The story of Alice in Chains

Seattle beginnings

Layne Staley was born on the twenty-second of August 1967 in Bellevue, Washington. His parents split when he was seven, and for a while at high school he went by his stepfather's surname, Elmer. He hated his given middle name, Rutherford, and changed it to Thomas because he was a fan of Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee. Layne started out behind a drum kit at twelve, but he wanted to sing. In 1984 his stepbrother talked him into auditioning for a glam metal band of Shorewood High students called Sleze. He was painfully shy and stared at the floor, but the band later said they were blown away by the grain of his voice.[1] [2] [3]

Sleze went through a string of line-up changes and in 1986 renamed itself Alice N' Chains. The idea came from a chat about backstage passes with a Wonderland theme, when another local singer joked about putting Alice in chains instead. Worried about the bondage overtones and about the parents, the boys spelled it Alice N' Chains. Layne later described the band as a group that dressed in drag and played speed metal. They cut a demo at London Bridge Studio in Seattle and pressed a hundred copies for friends. By 1987 the band had fallen apart, and Layne was living and working at a rundown twenty-four hour rehearsal space called the Music Bank.[1] [2] [3]

Jerry Cantrell grew up around Tacoma. His father, Jerry Senior, came home from Vietnam when Jerry was three, and his parents divorced when he was seven. He was raised by his mother Gloria and his grandmother, and the family lived on welfare and food stamps. Jerry sang in his high school choir, which performed old Gregorian chants that he later called scary church music, and he credited that choir with his taste for dark tones. Then, within six months, his grandmother died of cancer in October 1986 and his mother died of pancreatic cancer in April 1987, at forty-three. Friends said he became a different person, and soon afterwards he was kicked out of the family home.[1]

Three weeks after his mother died, Jerry went to see Alice N' Chains at the Tacoma Little Theatre and was struck by the singer. Around August 1987 he met Layne at a party, and Layne, hearing he was homeless, invited him to live at the Music Bank. Jerry wanted a new band. Layne gave him the number of Melinda Starr, the girlfriend of a drummer called Sean Kinney. Sean came to hear Jerry's demos, and when Jerry said he had a bassist in mind, Mike Starr, Sean pointed at his girlfriend and said that was her brother. Sean and Mike had been playing together since they were kids.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Now they needed a singer, and they wanted Layne, who was busy with a funk band. So the three of them staged auditions with deliberately terrible singers right in front of him, to drop a hint. When they auditioned a male stripper, Layne gave in. The deal was a trade: Jerry would play guitar in Layne's funk project, and Layne would sing in Jerry's band. The funk band soon folded. The new group played under names like Diamond Lie before Layne asked his old bandmates for permission to reuse a name, and with a small change it became Alice in Chains.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Signing and Facelift

A local promoter, Randy Hauser, offered to pay for a demo, but the day before the session police shut down the Music Bank in what was described as the biggest cannabis raid in Washington's history. The band finished their demo anyway in 1988. Known as The Treehouse Tapes, it reached two managers, Kelly Curtis and Susan Silver, who also looked after Soundgarden. They passed it to Nick Terzo at Columbia Records, who arranged a meeting with label president Don Ienner. Alice in Chains signed to Columbia in 1989. Curtis soon moved on to manage Pearl Jam, and Silver became the band's sole manager, a role she would hold for decades.[1] [2] [3]

Columbia made the band a priority. In the summer of 1990 it released a promotional EP, We Die Young, and the title song became a hit on metal radio. Jerry said he wrote it after riding the bus to rehearsal and seeing children of nine or ten with pagers, dealing drugs. The label rushed the band into the studio with producer Dave Jerden. Jerden later said he got the job by telling Jerry that Metallica had taken Tony Iommi's riffs and sped them up, while Alice in Chains had slowed them down again. Jerry looked at him and said he had got it.[1] [2] [3]

