Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [232]
And they all came up to the car, probably 15 kids, and they’re like, “If you’re Layne Staley, prove it.” And Layne was just looking straight ahead. Sunglasses on, 2 o’clock in the morning, wouldn’t even acknowledge them. Finally, one of the guys pulls up in a truck, cranks “No Excuses,” and he goes, “If you’re Layne Staley, sing along!”
And Layne started singing. Sang the verse, sang the chorus. Nailed it, exactly like it sounded on the record. All the kids were like, “Holy shit, it’s fuckin’ him!” He sang that, just to be, Get the fuck out of my face! Kind of proved who he was, and then he’s like, “Get out of here!” And then we drove off.
SCOTT MERCADO Sean and I talked for a long time and he’s like, “You guys probably get bummed by critics not liking you or people in the industry not liking you or people in the grunge scene not liking you. Now you know how I feel whenever somebody comes up to me and says, ‘Too bad your band is so fucked up they can’t go on tour.’ ”
JOHNNY BACOLAS The night that he was holding on to me and we were on that bridge there in Lake Chelan, Layne asked me to move in with him. He said, “I don’t trust many people. I trust you. Please, would you come live with me?”
JEFF AMENT The first record or two, Ed and I could talk. We roomed together, the whole first year and half that we toured, so we got to know each other fairly well. We were jamming on “Release,” and he started to sing this thing, and after we were done he said I need to talk to you and he laid the whole thing on me, acknowledged what had gone on with him and his dad. It was a heavy moment. But now communication was at an all-time low. I responded like I’ve always responded: just put my head down and played.…
STONE GOSSARD Vitalogy was the first record where Ed was the guy making the final decisions. It was a real difficult record for me to make, because I was having to give up a lot of control.
BRENDAN O’BRIEN Vitalogy was a little strained. I’m being polite—there was some imploding going on.
ADAM KASPER Vitalogy was when I started noticing that Eddie was not all too pleased with Dave musically. Dave was an extremely busy player, and Eddie likes a more raw sound. We even recorded a couple songs starting out with drum machines, and that’s sort of a slap in the face to a drummer.
And then there was Dave’s personality. I’m not really sure during which album this happened, but the classic story is when Dave Abbruzzese accidently knocked over Eddie’s guitar, which was a gift from Pete Townsend or something. He breaks it and just leaves a little picture of a boo-boo face on it, like, Sorry, and fuckin’ left the studio to go do a drum clinic or some self-promoting bullshit like that. He just had a bit of a rock-star attitude, and that didn’t go well with Eddie.
DAVE ABBRUZZESE Breaking one of Eddie’s guitars? That never happened. Nope. I never broke nothin’.
COLLEEN COMBS Pearl Jam really were a democracy as a band, but the way the democracy worked was that they were kind of all on the same page about what they wanted. Dave always wanted something different, and he was the only one who wanted something different. He was the person who would want to order a limo and not a town car. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But it was kind of a hard place for him to be.
DAVE ABBRUZZESE I really thought we should be playing music instead of participating in that Ticketmaster fiasco. I thought it was a waste of time.
JOHN HOYT What happened with Ticketmaster was that all those extra add-on fees were exorbitant. Pearl Jam has never been concerned just about making money, so they took on the cause. With all the extra charges, it meant that if they wanted to have a $20 ticket, it would cost $26. We were trying to cut deals with Ticketmaster to decrease those charges, but never were able to do it, and finally just