Alice in Chains: The Untold Story

Elmer, an all-state saxophonist, agreed and brought along three trumpet players to London Bridge Studios to record their parts. When they arrived, Bergstrom pulled Elmer aside.

“It’s really a privilege to be on a rock and roll album,” he said.

“Huh?” Elmer didn’t get what he was hinting at.

“We gotta pay for time.”

Elmer paid Bergstrom eighty dollars out of his own pocket to play on the demo. “I don’t know how he ever talked me into that one,” he said, laughing. “I really should develop a backbone in my life sometime.”

The horn section would reunite for a show at the University of Washington’s Kane Hall, where, for the first and only time, they would perform their parts live with the band. They arrived on campus early to set up. Someone found a driver’s license with a photo that looked like Elmer, so they took it to a store and had Elmer buy beer, since everyone was underage. Elmer didn’t drink, but he said the trumpet players got “a little bit wasted.”

“I remember [one trumpet player] came out in his underwear for the trumpet part, with a beer bottle in his underwear. We came out, and he just did that song, and it was toward the end of the thing. It was really neat, but they were getting some notoriety. They are playing this thousand-seat auditorium and actually sound pretty freaking good.”

In August 1986, Sleze and Branom finished recording tracks for the demo. Not long after this, the living situation and working relationship with bassist Mike Mitchell was beginning to deteriorate. Mitchell, then in his midtwenties and a few years older than his bandmates, lived in an apartment that was part of a triplex-style house in the University District with his on-again, off-again girlfriend, Lisa Ahern Rammell, who went by the nickname Leigh in those days. At some point while Mike and Leigh were broken up, Layne had moved into a closet in Mitchell’s apartment, because when the couple got back together, Layne was living there. The closet was big enough for a single bed and had a chest of drawers and its own window.

Layne’s living arrangement was a source of amusement because of the double entendre involved. “We used to give him so much crap about coming out of the closet in the morning. He’d come out rubbing his eyes, ‘Oh, Layne’s coming out of the closet again,’” Ahern Rammell recalled. Her car at the time was a 1969 Pontiac GTO Judge. When Layne wanted to look cool, he would borrow her car. She rode in Layne’s car many times and saw him squirt people with his windshield wipers the same way James Bergstrom did.

Morgen Gallagher recalls that he moved into Mitchell’s place after Layne had already been living there for a few months. They lived near an expressway off-ramp and had Big Wheel races down the ramp when there was little or no traffic in the early hours of the morning.

“One night they got drunk enough they thought it was a grand idea to go for a walk, and they came back bloodied, skinned-up,” Ahern Rammell recalled. “They’re laughing their asses off and I’ve got them all sat down like little kids putting Band-Aids on their elbows and washing off their boo-boos. They had stolen Big Wheels and taken them up on the express lane off-ramp and ridden them all the way down the off-ramp and down the road until they wiped out. They did that a couple times, and the last wipeout was so bad they decided they were done.”

Subsequently Mitchell was dismissed from the band and Gallagher joined as his replacement. Mitchell’s dismissal forced Layne and Gallagher to move out of his house. Marianne Condiff, who wanted to manage Sleze, let them stay in her studio apartment in West Seattle for several months.

The timing of Mitchell’s departure was especially bad because it happened a day or so before Sleze was scheduled to shoot the scene for Father Rock. Gallagher took Mitchell’s spot in the band for the movie. Over the course of a Friday and Saturday in September 1986, Byrd shot the Father Rock scenes with Sleze at the Richmond Beach Congregational Church. Sleze brought along about fifty extras for the shoot. The actor playing the lead role in the movie had to take off for a few hours because he was working as a stripper and had to jump out of a cake.

Byrd was annoyed when he found out Layne was drinking hard liquor in the church bathroom before the performance. Byrd filmed Sleze in the church, which took about three hours. Layne lip-synched as the band performed two songs: “Fat Girls” and “Over the Edge.” Byrd wrapped up the shoot and had everyone come back the next day.