On December 9, 2011, an attorney filed an application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office seeking to trademark the Alice in Chains name under the ownership of Nancylayneco LLC, a Seattle-based company owned and controlled by Nancy Layne McCallum. Attorneys representing Alice in Chains filed a notice of opposition in January 2013, objecting to McCallum’s application and requesting it be denied by the USPTO. As of this writing, ownership of the Alice in Chains trademark has not yet been determined, but according to a legal filing dated July 9, 2014, an extension for the discovery period has been requested because both sides are “engaged in settlement discussions.”7
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In 2001, Chris Cornell started working on material for Audioslave. According to court records, he checked himself in to rehab in late 2002, and, while he was there, he and Susan separated. Cornell filed for divorce a year later.8 According to a court document filed by Susan’s attorneys, Cornell wanted to finalize the divorce quickly because his girlfriend, the Paris-based publicist Vicky Karayiannis, was pregnant, and he wanted to start a family with her. They would later marry. He gave Susan a settlement offer, which she accepted, and the divorce was finalized on March 2, 2004.9
Litigation surrounding the divorce would play out over several years, involving multiple cases, courts, and attorneys in Washington and California. There were further legal disputes about personal effects of his that had remained at their Seattle home, now owned by Susan, including Grammy awards, lyrics and demos for songs, and a collection of guitars that Cornell had used during his career.
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At the beginning of the decade, Alice in Chains was still on hiatus. Although he left the door open for an Alice reunion as long as all four members were “alive,” Jerry made another solo album.10 Dave Hillis moved to Los Angeles in 2000 and ran into Jerry at the Sunset Marquis in West Hollywood. The two wound up hanging out together. At the time, Hillis was living in a studio apartment in Hollywood and was waiting for a two-bedroom unit to open up in his building. Jerry eventually took over his old apartment.
According to Hillis, there were a lot of musicians and actors who lived in the building, including Comes with the Fall, a band from Atlanta that Jerry was a fan of. This was the beginning of Jerry’s friendship with William DuVall.
“Comes with the Fall had just moved from Atlanta to LA,” William said during a 2013 interview. “[Jerry] came up and introduced himself to me at the Dragonfly Club on Santa Monica in LA. That’s how we met. Then it evolved into him learning our songs with us in our apartment. He would sit there, ‘Show me that thing you’re doing.’ Then he was finishing up Degradation Trip and he asked us to go on tour with him, so that kind of cemented our friendship.”11
William’s musical career began with the Atlanta hardcore band Neon Christ in the fall of 1983, in which he played guitar. Neon Christ released a self-recorded, self-produced record in early 1984 on Social Crisis Records—a name William came up with. In addition to being musicians and record producers, Neon Christ had to be business entrepreneurs, responsible for selling their own records. “In the early days of the hardcore scene in America, it was so small. I’d even extend that to the entire scene in the whole world—little pockets of people in Finland, then you’d find out about a little pocket of people in Japan, a little pocket in Italy, and you’d get these letters,” William said during a 2013 interview with Drowned in Sound. “To be in your bedroom trying to come up with these songs, then to be in your friend’s bedroom shoving envelopes and getting orders from Russia, then you get these broken-English letters … This was pre-Internet, in the early eighties, and it was so small and so innocent, and so passionate.”
On the significance of the hardcore scene, William said, “The hardcore thing is the first time the kids actually seized control of the means of production, in a meaningful way that was happening concurrently across the world, without you and your little scene knowing about anyone else. It’s a weird thing in the collective consciousness, where it just had to happen.”12
According to Randy DuTeau, William’s bandmate and singer in Neon Christ, the band started out heavily influenced by thrash, but the music evolved from an emphasis on speed to an emphasis on structure and melody. That musical progression was largely the result of William’s diverse range of musical influences up to that point.13
Jerry tapped Comes with the Fall and another band, Swarm, as his opening acts for a monthlong solo tour of clubs and small venues in March and April 2001. In addition to being an opening act, Comes with the Fall would be pulling double duty as Jerry’s backing band, because Rob Trujillo and Mike Bordin were unavailable for touring.14
After returning to Seattle to attend Layne’s memorial service, he decided not to cancel or postpone any of his remaining tour dates. That spring and summer, he found himself in the odd situation of opening for Nickelback and Creed, both influenced by Alice in Chains.
The Nickelback/Jerry Cantrell tour came to Seattle a month after Layne’s death. Jerry dedicated “Down in a Hole” and “Brother” to Layne, the latter of which featured a guest appearance by Ann and Nancy Wilson. He closed his set with “Them Bones.”15
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Sean and the former guitarist from Queensrÿche, Chris DeGarmo, formed a side project in 1999 after they finished touring behind Boggy Depot. Mike Inez and Vinnie Dombroski were recruited to fill out the band. The group went by the name Spys4Darwin—named after one of the homeless people who hung around the Seattle recording studio where they worked. In 2001, the band released a six-song EP titled microfish. After Jason Newsted quit Metallica, Mike was considered as a replacement, although Rob Trujillo ultimately got the job. Mike joined Heart in 2002, a gig that would last for four years. On October 22, 2004, the Alice in Chains partnership—at this time consisting of Jerry and Sean—received a letter from Sony Music that stated, “Sony BMG has recently received notice that both Jerry Cantrell and Sean Kinney have ceased to perform as members of the group ‘Alice in Chains’. Sony BMG hereby notifies you … of our election to terminate the term of the Agreement,” referring to the band’s contract signed in September 1989.16 Alice in Chains was without a record label for the first time in fifteen years.
More than two years after Layne’s death and two months after being dropped by Sony, it took another tragedy—one of cataclysmic proportions—to bring the surviving members of Alice in Chains back together. On December 26, 2004, a magnitude 9.1 to 9.3 earthquake in the Indian Ocean set off a devastating series of tidal waves, killing more than 227,000 people and displacing nearly 1.7 million in fourteen countries throughout Southeast Asia. It was the third-strongest earthquake on record since measurements of magnitude began in 1899.17
A few months later, Sean was helping to organize a benefit show in Seattle, with all proceeds going to relief efforts. The show was announced on KISW. The buzz and demand for tickets was immediate. According to Jeff Gilbert, “It just detonated all over this city. I’ll tell you, that thing sold out so flippin’ fast, there were people scrambling, trying to find tickets.”
The plan for the show was for Sean, Jerry, and Mike—in their first public performance as Alice in Chains since 1996—to play with a revolving door of singers, including Tool’s Maynard James Keenan, Puddle of Mudd’s Wes Scantlin, Heart’s Ann Wilson, and Damageplan’s Pat Lachman. The show ended with Wilson, Keenan, Lachman, and Scantlin taking turns singing in what the Seattle Post-Intelligencer described as a “We Are the World”-esque performance of “Rooster.” The show raised more than $100,000 for relief efforts.18