Alice in Chains was the first band to bring
grunge into the mainstream. But despite their considerable fame and fortune,
the band had more than their share of disasters, thanks to an array of drama, unfortunate incidents,
and rock star excess. Here is the tragic story of Alice in Chains. As the songwriter, guitarist, and co-vocalist,
Jerry Cantrell is responsible for much that makes Alice in Chains great, and seeing as
the band's musical vibe tends to skew toward despair, it's no surprise that Cantrell has
his share of personal tragedies. One of the biggest blows came when Cantrell
was only 21, and he lost his mother and grandmother over a short period of time. Cantrell explained to Kerrang!: "Those losses really tilted my horizon. My whole f---ing life was basically taken
away from me within the period of a year, and I felt like I was on my own." Cantrell notes in Mark Yarn's Everybody Loves
Our Town: A History of Grunge that he was living with the two women at the time, and
when he was still dealing with the gut punch that was his grandmother's death, his mother
informed him that she had mere months to live. Cantrell's mother was only 43 when she died
of pancreatic cancer. In Greg Prato's book, Grunge Is Dead: The
Oral History of Seattle Rock Music, Cantrell says that the losses happened within a span
of six months or so, leading him to a situation where he had no immediate family, other than
his distant father. As a very minor silver lining, his mother's
insurance policy left him with enough money to buy some music gear and, quote, "exist
for a while." Jerry Cantrell may not have lived quite as
rough a life as the band's famously tragic frontman, Layne Staley, but that doesn't mean
he's had it easy. As Louder reports, the aspiring rock star's
difficult relationship with his father was such a case. Cantrell Senior had his share of psychological
issues from his time in the Vietnam War. This ultimately played a part in breaking
up the family, leaving Cantrell and his father estranged. Fortunately, the Cantrells eventually managed
to grow closer after the guitarist was inspired to write a song about his father's experiences
in Vietnam. He named the brooding, dark song "Rooster"
after his dad's old nickname, and Cantrell Senior was so fond of the end result that
he agreed to appear in the music video. Alice in Chains frontman Layne Staley lived
a life that was full of tragedy and sorrow, but his personal history contains a sharp
turning point. A.V. Club recounts that In October 1996, Staley
was deeply shocked by the death of Demri Parrott, the vocalist's long-time girlfriend and fellow
drug addict. The couple was already separated at that point,
and while Staley had plenty of rock star money to finance his habits, Parrott's relative
poverty allegedly forced her to sell her body in order to finance her drug use. Parrott's addiction resulted in fatal bacterial
endocarditis, and Staley took the news of her passing extremely hard. In fact, with friends reporting that he never
recovered after Parrott passed away. Staley distanced himself from his band and
the world in general, opting instead to binge on narcotics and play video games. Over time, this less-than-healthy lifestyle
started taking its toll on the singer, who persisted on this dark path despite the numerous
attempts his bandmates made to lure him back into the land of the living. Alice in Chains drummer Sean Kinney, in particular,
attempted to contact Staley three times a week for years, but Staley refused to talk
to him. Rumors about the vocalist's condition started
making rounds, and some said he'd even lost an arm to gangrene, or at least a couple of
fingers. On the few occasions when Staley emerged from
his self-imposed exile, he indeed resembled a shambling, grey zombie. "Before, you know, they've had a chance to
see whether or not you've changed, they're just assuming you have." Alice in Chains drummer Sean Kinney's tenure
with the band has been comparatively tragedy-free, though Kinney did have his own struggles with
alcohol abuse during the Layne Staley years. Still, there was a time when the drummer's
very presence on the band's first studio album, Facelift, was at risk. As bad luck would have it, Kinney broke his
hand before the band was due in the studio, and Greg Gilmore, the drummer of Mother Love
Bone, sat in on the kit. Fortunately for Kinney, the producer, Dave
Jerden, didn't feel that Gilmore could capture the Alice in Chains drum sound, so the band
took a little while off...but not enough for Kinney's hand to heal. Eventually, he decided that he couldn't miss
the band's big break, so he cut off his cast and drummed on the album with a broken hand,
cooling it with a bucket of ice he kept beside his drum kit. Truly, art is suffering. Alice in Chains' sophomore studio album, 1992's
Dirt, was a massive success that cemented the band's place in the grunge pantheon and
featured landmark hits like "Angry Chair", "Would?", and "Rooster". However, the making of the album was somehow
an even darker process than the notoriously gloomy end result. As Rolling Stone writes, the Dirt sessions
were seemingly cursed by misfortune, and were even interrupted by the 1992 Los Angeles riots. The mayhem got so bad that assorted members
of the band found it better to flee L.A. for Tijuana and Joshua Tree, California. According to Revolver, things weren't much
better when they were in the studio. The band was struggling with the newfound
success from their first album, Facelift, and singer Layne Staley and bass player Mike
Starr in particular were beginning to use drugs heavily. Staley was so out of it that he had to wear
sunglasses when they shot the music video for "Rooster" so viewers wouldn't realize
