When she finished the letter, it dawned on her—“Oh my God! He thinks we’re dating!”
“I wanted to like him, but I don’t know if he’s got HIV; I don’t know what the deal is. I’m not going to get involved with that. But I guess that I was hoping foolishly that I could make a difference and inspire some sobriety or something and then maybe I would have tried dating him if he had cleaned up, because I was definitely fond of him. He thought we were, and then on my birthday he realized we were not.”
Ahern-Crane vaguely remembers writing the letter for Layne’s birthday, which would have been about three weeks before. She described it as “an inspirational note” in which she said she could see he was a sweet person deep down inside, and wouldn’t it be great if that person came out more. She also recalls writing that she felt he was special, and because of that he shouldn’t squander it. “I guess this meant a lot to him at the time because I think at this point no one was saying anything superpositive to him and meaning it. Or maybe it meant something to him (as he said it did in his birthday letter back to me later) because I was typically so reserved and emotionally cool—it may have been refreshing to him that I said ANYTHING positive about my feelings or perception of him,” she wrote in an e-mail.
Layne walked in, saw what was going on and that she was with Sibbald, and, according to Ahern-Crane, “His face kind of fell.” She excused herself to talk to Layne and try to make him feel welcome. Coming to the party was “totally humiliating for him, and I felt so bad and it was just a terrible thing. He got his feelings hurt.” Layne and Bacolas took off shortly after. Bacolas vaguely recalls going to this party but doesn’t remember any specific details. He did not dispute Ahern-Crane’s account.
Within a day or two after the party, Ahern-Crane went over to Layne’s apartment to pick up some things she had left. It was a bad sign when Layne wouldn’t let her inside. He brought her things to the door, and they spoke on the porch. Ahern-Crane didn’t mention the party. She decided to address his drug use.
“I think it’s really strange how you could clearly have a problem, and your friends and all these people that are kind of hanging around, no one talks about it. You’re in trouble. You clearly have a problem, you’re clearly in trouble. None of your so-called friends want to talk about it and it makes me really sad.”
Layne got defensive. Ahern-Crane described his response as “snotty,” and recounts that he said words to the effect of “If I make you sad, maybe you shouldn’t see me.” She got her stuff and left. Looking back on it years later, she wrote, “The fact of the matter is, that last day, when I said his drug use was sad to watch, he interpreted that as my disapproval of him. Or he thought it meant I didn’t like him.”
Mad Season closed out 1994 with a headlining show at RKCNDY on New Year’s Eve, with Second Coming opening for them. On January 8, 1995, Eddie Vedder hosted “Self Pollution Radio,” a series of live performances and interviews with Seattle musicians that took place in the basement of his house and was broadcast live by a satellite truck parked outside. Mad Season was on the bill and performed “Lifeless Dead” and “I Don’t Know Anything.”16
During this 1994–95 period, Layne would often join Second Coming onstage at local gigs to sing vocals on “It’s Coming After,” with Bacolas estimating the count at fifteen to twenty shows.17 According to James Bergstrom, all this happened in the weeks and months after Alice in Chains pulled out of their touring commitments because of an unidentified band member’s health issues. The explanation given for the tour cancellation indicated “that Layne was in deep water with his addiction, unhealthy and out of it,” Bergstrom said. Not long after this, Layne took the stage with Second Coming during a show at Under the Rail. MTV News obtained a video of the performance, and Kurt Loder did a story about it. The fact that Layne was performing around Seattle without Alice in Chains raised questions about the reason for the tour cancellation. “There was some controversy in the Alice camp. It was kind of a contradiction with what the press release said,” Bergstrom said.
At the same time, Second Coming was playing local gigs in the Seattle area as a cover band under the name FTA—an acronym for Funding the Album, in reference to their debut album that was in the works. Layne would occasionally come out to FTA shows, take the stage, and sing “Would?” or “Man in the Box.”18 Bergstrom recalls performing “No Excuses” at one show and Layne telling him afterward that it was his first time playing the song live.
By the spring of 1995, Bacolas decided to move out. “It was a culmination of everything. To me, it got to a point where it was just too depressing, too much.” Layne would leave handwritten letters to Bacolas on his bed. In one of them, he wrote words to the effect of how there was a black cloud over their house.19 Bacolas spoke to Layne’s mother, who told him, “You know you’re not helping him; you’re enabling him.” Bacolas sat down with Layne in the living room and told him, “I can’t do this anymore.” Bacolas isn’t sure how exactly Layne felt about it but thinks he was okay with his decision and understood it. The day Bacolas moved out was the last time he saw Layne.
At around the same time all this was going on, Jerry was quietly making moves in an effort to get Alice in Chains to regroup.
Chapter 20
That’s funny. You don’t plan on using those, right?
ALICE IN CHAINS’S SELF-TITLED third album traces its beginnings to the 1994–95 period when the band was on hiatus and was originally meant to be a Jerry Cantrell solo album. He invited Scott Rockwell, the drummer for Gruntruck, to jam and record material on his sixteen-track home studio. These jams were recorded by Jerry’s guitar tech, Darrell Peters. Rockwell said, “I was playing drums and he was playing guitar, and we’d record, and then he’d—we’d talk about it a little bit, and then he’d pick up the bass and put on down some bass tracks and stuff … So we worked on like three songs. I think two of them made it on the album.”
After these initial demo recordings, Jerry and Rockwell went into a recording studio. Mike Inez was there, as were Ann and Nancy Wilson, who brought a bagful of wine. “Nancy Wilson steps up, never heard the song before, and just [does] this awesome duet on top of it, on the song. This was preproduction tracks for the [Alice in Chains] album. And I’m just sitting there, just like, ‘This is awesome.’ I’m sitting here playing drums, and there’s Ann and Nancy Wilson over there singing with me.”
One of the songs Rockwell recorded with Jerry eventually became “Again.” Rockwell ran into Sean about a year later and the subject of the song came up during their conversation.
“Dude, I got out of the studio recording this fucking song and all fucking Jerry said is, ‘Play it like McCullum [Rockwell’s surname at the time],’” Sean told him. According to Rockwell, the style of drumming on that song is his, not Sean’s.
Toby Wright got a call asking if he wanted to make another Alice in Chains record. First and foremost, Jerry, Susan, and Wright had to get the other band members on board. Wright went to Jerry’s house to start working on material while Layne was doing Mad Season. The idea was to jolt the other members into making another album once they got word that Wright was in Seattle working with Jerry.1
“Jerry’s mind-set was if it didn’t come out, if the band didn’t want to get involved as Alice, he wanted to put out a solo record. We had the working title of Jerry’s Kids because most musicians call their songs their kids and treat them like kids, very precious. The record was never going to be called that,” Wright explained. Jerry’s plan ultimately worked.