by Greg Prato
ADAM KASPER: It was almost six months of recording. My role was an assistant engineer, but it ended up morphing into engineering a lot of it — there was bad friction between the engineer and the producer. There was friction everywhere — but sometimes that creates great art. The engineer tried to mix a song, I think Beinhorn may have tried to mix one, and it was just sounding terrible.
MATT CAMERON: There was a lot of wheel spinning going on — we would spend three days on a guitar part. It got silly. We knew we had a good record in there, but I think we were all just sick of it — we didn’t care anymore. And then lo and behold, Brendan O’Brien came in and mixed it — he did it in like a week and a half or two weeks. He worked the complete opposite of the way we were working — just knocked it out. When I took the mixes home and listened to it, I realized we had a really good record.
SUSAN SILVER: When Cameron Crowe was making Singles, Jeff Ament worked on the set on the art direction. The set that he created as Cliff Poncier’s apartment had stacks of cassettes lying all over — one was Cliff ’s demos. Jeff went so far as to put song titles on the cassette — something no one looking at a movie would ever see. Chris was visiting the set, saw that, took those song titles, and wrote those songs as a gift for Cameron. The a&r guy at A&M, as a gift, pressed them into CDs. Put the cover artwork that Jeff had put on Poncier’s demo, pressed up a thousand, and gave them to us. They got around. “Fluttergirl,” “Spoonman,” “No One But You,” “Missing,” and I think there’s one more.
ADAM KASPER: A lot of the songs — “Black Hole Sun” — the demos were just amazing. The final product didn’t change a whole lot from the demos the band had made on their own.
EDDIE VEDDER: They’d just finished Superunknown, and Chris had given me a copy. We went up for a hike up into the Olympic Peninsula — this eight-hour walkabout thing. And I got to talk to him about it the whole trip[laughs]. I felt like an apprentice — he was so kind and giving with talking about whatever that process was. “I don’t use a lot of background vocals — you use a lot of background vocals, and a lot of effects.” He started laughing, like, “I don’t know, I don’t really think so.” And I’d ask him about publishing — all this shit — the poor guy just wanted to take a hike and get away from this stuff ! And here we are — looking at the dirt, trudging along these switch-backs going vertically, listening to this shit from me.
Then I remember being on the side of some cliff. We had climbed up real easy, and then on the way back down, we got stuck on the middle of this cliff. He was above me and I was below. I was like, “I don’t see a way out of this” — we just sat there thinking about it for like five minutes. And then we both started laughing — it was just such a bizarre situation. Both our records were done, and we just started laughing like, “Well, I guess the records are going to sell pretty well!” Kind of like the mystery of whatever had happened. Two nights later they played this club, I think it was rkcndy, they were playing the Superunknown record. I remember that being beyond the beyond — all cylinders were firing.
SUSAN SILVER: The sense of pressure was never there, because the thing about Soundgarden and Alice — they had really clear musical direction within the group. What an outside producer or a&r person had to say about the music was irrelevant — it really just bounced off. In that sense, there wasn’t pressure from the outside. Internally, everybody had a pretty strong agreement as to what music they liked. They were making some amazing music. Of course, by that time, a big part of [Alice in Chains’] focus and struggle was drug addiction.
JERRY CANTRELL: We had a meeting one day at the office. Sean came down — he’s all animated. He’s like, “I had a dream. We put this record out — it’s an acoustic EP called Sap. People loved it. It was great, I could see the whole thing.” [1992’s] Sap, I think, was off the demo tapes that we did for Singles. Cameron wanted a song, so we got him to pay for us to record ten songs [laughs]. We gave him an inflated budget. We came up with “Would?” for the movie, and we demoed a bunch of shit. We had all this acoustic stuff, and we’re thinking, “What the fuck can we do with this? We’re a hard rock/ metal band.” We figured people might not dig it, also [laughs]. We put out an EP — put it in the stores without any advertising at all. That record, until the movie Clerks came out, only a real select, handful of people knew that record even existed — until “Got Me Wrong” got released as a single again years later.
