Alice in Chains: The Untold Story

Jerden was skeptical, thinking Layne was using the wedding as an excuse so he could go back to Seattle to get drugs. Whatever his intentions were, evidence shows Jerden’s skepticism was accurate. According to public records from the King County Recorder’s Office, Liz Elmer and her fiancé, Greg Coats, applied for a marriage license on May 26, 1998; were married on June 1; and filed the marriage certificate on June 11—more than two months before this recording session. According to Layne’s other sister, Jamie Elmer, “They got married just at the justice of the peace, and they had their two best friends there. Nobody else was there.”

“I’ve seen pictures of my sister and her husband, Greg, in the court. And it’s with her best friend and Greg’s friend. But it was the four of them, and I’m pretty darn sure that Layne wasn’t there.” There was a wedding party in mid-June that “Layne very well may have planned on coming to but didn’t make it to, because that’s just sometimes what would happen. So, to his credit, he may have definitely been trying to get there for a wedding party, or that was his plan. But I don’t remember him there.” Jim Elmer, Ken Elmer, and Kathleen Austin also attended the party. All three of them said Layne was not there.

At that point, the band members left. Jerden tried to book a studio in Seattle for Layne’s convenience to record his vocals, but by that point Layne didn’t want to work with him anymore. Susan was furious. “Susan Silver called me up and reads me the fucking riot act. She says my career was based on Alice in Chains, which is totally bullshit. I’ve worked with a lot of famous people before that. I had a lot of hit records that I produced before,” Jerden recalled. Rolling Stone got wind of the episode and wrote a story about it.18

Toby Wright got a call from Layne and Kevan Wilkins, asking if he would be willing to finish the project. He booked time at Robert Lang Studios to record the vocals and mix them with the material from the session with Jerden. Wright said, “At that point, Jerry and Layne weren’t getting along at all. So I had one guy in, and I would have another guy in after he was done. Those two songs required a lot of ProTools editing. That was one of the first times Alice was ever even on ProTools. Because Layne would do something; he’d go home. Jerry would come in. I’d change it for him; he’d go home. Layne would come in and hear what we did, and he’d change it again. So it was a lot of digital manipulation,” Wright said. Recording Layne’s vocals was difficult because of the loss of his teeth, which resulted in a lisp that affected his speech and singing ability. Consequently, they tried to stay away from lyrics that accentuated his lisp. “It was kind of hard to do that, because it shows up pretty much everywhere on those tracks. But it was easy for me, because Layne and I got along really well. So I didn’t have any problem with him at all. It was just a matter of getting him into the studio, having him sit down and get creative.”

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

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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.”