Alice in Chains: The Untold Story

Drug and heroin references were part of the band’s live act on this tour. Layne introduced one song as being “about a hopeless fucking junkie” at a show in Dallas in October 1992. During a performance of “God Smack” at the same show, Layne repeatedly jabbed his arm with the microphone while scooting around onstage in a wheelchair. “I really like the wheelchair effect,” Mike said. “I don’t know, it somehow makes Layne seem more … evil.”9 According to Biro, Layne was sober during this tour.

When the tour came to New Orleans, Layne and Mike appeared as guests for an edition of Headbangers Ball. At one point, Layne was sitting on a stool, with his crutches and the cast on his foot visible to the camera. Riki Rachtman asked, “If you see people walking around with crutches, it doesn’t mean they hurt their leg. They might just be using Layne Staley as a role model, and that’s why crutches have become a fashion statement, is that correct?”

“Well, what it is … my foot isn’t injured. I use this to get pity dates,” Layne responded. The episode had segments filmed at the Historic Voodoo Museum and at a cemetery. The most memorable thing about this shoot happened off camera. According to Randy Biro, Layne and Mike were being escorted by New Orleans police officers. They gave the cops autographed T-shirts in exchange for a couple of police badges and a bag of speed.

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The second leg of the Alice in Chains/Gruntruck tour kicked off in Fort Lauderdale on November 13, 1992, and ran for about five weeks. The Screaming Trees would join a little later, and would tour with Alice in Chains into 1993. Layne developed a preshow ritual on that tour with the Screaming Trees’s sound engineer, Martin Feveyear. “He would have some whiskey, and he would pass it to me, and I would check it for him to make sure that it was all okay and find a drink and hand it back to him,” Feveyear said. “It was just our way of sharing a moment before, or maybe him relaxing a little bit before he went onstage.” He added, “He was a real gentle, sweet man. He was quietly spoken. He was attentive to me—I’m not quite sure why—and he was delicate and funny, and we would laugh.”

There was a noticeable difference in the size and choice of venues between the first and second legs of the tour, as well as the quality of transportation and hospitality. “The other one was like vans and crappy little hotels. Small places in crappy little towns. This was like the Roseland and bigger rock venues in major metropolitan areas with three buses and a semitruck full of gear and full road crews,” Rockwell explained.

Another story comes from Screaming Trees drummer Barrett Martin, which he told during Layne’s memorial service: “[Layne’s] guest list … was not for friends or elite patrons of the rock circuit; it was for kids who couldn’t afford to buy a ticket.”10 Rockwell had a similar recollection, saying, “I remember something along those lines, where Layne was like, ‘Yeah, this fucking jackass from a record label wants to get in. Fuck him. He’s an industry guy. You don’t have to come to me for this shit, and if you do, you ain’t shit.’”

The other noticeable difference was that Susan hired bodyguards to try to keep Layne in check and to keep him away from people who might try to pass him drugs.11 According to Rockwell, the bodyguard’s job was to be Layne’s handler and chaperone at the same time. Although the exact nature of his relationship with Demri at this point is not known, Feveyear saw Layne in the company of other women at shows and hotels.

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Following the success of Pearl Jam’s landmark music video for “Jeremy,” Mark Pellington’s representative was approached by Alice in Chains in late 1992 asking if he’d be interested in directing a video for “Rooster.” “This is a little different,” Pellington was told. “This is very personal, because it’s kind of about Jerry Cantrell and his dad. Would you talk to him?”

Pellington agreed. The two bonded about the conflicted relationships they had with their fathers. At the time, Pellington was making a documentary about his father’s struggles with Alzheimer’s disease.

Pellington’s treatment called for three elements: a performance video with front and rear projections made of precut footage; hallucinatory color re-creations and stock footage of combat scenes in Vietnam; and black-and-white, present-day, documentary-style footage of Jerry’s father living in Oklahoma. Because of the success of “Jeremy,” Pellington was given a great deal of free rein. Pellington hadn’t made any films yet, but his thinking at the time was “I need to make it like a movie,” he recalled. “You’re really trying to stretch the ambitions of it, and you had the resources in those days with videos to shoot three or four days and really put a lot on the screen.” He had a budget of about $250,000 to make his vision happen.