Facelift came out in August 1990. Sean Kinney nearly missed it. He had broken his hand, and the band started rehearsing with Greg Gilmore of Mother Love Bone. Sean refused to be left out, so he cut off his cast in the studio and kept his hand in a bucket of ice between takes. The album also carried a dedication to Jerry's mother Gloria and to his friend Andrew Wood, the Mother Love Bone singer who died of a heroin overdose in March 1990 at just twenty-four. Jerry wrote the song Sunshine about losing his mother.[1] [2] [3] [4]

At first Facelift barely moved, selling under forty thousand copies in six months. Then MTV put the Man in the Box video into daytime rotation. Layne said the song began as a protest about censorship, until some vegetarian Columbia staff told him over dinner how veal calves are raised in tiny boxes, and the image stuck. Within six weeks the album sold four hundred thousand copies. On the eleventh of September 1991 Facelift was certified gold, the first album of the Seattle grunge movement to do so, ahead of Nirvana's Nevermind. Man in the Box earned the band its first Grammy nomination.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Alice in Chains was marketed as a metal band, and they toured like one. They opened for Iggy Pop, Poison and Extreme, and in 1991 they took the support slot on the Clash of the Titans tour with Anthrax, Megadeth and Slayer. Metal crowds often gave them a rough reception, and Anthrax bassist Frank Bello recalled Layne jumping into the audience to deal with a heckler. Van Halen singer Sammy Hagar then picked them for his band's tour. It was a triumph with a hidden cost. According to later accounts, Layne and Mike Starr were both introduced to heroin during that Van Halen tour.[1] [2] [3]

Sap, Singles and Dirt

A session meant to record one song for a film ended with the band demoing about ten. Sean then dreamed that they made an EP called Sap, and the band decided not to mess with fate. Sap was released on the fourth of February 1992, with no ads at all, while Nevermind sat on top of the charts. It was mostly acoustic, and on the opening song, Brother, Jerry sang lead for the first time, pushed by Layne to sing his own words. Ann Wilson of Heart sang on two songs, and Chris Cornell and Mark Arm of Mudhoney joined in on Right Turn, credited to a joke band called Alice Mudgarden.[1] [2] [3]

The film was Cameron Crowe's Singles, his love letter to the Seattle scene. Alice in Chains appeared as a bar band playing It Ain't Like That, and gave the soundtrack Would?, which Jerry wrote about Andrew Wood. He said the song was also aimed at people who pass judgment on the choices others make. Crowe co-directed the video, and it won the MTV award for best video from a film in 1993. In the same sessions Jerry demoed Rooster, a song about his father that he had written at night while staying at the home of Susan Silver and her husband, Chris Cornell.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Recording for Dirt began in the spring of 1992 in Los Angeles, and the riots that followed the Rodney King verdict erupted on the very first day. Jerry was buying beer when a looter walked into the store. The band fled to the desert near Joshua Tree for several days, taking Slayer singer Tom Araya with them, then went back to work. Layne had checked out of rehab and quickly relapsed during the sessions. By producer Dave Jerden's account, Layne came to resent him for repeatedly urging him to get sober. Jerden said his job was to make a record, not to be Layne's friend.[1]

Dirt was released on the twenty-ninth of September 1992. Six of its thirteen songs dealt with addiction, and Layne described it as partly a concept record: a young man who believes drugs will ease his pain, then slowly slides toward hell and learns they will not. Jerry said the sequence was meant as a warning, not a celebration. The album reached number six, spent about two years on the chart, and later went five times platinum, the band's biggest seller. Its five singles included Them Bones, Jerry's reflection on death, Down in a Hole, written for his long-time girlfriend, and Rooster.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Rooster was the nickname Jerry's great-grandfather gave his father, a Vietnam veteran who served two combat tours. Jerry wrote it from his father's point of view, imagining what the war had done to him and to the family. The first time his father heard it live, at a club show opening for Iggy Pop, he stood by the soundboard in his grey Stetson, took off his hat, held it in the air, and cried. Filming the video, Jerry Senior gave a long interview about the war, the first time his son had ever heard him talk about it. Jerry called the song the start of their healing.[1] [2]

