Alice in Chains was the first band to bring grunge into the mainstream.
But despite their considerable fame and fortune, the band had more than their share of disasters,
thanks to an array of drama, unfortunate incidents, and rock star excess.
Here is the tragic story of Alice in Chains.
As the songwriter, guitarist, and co-vocalist, Jerry Cantrell is responsible for much that
makes Alice in Chains great, and seeing as the band's musical vibe tends to skew toward
despair, it's no surprise that Cantrell has his share of personal tragedies.
One of the biggest blows came when Cantrell was only 21, and he lost his mother and grandmother
over a short period of time.
Cantrell explained to Kerrang!:
"Those losses really tilted my horizon.
My whole f---ing life was basically taken away from me within the period of a year,
and I felt like I was on my own."
Cantrell notes in Mark Yarn's Everybody Loves Our Town: A History of Grunge that he was
living with the two women at the time, and when he was still dealing with the gut punch
that was his grandmother's death, his mother informed him that she had mere months to live.
Cantrell's mother was only 43 when she died of pancreatic cancer.
In Greg Prato's book, Grunge Is Dead: The Oral History of Seattle Rock Music, Cantrell
says that the losses happened within a span of six months or so, leading him to a situation
where he had no immediate family, other than his distant father.
As a very minor silver lining, his mother's insurance policy left him with enough money
to buy some music gear and, quote, "exist for a while."
Jerry Cantrell may not have lived quite as rough a life as the band's famously tragic
frontman, Layne Staley, but that doesn't mean he's had it easy.
As Louder reports, the aspiring rock star's difficult relationship with his father was
such a case.
Cantrell Senior had his share of psychological issues from his time in the Vietnam War.
This ultimately played a part in breaking up the family, leaving Cantrell and his father
estranged.
Fortunately, the Cantrells eventually managed to grow closer after the guitarist was inspired
to write a song about his father's experiences in Vietnam.
He named the brooding, dark song "Rooster" after his dad's old nickname, and Cantrell
Senior was so fond of the end result that he agreed to appear in the music video.
Alice in Chains frontman Layne Staley lived a life that was full of tragedy and sorrow,
but his personal history contains a sharp turning point.
A.V.
Club recounts that In October 1996, Staley was deeply shocked by the death of Demri Parrott,
the vocalist's long-time girlfriend and fellow drug addict.
The couple was already separated at that point, and while Staley had plenty of rock star money
to finance his habits, Parrott's relative poverty allegedly forced her to sell her body
in order to finance her drug use.
Parrott's addiction resulted in fatal bacterial endocarditis, and Staley took the news of
her passing extremely hard.
In fact, with friends reporting that he never recovered after Parrott passed away.
Staley distanced himself from his band and the world in general, opting instead to binge
on narcotics and play video games.
Over time, this less-than-healthy lifestyle started taking its toll on the singer, who
persisted on this dark path despite the numerous attempts his bandmates made to lure him back
into the land of the living.
Alice in Chains drummer Sean Kinney, in particular, attempted to contact Staley three times a
week for years, but Staley refused to talk to him.
Rumors about the vocalist's condition started making rounds, and some said he'd even lost
an arm to gangrene, or at least a couple of fingers.
On the few occasions when Staley emerged from his self-imposed exile, he indeed resembled
a shambling, grey zombie.
"Before, you know, they've had a chance to see whether or not you've changed, they're
just assuming you have."
Alice in Chains drummer Sean Kinney's tenure with the band has been comparatively tragedy-free,
though Kinney did have his own struggles with alcohol abuse during the Layne Staley years.
Still, there was a time when the drummer's very presence on the band's first studio album,
Facelift, was at risk.
As bad luck would have it, Kinney broke his hand before the band was due in the studio,
and Greg Gilmore, the drummer of Mother Love Bone, sat in on the kit.
Fortunately for Kinney, the producer, Dave Jerden, didn't feel that Gilmore could capture
the Alice in Chains drum sound, so the band took a little while off...but not enough for
Kinney's hand to heal.
Eventually, he decided that he couldn't miss the band's big break, so he cut off his cast
and drummed on the album with a broken hand, cooling it with a bucket of ice he kept beside
his drum kit.
Truly, art is suffering.
Alice in Chains' sophomore studio album, 1992's Dirt, was a massive success that cemented
the band's place in the grunge pantheon and featured landmark hits like "Angry Chair",
"Would?", and "Rooster".
However, the making of the album was somehow an even darker process than the notoriously
gloomy end result.
As Rolling Stone writes, the Dirt sessions were seemingly cursed by misfortune, and were
even interrupted by the 1992 Los Angeles riots.
The mayhem got so bad that assorted members of the band found it better to flee L.A. for
Tijuana and Joshua Tree, California.
According to Revolver, things weren't much better when they were in the studio.
The band was struggling with the newfound success from their first album, Facelift,
and singer Layne Staley and bass player Mike Starr in particular were beginning to use
drugs heavily.
