The Last Days Of Layne Staley by Charles R.

Cross; In the summer of 1987 , guitarist Jerry Cantrell walked in a raucous Seattle party and saw a man at the center of it all , with bright pink hair pilled atop his head by means of fire poker. "he had a big smile on his face, and he was sitting with two gorgeous woman,". And when Cantrell heard Staley sing, he was convinced their friendship would be a lasting one: "I knew that voice was the guy I wanted to be playing with. It sounded like it came out of a 350- pound biker rather than skinny little Layne. I considered his voice to be my voice." Sometime in the first week of April, 2002 that oversize voice - which fuelled a halfdozen radio hits and helped sell millions of albums - died along with Staley. On Friday, April 19th, his body was discovered in his Seattle condo. The medical examiner estimates Staley had been dead for two weeks, putting his date of death roughly as April 5th. A heroin cooker and a syringe were found next to Staley, and though authorities remain uncertain of the cause of death, drugs clearly played a role. Staley was thirty-four. His death ends the fifteen-year history of Alice in Chains, of the most successful Seattle bands of the Nineties. It also ends one of the longest-running personal tragedies in rock, as Staley's protracted drug problems were well documented both in the press and in his powerful lyrics. Half of the songs on 1992's 4- million- selling Dirt touched on heroin addiction, a theme that Staley detailed painfully in such songs as "Junkhead" and "Down in a hole." "I wrote about drugs, and I didn't think I was being unsafe or careless by writing about them, " Staley told Rolling Stone in one of his last interviews. "They worked for me for years, and now they're turning against me - and now I'm walking through hell." The end didn't come as a surprise to band mates who had watched his slow deterioration and failed rehab efforts, but it still left them grieving. "It's like one of the world's longest suicides," says Alice in Chains drummer Sean Kinney. "I'd been expecting the call for a long time, for seven years, in fact, but it was still shocking, and I'm surprised at how devastated I am." Staley's death came at a time when the influence of Alice in Chains on modern rock seemed greater than ever. Groups as diverse as Creed, Puddle of Mudd and System of a Down show Alice's influence in their dark sounds and themes. "When Dirt came out, the thing did not leave my CD player," says Sully Erna, whose band, Godsmack, shares its name with an Alice song. "I've never heard someone's voice hit the tape like that. He's the reason I started singing." Staley was born on August 22nd, 1967, in the Seattle suburb of Kirkland. He began as a drummer but quickly switched to singing with his first garage band, sleze. While most Seattle groups were exploring punk, the initial incarnation of Alice was decidedly glam - Staley wore baby-blue satin suits on stage. "He had a real cockiness about him," says musician Johnny Bacolas, a longtime friend. When Staley teamed with Cantrell, Kinney and original bass player Mike Starr, Alice in Chains quickly gained a Northwest fan base. "He was funny and lucid, and without a doubt he was

