Alice in Chains: The Untold Story

Scott Hunt saw local news coverage of the raid. Hunt was stunned as he heard the details. He got in his car and went straight to the Music Bank, after which he was questioned by police. “They wanted to know my life story, so I had to go downtown with the one-way glass,” Hunt said. “So I told them everything that they needed to know and they were convinced beyond reasonable doubt that I had nothing to do with it, so they let me go.” Though he was never charged with anything, Hunt was dismayed by what the drug raid would mean for the Music Bank, specifically the loss of income and any chance of recovering his loan.

The Seattle Police Department estimated the operation was capable of growing $30 million a year in crops—calculated at a potential output of 10,000 plants per year valued at about $3,000 each. According to a document, authorities seized 28 boxes of marijuana plants, weighing a combined 448 pounds (204 kilograms).13

According to an article in the Ballard Tribune, the Seattle Police Department turned the case over to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Seattle because of the amount of marijuana involved. “It’s a very complicated case and you want to take your time in cases like this,” the Seattle Police Department’s Ed Joiner told the paper. “We want to indict as many people as possible in this, so time is not a factor.”14

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The band went to London Bridge Studios to make a twenty-four-track rerecording of the “Treehouse Tape” and to record some new material. This was the demo the band would shop around to the record labels. Hauser financed the sessions, which took place over the course of approximately one week and were produced by Rick and Raj Parashar. “We got off hours, and Rick and Raj worked with me because I promised them that I would come in later when we were recording and do full price,” Hauser said. He estimated the cost of the demo at about seven thousand dollars. They were able to get it so cheap because they would come in during overnight hours and work until five or six o’clock in the morning. If they had recorded at full price during regular hours, it would have cost Hauser twenty thousand dollars, which he couldn’t afford.15

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Some time after the raid, the band moved out of the Music Bank and into a house near Seattle-Tacoma International Airport that they rented from Bob Jeffries, Gayle Starr’s boyfriend at the time. Though money and resources were scarce, somehow they managed to pay their rent. The house had four bedrooms—three upstairs that were occupied by Layne, Mike, and Sean, and one downstairs that was occupied by Jerry to minimize any possible damage in case his waterbed leaked. Layne cut a hole in the floor of his bedroom, which was directly above the rec room where the band jammed, so he could hear the music from his room.

There was a problem when they moved in: one of the toilets had clogged the plumbing for the entire house. They set up a portable toilet in the backyard while doing the necessary repairs themselves, which took about a month. Their next-door neighbors, an elderly couple, offered to let them use their guest bathroom as a short-term solution, an offer that was accepted. Coincidentally, the woman’s name was Alice. They told her that they named the band after her, presumably to get on her good side and so she wouldn’t complain about the loud music. On Sundays, the band went to Gayle Starr’s house, where she would cook them dinner with enough leftovers that would feed them through Wednesday. They would survive until the following Sunday on a diet of pizza, beer, and whatever food girls would bring over.

On August 11, 1988, Alice in Chains was part of a four-band bill performing at the Kent Skate King—a local roller rink—organized by Hauser’s company Standing Room Only Productions.16 Layne had shaped his hair into a Mohawk. One of the people there was Diana Wilmar, a news photographer and editor at KING 5, a Seattle affiliate of NBC News. She had heard about the local music scene and wanted to do a story about “a wannabe famous band.” After the show, she talked to Alice in Chains. “They were just a ton of fun, and they played off each other. They were really funny. Like one guy would start a sentence, and somebody else would finish it.” As they told her their story—about how they all lived together in a house, with one car for the four of them, Wilmar began thinking about these details as visual elements for a story. The band agreed to do it. Wilmar pitched it to the station and brought KING 5 news photographer George Stark and reporter/producer Jack Hamann on board to help write and shoot it.