Staley was so out of it that he had to wear sunglasses when they shot the music video
for "Rooster" so viewers wouldn't realize how high he was, while Starr's drug problems
became so bad that the band had to ultimately fire him.
Staley even broke his foot before they started touring the album as a warm-up act to Ozzy
Osbourne, so he had to perform several dates in a wheelchair.
Layne Staley was hardly the only member of the band to struggle with addiction.
Mike Starr, the band's original bass player, also developed a taste for narcotics early
on.
Starr took care of bass duties on Alice in Chains' beloved debut studio album, Facelift,
as well as their even more esteemed sophomore effort, Dirt.
He was there when they toured with giants like Van Halen and Iggy Pop, but sadly, so
was his drug addiction.
Alice in Chains and Starr parted ways in 1993.
Layne Staley said that Starr left because he didn't want to keep up with the band's
hectic touring and press schedule, while Starr later said that he was straight up fired because
of his addiction issues.
Regardless of what actually happened, this marked the start of a long downfall.
A year or two after his Alice in Chains days ended, Starr got in trouble for stealing luggage
at an airport, and spent 90 days in jail.
Later, he became something of a mainstay in reality shows of the Celebrity Rehab and Sober
House variety.
On March 8, 2011, the 44-year-old musician passed away in Salt Lake City, just a month
after he'd been arrested for drug possession.
Deseret News reported that Starr had been mixing his anxiety medication and methadone,
and The Hollywood Reporter later confirmed that the bassist's cause of death had been
a prescription drug overdose.
The band had their last full tour with Staley in 1993, when they were co-headlining Lollapalooza.
In 1994, they were set to tour with Metallica, but they ended up canceling just before the
first dates.
The reason?
Staley's heroin addiction.
Staley had recently gone to rehab, but soon afterwards, he showed up in a band rehearsal
under the influence.
As Rolling Stone recounted, the rest of the band were less than pleased, to the point
that drummer Sean Kinney swore he'd never play with Staley again.
Guitarist Jerry Cantrell agreed with the sentiment, and just like that, Alice in Chains took a
hiatus - they never officially did brake up.
They managed to patch things up six months later, but unfortunately, this wasn't the
end of their troubles.
If the tragedies Alice in Chains has faced over the years were a mountain range, Layne
Staley's death in 2002 would quite likely be its highest peak, when the 34-year-old
lead singer was found dead in his apartment in Seattle.
Though his long-time issues with drug addiction were well known, Staley had also been a recluse
for quite some time.
As a result, his body wasn't found until two weeks after his death, when people realized
they hadn't heard about him in a while.
When the police broke down the door of Staley's home, they found the singer's apartment in
a sorry state, and its six-foot-one occupant dead and so withered, he only weighed 86 pounds.
Staley's place was full of various drugs and paraphernalia, and he was still clutching
a syringe filled with the next intended dose of heroin.
The death was ruled accidental, and caused by a "speedball", a combination of cocaine
and heroin.
"It was a team, and I really miss him a lot.
I love him.
I miss him terribly."
Surviving members of Alice in Chains, guitarist-singer Jerry Cantrell, bassist Mike Inez, and drummer
Sean Kinney, reunited in 2006 without a particularly clear vision for their future.
However, they soon discovered William DuVall, who ended up joining the band as a vocalist
and guitarist.
In 2009, the new lineup released the fourth Chains studio album, Black Gives Way to Blue,
and they've kept busy ever since.
As you can probably imagine, this didn't sit too well with many people, who saw the death
of Layne Staley as the end of Alice in Chains.
The band continuing with its new lineup prompted criticism from such fans, and as Loudwire
tells us, in 2018 the band decided to fire a volley right back at their critics.
Cantrell pointed out that DuVall wasn't replacing Staley any more than Inez had replaced former
bassist Mike Starr.
He said,
"We never looked at it as a part of somebody is replaceable, because Layne Staley is not
replaceable, Mike Starr is not replaceable.
Their period of time with us in the band, on those records is indelible and completely
unique."
In an interview with The Los Angeles Times, Jerry Cantrell recalled that the road to their
fifth studio album, 2013's The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here, was a painful one for him.
The guitarist developed a repetitive motion injury and had to have surgery to fix the
issue.
According to Revolver Mag, the band had started working on the album soon after wrapping up
their previous tour.
However, after recording just one song, Cantrell started experiencing excruciating pain in
his arm.
It turned out that the guitarist was suffering from a cartilage injury he had been enduring
since 2005, as the years of intensive guitar heroics had worn down the glenoid labrum
in his shoulder socket in a similar way that sometimes happens to baseball pitchers,
wherein the bones essentially grind on each other with painful results.
The injury and the ensuing surgical procedure set the musician, and his band, back several
months.
Still, Cantrell ultimately came to see a silver lining in the painful situation, as it forced
him and the rest of the band to recharge their batteries before jumping right into a labor-intensive
album cycle.
If you or someone you know is struggling with addiction, please call the Substance Abuse
and Mental Health Administration's 24/7 National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP.
That's 1-800-662-4357.