not reluctant to be a star," remembers Pearl Jam Mike McCready. Alice signed to Columbia in 1989, and on an early tour they headlined above the then - unknown Pearl Jam. The band played itself in the Cameron Crowe movie Singles, and "Would?" - its contribution to the soundtrack became Alice's first hit, in 1992. Dirt quickly followed and went platinum. By late 1993, as Nirvana and Pearl Jam cooled off, Alice had headlined Lollapalooza and briefly reigned as the most commercially successful Northwest band. In 1994, Jar of flies became the first EP ever to debut at Number One on the Billboard charts. But even before the band's greatest fame, substance abuse problems - not just Staley's threatened to derail Alice. "We partied like demons." admits Kinney. "It took a toll. From 1991 on, it was getting pretty ugly, and Dirt is a shining example of how ugly it got. No one wanted to address it , because no on wanted confrontation." Cobain's death in April 1994 scared Staley into temporary sobriety, but soon he was back into his addiction. "Everyone around him tried over and over again to help him get clean," says Pearl Jam manager Kelly Curtis. "In the end there was little else anyone could do." Alice's managers turned down lucrative touring possibilities and kept the band off the road, hoping that would help. With Alice temporarily on hiatus, Staley formed a side project called Mad Season, with McCready. "I told him ," McCready says, " You do what you want, you write all the songs and lyrics. You're the singer.' He'd come in , and he'd do these beautiful songs." The resulting album , from 1995, quickly went gold and spawned the hit "River of Deceit." The biggest blow for Staley came in October 1996, when his long time girlfriend , Demri Parrott, died of bacterial endocarditis as a result of her own drug abuse. "He never recovered from Demri's death," says Mark Lanegan, formerly of Screaming Trees and one of Staley's best friends. "After that, I don't think he wanted to go on." Following Parrott's death, Staley moved to a penthouse condominium in a secure building and rarely answered the door or the phone. His health deteriorated to such an extent that most of his close friends thought him near death. Abscesses from years of heroin abuse covered his arms, ad he lost most of his teeth. A 1997 internet rumour that he had lost an arm to gangrene became an urban legend. But Staley steadfastly refused to return to rehab. "He was way, way past the point where walking into an N.A. meeting would have been sufficient," says a friend. Journalist Jon Weiderhorn interviewed the band for Rolling Stone' magazine around the time of the album's release. Although he dismissed rumors about his health, Layne Staley refused to comment on whether he was still addicted to heroin. Wiederhorn pointed out Staley's "uncut, dirt-encrusted fingernails", and noted "what appear to be red round puncture marks" from the knuckles to the wrist of the singer's left hand. "And as anyone who knows anything about (intravenous) drugs can tell you," wrote Weiderhorn, "the veins in (the) hands are used only after all the other veins have been tapped out." Staley might not have been visible, but a glimmer of his presence was occasionally felt in Seattle. When AIC's longtime manager, Susan Silver, announced her retirement

in 1998, The Rocket' ran a piece asking But who's to wipe and clean Alice In Chains now?" "It was a dig at Layne and the constant rumors about his health," says Joe Ehrbar. "A few days later, we received a package containing a jar of piss and a bag od shit, with a not attatched saying, "Wipe and change this, motherf**kers!'. It had to be from Layne. What a classic response." For several years, Staley rarely left his condo and spent most of his days creating art, playing video games or nodding off on drugs. He began to mix heroin and cocaine, and he started using crack. Even finding drugs became a physical burden, so he employed a series of dealers and other users who regularly brought him what he jokingly referred to as his "medicine." "His daily life," confides a friend, "was just a extreme struggle to get his medicine. His sense of time became so distorted." Acquaintances would visit after an absence of a year or more, and Staley would insist they'd been away for only a month. "It got to a point where he'd kept himself so locked up, both physically and emotionally," says Kinney. "Even if you could get in his building, he wasn't going to open the door. You'd phone and he wouldn't answer. You couldn't just kick the door in and grab him, though there were so many times I thought about doing that. But if someone won't help themselves, what, really, can anyone else do?" It is a question that has plagued everyone who cared about Staley. "I loved him and will always love him," says his manager, Susan Silver. "He was like a brother to me. He was this little broken but gentle spirit. We did everything we could thing of to help him choose life, but sadly the disease won instead. Even as the sickness progressed, Staley's friends and band mates continued to reach out, with little success. "I kept trying to make contact," Kinney says. "Three times a week, like clockwork, I'd call him, but he'd never answer. Every time I was in the area, I was up in front of his place yelling for him." Both Kinney and Cantrell say they hadn't spoken with Staley for at least two years. Staley had the wealth to continue his addiction unabated, but , ironically, it was money that served as the tip-off that something was wrong: His accountants noticed there had been no activity on his accounts for weeks. On April 19th, his mother and stepfather went to his condo with the police. At 5:50 p.m. they kicked down the deadbolted door and found Staley's body on the couch. "It's not the newest story," says Kinney. "It's the fucking rock & roll cliche, and I wonder if it will ever stop. I just hope nobody has to go through this again."