Layne Staley
Layne Thomas Staley was an American singer-songwriter. He was the original lead vocalist of Alice in Chains, which rose to international fame in the early 1990s as part of Seattle's grunge movement. He was known for his distinctive vocal style as well as his harmonizing with bandmate Jerry Cantrell. Before his success with Alice in Chains, Staley was also a member of the glam metal bands Sleze and Alice N' Chains. He was also a part of the supergroups Mad Season and Class of '99.
"Man in the Box", the second single from Alice in Chains' debut album, Facelift, garnered Staley critical recognition for his vocal style. Alice in Chains' EP Jar of Flies, debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, making it Alice in Chains' first record—and the first-ever EP—to top the chart. However, Staley's deteriorating condition due to heroin abuse led him to enter a rehabilitation clinic. He began to work on a side project with several Seattle musicians, Mike McCready of Pearl Jam, Barrett Martin of Screaming Trees, and John Baker Saunders of the Walkabouts, which came to be Mad Season, while Alice in Chains went into hiatus.
During Alice in Chains' hiatus, reports of Staley's drug addiction began to gain widespread circulation in fan and media communities, in part due to changes in his physical condition brought on by prolonged heroin abuse. On April 10, 1996, the band returned with a performance on MTV Unplugged in New York; it was Alice in Chains' first concert in two-and-a-half years. The band performed three more shows, supporting Kiss on their reunion tour, with Staley's final live performance on July 3, 1996, in Kansas City, Missouri. Aside from recording two more songs with Alice in Chains – "Get Born Again" and "Died" – and a cover of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" with Class of '99 during 1998, Staley was out of the public spotlight by the late 1990s.
Staley struggled with drug addiction for much of his adult life; he later died from a speedball overdose on April 5, 2002, at the age of 34. He was ranked at No. 27 on Hit Paraders list of "Heavy Metal's All-Time Top 100 Vocalists" in 2006, and at No. 42 on Complex magazine's list of "The 50 Best Lead Singers of All Time" in 2012. Seattle officially declared August 22, 2019, as "Layne Staley Day". Staley earned six Grammy Award nominations as a member of Alice in Chains.
Early life
Staley was born as Layne Rutherford Staley on August 22, 1967, at Overlake Hospital in Bellevue, Washington, to Phillip Blair Staley and Nancy Elizabeth Staley. Staley disliked his middle name "Rutherford" and would get angry every time someone called him by this name. He legally changed his middle name to "Thomas" during his teens because he was a fan of Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee.Staley joined a rhythm band in Bellevue when he was two or three years old, and was the youngest in the group.
Staley was seven years old when his parents divorced, after which he was raised by his mother and stepfather, Jim Elmer. He took his stepfather's surname while enrolled in Meadowdale High School in Lynnwood, and was known for some time as Layne Elmer.
Staley was raised as a Christian Scientist. However, he was critical of religion in his adult life, stating in a 1991 interview:
"I have a fascination with how brainwashed people get with religion and how they'll give up their money, their time and their whole life for a cause that they're sure is right, but I'm sure is wrong. I think there's a lot of people who are scared of life and living and they want to make sure they get to Heaven or whatever. I try to stay away from it as much as I can. I was raised in the church until I was 16 and I've disagreed with their beliefs as long as I can remember, so when I had the choice I chose not to believe in anything apart from myself."Staley also stated in a 1999 interview that the song "Get Born Again" is about "religious hypocrisy".
He approached music through his parents' collection, listening to Black Sabbath and Deep Purple. Other favorite bands include hard rock and metal bands like The Stooges, Anthrax, Judas Priest, Saxon, Rainbow, Mercyful Fate, Twisted Sister, Van Halen, and industrial/new wave acts such as Ministry, The Lords of the New Church and Skinny Puppy. He also cited Prince and David Bowie as two of his biggest idols.
Staley began playing drums at age 12; he played in several glam bands in his early teens, but by this point, Staley had aspirations of becoming a singer. In 1984, Staley joined a group of Shorewood High students in a band called Sleze, which also featured future members of The Dehumanizers and Second Coming.
In 1985, Staley and his band Sleze made a cameo in Father Rock, a low-budget movie from Seattle's Public Access Channel. In 1986, Sleze morphed into Alice N' Chains, a band which Staley said "dressed in drag and played speed metal." The new band performed around the Seattle area playing Slayer and Armored Saint covers.
Career
Alice in Chains and Mad Season
Staley met guitarist Jerry Cantrell at a party in Seattle while working at Music Bank rehearsal studios in 1987. A few months before that, Cantrell had watched Staley performing with his then-band, Alice N' Chains, in his hometown at the Tacoma Little Theatre, and was impressed by his voice. Cantrell was homeless after being kicked out of his family's house, so Staley invited Cantrell to live with him at the Music Bank. The two fast friends lived as roommates for over a year in the dilapidated rehearsal space they shared.Alice N' Chains soon disbanded and Staley joined a funk band, which at the time also required a guitarist. He asked Cantrell to join as a sideman. Cantrell agreed on condition that Staley join his band, which at the time did not have a name and included drummer Sean Kinney and bassist Mike Starr. They started auditioning terrible lead singers in front of Staley to send a hint, which made him angry. The final straw for Staley was when they auditioned a male stripper in front of him – he decided to join the band after that. Cantrell said this about Staley's voice: "I knew that voice was the guy I wanted to be playing with. It sounded like it came out of a 350-pound biker rather than skinny little Layne. I considered his voice to be my voice." Eventually the funk project broke up, and in 1987, Staley joined Cantrell's band on a full-time basis. The band had names like "Fuck" and "Diamond Lie", the latter being the name of Cantrell's previous band.
