was. It was a sad time.”

  Mike, for whatever reason, still held a grudge against Randy Biro. A few years after his dismissal from the band, when both of them were living in Los Angeles, Mike called him. In that conversation, Biro said, Mike was “yelling and screaming, fucking high as a kite, blaming me for him being kicked out of the band. He said I manipulated everybody into doing that … I didn’t have that much power. That was insane.”

  According to Aaron Woodruff, the only member of Alice in Chains Mike kept in touch with a
fter his dismissal was Layne. He had a difficult time adjusting to life after Alice in Chains. Besides his escalating drug addiction, people who knew Mike generally tend to agree he never got over not being in the band. He would introduce himself as Mike Starr from Alice in Chains, even though he had been out of the band for years.

  Mike was hired to play bass for Sun Red Sun, the new band started by the former singer of Black Sabbath, Ray Gillen. Jason Buttino said he was “almost one hundred percent sure” that gig was set up for him by Susan. Besides personnel issues within the band, Gillen had developed AIDS and was unable to finish recording his vocals. He died on December 3, 1993. He was thirty-two years old.1

  Mike checked in to the Lakeside-Milam Recovery Center in Kirkland, Washington, where he met another patient named Jason Buttino while they were roommates going through detox. Buttino had no idea who Mike was and didn’t figure it out until he started hearing rumors that the bassist for Alice in Chains was there. “I just thought he was another rocker dude, just like me, and just a normal person.” Mike began feeling uncomfortable with the attention and left the facility within a day of the rumors starting to circulate. Buttino hit it off with John Starr and, later on, with Mike and Gayle. Buttino and Mike began hanging out and became friends.

  According to Woodruff, when Mike was sober, he was fine, a nice guy. But when he was on drugs, he became a completely different person. “[When] Mike was on pills he wasn’t himself—not real selfish but self-absorbed, and he was all about just getting high and doing whatever he did.”

  On April 12, 1994, Mike was arrested for attempting to steal luggage at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston and for possession of marijuana and “possession of dangerous drugs,” identified as Valium. According to the police report, “Witnesses noticed suspect taking bags from an airport baggage area and taking items out of them, placing them into another bag, and switching baggage claim tickets on the bags.” Mike, who was high at the time, later told Woodruff the airline had lost his luggage. He told Buttino he thought he was opening his own bag. According to court records, he served ninety days in Harris County Jail.2