“I saw all the suffering that Kurt Cobain went through,” Layne would recall. “I didn’t know him real well, but I just saw this real vibrant person turn into a real shy, timid, withdrawn, introverted person who could hardly get a hello out.”7 Layne’s private views were skeptical of the official story. “Layne was a little more vocal on the Kurt issue, because he never thought Kurt would take his own life,” Jim Elmer said. “He mentioned that multiple times, about that issue, that he never did believe it. And so this was not right after he died, this was years after, too. He still remembered that and just thought that was not characteristic of Kurt.”
A few weeks after Cobain’s death, Jim Elmer got a call from Courtney Love. She had been trying to get ahold of Layne and somehow got Elmer’s phone number. According to him, they spoke twice. “The gist of the conversation was that she was looking for Layne because she knew Layne and Kurt were friends and wanted to find out what had happened the last few days, that she intimated to me that she was not happy with the outcome that it was a suicide. She thought there was more to it than that, and she wanted to chase down Layne and have a discussion with him.”
Love was probably assuming that because Cobain and Layne ran in the same social circles—musicians, drug users, and drug dealers—he might have seen Cobain or have some knowledge of his final days. Whether Layne saw Cobain during his final days is not known, but there is evidence of at least one mutual drug connection.
Cobain confidant Rene Navarette told Nirvana biographer Everett True about an encounter with some of Seattle’s highest-profile musicians in the spring of 1993, who all coincidentally found themselves at the same place at the same time trying to procure drugs. “When Courtney went to England, that was the first time me, Kurt, Dylan [Carlson, guitarist from the band Earth], and Cali [DeWitt, Frances Bean Cobain’s nanny] had a few days to mess around without her … We had too much fun. We would go into town, walk into a drug dealer’s living room: Kurt, Dylan, Mark Lanegan, and Layne Staley coincidentally walking into the same basement at the same time. It was pretty amazing. Everyone had mutual admiration for each other. Now, looking back on it, there were all these great talented guys who were tainted forever because of their drug use.”8
Tool was performing at KISW’s Rockstock concert held at Kitsap County Fairgrounds on May 28, 1994, when Layne made a surprise appearance and joined them for a performance of “Opiate.” According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Layne “looked sickly and wore a wool ski mask to hide his face.”9
That summer, Alice in Chains had plans to tour with Metallica. They were also on the bill for Woodstock ’94, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the seminal concert festival, scheduled to take place in Saugerties, New York, that August. Layne had just returned from another stint in rehab and had relapsed, while Sean was struggling with a drinking problem.10
Sean later told Rolling Stone that the final straw was when Layne showed up for practice high the day before the start of the Metallica tour. He threw down his sticks and vowed he would never play with Layne again, a sentiment shared by Jerry. Shortly after, Susan issued the following statement: “Alice in Chains has withdrawn from the Metallica summer tour, as well as an appearance at the Woodstock ’94 festival. This decision is due to health problems within the band. Alice in Chains apologizes to their fans and appreciates their support and concern. The band hopes to resolve the situation in privacy. The members look forward to returning to the recording studio in the fall.” The tour was canceled and—according to Rolling Stone—the band broke up for six months. Candlebox got the band’s slots on the Metallica tour and at Woodstock.11
Jimmy Shoaf had made plans to tour with Alice in Chains that summer and had spent some money in anticipation of getting paychecks from the tour. He was sitting on a plane about to take off when a stewardess approached him.
“We’re pulling your bags off. Kevan Wilkins called. He told us not to let you fly.”
“I was like, ‘Shit!’ That was when I learned my lesson: don’t spend your money before you make it,” he recalled.
Metallica weighed in on the Alice in Chains situation during the tour. They would play the opening bars of “Man in the Box” with their front man James Hetfield doing Layne’s opening wail while mockingly rubbing and smacking his left arm in a shooting-up-heroin gesture.
“I can’t tour. I can’t tour,” Hetfield moaned. Drummer Lars Ulrich and lead guitarist Kirk Hammett also made the shooting-up gesture with their arms. Ulrich pressed one of his drumsticks into the vein on the inside of his left arm, so it stuck out like a giant wooden syringe.12
Sean later said of this period, “Nobody was being honest with each other back then. If we had kept going, there was a good chance we would have self-destructed on the road, and we definitely didn’t want that to happen in public.”13 During this hiatus from Alice in Chains, Layne tried to kick heroin again and found another musical outlet for his creativity.
Chapter 19
I’m not going to be like this forever.
IN THE LATE SPRING or early summer of 1994, Michelle Ahern-Crane was living in Seattle’s Queen Anne neighborhood. She had heard Layne was living in the area but hadn’t seen him in several years. One night she had a very vivid dream about him.
“I had this epic dream that I was walking around this sixties motel, the kind that every motel room has its own door and you walk on the outside on the railing,” she recalled. “I was walking by all these motel rooms and each door was open; in each room there was a totally different scene going on. I walked by one door and look in and Layne is in the motel room. There’s a kitchenette and there’s a pot on every burner of the stove, they’re boiling over and he was really perplexed and like, ‘Aaah … the stuff’s boiling over!’ Kinda chaotic. I go in and take his hand, I’m like ‘Let’s get out of here.’”
The next thing she remembered was “We’re in this gymnasium running around like kids, just having fun, laughing, running, playing like kids.” At that point, her phone woke her up. It was her aunt, Lisa Ahern Rammell, who had introduced her to Layne several years earlier.
“Guess who I saw last night?”
“Layne.” Michelle correctly guessed.
Ahern Rammell said she had been out with another girl the night before when they saw him. Layne gave the other girl a big hug, thinking she was Michelle, and was embarrassed when he found out it wasn’t. Michelle told her about her dream. After their conversation, Ahern-Crane was walking along Queen Anne Avenue. A car drove by and she noticed the passenger. “I just see these huge blue eyes and I just knew it was him. And I look and it’s like, ‘Whoa! That’s so weird, the dream and my aunt saw him last night, and I think that was him that just drove by.’”
The car pulled over and Layne got out, holding a kitten. She was taken aback by his physical appearance. “He looked really bad. It was pretty shocking because I hadn’t seen him in a long time. It was sad,” she said. He had let his hair grow, and it was his natural brownish-blond color. He had gauze on his hands, which was only partially covered by fingerless gloves. He was wearing a long-sleeve shirt and a leather jacket.
She told him about the dream and mentioned his running into her aunt and how weird all these coincidences were. Layne told her that he and his mother, who was driving the car, were returning from taking the kitten to the vet.