A new bassist and Jar of Flies

The Dirt tour began with Layne on crutches after breaking his foot in an ATV accident, opening for Ozzy Osbourne. Manager Susan Silver even hired bodyguards to keep dealers away from him, but he relapsed on the road. In Brazil in January 1993 the band shared bills with Nirvana. Mike Starr later said that one night Layne and Kurt Cobain both gave him heroin, that he collapsed, and that Layne brought him back with CPR, crying as he came round. After a show in Rio de Janeiro on the twenty-second of January 1993, Mike Starr was out of the band.[1] [2] [3] [4]

His replacement was Mike Inez, a Los Angeles bassist who had joined Ozzy Osbourne's band in 1989 after beating more than fifty others at audition. He had written the riff to Ozzy's No More Tears in a jam, though he was credited only as music inspiration. Inez had befriended Alice in Chains on the Ozzy tour, and he played his first show with them on the twenty-seventh of January 1993 at the Underworld in Camden, London. That spring they cut two songs with him for the Last Action Hero soundtrack, and in the summer of 1993 they played Lollapalooza. It would be their last major tour with Layne.[1] [2] [3]

When the band came home from Lollapalooza they found they had been evicted for not paying the rent, so they more or less moved into London Bridge Studio. Jerry had booked ten days there with engineer Toby Wright, though they had no songs ready. The sessions started on the seventh of September 1993 and ran fourteen to eighteen hours a day. Layne wrote most lyrics in the studio, insisted on analog tape, and usually sang in one or two takes. Sean's side stick groove on No Excuses came from fooling around. Within a week they had a quiet, acoustic record they never planned to release.[1]

The label loved it. Jar of Flies came out on the twenty-fifth of January 1994 and debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 with more than a hundred and forty thousand copies in its first week. It was the first EP ever to top that chart. No Excuses became the band's first number one on mainstream rock radio. The title came from a third grade experiment of Jerry's, in which overfed flies bred until they died of overcrowding while the underfed jar survived. Layne dryly said there was probably a message in there. The EP went on to sell millions in America.[1] [2]

Falling apart, 1994 to 1996

After Jar of Flies, Layne went into rehab. The band was booked for Metallica's summer tour in 1994 and a slot at Woodstock '94, but at a rehearsal Layne arrived high. Sean, who was fighting his own drinking at the time, threw down his sticks and said he would not play with him like that, and Jerry agreed. They cancelled everything the day before the tour began, and Candlebox took their place. Management blamed health problems within the band. For about six months, Alice in Chains simply stopped. Sean later said that if they had kept going, they might well have destroyed themselves in public.[1] [2] [3]

Into the silence came rumors. Layne told Rolling Stone he learned from the internet that he had AIDS, and that he was dead, and at Lollapalooza a fan once stared at him as if she had seen a ghost. Meanwhile Pearl Jam's Mike McCready, who had met bassist John Baker Saunders in rehab, formed a band with Screaming Trees drummer Barrett Martin and invited Layne to sing, hoping sober company would help him. First billed as the Gacy Bunch, they became Mad Season. Their only album, Above, came out in March 1995, with Layne on vocals and cover art, and went gold.[1] [2] [3]

Jerry had started a solo album, but he quietly arranged sessions hoping Layne and Sean would hear about them and want back in. By January 1995 Sean had rejoined him and Inez, and in May Layne returned. With Toby Wright producing at Bad Animals Studio in Seattle, they jammed songs into shape. Layne's addiction meant long waits, and an assistant carried a pager so he could be summoned whenever the singer turned up, sometimes after midnight. Finally Don Ienner and Sony executive Michele Anthony called Layne and gave him nine days to finish. He did, and later wrote Sludge Factory about that ultimatum.[1] [2]

