Alice in Chains: The Untold Story

According to Jerry, the first time he met Layne was in the summer of 1987, after the Tacoma Little Theatre show and after Gypsy Rose. The timing of the events in Jerry’s life at the time suggests it is likely he met Layne in August of that year. According to Nick Pollock, “I remember we talked on the phone, and he wanted to hang out with us. So I had him come up, and he stayed overnight at my parents’ house, because I was still living at home.

“He and I went to a party and met Layne at the party—something like that. Then I came up and said, ‘Hey, Layne, this is Jerry. Jerry, this is Layne Staley,’ and that’s how they met.”

“I met Jerry at a party, just out of the blue,” Layne said years later. “I didn’t think he was the coolest guy in the world or anything. He had no family in the area, so he’s kind of struggling, didn’t have any money or a place to stay or anything. And me being completely drunk, just offered a total stranger a place to stay and clothes and food and musical instruments. I think two days later he moved his stuff up into the rehearsal room that I was working [out of].”23

Jerry eventually moved into the Music Bank at Layne’s invitation, although his bandmates weren’t exactly thrilled about it. According to Johnny Bacolas, “Layne brought it to us, and we were like, ‘Well…’ I think all of us were a little bit hesitant at first. He wasn’t a total stranger; we knew him. But we didn’t want somebody crowding our space really, and with all his suitcases and socks and shoes in our jam room.”

At around the same time, Alice ’N Chains was beginning to drift apart. Pollock described it as an amicable split. “It was never anything any of us had against each other, or anything like that. There was no fight, nothing about that,” he recalled. “I can say for me that I knew where things were going to go with Layne, and I knew that he wasn’t going to stop [using drugs], and I knew that I couldn’t go there with him and that I needed some distance. Part of it really broke my heart to do that because he and I were such close friends.”

Toward the end of Alice ’N Chains’s run, Johnny Bacolas and James Bergstrom invited a Seattle musician named Ron Holt to check out their band. Holt had known them from several years earlier. He had moved to Los Angeles but came back about a year later.

“When I met them, their songs were really horrible. Layne didn’t know anything about song crafting. He didn’t know anything about dynamics. He was really just shouting against the music. Their songs did have some structure, but they didn’t have any songs yet.”

Holt thought “Party People,” one of his earliest compositions, might be a good fit for them. He played it for them, and they liked it. Holt was appreciative that they wanted to play his song. He explained the guitar, bass, and drum parts to Pollock, Bacolas, and Bergstrom. When it came time for Layne’s vocals, Holt pulled Layne out into the hallway, because he couldn’t hear him in the jam room. According to Holt, Layne was “still green” at this point, and he didn’t want to embarrass him.

While standing in the corridor, Holt told the other guys to start playing, at which point Layne started to scream with the music. Holt cut him off and walked him through it. Layne sang it back, and Holt could see he got it. He was impressed by Layne’s vocal talents.

“At the time, they were still just all energy. They wanted to do it—they had all the enthusiasm, and they had all the energy, but they just didn’t know exactly how to do it. I’m not saying that ‘Party People’ or any of the stuff I gave them was great, but they were structured and they were more than what they were doing at the time, and they dug the song. When they played it, they got a pretty good response,” Holt recalled.

For a brief period, according to Bergstrom, there was talk of possibly having Jerry join as a second guitar player. The closest this ever came to happening was when Jerry joined them onstage to play guitar on “Party People” during a show at the Backstage in Ballard in the late summer or fall of 1987, the only time they ever did that. This show was one of the band’s last.

With the demise of Alice ’N Chains, Layne and Bergstrom were drawn to Holt’s music. Bergstrom described the band as “pretty ahead of its time, semi-industrial, kind of hard funk, heavyish rock combination.” Holt noted how their sound deviated from the hard rock norms of the time. “Synthesizers and electronic is not something that a heavy metal band would have anything to do with. It was looked [at] as faggy, new-wave bullshit.” Holt compared the material to Ministry, who may have already released The Land of Rape and Honey by that point.