Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [186]
SUSAN SILVER Not that the others weren’t heavily into drugs, too, but Layne was clearly so deep—it was so dangerous—that all of our lives centered around how to aid him. It was never about, “How are we going to prop him up to get him on a tour?” I had this conversation with Layne over and over and over after the success of Facelift: “Your health is the most important thing. You need to get well. Stop this. You have enough money, you can go buy a cottage on the beach and be there with Demri”—who was also very artistic—“and you can go and create whatever art you want.”
DAVE JERDEN During Dirt, recording vocals, Layne and I got into arguments. He’d come in loaded on heroin, and I told him I didn’t want him to sing on heroin. He could use heroin afterward, but when he sang he had to be somewhat together because he was singing all out of tune on heroin. I remember making a phone call to Layne and I told him, “Listen, I’m not trying to be mean, all I’m trying to do is get these vocals out of you.” We didn’t have any problems after that.
Jerry and I got along fine. Jerry’s morale was good. Sean’s always great. At that point they were having problems with Mike Starr. Mike Starr had a song that he wanted on the album, and they didn’t wanna put it on the album. Layne sang on it, and Mike said Layne didn’t sing it right and Layne got really mad.
MIKE STARR I wrote a song called “Fear the Voices.” We did record it, but they didn’t let it on the album because Jerry didn’t have nothin’ to do with the writing of the music. But they put it on the box set later, and it got some recognition and got played on the radio.
DAVE JERDEN And Mike Starr used heroin within my studio one time. He was in the bathroom with Layne, and Layne said, “Stick out your arm,” and Layne hit him with heroin. Mike Starr was crawling through the lobby throwing up on the carpet. It was really sad.
MIKE STARR I shot heroin once with Layne during the making of the song “Junkhead.” I stayed up all night—we were hanging out with two girls. It felt great, but I decided never to do it again.
DAVE JERDEN Layne was worse off. He had a drug dealer that was hanging out with him the whole time while I was mixing the record. In fact, Layne came in to listen to it, and he brought his drug dealer with him. His drug dealer made some comment about the mix, what he wanted to have changed on the mix, and I blew up. I said, “Fuck you! Who are you?” And Layne told the guy to settle down and shut up. The drug dealer had some input on my mix.
JERRY CANTRELL It’s a dark album, but it’s not meant to be a bummer. Those five songs on the second side, from “Junkhead” to “Angry Chair,” are in sequence because it tells a story. It starts out with a really young, naive attitude in “Junkhead,” like drugs are great, sex is great, rock and roll, yeah! Then as it progresses, there’s a little bit of realization of what it’s about … and that ain’t what it’s about.
DAVE JERDEN I was a little concerned we were making an album glorifying drug use. The take I got from people around me was I wasn’t glorifying drugs, I was making a record that was showing the horrors of drugs. The band talked to me about where a lot of the songs came from. “Rooster” was about Jerry Cantrell’s dad.
MARK PELLINGTON The “Rooster” video was awesome. I heard the song and thought, Wow, this is really epic in terms of its flow and its arc, very cinematic. Jerry was in the process of really trying to heal with his dad. I spoke to Jerry and was like, “Let’s go to Oklahoma. Let’s make this as personal as you can. I want your dad to be in it.”
JERRY CANTRELL [“Rooster”] was all my perceptions of his experiences [in Vietnam]. The first time I ever heard him talk about it was when we made the video and he did a 45-minute interview with Mark