Alice in Chains: The Untold Story

Pellington traveled to Oklahoma for two days to shoot footage and interviews with both Cantrells. For the video, he worked with Hank Corwin, who edited Oliver Stone’s JFK, and John Schwartzman, who would later work as a cinematographer for Michael Bay. Oliver Stone’s military consultant, Dale Dye, was hired to assist with military training and the combat sequences, which were influenced by Stone’s film Platoon. Casey Pieretti, an amputee, played a soldier who steps on a land mine and loses his leg.

Pellington had a day to shoot the performance scenes. Layne was high and wanted to wear a cowboy hat. “He looked pretty fucked up, and I was well aware of his addictions,” Pellington said. He told the label rep or manager with them he didn’t think the hat was a good look for the video, but that it was their decision. Pellington offered a solution: “Layne, I think the sunglasses actually look cool because it’s more sinister, and the song is kind of evil and you guys are fucked up and evil.” Pellington’s talk worked, because Layne wore the sunglasses in all his scenes. Layne also wore an earring with a peace sign, which Pellington said was a coincidence.

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While Alice in Chains and the Screaming Trees were touring, Trees’s manager, Kim White, got a phone call from the band’s singer, Mark Lanegan, who was on a cot in a Canadian hospital. It was the first time he did heroin with Layne, and he got blood poisoning. Layne filled in for Lanegan that night.12

Issues arose when Gruntruck’s singer, Ben McMillan, was mimicking Layne’s appearance, to the point it made Layne so uncomfortable that, according to Rockwell, instead of continuing the tour in Europe at the beginning of 1993, Gruntruck wound up opening for Pantera. “I don’t know what happened between them together, but Ben wanted so bad to be a rock star, and he just coveted Layne’s position and stuff that it affected him in a way that I think it worried Layne.”

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According to previously published accounts, Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love sent Susan a Christmas card, addressed to “our favorite inside source,” based on their erroneous belief that she was an anonymous source for a controversial Vanity Fair article alleging Love had used heroin while she was pregnant. She got a phone call from Nirvana/Hole manager Danny Goldberg on the Cobains’ behalf, who said, “They just really want you to stop talking about them.” Susan did not like that Courtney Love was taking shots in the media at other musicians, but she denied talking about them. Love left “a super abusive voice mail” on Susan’s answering machine, which she still has. She was later approached by a British journalist writing a book about Nirvana to ask questions that apparently came from the Cobains’ rumor mill. “At that point, I was pissed. Like, ‘Wait a minute, they’re talking shit about me to other people? She’s leaving me abusive phone messages. She’s having Danny Goldberg calling to basically give me a gag order.’”13

Alice in Chains closed out 1992 by performing at MTV’s New Year’s Eve Party at the Roseland Ballroom in New York City.14 They had achieved new professional, critical, and commercial highs. Regardless, a change was imminent.

Chapter 17

Fucking Nazis die!

LAYNE STALEY

MINISTRY WAS PERFORMING at Pearl Harbor Naval Station on January 2, 1993, a show Layne attended while Alice in Chains was in town for a show scheduled for January 8.1 “Not all junkies are scumbags—though many of them are. Some are just lost souls, misguided fuckers, or glamour seekers. The vocalist from Alice in Chains, Layne Staley, was the latter,” Al Jourgensen wrote in his memoir. He continued:

He got backstage into the dressing room and saw [Ministry guitarist Mike Scaccia] shoot up. So he asked if he could try. I looked him right in the eye, held up a syringe, and said, “Are you sure you want to do this, man?” And he nodded. I feel really bad about that because we turned him on to needles, and now he’s dead.

I don’t feel responsible, because he was gonna find someone to shoot with; it just happened to be us. He did a dose and passed out and didn’t wake up. He was barely breathing. I don’t know if he was dead or alive. I had to keep checking. Then he woke up, got some more dope, and shot up again. He took to needles like a fish to water, but I could tell he got into it for the glamour. That was a mistake. Other than the fact that he died from drugs, there’s no glamour in being a junkie.2