Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [238]
SEAN KINNEY A lot of the songs that Jerry and Layne wrote, you can hear what they have to say to each other right there. It’s spelled out, in a roundabout way. It’s a way more malicious and brutal album than Dirt was.
TOBY WRIGHT There were so many rumors going on about Layne and his lifestyle at the time: “Layne has gangrene and lost both of his arms.” “Oh, my God, he’s lost all of his teeth!” But the band never answered any rumor calls, because they didn’t think it was anybody’s business. There was a lot of speculation that the album would never happen. I heard rumors about some of the record executives betting against the record being made. I was like, Oh, really? Watch this.
NICK TERZO I felt Toby was more of an enabler in a way, too. Because he enabled the label to be shut out. As someone who’s being hired by a record label, I think you have to have better diplomatic skills than that. You’re serving two masters in a way.
MIKE INEZ Toby was very, very patient. He was such a soldier and just trying to keep the energy upbeat. He’s a brother for life. The cover of that album is very gray, and I think that was the general feeling of the band. And Seattle, when we were doing the record, I remember that feeling real gray.
TOBY WRIGHT One of the things that happened when we were recording was the Mad Season record went gold. So at 6 in the morning we were still in the studio with Layne, and the heads of Sony, Donnie Ienner and Michele Anthony, called and were congratulating him. And at the end of the conversation, they said, “Oh, yeah, by the way, you have nine days to get your record done.”
So they call him up to congratulate him and then threaten him. (Laughs.) So he wrote that into the lyrics. It’s the second verse: “Call me up congratulations ain’t the real why/There’s no pressure besides brilliance let’s say by day nine/Endless corporate ignorance lets me control time/By the way, by the way …” I think the recording process went another month or two after that.
The band didn’t do very much touring on the dog record, but they got offered to do this Unplugged show by MTV, in 1996.
ALEX COLETTI Before the show, I went to Alice in Chains’ rehearsal space in Seattle. When I walked in, I was happy to see Layne eating a bucket of chicken. He had on fingerless gloves and they were all greasy, so he wouldn’t shake my hand, but I got the elbow shake. He was really friendly. Seeing him eating that chicken just blew away my concerns of what condition Layne’s gonna be in. He was really in a great place. When he got to New York, I think he was still in good health.
MIKE INEZ Scotty Olson, who played with Heart, was playing with us that night; it was really special to have another energy up onstage with us. We discovered at that show that songs like “Sludge Factory” were even heavier acoustic. Layne that night was so haunting. His voice, especially his performance on “Down in a Hole,” it still brings a tear to my eye. There was a couple times I had to pull my eyes off of Layne and remind myself, Hey, I’m at work. Instead of being a fan here, I better concentrate on my bass chords. He was just so mesmerizing.
TOBY WRIGHT I recorded it and mixed the show. It was an amazing performance to watch. With Unplugged, you can do a song as many times as you wanna until you capture the performance that you wanna release, but you can’t do any overdubs. And Layne kept forgetting the words to “Sludge Factory.” It got pretty funny. I think he was nervous because Donnie and Michele happened to be sitting right in front of him.
SUSAN SILVER Alice did a four-show run opening for Kiss. Kansas City was the last show. I remember standing there at the soundboard with the tour manager. As soon as they went on I looked over at him and said, “This is the last time we’re gonna see these guys together onstage, Kevan, I just feel it.”
MIKE INEZ That was our last show with Layne. That was really just a heartbreaking thing. Dragster