The self-titled album arrived in November 1995 and debuted at number one. Fans call it Tripod after the cover, a three-legged dog Sean chose because, the story goes, such a dog used to chase him on his paper round. Jerry sang lead on three singles, including Grind, his answer to the constant rumors about death and breakup, and Heaven Beside You, about the end of his seven-year relationship. In February 1996 Rolling Stone put Layne alone on its cover under a headline borrowed from a Neil Young song about heroin. Layne felt betrayed, since he had been promised a story about the whole band.[1] [2] [3] [4]

On the tenth of April 1996 the band played MTV Unplugged at the Majestic Theater in Brooklyn, their first concert in about two and a half years. Jerry had food poisoning and kept a bin beside him on stage. Layne was visibly unwell, yet he sang beautifully, and many now rank it among the finest Unplugged sets. That summer they opened four shows on Kiss's reunion tour. At the last one, in Kansas City on the third of July 1996, Sean even stood up and sang the Kiss song Beth. After the show Layne overdosed and was rushed to hospital. It was his final concert.[1] [2] [3]

Silence and the death of Layne Staley

On the twenty-ninth of October 1996, Layne's former fiancee, Demri Parrott, died of a drug overdose at twenty-seven. NME reported that he was put on suicide watch. His friend Mark Lanegan later said Layne never recovered from her death, and did not seem to want to go on. He retreated into his condominium in Seattle's University District and was rarely seen. Rumors spread that he had gangrene or had lost limbs. Jerry told the press the band still hung out at his place, and when Jerry promoted his first solo album in 1998, Layne phoned a radio show just to say he loved it.[1] [2]

With the band stalled, Jerry released his solo debut, Boggy Depot, in April 1998, with Sean and Mike Inez playing on it. That October, Layne came back to record two last songs with Alice in Chains, Get Born Again and Died, for a box set called Music Bank. People at the sessions were shocked by how frail he had become. On Halloween night 1998 he went backstage at Jerry's solo show in Seattle but declined to sing. The photo taken that night is the last one of him ever released. His last interview was a surprise call to a radio program in July 1999.[1] [2] [3]

On the nineteenth of April 2002, Layne's accountants noticed that no money had left his bank account for two weeks and alerted Susan Silver, who called his mother. Nancy McCallum went to the condo, heard his cat, and called the police. They found Layne's body on the couch. He weighed about eighty-six pounds and had to be identified from dental records. The autopsy found he had died of a mix of heroin and cocaine on the fifth of April, two weeks earlier, and the death was ruled accidental. It was eight years to the day after Kurt Cobain's death. Layne was thirty-four.[1] [2] [3] [4]

His bandmates called him a sweet man with a sharp sense of humor and a deep sense of humanity. Fans held a vigil at the Seattle Center, and at the private memorial Chris Cornell sang with Ann and Nancy Wilson. Jerry dedicated his second solo album, Degradation Trip, released two months later, to Layne, and took in his cat, Sadie. His parents set up the Layne Staley Memorial Fund to help people with heroin addiction in the Seattle music community. Years later, Sean Kinney admitted Layne was not the only addict in the band, just the one everyone singled out.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Rebirth with William DuVall

After Layne's death the others scattered. Mike Inez toured with Heart, Sean formed Spys4Darwin, and Jerry played with Ozzy Osbourne and others. In 2004 Sony ended the band's contract. Then the Indian Ocean tsunami struck, and Sean had the idea of a benefit concert. On the eighteenth of February 2005, Jerry, Sean and Mike played together for the first time in years in Seattle, with guest singers including Maynard James Keenan of Tool and Ann Wilson. The response moved them. A few months later they called Susan Silver and said they wanted to tour again as Alice in Chains.[1] [2] [3]

The singer they found was already a friend. William DuVall, born in Washington DC in 1967, came out of the Atlanta hardcore punk scene and had co-written the Dionne Farris hit I Know. Jerry met him in Los Angeles in 2000, and DuVall's band Comes with the Fall opened for Jerry and backed him on tour in 2001 and 2002, with DuVall singing Layne's parts. They were on the road together when Layne died. At his first rehearsal with Alice in Chains he sang Love, Hate, Love, and when they finished, Sean said he thought the search was pretty much over.[1] [2] [3]

