Alice in Chains: The Untold Story

According to Coletti, one factor working in the band’s favor was that they weren’t touring. “If you’re on tour playing arenas and big rock venues every night, to unplug when you’re in that headspace is really hard, to kind of turn it down. But coming from kind of a resting period, they were able to approach it as they were rehearsing this one thing. It wasn’t an add-on to a busy schedule.” A few weeks before the show, Coletti flew to Seattle to meet with the band at their rehearsal space to check on how they were adjusting to the parameters of the show—from instruments and gear to stage positioning.

The band brought in Scott Olson, who had played with Heart, as a second guitarist. Things were looking good from what Coletti saw. Layne energetically walked into the room eating a bucket of chicken and greeted him. “Hey, man!” His hands, covered by fingerless gloves, were greasy from eating the chicken. Rather than shake hands, he gave Coletti an elbow bump. In retrospect, Coletti said of this visit, “I do remember going, ‘Oh, cool. Layne’s in awesome form.’ And then when I heard him sing, it was … already a home run—this was a slam dunk.”

The band traveled to New York City in early April to prepare for the show, which was scheduled for April 10, 1996, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Toby Wright got tapped to produce and sat in during rehearsals at Sony Studios, which, in his words, “went great.”

The show was to take place at what at the time was known as the Majestic Theater, a venue whose appearance reflected the music that would be performed there for the series. An art director had renovated it to intentionally look “kind of decrepit,” Coletti said. “The stagehands told me they shot bullet holes into the upstage walls to create the cracks. But all the flaking paint was beautifully hand-painted and done on purpose. You have this bowl shape, the semicircle amphitheater, and it was perfect for Unplugged. Out of all the bands we’ve done there, it was most perfect for Alice. It had this old-theater feel to it, it had a sense of history, a little sense of gloom to it, just enough moodiness, and it was art-directed beautifully.”

Coletti also got a last-minute request for lava lamps to decorate the stage, which wound up adding a visual element he hadn’t anticipated. “I was getting them so late. Apparently lava lamps need to be heated and turned on for quite a while before they do what they’re meant to do. So if you watch the show, they’re kind of sluggish and not at full potential. So the lava lamps themselves were kind of grungy and just barely moving around. It was kind of fitting, but we didn’t do it on purpose.”

Because Layne had dyed his hair pink, the lighting director tried to match the background to that. As the band was doing sound check and camera rehearsal, the lighting palette was chosen based on each song the lighting director was hearing them play. The fact that the band had a specific set list for that show and provided it to MTV ahead of time helped prepare the lighting.

Coletti would be responsible for producing the televised performance, splitting his time between the production truck outside and the floor, while Wright would be responsible for producing the audio, working from inside the truck and letting the band know what sounded good and what needed to be redone. There was an unforeseen preshow complication: Jerry had eaten a hot dog and gotten food poisoning. A wastebasket was placed next to his stool onstage in case he felt sick during the show. “They were expecting [the performance] to be problematic. Everyone was planning on it being a big clusterfuck,” Biro said. “Because of Layne, because of the shape the band was in, especially when we got there. Jerry was throwing up the whole time. Layne and I were going through withdrawals. It was a really ugly situation.”

Biro had run out of heroin and had someone bring some for him to the show. Layne had brought along his own precooked supply, which he carried in an old glass pill bottle covered by a cork top. According to Biro, “He hadn’t done enough where he was nodding off and drooling, but I was there right before he went on, and he did shoot up some dope before he went on. But he didn’t do a lot and he had enough, and at no point during the show did I see him run down to the bathroom or anything.”

When the band started the show—opening with “Nutshell”—Biro turned around and was in tears. He looked around and saw Susan and Michele Anthony in tears as well.

Layne blew the lyrics during several takes of “Sludge Factory.” Toby Wright speculated he might have been nervous singing that song because Ienner and Anthony—the subjects of part of the song—were sitting in front of him at the time. “I don’t remember exactly how many takes we did, but we did a lot,” Wright said.