“I knew that it was the phone call I had thought about getting for years,” Jamie said. She called her mother back, who calmly told her, “Layne’s passed away.” Jamie flew up to Seattle the next day. “We were all obviously just incredibly sad and heartbroken, but also relieved. Because I think we all knew that Layne was suffering so much, to see him physically so sick and just not well. I would say that most of us all felt some relief, for sure, to know that he wasn’t suffering anymore,” Jamie recalled.
The consistent reaction to Layne’s death from friends and family was that although tragic, the outcome was not surprising. “When somebody’s in that position for years and years, you know what the end result is, so that was not a surprise. Was it still a shock? Of course it was, but it was something that you would expect,” Jim Elmer said.
Ken Elmer was at home when he got the call from Jim. “Dad called fairly quickly after it happened. I don’t think he wanted me to see it on the news. He was in shock, but it was one of those ‘We knew this day was coming’ type of shocks,” Ken said. He had not seen Layne since the late 1980s or early 1990s and was blown away. “Over the next twenty-four hours, it was, ‘What could I have done? What could we all have done?’”
“I loved him and will always love him,” Susan told Charles R. Cross. “He was like a brother to me. He was this little broken but gentle spirit. We did everything we could think of to help him choose life, but sadly the disease won instead.” Jerry and Sean told Cross they hadn’t spoken with Layne for at least two years.1
Mike Inez had just returned to his home in Big Bear Lake, California, from his former Ozzy Osbourne bandmate Randy Castillo’s funeral in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He got a phone call from Sean telling him Layne was dead. Mike was in disbelief.
“Are you sitting down? Layne’s gone.”
“Oh, my God, you’re kidding.”2
Johnny Bacolas got a call from Nancy Layne McCallum or Jim Elmer and spoke to both of them. “It’s going to be on the news very soon. Layne’s gone; he passed away,” he was told. Bacolas turned on his TV, and within twenty minutes it was breaking news.
James Bergstrom was driving across the Tacoma Narrows Bridge when he found out. He thinks he heard it on the radio or got a call from Johnny Bacolas. “It hurt deep, because that’s part of your childhood,” Bergstrom said. “We all knew the direction his life was headed. We’d pray for him, but still, when you hear that news, things go into reflection instantaneously. My mind just relapsed. I just remember for a long while that I just listened to his music, and that voice, every time I hear it my eyes well up, and tears would come out for a long time. They still do.”
Someone tried to contact Nick Pollock at his mother’s house. This person told his mother what happened, and she immediately got in touch with her son before he found out through the media. “I was devastated by that news and was not in a good state upon hearing the news. Probably for a number of hours I was extremely distraught. And so it was good to hear it from her. It was good to hear it from my mom instead of getting it from the news, because I don’t want to fall apart when I’m at work or school or whatever I was doing at the time,” Pollock said.
Toby Wright and his wife were halfway to the Burbank Airport, en route to Seattle to record Layne’s vocals. He got a call from Susan saying Layne had passed away. They all cried. Wright told her he was already on his way, and she told him to come for the memorial service. “Spacey”—the song Layne was supposed to sing vocals for—did not make the cut for Welcome or any subsequent Taproot release, although the band has performed it live in its original instrumental form.3
Dave Jerden heard about Layne’s death on the news and started getting phone calls and e-mails. “I was crushed, of course—I still am. I felt terrible. All I heard about was in the news. It was just a really sad thing. The world lost a major talent. That’s what heroin does. That’s the reason I hate drug dealers—[Layne’s dealer] who came in and told me to change the mix. He didn’t get that mix changed, but he changed Layne, that fucker. That guy should die.”
Randy Biro was in a San Diego–area prison watching the news when a story was read, with words to the effect of “Rock star dies of heroin overdose,” without identifying Layne. Biro’s initial reaction was “Oh God, no. Please don’t let it be him.”
“When they came back and they said it was him, I almost passed out. It was probably one of the saddest moments of my life, just looking back at it right now. I remember where I was sitting,” Biro recalled. “I knew he had been dead for a while, but at the time, I’m sitting in prison. You can’t cry over it or anything. So I never got to let it go, never had the opportunity.”
Randy Hauser was in a medium-security federal prison in Sheridan, Oregon, when another inmate who had been a musician in Seattle approached him privately and told him. “I was devastated,” Hauser said. “I’m crying, and he’s making sure that nobody sees me. I’ve got this reputation to keep up to survive in prison. Here I am crying because one of my kids died.”
Chrissy Chacos was in the hospital, having just given birth to her second son. She had to remain hospitalized an extra week because she had undergone hernia surgery. “I was watching the news. They said, ‘Body of Layne Staley, Alice in Chains, dada, dada, da.’ I completely lost it, right then and there. I couldn’t believe it.” One coincidence that made Layne’s death hit even closer to home was the fact his body was discovered on April 19—her oldest son’s birthday.
Ron Holt got a phone call from Dave Hillis. “Two nights later, Raj Parashar and Dave came out to my house in Everett, and we drank my homemade absinthe, and I took Xanax, and we went out and partied in Layne’s honor.”
Pearl Jam was in the studio working on their Riot Act album when they heard. Eddie Vedder wrote the song “4/20/02”—about Layne’s death—the same night. According to McCready, “He recorded it at, like two or three in the morning, just with producer Adam Kasper. I think he was just so angry and he wanted to get it out.” The song would appear as a hidden track on some editions of Lost Dogs, the band’s B-sides compilation. “I think the reason it’s hidden is because he wouldn’t want it to be exploitative,” McCready explained. “I think he wants it to be hidden so you have to find it and think about it.”4
Fans gathered to mourn at the International Fountain at Seattle Center at a vigil organized by Cain Rarup, an Alice in Chains fan. The event began at around 6:00 P.M. on Saturday, April 20—approximately twenty-four hours after Layne’s body was discovered. Attendance was estimated at about two hundred people. The three surviving members of Alice in Chains came, as did Mike Starr, along with Susan and Chris Cornell. Jerry hugged friends and fans but didn’t speak much. Sean was quoted as tearfully saying, “My heart is broken. I’ve lost a lot of friends. But this…”5
Jeff Gilbert attended the vigil. “It seemed like everybody was kind of in a daze. We knew it was just going to be a matter of time for him, but when it happened, you can’t ever prepare yourself for that, and it was wretched.”
Three days after his body was discovered, the surviving members of Alice in Chains released a statement on their Web site that said they were feeling “heartbroken over the death of our beautiful friend” and described Layne as “a sweet man with a keen sense of humor and a deep sense of humanity” and “an amazing musician, an inspiration, and a comfort to so many.” The statement concluded, “We love you, Layne. Dearly. And we will miss you … endlessly.” The statement also asked that the media honor the privacy of Layne’s family and gave the name and address of a rehab center in Bellevue where people could send donations in Layne’s name.6