Alice in Chains: The Untold Story

Hunt had to put in his own money to get the project going. His father passed away in January 1984, leaving his mother a sum of money from his insurance policy. She decided each of their children would receive $20,000 as a down payment for a home or to finish college. Hunt pitched his idea to her, and she lent him the money, which he immediately used to buy the doors, walls, studs, wires, and carpeting. Hunt also made Jake Bostic, Von Haartman, and Marian sign a promissory note agreeing to pay his mother $750 a month to repay the loan.

On September 25, 1984, Von Haartman, Marian, and Marian’s wife signed a five-year lease for the property, which would begin on October 1. Under the terms of the lease, they would pay the Rosen Investment Company $2,700 a month in rent. The premises were to be “used and occupied only for recording and audio visual studios.”1 The name had to be changed from Round the Sound Studios to the Music Bank about a year and a half later after Hunt, Marian, and Von Haartman decided to get rid of Bostic. Because of that, and the fact they had to rewrite the promissory note, they had to change the name of the partnership as well. Hunt suggested the name Music Bank.

Hunt and Jake Bostic, along with a framing crew, an electrician, and a laborer, worked to get Round the Sound Studios up and running—aiming to build a room a day. They came very close to that goal. By Hunt’s calculations, they built fifty-two rooms in sixty days. On opening day, every room was rented out, and Hunt had a waiting list of twenty-five bands wanting to get in.

Besides himself, Hunt credits Bostic as a cofounder of the Music Bank. “This was me and Jake’s baby completely. The other guys were just silent partners that were willing to put their name on a piece of land.”

One day in late 1985, an eighteen-year-old who had long spiky hair with a blue streak and was wearing pink jeans walked into Hunt’s office. “I’m Layne from Sleze and I’m looking for a job.”

“Well, Layne, I’m not hiring,” Hunt responded.

Layne continued, “I was in here the other night and I noticed you had this guy that was mopping the back hallway between rooms thirty-six and forty-two. Can you rent that?”

“That’s our fucking broom closet.”

“I don’t care,” Layne responded. “Could I set up a little drum set in there?”

Hunt thought about Layne’s proposition. The small room was not designed for the purpose Layne had in mind. Hunt described it as “barely big enough to hold a small drum set.” He had been looking for more space and figured that if he relocated the cleaning supplies to the back office and rented out the closet, it would bring an extra $150 a month in revenue.

Johnny Bacolas said of this first room, “It could barely fit four of us. It was me, Nick, James, and Layne. And then that room was just too small. It would just kill us in the summer.”

On their first day in the room, they had left their door slightly open. A member of the punk band The Accüsed stuck his hand inside the doorway and gave them the middle finger. Layne got mad and decided that couldn’t go unanswered. He found a piece of dog poop and placed it in front of the door to The Accüsed’s room while they were practicing. They later found out one of the band members stepped on it.

Sleze practiced in the closet until a better room opened up. Hunt put Layne at the top of the waiting list, so they upgraded as soon as one became available. Layne continued pestering Hunt for a job, but he wouldn’t actually work there until about a year later.

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After repaying slightly more than half of Hunt’s twenty-thousand-dollar loan from his mother, Von Haartman and Marian stopped paying it. According to Hunt, the reasons for this were that “It was starting not to be profitable. Our rent had gone up. We had been classified as a commercial zone.”

“We were pulling a lot of power. Our power rates went up. A lot of money stuff changed and they decided, ‘This is a promissory note, punk. Why don’t you start paying your mom back out of your money—out of your share?’” Hunt, Von Haartman, and Marian wound up kicking Bostic out, but, because his was the main name on the paperwork, Von Haartman and Marian tried pinning the responsibility for the Hunt loan on Bostic. Hunt, however, refused to renegotiate the original agreement. Complicating matters was that Von Haartman and Marian were the signers on the lease. “They decided to go to war with me, because they didn’t want to make the payment anymore.”

At that point, Hunt approached David Ballenger to take over the day-to-day operations of the Music Bank. “I said, ‘I’m at war with my partners now, because they don’t want to pay my family money back anymore. So I need you to kind of help me run things. This may turn into an ugly fucking deal here.’”

Ballenger had secretly been living in a room, paying rent with his unemployment benefits. Hunt was fine with him doing that and began giving him hours. Ballenger eventually moved into Hunt’s band’s former room and began running keys.