Alice in Chains: The Untold Story

Bacolas asked Layne how his heroin use began. He recalls Layne telling him they ran out of cocaine, and Demri went out looking for more but came back with heroin instead. This, Bacolas says, is his best recollection as to when and how Layne first tried heroin, as told to him by Layne himself. Regarding Demri’s use, Bacolas said, “I think she was using at that point on and off. I don’t know how seriously she was using, but [she] was using enough to take it when someone gave it to her.”

Alice in Chains’s producer, Dave Jerden, offered some insight that might verify Bacolas’s account. He said unequivocally that Layne was not doing heroin when they worked on Facelift, an account corroborated by Ronnie Champagne. Asked to comment on the account provided by Bacolas, Jerden said, “That’s totally possible. I went to Arizona and saw them play with Van Halen. Layne was definitely acting different at that point. Layne did coke and he drank a lot, so I didn’t know if he was drunk or whatever, but he wasn’t the same. Layne was usually gregarious and cracking jokes all the time. I went to their tour bus and saw the band before the concert, and Layne was really quiet. I didn’t know what was up with him. He is the only one, besides later Mike Starr, of course. Jerry never did heroin; neither did Sean.”

During this visit, Jerden jokingly asked Layne, “How does it feel to be famous?”

Layne answered him, seriously, “It’s freaking me out. People treat me like an object. I’m not a person anymore. I’m just a commodity to be sold. People don’t really know who I am. People grab things from me.”

“It [was] like he [wasn’t] having a conversation with me [but] was making a statement to the universe. He wasn’t being vitriolic about it, just really honest,” Jerden recalled. He compared what Layne was going through to Beatlemania.

Jerden also said he heard Demri had introduced Layne to heroin from a source close to the Jane’s Addiction camp—another band he had worked with.

Why Layne decided to try heroin after having been openly against it a few years earlier is not known. According to Nick Pollock, “Everybody’s got to live with their part in this life. Nobody should be hung up on a cross because of it. Layne made the choices that Layne made. Layne chose to do drugs. Layne chose to continue to do drugs to compensate for other things.”

It may be easy to blame Demri, but doing so would absolve Layne of any personal responsibility for his decision. It should be noted that even before he was successful, Layne had a drug problem—having used marijuana, cocaine, mushrooms, and acid, at least. It was serious enough for his previous bandmates to organize their own private intervention. On the other hand, Kathleen Austin noted, “People who love Demri blamed Layne for her addiction. That’s what people do when you love somebody and they’re hanging with somebody else and they’re doing bad things. You don’t blame that person. You say, ‘Oh, it’s their friends,’ ‘Oh, he’s running with a bad group of people.’”

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Although nobody noticed at first, Mike had been putting names on the guest list, but it wasn’t until later that the band and crew figured out why. “We did notice that at one point, ‘Man, he’s got a lot of fucking relatives,’” Randy Biro said. “Mike was putting names on the guest list every night. And he’d fill out raffle tickets for the spot and scalp them.” Van Halen’s security people caught Mike scalping tickets outside a venue. According to multiple sources, Mike had been caught trading or selling backstage passes, spots on the Alice in Chains guest list, or tickets in exchange for drugs or money on multiple occasions.10 This issue was likely a contributing factor in the decision to fire him in early 1993.

Mike told Mark Yarm he did it to get drugs for Layne.11 Biro disputes this account. “Demri would come up to me and say, ‘I guarantee I can find dope in this arena.’ I was [like], ‘Bullshit.’ We’d be out in the middle of some fucking cowpoke little town somewhere, and she walked into this arena, and she would find some heroin and bring the person backstage.” He added, “Layne never needed anybody to hunt down drugs for him. People came to us. Especially Van Halen; we were starting to get recognized. That was a big [turning] point, and people were starting to come to us.”

It should also be noted that not everything that happened on the Van Halen tour was bad. According to Shoaf, Eddie Van Halen spent a lot of time hanging out on the Alice in Chains bus and became good friends with Jerry, a friendship that continues to the present day. In Jerry’s words, “He hung out in our room more than he hung with his own band.”