Alice in Chains: The Untold Story

Nick Pollock went to another Lollapalooza show, accompanied by one of Layne’s ex-girlfriends. “We went on his bus and he showed us a bunch of his artwork, which was very dark and introspective at that time, in some cases kind of odd,” he recalled. “I don’t know how to really qualify that more than it was odd. I think that he was in a pretty dark place.”

Pollock added, “Here’s Layne, who’s kind of an alien in his own skin, showing us, ‘Here, I’ve been doing this artwork and I did these photo things.’ I think they were with Demri and stuff like that. They were just like, ‘Wow, where the hell is he?’ But it wasn’t obvious by looking at them that he’s got all the drug problems and that stuff.”

In comparing what he saw to Layne’s artwork for the Mad Season album, Pollock described it thus: “That would be more stylized things that are evocative of what I was talking about. But he had things where he actually had photographs of himself that were very gaunt, that had a certain sort of bondage-ish type of feel to it. It was just strange.”

They went to the soundboard to watch the other bands perform, and they talked. According to Pollock, “He loosened up. We got back to like we were kids. He was dealing with the weight of his musical career and everything that was going on with that, the weight of his drug situation, and I think that emotionally in a lot of ways, just the weight of a lot of things from his past that he never could deal with, that he was still dealing with and trying to blot out with drugs.”

The former singer of Cat Butt, David Duet, was living in Texas when he got a call from Layne, telling him he would be in town and giving him a list of drugs and alcohol to bring for him. Duet was excited to see his old friend when he got on the bus, ready to give him the bag of stuff. Layne cut him off—Duet later found out he was on Layne’s personal sober bus and that his stepfather and manager were there. Duet left before the bag could be confiscated and made arrangements to meet with Layne fifteen minutes later.22

Jim Elmer—who traveled to three Lollapalooza shows in Washington State and Texas that summer—did not recall this but did not dispute the account. He also noted, “Layne was very, very careful of not being public with family on his addiction. I don’t know if that’s true or not, or if I was oblivious, but he put up a good shield. There was no doubt he had a problem, and we all agree on that. But in terms of how he handled that and so forth, he was very discreet, I thought, toward the family.”

There were issues with one of the people traveling on the tour as part of the Village, which was described by the Fort Lauderdale–based Sun-Sentinel newspaper as “a place Lollapalooza is creating to be a surreal world where art, music and politics collide.”23 This person was discovered to have been providing Layne with heroin. He was warned repeatedly to stay away from the band and Layne. It got to the point where Biro thinks his wife at the time—who was an assistant tour manager—may have threatened to have the guy arrested and ordered him to never come backstage again. (Biro got married during the tour, and Layne lent him and his wife his private bus while the tour was traveling from Orlando, Florida, to New Orleans, where the wedding was to take place. Layne traveled on the band bus for this leg of the trip.)

The musicians on the tour hit it off with each other for the most part, leading to many onstage collaborations: Jerry would perform with Fishbone; members of Fishbone would perform with Alice in Chains; and Layne would sing with Front 242 or Tool. Layne became friends with Tom Morello, the guitarist for Rage Against the Machine. Morello would later recall how the two of them would be laughing pretty hard while arguing about which of them was more metal. Layne also became close friends with Babes in Toyland—a three-piece female punk rock band from Minneapolis.24

According to the band’s bassist, Maureen Herman, Babes in Toyland had one of the most popular dressing rooms on that tour. “It seemed like everybody on the tour had these healthy riders, like, ‘No alcohol, we’re only bringing in fruit juice, we only have really healthy food,’ and our rider was not that way. Our rider was full of really fun junk food and cool stuff and tequila, vodka, and Jack Daniel’s and lots of beer, and so everybody was always coming to our dressing room because their fucking dressing rooms didn’t have rock-and-roll accoutrements, and Layne was one of those people who was attracted to our dressing room.”

Drummer Lori Barbero had a similar recollection. “I think seriously it was the very first night. Layne came to our backstage room, and he was like, ‘Hey,’ and just became our friend immediately, and that was kind of his tree house, as I like to say—where he hung out pretty much all the time. Every day he’d come and hang out with us.”