Alice in Chains: The Untold Story

The KING 5 crew filmed the band hanging out at their house and at the Music Bank, taking showers at Susan Silver’s house and getting ready for a show, and during a performance at the Vogue. Another time, they went with the band to Fishermen’s Terminal, where the band had a job unloading fishing ships that Randy Hauser had gotten them so they could cover the rent on their rehearsal room. “My memory of it was that after ten minutes they’re like, ‘Fuck this, there’s no way I’m gonna do this work. Are you shitting me?’ It’s hard, it’s smelly, and we never ended up really getting any video out of it because they were like, ‘I ain’t doing this. I’ll find some other way to make money,’” Hamann said. He interviewed all four members. It was his impression everybody except Layne was playing to the camera. “When this was done, there was very little role model for [reality television], and so clearly Sean, Mike, and to a lesser extent Jerry had a consciousness that the cameras are there and ‘we’ve gotta be good TV.’ From Layne a lot of it was, ‘I don’t give a shit—take my picture.’ He said a few things, but a lot of it was like, ‘I’m about my music and that’s what I’m here for, and if you guys wanna take my picture, that’s fine.’”

After they finished filming, Wilmar had to go to South Korea to assist with coverage of the Olympics. Hamann and Stark worked on the story while she was away, getting her feedback from abroad as the script came together. The finished story was unconventional for two reasons: first, it would run longer than five minutes; and second, there was no voice-over narration. They used sound from interviews with the band members to move the story along. It aired on October 14, 1988. Stark would later win the National Press Photographers Association National Award for Editing for his work on it. Hamann ran into Jerry after Facelift was released. “I don’t know if we would’ve gotten in the door with CBS if we hadn’t had that video, if you guys hadn’t done that for us,” Jerry told him. “I can’t thank you enough.”

*   *   *

Layne turned twenty-one on August 22, 1988. His bandmates and David Ballenger took him to a strip club to celebrate the occasion. On the milestone nature of the age, specifically the ability to buy alcohol and go to strip clubs, Ballenger told him, “Now you get to legally do what you’ve been doing for years.” Also at some point during this period, Ballenger recalls Layne and Jerry coming back from a night out in Seattle with their first tattoos—skull-shaped designs on their upper left and right arms respectively.

With Layne now of legal drinking age, going to bars and clubs became a much more frequent and easier endeavor. Before, he technically wasn’t even supposed to be in some of the venues where the band had played. The compromise solution, according to Jerry and Sean, was Layne had to stand outside until the band was ready to perform. He would go straight to the stage, play the set, and then have to leave immediately.17

Alice in Chains still had their room at the Music Bank and owed rent. Because Layne wasn’t working as many hours, Ballenger gave his job to somebody else. “I didn’t figure I’d ever get paid, because normally there was never, ever any money that changed hands,” Ballenger said. To his surprise, Jerry came back one day with cash to pay the outstanding balance.

In the months after the drug raid, Bengt Von Haartman and Gabriel Marian were trying to hand over ownership of the Music Bank to Ballenger, even going so far as to present legal documents to the city of Seattle. At the same time, Ballenger was still friends with Scott Hunt, who was involved in a lawsuit against them. Hunt was confident about the prospects of getting the building back and asked Ballenger if he would keep running it.

Ballenger politely declined, saying he had no interest in running the Music Bank and that there wasn’t enough money in doing so. Von Haartman and Marian got wind of this discussion, and about a week later they told Ballenger, “We put you in place here. We can kick you out just as easily.” Ballenger called their bluff. “And who would run it?” Ultimately, nothing changed.

Ballenger was nervous about possibly getting involved in litigation in connection with the marijuana operation and sought advice from an attorney. “I told him about what I was doing, about the pot bust. I told him I was worried about getting sued, about losing my equipment. I was terrified of [Von Haartman] and [Marian] at that time,” Ballenger explained.