Rocky Schenck photographed the three-legged dog for the album cover at a playground near downtown Los Angeles on August 23, 1995. The dog on the cover was “officially in memory of a dog which chased [Sean] during boyhood paper-route duty,” according to the Music Bank liner notes.
“I did a casting for three-legged dogs for the shoot, and the band ended up choosing a fax of one of the submitted photos as the cover shot. Eventually, the photos we shot at the playground appeared in [the box set] Music Bank,” Schenck wrote.
On September 24, Schenck flew up to Seattle to photograph the band and film what was originally intended to be a video press kit, which became something hilariously different: The Nona Tapes. Schenck called this “one of my absolute favorite experiences with Alice.” What began as a promo piece evolved into a Spinal Tap–style mockumentary showing how the band members spent their free time when they weren’t being rock stars. Schenck talked with each band member about how he wanted to be portrayed. Jerry is shown shoveling manure at a horse stable when he’s approached by an interviewer asking about the new Alice in Chains album. Jerry told Schenck’s producer Katherine Shaw he’s been working at the stable “since that music thing went sour a few years back” but that “Sony let us do another record, so I’m going back to that rock-and-roll thing.” Jerry also dressed in drag and played Nona Weissbaum, the title character, who is an aspiring journalist seeking Seattle rock stars for a story.
While cruising around Seattle, Nona stumbles onto Sean, who is standing on a corner, and she forces him into the car. Appropriately enough for his comedic nature, Sean is shown in his downtime dressed in a Bozo the Clown–style costume and rubber nose. Sean was later filmed at a bar drinking shots in full clown gear.
Mike told Nona he joined the band because they kidnapped his family and were holding his grandmother hostage until he did a few albums and tours with them. He is later shown at a hairdresser’s salon, with his hair in curling irons. He said since he read in a magazine that his band broke up, he stopped going to rehearsals and was running a hot dog cart on First Avenue.
Then it was Layne’s turn. Nona’s car is parked in an alley when they see him going through a Dumpster. According to Schenck, this setup was Layne’s idea. It was also Layne’s idea to have his lip and mouth movements not match up to the responses to the interview questions. He would say one thing during the on-camera portion of the interview and later overdub the video with an audio recording to an entirely different question.
There was a scary moment during filming in which a soundman almost died. They had spent several hours driving around in a convertible, with Schenck and his cinematographer in the front seat and the soundman in the trunk. When they stopped filming, Schenck noticed the soundman wasn’t responding to any of his questions. They opened the trunk and discovered he had passed out from inhaling carbon monoxide fumes.
“We ended up in a bar, quite drunk and having a great time. By that time, it was just me and my camera and the band. Sean, still in his Bozo outfit, stumbled out of the bar with a piece of toilet paper strategically attached to his foot as I followed him out onto the street. The evening continued to get wilder, but I decided that we had enough film for the project and stopped shooting.”10
On one of his trips to Seattle, Schenck went to Layne’s home with another band member and waited outside, but he never came out. As he was waiting, he wrote, “I experienced a variety of reactions and emotions—everything from frustration to anger to pity to compassion to empathy. The Layne I knew was such a complex conglomeration of diverse qualities, and I knew that if he had answered that door, I couldn’t have said or done anything that would have helped him or change the course of his life. He was determined to go down the road that he chose for himself, and nobody was going to change that.”
According to Schenck, all four band members could have been actors if they wanted to. He mentioned this idea to a few casting director friends, but nothing ever became of it. He also directed the video for “Grind,” which was shot at Hollywood National Studios on October 8–9, 1995, with the animated sequences filmed from October 11–21. “This was not an easy shoot. Layne was not in great shape during this period, and it was difficult to get him to come to the set to film his scenes. But, again, when he finally showed up, he was mesmerizing and unforgettable. This would be the last time I would see him.”
Alice in Chains was released on November 3, 1995, and, like its predecessor, it debuted in the number 1 position on the Billboard charts. Rolling Stone’s associate editor, Jon Wiederhorn, gave the album four stars in his review for the magazine.11 Not long after his review of the album, Wiederhorn was approached by Keith Mohrer, then the editor in chief of the magazine, and asked if he wanted to write a cover story about Alice in Chains, an assignment Wiederhorn accepted.
A lunch was arranged with Susan at the China Grill restaurant in New York City to discuss the story and lay out ground rules. Representing Rolling Stone were Wiederhorn, Mohrer, and Sid Holt, the managing editor. The lunch meeting gave Susan an opportunity to raise her concerns and ask any questions about the story. Most of the conversation focused on logistics—when and where the band members would be available for interviews while Wiederhorn was in Seattle. “It was kind of making sure we would have enough material to write a full-fledged cover story, and it wasn’t going to be an hour and a half in a conference room,” Wiederhorn said. One factor working in Wiederhorn’s favor was that the band had read and liked his review of Alice in Chains. He flew to Seattle in late November or early December, where he spent three days getting material for the story.
“One day it was sort of the ‘get to know you’ day, and we wanted to do something kind of quirky,” Wiederhorn recalled. Sean suggested playing Whirlyball—a game that combines elements of basketball, bumper cars, and lacrosse. Wiederhorn and the band went to an Italian restaurant after the game for the first formal Q&A. Wiederhorn noticed when Layne came back from the bathroom, he had not put his gloves back on, exposing “red, round puncture marks from the wrist to the knuckles of his left hand.”12
Wiederhorn spent several hours interviewing the band members as a group and individually. Sean drove Wiederhorn to Jerry’s house outside Seattle for their one-on-one interview. Along the way, Wiederhorn and Sean smoked a joint. Sean was open about the tensions that led to the withdrawal from the Metallica tour and the breakup in the summer of 1994. “Sean struck me as a guy who was sticking up for his bandmates. If I asked him any questions—I did ask him questions about the inability to tour or the frustrations of dealing with chemical dependencies or whatnot—he said, ‘Hey, none of us are perfect. None of us were free from blame in any of those departments,’” Wiederhorn said. “It was clear why they couldn’t tour, but they didn’t talk about it in specific terms and didn’t express any resentments toward Layne.”
Wiederhorn asked Layne about his heroin addiction, which he wouldn’t acknowledge was still a problem. Layne gave a candid assessment of his drug use: “I wrote about drugs, and I didn’t think I was being unsafe or careless by writing about them. Here’s how my thinking pattern went: When I tried drugs, they were fucking great, and they worked for me for years, and now they’re turning against me—and 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.”13