Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [264]
SUSAN SILVER Sean would call Layne all the time. But it didn’t matter—he could call Layne every day for six months and Layne still wouldn’t respond. Not because there was any animosity; it was just like Layne was in that cloud.
TOBY WRIGHT I had spoken with Layne by phone three or four times like three weeks before they found his body, which turned out to be a week before he died. I had sent him a track—I was working with a band called Taproot, and they really, really wanted Layne to sing on this one song, and he had agreed to do it. He sounded excited on the phone because this band was a big fan of his, and he was like, “Wow, I get to perform again.” Some of the members of Taproot wanted to be there when he recorded, but he wanted complete privacy.
MIKE STARR He died the day after my birthday. And I was with him all that day, on my birthday, trying to keep him alive. I even asked him if I could call 911, and he said if I did he would never talk to me again. And of course, I didn’t know he was gonna die, or I would’ve called 911 anyways.
I wish I wouldn’t have been high on benzodiazepine.… [Layne] just said, “I’m sick” … He was agitated because I was too high. He used to get mad at me when I took ’em. He’d be like, “You’re an idiot on these pills.” And then I got mad at him, and I said, “Fine, I’ll just leave.” And his last words to me were, “Not like this, don’t leave like this.” I just left him sitting there. His last words were, “Not like this.” I can’t believe that. I’m so ashamed of that.
KURT DANIELSON Layne had access to resources that allowed him to get in much deeper than most people ever could, unless they’re an ingenious thief. When you heard about his death, it wasn’t such a surprise. What was sad about it was that his body wasn’t found immediately, but only after many days, which indicated the level to which he’d been cut off from everybody else.
MIKE STARR I went home and I blacked out on benzodiazepine. I just blacked out for the whole two weeks.
SUSAN SILVER I got a call that there was some concern because Layne hadn’t been heard from for a while. Maybe his bank statement came in, and there hadn’t been the usual pattern of activity. Both Laurie Davis, who was the bookkeeper for the business-management firm Alice was with, and I had an innate sense that something was wrong. And Laurie mentioned it to Sean, who also runs heavily on intuition, and he was gonna go over there and try to get into Layne’s building and break down the door. I immediately felt the gravity of it and told him he needed to sit tight and we needed to get the family involved.
IANN ROBINSON (MTV News reporter; MTV News report, weekend of April 20, 2002) The rock world lost one of its more honest voices this weekend when Alice in Chains front man Layne Staley was found dead in his Seattle home on Friday. He was 34. Seattle police say they responded to a call from one of Staley’s relatives, asking them to check on his well-being since he hadn’t been seen in two weeks. Police then discovered a body, later identified as Staley, that had been deceased for at least a few days, surrounded by intravenous-drug paraphernalia.
SEAN KINNEY It’s like one of the world’s longest suicides. I’d been expecting the call for a long time, for seven years, in fact, but it was still shocking …
MIKE INEZ I had just come home to Big Bear Lake, California, and I was really in a bad spot because my best friend in the world, Randy Castillo, the drummer of the Ozzy band and basically my mentor, died. He got smoking cancer in his jaw, and it spread throughout his body. Either the day I got back from his funeral in Albuquerque or the next day, I get a call from Sean. He said, “Are you sitting down? Layne’s gone.” “Oh, my God, you’re kidding.” That was one of the lowest points I think I’ve ever been in my whole time of existence.
TOBY WRIGHT My wife at the time and I were from Los Angeles and we were on our