DuVall's public debut came on the tenth of March 2006 at a VH1 tribute to Heart, singing Rooster, a slot he got partly because Ann Wilson was running late to rehearsal. The reunion tour opened in May 2006. At first Sean said he might prefer a new name rather than replace Layne under the old one, and Jerry asked aloud whether they should take the Led Zeppelin approach and never play again. Instead they chose remembering and moving on. Layne's mother backed them and even visited the studio. Their tribute set included a short film about Layne between the electric and acoustic halves.[1] [2] [3] [4]

With no record deal, Jerry and Sean paid for the next album themselves. Produced by Nick Raskulinecz at Dave Grohl's Studio 606, it was finished on the eighteenth of March 2009, Jerry's forty-third birthday and the day DuVall's son was born. For the title song, Jerry's farewell to Layne, they dreamed of Elton John on piano. Elton heard it, came to meet them in the studio, and said he would play. Jerry had described a mystery illness before writing it, which he came to see as grief for Layne. Black Gives Way to Blue reached number five, and Check My Brain topped rock radio.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Mike Starr's story did not end well. After leaving the band he played briefly with Sun Red Sun and then stopped performing as addiction took over, with arrests over the years including a 1994 case at Houston airport involving stolen luggage. In 2010 he appeared on VH1's Celebrity Rehab and spoke of guilt over Layne's death. Jerry and Sean called the show disgusting, while hoping Mike would turn his life around. On the eighth of March 2011 he was found dead at a home in Salt Lake City at forty-four. Dr Drew Pinsky said it was a prescription drug overdose.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Later years and legacy

Work on a fifth album was delayed when Jerry needed shoulder surgery and could not play for eight months. While his arm was in a sling, a riff came into his head and he sang it into his phone. It became the single Stone. The band teased the album title as a jumble of letters on Facebook, and it turned out to be The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here, a swipe Jerry aimed at religious hypocrisy. Released in May 2013, it reached number two. To promote it they made a mockumentary with Funny or Die, playing fake musicians, with cameos from Heart, Metallica and Pearl Jam.[1] [2]

From 2013 Sean added the initials LSMS to his drum kit for Layne and Mike, saying six people had been in the band and all of them were up there. Jerry began dedicating Nutshell at every show to his two lost bandmates. In 2016 the band opened select shows on the Guns N' Roses reunion tour. Their sixth album, Rainier Fog, named after the mountain that looms over Seattle, came out in August 2018 on BMG. It was their first album recorded in Seattle in more than twenty years, and the title song pays tribute to the city's music scene, Layne and Mike included.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Rainier Fog carried fresh grief. Chris Cornell had died in May 2017, and one of his sisters brought his acoustic guitar to the studio, where both Jerry and DuVall played it on the record. DuVall wrote much of Never Fade thinking of Cornell, his own grandmother and Layne. The album became their first top ten in Britain and earned a Grammy nomination for best rock album. Ten music videos grew into a science fiction web series called Black Antenna. In December 2020, Seattle's Museum of Pop Culture gave the band its Founders Award, with Metallica and Korn among those covering their songs.[1] [2] [3]

In 2022 the four current members sold their share of the band's catalog to Round Hill Music, reportedly for about fifty million dollars, while the estates of Layne Staley and Mike Starr sold their rights separately. In May 2025 Sean Kinney suffered what the band called a non-life-threatening medical emergency at soundcheck before the opening night of a tour, and the whole run was cancelled. He recovered in time to join his bandmates at Ozzy Osbourne's farewell show in Birmingham in July. As of 2026, Jerry has said the band would decide whether to make another record, play shows, or both.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Alice in Chains never liked the grunge label. Jerry always called them a metal band at heart, and Mike Inez joked that they were the metal stepchildren of the Seattle scene. Yet their mix of slow, heavy riffs and the eerie two-voice harmonies of Layne and Jerry shaped a generation. Godsmack took its name from one of their songs, and Metallica called them an inspiration. They have sold more than thirty million certified records in America and earned eleven Grammy nominations. And in 2019 Seattle's mayor declared the twenty-second of August, Layne's birthday, as Layne Staley Day.[1] [2]