MARK ARM: I was friendly with Alice in Chains, but I didn’t know them well. I knew Layne a little bit. I didn’t meet those guys until after they had already put out [Facelift]. My girlfriend was sort of hanging around Layne’s girlfriend. So I hung out with those guys for a while, because we had the same “hobby” [laughs]. But it was Jerry Cantrell who called and asked me to sing on Sap[on the song “Right Turn”]. I was surprised, like, “Why would you want me to sing?” I could understand why they’d want Chris Cornell to sing [laughs].
SUSAN SILVER: [1992’s] Dirt record — the making of the record — started to be compromised. It took longer periods of time to get things done. It started to be undeniable. After Andy died, there’s this denial factor. And I was already deep in a struggle with my own brother, who was also a heroin addict. For me, this couldn’t happen to someone else who hasn’t gone down that road already — because they’ll see this is where it leads. So I had a certain amount of denial that it was a problem with Layne in the beginning. And then it just became my life as the Dirt cycle unfolded. I’ve spent more hours in every single day focused on and dealing with heroin addiction than I did managing my client’s career. It became a behemoth. I lost my brother to the battle, so it was all-consuming. It was a horror show so much of the time — which ultimately led to nothing except pure trauma on my part, to see my own husband go down that road so many years later. It was shocking.
By the beginning of the tour cycle with Dirt, it was something that I was dealing with every day. And through that cycle, there were many cancellations and incidences. But Layne never gave up hope. He was not a sneaky drug addict — he was open about his struggle. He tried so hard on numerous occasions to get clean — through rehabs, and was willing to talk to people about it. He was willing to talk to the press about it. He was really honest about it — often apologetic about it. It kept taking him down.
JERRY CANTRELL: Dirt was a heavy record. We came down to L.A., and things had gotten darker around the band. As they will — if you’re fucking around with the wrong shit. And we were. We rented a ranch house out in Malibu, and we rehearsed in it. We were coming up with all this stuff that was just agro. Super powerful, very heavy lyrical content. It was a serious step up from Facelift — I equate it, as far as artistically, [to] what I was saying about Nirvana from [Bleach] to Nevermind. To many people, it’s a record unto itself. I don’t think there’s a record like that.Dirt, from top to bottom, is just an assault, man. It’s beautiful, it’s moody, and it’s no-fucking-holds-barred — no punches pulled at all. Beautiful, dark, and ugly at the same time. We came down to L.A., started tracking the record, and that Rodney King verdict came down. The fucking town went up in flames. We were staying at the Oakwoods in Venice — so we had to come from Studio City to Venice while the whole city’s in a riot. We called up Tom Araya from Slayer, and we went out to the desert and hung out there for a while, ’til the shit cooled down. We had to postpone until the riots fucking chilled out. That’s a moment I’ll never forget — tied to that record.
JONATHAN PLUM: It was amazing being in the studio with Layne — he was an explosive singer. This is true with all those bands — earlier on they weren’t as good in the studio, and later, after they did touring, they’d be remarkably better. In the early days, Layne wasn’t super-proficient at singing in the studio. But later on, everything was one take. The latter stuff probably was when he was deep into the drug thing. It was weird — I didn’t know what he was doing, or what he wasn’t doing. He seemed like a quirky artist at that point. He was temperamental. He’d come into
the studio, and be really friendly and funny — and present. And then when he would do his tracks, he got really focused and edgy. When things wouldn’t go right, he’d get pretty pissed off. The producer on their later stuff was Toby Wright, and I remember both of us sweating — trying to keep things rolling smoothly, because he would start yelling. Then he’d come back in the control room, listen, and just go back to his happy/normal self. He seemed like he was in a zone — I don’t know if that has to do with drugs or not.
SEAN KINNEY: [Drugs] were taking over. We were doing whatever we could get our hands on — and as much. It definitely started working against us. That record, people could probably identify with it — it’s all right there. It’s laid out — explained exactly what we were doing, what we were going through. It sounds [like] what was echoing in our heads at that time. From then on, some of us continued further down in that direction, and some of us didn’t. That’s a tough album for me. People are like, “That’s your greatest record.” It’s bittersweet.