Two weeks after the band's formation, they were playing a gig at the University of Washington, trying to fill in a 40-minute set with a couple of original songs along with Hanoi Rocks and David Bowie covers. Diamond Lie gained attention in the Seattle area and eventually took the name of Staley's previous band, Alice N' Chains, then renamed Alice in Chains. Staley got permission from his former bandmates to use the name.
Local promoter Randy Hauser became aware of Alice in Chains at a concert and offered to pay for demo recordings. However, one day before the band was due to record at the Music Bank studio in Washington, police shut down the studio during the biggest cannabis raid in the history of the state. The final demo, completed in 1988, was named The Treehouse Tapes and found its way to the music managers Kelly Curtis and Susan Silver, who also managed the Seattle-based band Soundgarden. Curtis and Silver passed the demo on to Columbia Records' A&R representative Nick Terzo, who set up an appointment with label president Don Ienner. Based on The Treehouse Tapes, Terzo signed Alice in Chains to Columbia in 1989. The band also recorded another untitled demo over a three-month period in 1989. This recording can be found on the bootleg release Sweet Alice.
Alice in Chains released its debut album Facelift on August 21, 1990, shaping the band's signature style. The second single, "Man in the Box", with lyrics written by Staley, became a huge hit. "Man in the Box" is widely recognized for its distinctive "wordless opening melody, where Staley's peculiar, tensed-throat vocals are matched in unison with an effects-laden guitar" followed by "portentous lines like: 'Jesus Christ/Deny your maker' and 'He who tries/Will be wasted' with Cantrell's drier, and less-urgent voice."
Facelift has since been certified double platinum by the RIAA for sales of two million copies in the United States. The band toured in support of the album for two years before releasing the acoustic EP Sap in early 1992. Alice in Chains made a cameo in Cameron Crowe's 1992 film Singles, performing the songs "It Ain't Like That" and "Would?".
In September 1992, Alice in Chains released Dirt. The critically acclaimed album, also the band's most successful, debuted at number six on the Billboard 200, and was certified quadruple platinum. Staley designed the sun logo on the album's inlay. During the Dirt tour in Brazil in 1993, Staley saved Starr's life after he had overdosed. Because of Staley's drug addiction, the band did not tour in support of Dirt for very long.
Cantrell wrote almost all of the music and lyrics for Alice in Chains, but as time went on, Staley contributed more lyrics. Eventually, Staley would receive credit for about half the lyrics from the entire Alice in Chains catalog prior to the release of Black Gives Way to Blue in 2009. He also wrote the music and the lyrics to "Hate to Feel", "Angry Chair" and "Head Creeps", and melodies to other songs. Staley's lyrics are largely viewed as having dealt with his personal troubles, such as drug use and depression. Staley also played guitar on "Angry Chair" and "Hate to Feel". Cantrell said of "Angry Chair" on the liner notes of the 1999 Music Bank box set:
In 1994, Alice in Chains released their third EP, Jar of Flies. It debuted at number one, making it the first Alice in Chains release—and the first-ever EP—to do so. The other members of Alice in Chains, seeing Staley's deteriorating condition, opted not to tour in support of Jar of Flies. Following the album's release, Staley entered a rehabilitation clinic and began to work on a side project with several Seattle musicians, Mike McCready of Pearl Jam, Barrett Martin of Screaming Trees and John Baker Saunders of The Walkabouts. The band worked on material for several months and played its first show on October 12, 1994, at the Crocodile Cafe in Seattle under the name "The Gacy Bunch". Within a few weeks, the band changed its name to Mad Season. In January 1995, Mad Season performed two songs on Pearl Jam's Self-Pollution satellite radio broadcast, "Lifeless Dead" and "I Don't Know Anything". The band completed an album, titled Above, which was released in March 1995. The first single, "River of Deceit", became a modest success on alternative radio. A live performance filmed at the Moore Theatre in Seattle was released in August 1995 as a home video, Live at the Moore.
During Alice in Chains' hiatus, reports of Staley's addiction began to gain widespread circulation in fan and media communities, in part due to changes in his physical condition brought on by prolonged heroin abuse.
Alice in Chains regrouped to record Alice in Chains, sometimes referred to as "Tripod" due to the cover featuring a three-legged dog, which was released in November 1995. The album debuted at the top of the U.S. charts, and has since been awarded — along with Facelift and Jar of Flies — double platinum status. With the exceptions of "Grind", "Heaven Beside You", and "Over Now", the lyrics were all written by Staley, making this album his greatest lyrical contribution to the band's catalog. To accompany the album, the band released a home video, The Nona Tapes, but the band lapsed again, failing to complete tours planned in support of the album. When asked about the frustration of not touring to support the record, Cantrell provided some insight into how Staley's addictions led to tensions within the band: "Very frustrating, but we stuck it out. We rode the good times together, and we stuck together through the hard times. We never stabbed each other in the back and spilled our guts and that kind of bullshit that you see happen a lot." "Drugs worked for me for years", Staley told Rolling Stone in February 1996, "and now they're turning against me, now I'm walking through hell and this sucks. I didn't want my fans to think that heroin was cool. But then I've had fans come up to me and give me the thumbs up, telling me they're high. That's exactly what I didn't want to happen."
One of Staley's last shows with Alice in Chains was the MTV Unplugged performance in New York on April 10, 1996. The recording of Unplugged came after a long period of inactivity for the band; it was their first concert in two-and-a-half years. Staley made his last performance on July 3, 1996, in Kansas City, Missouri, while Alice in Chains was touring with Kiss.