The people around Alice in Chains

Layne Staley and Jerry Cantrell. They met at a party in 1987 and lived together at the Music Bank for over a year. Jerry said Layne's voice sounded like it came from a huge biker rather than a skinny kid, and that he considered it his own voice. Layne in turn pushed Jerry to sing his own songs. Their harmonies, often a third apart, became the band's signature. Jerry never publicly criticized Layne through the dark years, and later dedicated an album to him.[1] [2] [3]

Jerry Cantrell and Jerry Cantrell Senior. Jerry's father came home from Vietnam when his son was three, and the family broke apart a few years later. Rooster, written from his father's point of view, began to heal things between them. Jerry Senior appeared in the video, played a sheriff in one of his son's solo videos, and joined the band on stage in Tulsa in 2007. Jerry named his publishing company Rooster's Son.[1] [2]

Layne Staley and Demri Parrott. Demri Parrott was Layne's girlfriend and later fiancee through the band's rise. She died of a drug overdose on the twenty-ninth of October 1996, aged twenty-seven. Friends including Mark Lanegan believed Layne never recovered, and his retreat from public life followed. In a last sad echo, his mother went to his apartment in April 2002 to tell him that Demri's brother had died, and got no answer.[1] [2]

Alice in Chains and Susan Silver. Susan Silver co-managed the band from its first demo and became its sole manager, hiring bodyguards on the Dirt tour to keep dealers from Layne and fielding the calls when things went wrong. After Layne's death it was Silver the band phoned when they wanted to tour again, and she has co-managed them since 2009 with David Benveniste. Jerry has called her his sister and credited her with helping him into rehab.[1] [2] [3]

Jerry Cantrell and Chris Cornell. The Soundgarden singer was married to the band's manager Susan Silver, and Jerry was staying at their house when he wrote Rooster. Cornell sang on Sap as part of Alice Mudgarden and sang at Layne's memorial. After Cornell died in 2017, the band closed a 2018 festival set with two Soundgarden songs, played his guitar on Rainier Fog, and performed at his tribute concert in 2019.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

Jerry Cantrell and Andrew Wood. Andrew Wood, the flamboyant Mother Love Bone singer, was a friend Jerry remembered as hilarious and full of life. His overdose death in March 1990, weeks before his band's debut album, hit the scene hard. Jerry dedicated Facelift partly to him and wrote Would? with him in mind, later calling the loss a warning of what was coming for their own circle.[1] [2] [3]

Sean Kinney and Mike Starr. Sean and Mike had played in bands together since childhood, and Sean was dating Mike's sister Melinda when Jerry came looking for a rhythm section. That family link is how Mike joined. Their bond outlasted Mike's exit. Sean attended his private memorial in 2011 and put Mike's initials beside Layne's on his drum kit.[1] [2]

Layne Staley and Mike McCready. The Pearl Jam guitarist invited Layne into Mad Season in 1994 because he hoped playing with sober musicians would help Layne stay clean. The band made one gold album, Above, with Layne writing lyrics and painting the cover. It did not keep him sober, and Mad Season faded as his health declined. Bassist John Baker Saunders died of an overdose in 1999.[1] [2]

Jerry Cantrell and William DuVall. They met in Los Angeles in 2000, and DuVall's band became Jerry's opening act and backing band, with DuVall singing Layne's parts. They were touring together when Layne died, which DuVall said bonded them. Since 2006 they have shared lead vocals, with DuVall careful never to imitate Layne, which the band said was exactly why they chose him.[1] [2] [3]