how high he was, while Starr's drug problems became so bad that the band had to ultimately
fire him. Staley even broke his foot before they started
touring the album as a warm-up act to Ozzy Osbourne, so he had to perform several dates
in a wheelchair. Layne Staley was hardly the only member of
the band to struggle with addiction. Mike Starr, the band's original bass player,
also developed a taste for narcotics early on. Starr took care of bass duties on Alice in
Chains' beloved debut studio album, Facelift, as well as their even more esteemed sophomore
effort, Dirt. He was there when they toured with giants
like Van Halen and Iggy Pop, but sadly, so was his drug addiction. Alice in Chains and Starr parted ways in 1993. Layne Staley said that Starr left because
he didn't want to keep up with the band's hectic touring and press schedule, while Starr
later said that he was straight up fired because of his addiction issues. Regardless of what actually happened, this
marked the start of a long downfall. A year or two after his Alice in Chains days
ended, Starr got in trouble for stealing luggage at an airport, and spent 90 days in jail. Later, he became something of a mainstay in
reality shows of the Celebrity Rehab and Sober House variety. On March 8, 2011, the 44-year-old musician
passed away in Salt Lake City, just a month after he'd been arrested for drug possession. Deseret News reported that Starr had been
mixing his anxiety medication and methadone, and The Hollywood Reporter later confirmed
that the bassist's cause of death had been a prescription drug overdose. The band had their last full tour with Staley
in 1993, when they were co-headlining Lollapalooza. In 1994, they were set to tour with Metallica,
but they ended up canceling just before the first dates. The reason? Staley's heroin addiction. Staley had recently gone to rehab, but soon
afterwards, he showed up in a band rehearsal under the influence. As Rolling Stone recounted, the rest of the
band were less than pleased, to the point that drummer Sean Kinney swore he'd never
play with Staley again. Guitarist Jerry Cantrell agreed with the sentiment,
and just like that, Alice in Chains took a hiatus - they never officially did brake up. They managed to patch things up six months
later, but unfortunately, this wasn't the end of their troubles. If the tragedies Alice in Chains has faced
over the years were a mountain range, Layne Staley's death in 2002 would quite likely
be its highest peak, when the 34-year-old lead singer was found dead in his apartment
in Seattle. Though his long-time issues with drug addiction
were well known, Staley had also been a recluse for quite some time. As a result, his body wasn't found until two
weeks after his death, when people realized they hadn't heard about him in a while. When the police broke down the door of Staley's
home, they found the singer's apartment in a sorry state, and its six-foot-one occupant
dead and so withered, he only weighed 86 pounds. Staley's place was full of various drugs and
paraphernalia, and he was still clutching a syringe filled with the next intended dose
of heroin. The death was ruled accidental, and caused
by a "speedball", a combination of cocaine and heroin. "It was a team, and I really miss him a lot. I love him. I miss him terribly." Surviving members of Alice in Chains, guitarist-singer
Jerry Cantrell, bassist Mike Inez, and drummer Sean Kinney, reunited in 2006 without a particularly
clear vision for their future. However, they soon discovered William DuVall,
who ended up joining the band as a vocalist and guitarist. In 2009, the new lineup released the fourth
Chains studio album, Black Gives Way to Blue, and they've kept busy ever since. As you can probably imagine, this didn't sit
too well with many people, who saw the death of Layne Staley as the end of Alice in Chains. The band continuing with its new lineup prompted
criticism from such fans, and as Loudwire tells us, in 2018 the band decided to fire
a volley right back at their critics. Cantrell pointed out that DuVall wasn't replacing
Staley any more than Inez had replaced former bassist Mike Starr. He said, "We never looked at it as a part of somebody
is replaceable, because Layne Staley is not replaceable, Mike Starr is not replaceable. Their period of time with us in the band,
on those records is indelible and completely unique." In an interview with The Los Angeles Times,
Jerry Cantrell recalled that the road to their fifth studio album, 2013's The Devil Put Dinosaurs
Here, was a painful one for him. The guitarist developed a repetitive motion
injury and had to have surgery to fix the issue. According to Revolver Mag, the band had started
working on the album soon after wrapping up their previous tour. However, after recording just one song, Cantrell
started experiencing excruciating pain in his arm. It turned out that the guitarist was suffering
from a cartilage injury he had been enduring since 2005, as the years of intensive guitar
heroics had worn down the glenoid labrum in his shoulder socket in a similar
way that sometimes happens to baseball pitchers, wherein the bones essentially grind on each
other with painful results. The injury and the ensuing surgical procedure
set the musician, and his band, back several months. Still, Cantrell ultimately came to see a silver
lining in the painful situation, as it forced him and the rest of the band to recharge their
batteries before jumping right into a labor-intensive album cycle. If you or someone you know is struggling with
addiction, please call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration's 24/7 National
Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP. That's 1-800-662-4357.
