Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [239]
SUSAN SILVER Layne’s situation was heartbreaking over and over, and I didn’t realize how it affected me until the daily crisis management was over. I didn’t realize how psychically drained I was until after the last record and after those Kiss shows, when they finally stopped touring and stopped being active altogether.
BARRETT MARTIN We had started making a second record for Mad Season; we had 16 or 17 tunes that we were working on. We were gonna do the same thing—have Layne be the main singer and lyric writer, and have Lanegan be involved. But I could never get either of them to come down to the studio. And then McCready had this idea of doing a new band called Disinformation. I guess Lanegan was gonna be the singer, but again, he never showed up, not once. We talked, Mike and Baker and I did, about getting another singer. And then Baker died.
JOHNNY BACOLAS I was at Baker’s house probably a week and a half before he died, which was in 1999. He lived in a tiny house over by Green Lake, another suburb of Seattle, and was playing in a band called the Walkabouts. He was really sad that they weren’t finishing Mad Season record number two. And I remember that he was kind of stressing financially. He was just really somber. When he first came out of rehab and I met him, he was extremely excited because it was a fresh start. I remember leaving his house that last time feeling, This is not the normal Baker I’m used to. There’s just something not right.
BRETT ELIASON Baker had a girlfriend from Belgium who’d gone back to school in Europe, and I think he felt really lonely. He ended up turning back to dope. I’ve heard this kind of story a few times, where if you do what you used to be able to do, your body can’t take it anymore. Baker hit the floor, and the gentleman that was with him was brave enough not to run, and he called 911. But he was dead by the time they got there. He was a sweet man, a smart man. It’s crushing. So sad.
BARRETT MARTIN I was the last guy to talk to Baker. I spoke to him on the phone the night he died; we were supposed to meet for lunch the next day, since I hadn’t hung out with him in a little bit. I guess that night this dealer came over, and Baker overdosed and died right there on the kitchen floor. And this shows the sleaziness of the drug dealer—the guy didn’t even call an ambulance right away. He left Baker in an overdosed state, and then later, I guess, called the cops to say, “You better go check on this guy.”
And when Baker died, that was it. The band was done.
KEVIN MARTIN The making of Candlebox’s second album, Lucy, was a disaster. Scott wanted to quit the band, but he wasn’t telling anybody, so he was playing drums like a robot. Everybody was really unhappy and tired and overworked. When we said no the first time about getting into the studio to make a record, we should’ve stuck to it. Were we being pressured? Yeah. The label and management were like, “We need to make this record. We need to make this record.” To capitalize on the success of the first album, they want you to follow up with it and be able to get it out as soon as you can.
KELLY GRAY Everybody had just gotten done with a tour. They just got beat to death on the road. They weren’t ready to make the second record yet. Hindsight being 20/20, if they’d waited six months it probably would’ve been a lot better.
KEVIN MARTIN Also, nobody would show up to the studio. Why? Because they had a lot of money. People were buying houses, and it’s like, “We got a job to do.”
SCOTT MERCADO I don’t think I was one of those people that would’ve just flat-out not shown up. Pete back then was obsessed with golf, so if it was sunny out we knew he was gonna be golfing and we weren’t gonna be doing music. (Laughs.) Also, Pete at that point, that was before he was clean and sober,