Alice in Chains: The Untold Story

The punk rock band Cat Butt moved into the Music Bank in the summer of 1987. It was a transitional period for the band, since two of their members returned to their main band, the U-Men. After several personnel changes, front man David Duet and guitarist James Burdyshaw decided to revive Cat Butt with new members and do it full-time. They met Layne early in their time at the Music Bank because of his job there.

“Layne was just so enthusiastic and interested in who you were. It was like, ‘Hey, cool! You guys got a band! What’s the name? Cat Butt—that’s really funny! All right! Oh, man, we should do a show sometime!’ Then he’d say things to you: ‘Do you need anything? ’Cause I can get you anything you need. You need pot? I can get you pot. You want some acid? I can do that. Whatever you want. Want me to go on a beer run for you?’” Burdyshaw recalled.

“It’s like he just was eager to please, just wanted to be your friend so bad. I thought that was real endearing about him. I didn’t think it was phony. I thought he was just like this metal kid who was nice, whereas a lot of time the metal guys were too cool for school, and they wouldn’t talk to you because you were in the punk band.” They also met Demri, who, after being told of their band’s name, lifted up her shirt, pushed her abs and belly button together, and said, “Look, I can make a cat’s butt!”

Soon after meeting Layne, they were introduced to Jerry, Mike, and Sean. “When we started practicing there, they got real curious about us and they wanted to know about us. And to be honest with you, my whole attitude was like, ‘They’re really nice guys, but, Jesus Christ, I don’t want to hook up with these guys. They’re like Lynnwood rockers.’ It wasn’t that I didn’t think they were nice people. I just thought that their music was dumb.

“We didn’t want to be mean to them. They were so nice it was impossible. I sort of figured we could be friends with them at the Music Bank, but there was no way we were going to have anything to do with them outside the Music Bank.”

Besides Layne, the person Burdyshaw had the closest relationship with was Jerry, although for very different reasons. “Jerry was cool with hanging out, but he wanted to learn about you. He wanted to learn about your influences. He liked picking your brain.”

“He was very complimentary and asked me about my guitar sound. He liked to talk shop a lot. I probably had the most interesting conversations with Jerry just about music in general, because Jerry seemed to know more about stuff. Even though they were playing rock music, he knew about Bowie, he knew a lot about the history of rock and roll, so we could talk about the stuff I was into, like the Who and that kind of thing. He didn’t know a lot about punk music, but he sure wanted to. He was really curious.”

Burdyshaw credits Jerry for reinventing and developing what would eventually become the Alice in Chains sound. Of Cat Butt’s influence on Alice in Chains during this crucial early period, Burdyshaw said, “It seemed like Cat Butt was one of the catalysts for them to be like, ‘Hey, these guys are doing something different than what we’ve been doing. Let’s get in their circle.’ And then, I don’t think it was necessarily calculated, but I think they just found us fascinating and they wanted to be a part of our world and they invited us to be a part of theirs.”

Burdyshaw won’t take credit for being an influence, because he said they were picking the brains of every band they could get near. Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil said he was at a show and ran into Jerry, who asked him about the songs “Beyond the Wheel” and “Nothing to Say”—specifically, if the songs had a different tuning. Thayil explained to him the concept of dropped-D tuning—a popular tuning among hard rock and metal musicians in which the low E string on the guitar is tuned down a whole step to D, giving it a heavier sound. According to Thayil, “Alice in Chains became a different band almost overnight!” (Jerry disputes this claim, saying he first learned it from Van Halen’s “Unchained.”13)

Thayil wasn’t the only one to notice the change. Grant Alden, managing editor of The Rocket, said, “There were a series of bands who saw what was working and began to try to do that. I think Alice in Chains was one of them. It doesn’t mean they were without talent, but it meant in some ways that they were without heart or without soul.” His dislike of the band got to the point that he made an effort to deny them coverage in the pages of his publication.14