Alice in Chains: The Untold Story

La Fuente was at a work meeting that night and left at 10:00, instead of her usual 6:30 or 7:00 time. Two coworkers asked for a ride home, which she agreed to, but it added another thirty to forty minutes to her trip home. When she got there, Wood was lying facedown, unconscious on the bed. According to The Seattle Times, which attributed this information to Wood’s father, who had heard it from La Fuente, Wood’s arms were sprawled out at his side, his face was tinged blue, and he had blood in his mouth. There was a needle puncture in his arm, with a syringe found nearby. La Fuente called 911 at 10:10 P.M., and the dispatcher told her how to administer CPR while paramedics arrived. Although initially presumed dead, at 10:34 P.M. Wood was revived and placed on a respirator.

He was admitted to intensive care at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle at 12:40 A.M. He initially showed signs of improvement, but a CT scan showed brain swelling. La Fuente called several people with the bad news, probably too many people. “I wish I would have never called anyone and told them he was there,” La Fuente told Mark Yarm. “Because of that scene there. A lot of people didn’t deserve to be part of that. There were a lot of groupies showing up.”7

La Fuente may not have been entirely responsible for the “scene” at the hospital. A few other people overdosed that weekend as well—possibly caused by the same batch of heroin. One of them was the keyboardist from the band Sleepy Hollow. His bandmates, including future Tad roadie Ben Rew, were at the hospital at the same time Alice in Chains and other friends of Mother Love Bone were there to see Wood.

“I think Jerry Cantrell thought I was there to pretend I was cool, because there were a lot of people that were there that shouldn’t have been there. There’d be like random chicks. So I think it got confused that I was there for the wrong reasons, and Jerry brought it up,” Rew told Mark Yarm. “He asked me why the fuck I was there. It was as simple as, ‘My fucking keyboard player is dying in there, asshole!’ That normally will spark some confrontation. Basically, I think I lunged at him. And I think Jeff and some other guys and my guitar player Rick got in between us. I was pretty stoned at the time.” Rew’s keyboardist would spend the next four and a half months in a coma before he eventually recovered.8

Wood’s roommate, Chris Cornell, was touring with Soundgarden in Brooklyn at the time, and the band’s tour manager got the bad news. The tour manager didn’t tell the band until after the show, so it wouldn’t affect their performance.

According to Soundgarden’s soundman, Stuart Hallerman, “We did tell them after the show, and Susan was out with us, and she started plying herself and Chris with liquor to dull the pain a bit. Driving back to Manhattan, Susan was like mumbling and falling over in the van. It was maybe the only time I’ve seen Susan drunk. The band played the last show of the tour in Hoboken the next night, and Chris and Susan flew out and got to the hospital.”9

Once at Harborview, “All the band was around, and his girlfriend. They told us when we got there that they were going to take him off life support,” Susan recalled.10

According to Scot Barbour’s documentary Malfunkshun, by 11:20 A.M. on Monday, March 19, Wood was unresponsive, with no reflexes or signs of brain function. Wood’s parents decided to remove him from life support, but La Fuente would not let them until Cornell arrived.

According to La Fuente, “His whole family was at the hospital, like twenty people. They all went in and saw him. Then all of his friends went in and saw him. Then I went in, had cut his hair off, and kept it. I played some Queen for him—they were his favorite band. The doctors turned everything off, and I just held him really tight and listened to his heart until it stopped. It took like fifteen minutes.” He was twenty-four years old. A coroner concluded he died of hypoxic encephalopathy—lack of oxygen to the brain—as a result of his overdose.11

A public memorial service was held at the Paramount Theatre on March 24. Ken Deans and La Fuente spoke. There was a video tribute put together by friends. David Wood, Andrew’s father, addressed the audience, saying, “My son was a junkie.” He urged the crowd not to do drugs. He addressed the surviving members of Mother Love Bone: “I want you guys to go on and be the biggest stars you could be. I want to see you guys on TV. If you’ve got to get another singer, don’t get a junkie.”12

A private wake was held at Kelly Curtis’s house immediately after the memorial. There were between twelve and twenty people there, according to Ken Deans, mostly local musicians. “The fans went home. His friends went to Kelly’s,” Chris Cornell wrote. Nancy Wilson of Heart brought her three springer spaniels along. “Everybody at the place took turns getting down on the ground and hugging the dogs because it was really comforting.”13