JERRY CANTRELL: We all partied man, so to point the finger at [Layne] — might as well point the finger at all of us. Unfortunately, he’s the lead singer, and the lyrical content of what he was writing — he was putting it out there. I always thought that was very brave of him, and I always stood behind that. It’s the type of thing that we always supported ourselves in — going all the way with it, whether it was good or bad. I mean about expressing it artistically. We dicked around — I don’t think none of us can say we didn’t try it, in one form or another. I was first introduced to it in Europe on one of our first tours. There was, like, two days missing that I don’t remember very clearly — except all of us being very ill and on a bus. I guess it’s something that spoke to Layne, but his experience wasn’t anything different than ours. We all had our little vices. If you fuck around with that long enough, it’s going to turn on you.
NANCY LAYNE McCALLUM: I didn’t relate to it at all. I didn’t know any of the code words for the drugs or the lifestyle. It was foreign territory.
MATT VAUGHAN: [Gruntruck] did a couple of tours with them. For Gruntruck, it was double-edged. They went from being beer-drinking best friends to doing it “the Alice in Chains way” — which is a little nastier, and it got ugly in the end. Susan Silver had a bodyguard for Layne. I remember asking her, “Why do you have a bodyguard for him? They don’t seem that popular yet.” And she said, “It’s not for the band, it’s to make sure fans and dealers aren’t getting to Layne.” I think the bodyguard slept in the same room, or outside Layne’s room. At the same time, Alice in Chains had a lot of young girls that were always hanging on them — as do most bands — but they didn’t just walk away, let’s say. There was some Mötley Crüe–styled behavior going on with Alice. Guys like me, Gruntruck, and most guys from Seattle, that was not our style — to be messing with fourteen-year-olds, and stuff like that. That was more the L.A./Coconut Teaszer/Sunset Strip scene. It was different — at times funny, but after a while, not funny at all. A lot of drugs. It was more of an L.A. trip than a Seattle-style trip.
KURT DANIELSON: Tad did a tour opening for them — right before Inhaler came out. Layne was going through one of his periodic attempts to kick his dope addiction. Layne’s lyrics remain as naked testimonials of what it is to try to live through being a heroin addict — a story that is difficult to tell, not least because it is almost impossible to survive.
TAD DOYLE: [Layne] was pretty mellow outside of the rock thing. Of course, Kurt Danielson and I did most of the talking when we were hanging out with him. He’d just sit and laugh, make comments every now and then. They’re all really funny guys — they had futures in being comedians if the rock thing didn’t turn out too well. We were in a van, and they were on a touring bus. They always had us riding with them — playing video games and listening to music.
MARK ARM: I knew Layne a little bit. I remember one time I went to one of their shows at the Coliseum. Layne was trying to stay clean — so was I. He was staying at a hotel, because he didn’t want to go back to his apartment where his girlfriend was — he was trying to remove himself from the people who were still doing drugs. So we went back to his hotel, and watched The Player [laughs].
MATT VAUGHAN: Silver and Curtis worked together with Alice in Chains the first year or two, and eventually, Susan ended up managing them herself.
SUSAN SILVER: [Pearl Jam’s] stuff was taking off so big — [Kelly Curtis] just really wanted to focus … it was hard, because drugs were becoming a real issue, and he managed Mother Love Bone when Andy died. It was too painful.
SEAN KINNEY: Everybody was there [two festivals in Brazil, during January 1993] — L7, Chili Peppers. It was a big gig down there. That was another bittersweet moment, because our bass player was leaving — that was the last show we did with him. It was one of the biggest shows we played — probably 100,000 people. You’re just looking down the whole time, bummed out, because the bass player [Mike Starr] is leaving. And I’d known the guy since … me and him were in garage bands when we were, like, nine. It was a sad moment, but hanging out was cool. The parties were always going on. At that time, there’s partying where it’s fun, and then it takes over. It’s not a party, it’s your fucking lifestyle. It’s a huge dependency, and you’re sick if you’re not having your whatever it is you’re having. It’s “the trick” — it’s not anything that’s glamorous, cool, or fun.
