Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [237]
BARRETT MARTIN Even though I’d lost respect for Alice in Chains on tour because of the resonant attitude of “We’re the big rock stars,” I wasn’t opposed to Layne being in the band, because he had an incredible voice and he was always cool. We did a couple of rehearsals with Layne and he was actually clean at that time; he had stopped using heroin. The beauty of that Mad Season record is that we were all sober. We wrote the songs in a couple weeks, played a couple unannounced shows, and recorded the album in about two weeks. It was fast.
BRETT ELIASON I produced, recorded, and mixed the Mad Season album. Layne was not healthy. Heavy, heavy drug use. Such a sweet guy, such an amazing talent. One of the best singers I’ve ever recorded. He could just stand out there and light it up. The problem was getting him there. We were in cahoots with his roommate, who’d help get Layne off the couch and point him in our direction.
Layne would show up and he’d go back to the bathroom and be doing dope back there and you’d wait for hours before he was ready to come back out. He was pretty open about it. I asked him, “Why? Why are you doing this to yourself?” He said, “I’m either going to drink or I’m going to do dope, and drinking is harder on me.”
JOHNNY BACOLAS Either during the making of the record or after, McCready started getting really concerned about Layne. He really wanted Layne to go back to Hazelden, where Layne had been in the past. He knew that Layne really liked this one counselor, whose name was Lowell, kind of a Harley-Davidson biker-type dude. McCready flew Lowell out one day and surprised Layne. Layne agreed to go back to Hazelden, but he only ended up staying for two or three days before flying back to Seattle. That was it for drug rehab.
MIKE MCCREADY I was under the mistaken theory I could help him out. I wanted to lead by example.
JOHNNY BACOLAS Ultimately what happened is Layne’s mom and his stepfather, Jim, convinced me that I was essentially enabling Layne, that I was making life a lot easier for him to continue doing what he’s doing. Now there was someone that bought him the groceries, took care of the day-to-day affairs of living. Stuff that pretty much anybody that’s into heroin that deep seems to neglect. So I moved out after about six or seven months.
TOBY WRIGHT (producer/engineer) I had engineered Alice in Chains’ Jar of Flies acoustic EP—the first EP ever to debut at number one—which they recorded after they finished that Lollapalooza tour. The third Alice in Chains album, the one with the three-legged dog on the cover, started with me coming up to Seattle and working with Jerry at his house. The strategy between Susan, Jerry, and myself was to get me up there, and as soon as the other members heard I was in town, hopefully their ears would perk up and they’d go, “What’s goin’ on? What are we doin’?” And that’s exactly what happened. It got Sean interested, brought Mike in. All of a sudden, boom, we were jamming, and I’d go over to Layne’s place and get him.
NICK TERZO The third album was when Alice in Chains accomplished their goal of boxing me out. I heard very few demos. They picked Toby Wright, who I brought in once to engineer something for them. I would not have picked Toby Wright. I think he was more of an engineer, and they could have used a full-on producer again. At the time, I didn’t think he had the experience to deal with the challenges he was going to face.
TOBY WRIGHT I had a special relationship with Layne. I had already gone through a phase of smokin’ weed and doin’ coke and heroin and all that kinda shit, so we could identify with each other and I kinda knew how to talk to him. Which I guess was one reason why I was hired to continue with them. I was able to really get down to some personal issues: “Here