Alice in Chains: The Untold Story

I would like to thank the many people who made this book possible. First and foremost, my agent, Anthony Mattero, at Foundry Literary + Media, as well as Rob Kirkpatrick, Jennifer Letwack, and everyone at St. Martin’s Press who took a chance on a first-time author and saw the potential in this story and who were unwavering in their efforts to make this book a reality. I could not have made it across the finish line without their guidance and support.

Thanks to Jamie, Jim, and Ken Elmer for providing the family’s perspective and insights into Layne’s life that only they could.

Thanks to Gayle Starr for putting me in touch with several of Mike’s friends, as well as for providing me with a DVD of Mike’s memorial service. Thanks to Steve Alley, Aaron Woodruff, Jason Buttino, Evan Sheeley, and Jeff Gilbert for their accounts of Mike’s life before, during, and after Alice in Chains. The Facebook pages for SATO and Mike Starr were also excellent sources of stories, photos, articles, and audio and video recordings.

The quotes that are attributed to the band members and Susan Silver are from previously published materials or from sources with direct knowledge of a person, event, or subject. I have made every effort to portray their views and experiences as fairly and accurately as possible.

Thanks to Kathleen Austin for her wealth of insight and stories about Demri and Layne that only a mother could know. I’d also like to give my profoundest thanks to Karie Pfeiffer-Simmons, who, in addition to being a good interview, put me in touch with many of Demri’s friends from her middle and high school days in Arlington, as well as Chris Schulberg, Nanci Hubbard-Mills, Damon Burns, and Demri’s former teacher Lyle Forde. Thanks to Chris for taking me on a tour of Demri’s old stomping grounds in Arlington. Thanks to Russell for his account of Demri during the summer of 1996, a few months before her death.

My sincerest thanks to the many public information and archives officials who dealt with my numerous records requests expeditiously and with the utmost professionalism: Rodger Stephenson and Elizabeth Mash at the Seattle Police Department; Colin Jones at the King County Medical Examiner’s Office; Candee Allred at the Salt Lake City Police Department; Kathy Kunkel at the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office; Jacquie Thornton at the office for the Harris County District Clerk; Barbara Lester and Ann West of the Harris County Sheriff’s Office; and the staff at the National Archives office in Seattle.

I’d also like to thank the staff at the Seattle Public Library and the Suzzallo Library at the University of Washington for giving me access to their wealth of records in hard copy, digital, and microfilm formats. Their old copies of The Rocket were a gold mine of source material, as were old archives of local newspapers and genealogical research tools. Thanks to the staff and students at the Lauinger Library at Georgetown University for providing such a great place to work—both as a graduate student and as an author. I spent many hours at Lauinger Library writing and rewriting this book as it came together over the course of three years.

Thanks to the many producers and engineers who worked with Sleze/Alice ’N Chains, Alice in Chains, Mad Season, and Jerry Cantrell over the years—Peter Barnes, Tim Branom, Bryan Carlstrom, Ronnie Champagne, Annette Cisneros, Dave Hillis, Sam Hofstedt, Dave Jerden, Jonathan Plum, Elan Trujillo, and Toby Wright—who were critical in explaining how the bands developed their sound and how their records were made. I’d like to praise Annette Cisneros for sharing with me her production calendar from the Dirt sessions in 1992, as well as her photos from the Music Bank session in 1998. I was fortunate to interview Bryan Carlstrom extensively about his role in making the Facelift and Dirt records before his passing in January 2013. My sincerest condolences to his friends and family for their loss.