And it’s weird down there — Beatlemania kind of shit. That opened my eyes — I don’t ever want to be this huge, Beatley kind of band, where you can’t go anywhere, with people chasing you and jumping on your car. When you’re a kid, you’re like, “That’s so cool! ” It’s terrifying — “I think these people will kill me if they get a hold of me.” There were a lot of eye-opening things there, but it seemed to me it was really a closure of one of us leaving, and the drugs spinning out of control.
BEN REW: The band wanted to fire him when they first got signed, but the label told them to keep him, because he was so good-looking. Poor Mike — it would probably would have done a lot better for his health in the future if they would have fired him.
SUSAN SILVER: His focus became more “lifestyle” than the music.
JERRY CANTRELL: I think we toured with Ozzy for half a year. It was a real family-type thing. Hanging out with Zakk [Wylde], Randy [Castillo], Mike [Inez], and Ozzy was great. So when we decided to make that decision, we made one phone call — we called Mike. 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! [Laughs.]
MIKE INEZ: I had just finished a twelve-month tour with Ozzy, supporting the No More Tears record. One of the last bands to open up for us was Alice in Chains. We were in Nevada mixing Live and Loud with Ozzy. Sean called me from Brazil, and said, “What are you doing?” They were going to make a move on their bass player. Went up to Ozzy and said, “Is it cool? I hate to leave you in the lurch.” It’s as clear as day — he says, “If you don’t go, we’ll have to go to the hospital. It’s going to take me about a week to get my foot out of your ass!”
I ended up not going to Brazil. I was going to hop on a plane, and jam with the guys without practice or anything. Then Sean and Jerry called and said, “We’ll meet you in London, and we’ll do two or three days rehearsal.” So I flew to London, and we did, I think, twenty-one shows in sixteen or eighteen countries. It was an amazing schedule, right off the bat. These guys were so burnt from the time travel — going down to Brazil and then to London. We spent the first day just smoking this killer hash [laughs]. We got two rehearsals in — I think it was us and Screaming Trees. We just tore up Europe — it was a trial by fire for me. Looking back, I don’t know if I would have jumped in without thinking about it more [laughs]. I mean, I wouldn’t take it back for the world, but it was such a crazy thing — to just hop on a plane, and now I’m in Alice in Chains. We put a lot of road miles in. I think at the height, there
was one year we did 350,000 road miles — and that’s not even including the tour bus. That’s ten, eleven times around the earth in the air in one year.
STU HALLERMAN: I did some demos for them, and hosted them [at Avast! Studios] for some rehearsals. [1993’s] The Last Action Hero Soundtrack, they wrote songs for that — Mike Inez was in the band at that point. Layne was having “arm problems” then. He would show up at the studio promptly, but then lock himself in the bathroom almost all day. He would come out, and sing a verse and a chorus, [and say] “Alright, you got the idea?” Then disappear back in the bathroom.
JERRY CANTRELL: Things change, and things change quickly. All of a sudden, we’re able to buy houses — we’ve been living on people’s couches for years. Even when we weren’t touring, because we were working so hard, what’s the point of buying a fucking house? We’re never home. So by the time we got home after Dirt — this is like two years, making that record and touring. We were done by the end of that. It puts a wear on you, and you develop a few bad habits here and there that are not conducive to stopping. It’s not like, “Oh, you become a drug addict.” It’s something that develops over time. And it’s also indicative to the gig — because you’re the party in town every night. We had a lot of fun doing it for a lot of years. And then we, all of a sudden, had a lot of time off and a shitload of money.
CHAPTER 26
“We might as well start talking to majors”: Mudhoney, Tad, Skin Yard, Screaming Trees, Melvins, Brad
In 1992–1993 Mudhoney and Tad issued their major label debuts, Piece of Cake and Inhaler. While Skin Yard broke up, the Screaming Trees scored a breakthrough hit with the song “Nearly Lost You,” and the Melvins entered the studio with Kurt Cobain as producer for their major label debut, Houdini. And at the height of Pearl Jam’s popularity, guitarist Stone Gossard launched a side band, Brad.