Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [84]
NICK POLLOCK I introduced Layne to Jerry. I’d met Jerry out in Tacoma. Alice N’ Chains played a show at the Tacoma Little Theatre. I remember I was out in the back of the place and he came out and said hi and was a really enthusiastic guy. We traded numbers and he started coming up into my neck of the woods and started hangin’ out with me. Since Layne and I went out all the time, we’d all go out and go to parties.
DAVE HILLIS (producer/engineer/mixer; Mace guitarist) When I first met him, Jerry was just moody and always ready to start a fight. I got to know Jerry quite well over the years, but at that time he was just a dude I didn’t really want to know. He had a hard upbringing, I think. He had a chip on his shoulder, but he was incredibly determined.
JERRY CANTRELL I never had a whole lot of money and stuff. But when my mom passed away, I got a little money that she left to keep me jamming. So I just totally went crazy. I bought a bunch of amps, did a lot of drugs, and was an idiot, but fortunately it turned out okay.
I met Layne again at a house party right after [Gypsy Rose].… I didn’t have a place to live, so he invited me up to Ballard, where he lived at this place called the Music Bank, which was fucking awesome for a bunch of young kids.
JEFF GILBERT The Music Bank—a hideous place. Underneath the Ballard Bridge. You’d constantly hear those damn Alaskan fishing boats coming through there, and you’d hear the winches and the cranks of the drawbridge just grinding all the time. Those guys could make as much noise as they wanted, and it was just a monstrous party pad.
There was just one bathroom in the whole building. You know those public bathrooms in bus stations and seedier parts of downtown? Multiply that by a hundred rock-star wannabes and, yup, pretty disgusting. Most of the time people who slept there just pissed in the corner, because when you’re that drunk, and you get up in the dark in the middle of the night to try and find the door to go to the bathroom, trippin’ over band gear, you end up givin’ up.
JOHNNY BACOLAS The Music Bank was open 24 hours. You could go there and knock on the door at 3 in the morning and the guy that was working the keys would come, look through a peephole, let you in if you had a room there, walk you to your room, unlock it with the key—he had a huge key ring with probably 150 keys on it—and you were good to go. Layne was one of the key guys, and he usually worked the graveyard shift.
Jerry was living in our jam room, so in the middle of the night, Jerry would be in the office with Layne, watching TV with his guitar in his hand saying, “Hey, dude, check out this riff. I got this idea.” That’s quite a big catalyst to that incredible connection those two had.
NICK POLLOCK Alice N’ Chains went our separate ways, but it was very amicable. I could see where things were going with Layne with drugs. All of us did. That did have a certain amount to do with why we parted company as a band. He had never put a needle in his arm or tried heroin at the time, but he was doing other things to excess that could be quite startling. And it wasn’t gonna stop, and we all knew it.
James and I went and made a band together called the Society, which was more of a funk band with all different music styles. It didn’t last very long, about nine months, and James went his way and I started My Sister’s Machine. By that time, the new Alice in Chains was formed. Actually, it was called Diamond Lie.
SEAN KINNEY (Alice in Chains drummer) I first met Layne around 1985 when his band was playing at Alki Beach.… When Layne and Jerry hooked up, they were looking to put together a band. Jerry knew Mike Starr from playing with him in Gypsy Rose. Layne