Alice in Chains: The Untold Story

“Because he had a focus. He had a goal. He had something that gave him some drive. School didn’t give it to him. He was never overly interested in girls in that way at a young age, and this kind of gave him a push. I think that’s just as much a key as whether he was six feet or not.” In switching from drums to singing, Layne may have found something he was passionate about that he could develop, but it was an encounter and a chance suggestion by Ken that would ultimately change the direction of Layne’s life.

Chapter 2

Fuck, yeah! This is what a lead singer should look like!

JOHNNY BACOLAS

JAMES BERGSTROM WAS WALKING between classes at Shorewood High School one day in 1984 when he ran into Ken Elmer, a friend from the marching band. Ken knew that Bergstrom’s band, Sleze, was looking for a singer, and he had somebody in mind for them.

“Hey, my stepbrother Layne plays drums but he wants to be a singer. You should give him a call,” Elmer told him. After the initial pitch, Elmer said under his breath, “I think he kind of sucks, so it’s not my fault—if you can’t do it, then that’s fine.”

Not long after, Ken went over to Jim and Nancy’s home and told Layne about the position. Layne’s mother recalled that conversation to journalist Greg Prato:

“Layne, there are a couple of guys over at Shorewood High School looking for a singer,” Ken told him.

“Well, I’m not a singer,” Layne responded.

“Why don’t you try out anyhow?”1

An audition was eventually set up. Bergstrom told Sleze guitarist Johnny Bacolas about the new singer they would be trying out. Bacolas liked what he was hearing—that he was thin and was peroxiding his hair. The first person who came to mind was Mötley Crüe singer Vince Neil, a band that Bacolas and the other members of Sleze were huge fans of.

The tryout took place at Bergstrom’s parents’ house in Richmond Beach, where Sleze had their jam room in the basement. They were young—still in early high school and still learning how to play their instruments and playing covers. Tim Branom—a musician who would later produce one of Sleze’s demos—described the band: “They had a Mötley Crüe but punk influence, something [that] today would be only described as an angry Seattle vibe but as a glam band with black lipstick and black fingernails. This was very radical for them to do, especially since their parents were very straight and churchgoing people.”

The members of Sleze had no expectations before the audition. “[We] didn’t know what we were going to get. Just, we knew that he was really getting into singing, and that he had bleached-blond hair, and that was good enough,” Bacolas recalled. When he arrived, the others noticed his tall stature, soft-spoken demeanor, and that he was very much dressed for the part.

“He came to our jam room and was really shy, real timid,” Bacolas said. “And just as we expected, we were like, ‘Fuck, yeah! This is what a lead singer should look like!’”

Ed Semanate, the other founding guitarist for Sleze, recalls that his most vivid memory of Layne during that first introduction was that he had band names like “Ozzy” or “Mötley Crüe” written on his pants in bleach.

The four surviving band members are all fairly certain that the first song they performed with Layne was a cover of Mötley Crüe’s “Looks That Kill,” although Bacolas and Bergstrom won’t entirely rule out the possibility it may have been W.A.S.P.’s “L.O.V.E. Machine.”

“At the top of our list for sure was Mötley Crüe. That was the band we would want to be,” Byron Hansen said. The other members immediately knew they were onto something.

“I can tell you if it was ‘Looks That Kill,’ when he got to the part ‘Now she’s a cool cool black,’ he could actually hit those notes. We were like, ‘Oh my God! This is awesome!’” Bergstrom recalled with a laugh. “So you had that feeling, ‘Here’s this kid. He’s got a great-sounding voice. He’s cool. He could sing on key. And he also had good range and he was soulful, though he was just a raw beginner.’ So we knew we had something special, and we were like in heaven from then. We became a band.”

Hansen agreed. “We were totally like, ‘Wow! This guy can sing like Vince Neil! He’s like a little Vince Neil!’ We just thought it was awesome.”

Although Layne’s voice was still in a raw, undeveloped form and he was only singing covers at this point, it was impossible to compare his sound with that of singers in the past or his contemporaries.

“He didn’t strike me as ‘Oh, this guy is a [Jim] Morrison wannabe,’ or ‘Oh, this guy is a Robert Plant wannabe,’ or an Ozzy wannabe. Layne had his own thing, and I think that’s what was the most appealing about him,” Bacolas said. “He had a very distinctive voice. I didn’t want another Morrison or another Rob Halford. We weren’t looking for that. I don’t know what we were looking for. We just kind of—we just found it.”