Alice in Chains and Ann and Nancy Wilson. The Heart sisters were early champions. Ann sang on Sap and duetted with Layne on a Heart record, and Mike Inez later toured with Heart, the only musician in both bands. Ann sang at Layne's memorial and at the 2005 benefit. The 2006 VH1 tribute to Heart became the public debut of the new line-up with William DuVall.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Layne Staley and Dave Jerden. Jerden produced Facelift and Dirt and admired Layne's voice and lyrics. But he said he later heard that Layne resented him from the Dirt sessions onward, because he kept urging him to get sober. Jerden replied that his job was to make the record. When he saw Layne in 1998, he described him as shockingly thin and pale.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Rare facts about Alice in Chains

• Layne Staley changed his middle name from Rutherford to Thomas because he was a fan of Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee. He disliked Rutherford so much that he got angry when anyone used it. As a teenager he legally switched it to Thomas in honor of Tommy Lee.[1]
• As children, both Layne and Jerry wrote in Dr. Seuss activity books that they wanted to be a singer and a rock star. At nine Layne wrote that he wanted to be a singer. Jerry filled in the line about what he wanted to be when he grew up with the words rock star.[1] [2]
• When Facelift went gold, Jerry Cantrell sent gold records to his old high school choir teacher and drama teacher. He called them his two greatest early motivators toward music. His school choir had sung old Gregorian chants, which he said gave him his taste for dark sounds.[1]
• The first album Jerry Cantrell ever owned was an Elton John greatest hits record, a gift from his father. He was ten. Decades later Elton John played piano on Black Gives Way to Blue, the song Jerry wrote as a farewell to Layne.[1] [2]
• At nine, Sean Kinney was already the drummer in his grandfather's band, The Cross Cats. He got his first drum kit at five and toured small venues around the Northwest with the family band while still a child.[1]
• Sean Kinney first met Layne in 1985 by telling him his band was bad and he should hire a new drummer, namely Sean. Sean had no phone, so he gave Layne his girlfriend's number on a scrap of paper. That number later led Jerry to Sean.[1]
• In 1985 a teenage Layne spoke on a Seattle TV debate about the PMRC's record labeling campaign, with Frank Zappa as guest. Introducing himself as the singer of Sleze, he argued that nobody but the band had the right to rate their music.[1]
• Sean Kinney played Facelift with a broken hand, keeping it in a bucket of ice by the kit. The band had begun rehearsing with Mother Love Bone drummer Greg Gilmore, so Sean cut off his own cast in the studio rather than miss his big break.[1] [2]
• The talk box sound on Man in the Box was Dave Jerden's idea, sparked by hearing Bon Jovi's Livin' on a Prayer on the radio. Jerden was driving to the studio when the song came on, and he brought the effect to the session.[1] [2]
• The Facelift cover was shot by having the band swim up under plastic stretched over a Burbank apartment pool. The idea was that they seemed to emerge from an eyeball. The final cover used a distorted, multi-exposure photo of Mike Starr's face.[1]
• Layne's shout at the end of the Facelift song Real Thing is a joke borrowed from Eddie Murphy's film Coming to America. He was referencing the fictional band Sexual Chocolate, fronted by Murphy's character.[1]
• On Sap's hidden track, Love Song, all four members swapped instruments, with Layne on drums. Sean sang and played piano, Mike Starr played guitar and Jerry played bass. Jerry called it the most bizarre song they ever recorded.[1]
• Jerry wrote the Dirt song Dam That River after a fight in which Sean Kinney broke a coffee table over his head. The brief Dirt track Iron Gland was built from a riff that annoyed the band so much Jerry promised never to play it again after recording it.[1]
• A 2024 reissue of Jar of Flies included a vinyl edition with real fly carcasses pressed into it, limited to one hundred copies. The first CD pressing in 1994 already had plastic flies visible in its clear spine, and the packaging earned a Grammy nomination.[1]
• In Japan, the three-legged dog cover of the 1995 album was replaced with a plain white sleeve. The Japanese distributor felt the image mocked injured animals. The dog in the Grind video was another dog, named Sunshine, hired for the shoot.[1] [2]
• Layne's distorted vocal on Grind was recorded through a 1932 microphone that producer Toby Wright bought at a pawn shop for ten dollars. Most of Layne's vocals on that album were done in one or two takes, often alone in the control room with a handheld mic.[1]
• For the Unplugged set, stagehands fired guns into the theater walls to create cracks. The designers wanted the stage to look old and decrepit. Layne bought the candles at Seattle's Pike Place Market, and the lava lamps barely moved because nobody warmed them up.[1]
• At Unplugged, Mike Inez's bass carried a teasing message aimed at Metallica, who were in the audience, about their new short haircuts. The band also slipped in brief nods to Metallica songs during the show.[1]
• Primus bassist Les Claypool once crashed an Alice in Chains performance of Rooster wearing a chicken suit. Jerry threw a bottle at him and chased him off the stage, a moment captured on a Primus home video.[1]
• After September 11, 2001, Rooster was among some one hundred and fifty songs on a Clear Channel list of tracks deemed inappropriate for airplay. Down in a Hole, Them Bones and Sea of Sorrow were on the memo too.[1]
• Down in a Hole was never played live until the Unplugged show in 1996, despite being a single. Jerry had nearly kept it from the band because he thought it was too soft.[1]
• Godsmack took its name from the Alice in Chains song God Smack on Dirt. Singer Sully Erna has named Layne Staley as his main vocal influence.[1]
• Some Seattle scenesters mocked the early band as Kindergarten, claiming they sounded like a junior Soundgarden. Rolling Stone reported the nickname in 1996, noting that Dirt had silenced most of those critics.[1]
• Before an interview in 1996, the band insisted on playing WhirlyBall, a mix of bumper cars, basketball and lacrosse. Sean Kinney came up with the outing and told Rolling Stone that offstage they were more like the Monkees than a gloomy band.[1]
• Man in the Box was the second most-played song of the 2010s on American mainstream rock radio. Nielsen counted about one hundred and forty-two thousand spins across the decade, two decades after its release.[1]
• Jerry Cantrell adopted Layne Staley's cat, Sadie, after Layne died. Jerry and the family looked after her until she died in 2010 at the age of eighteen.[1]
• Black Gives Way to Blue was finished on Jerry's forty-third birthday, the same day William DuVall's son was born. Elton John recorded his piano part in a Las Vegas studio a few weeks later.[1] [2]
• Mike Inez wrote the riff for Ozzy Osbourne's No More Tears but does not play on the album. Another bassist was brought in for the recording, and Inez was credited with bass and music inspiration.[1]
• Mike Inez is the only musician to have been a member of both Heart and Alice in Chains. He toured with Heart from 2002 to 2006 after Layne's death, and played on their 2004 album Jupiters Darling.[1]
• The riff for Stone came to Jerry while his arm was in a sling after shoulder surgery, so he sang it into his phone. He could not play guitar for eight months while recovering from a repetitive strain injury.[1] [2]
• In 2018 Alice in Chains became the first band to play on the Space Needle's new revolving glass floor. The acoustic set, five hundred feet above Seattle, marked the launch of Rainier Fog and debuted the song Fly.[1]
• To launch Rainier Fog, the band hid ten signed CDs around Seattle as tickets to a secret show. Fans followed clues on Instagram, and the gig turned out to be at The Crocodile, a club Sean Kinney co-owns with Susan Silver.[1] [2]
• Jerry Cantrell's covers band with Billy Duffy of the Cult was named Cardboard Vampyres, after Jerry's cats. They played mostly classic rock covers around the West Coast in 2004 and never released an album.[1]
• The claymation band figures from the I Stay Away video are on display at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame museum in Cleveland. I Stay Away, from Jar of Flies, earned a Grammy nomination for best hard rock performance.[1] [2]
• In 2022 the four current members sold their Alice in Chains catalog rights, reportedly for about fifty million dollars. The deal with Round Hill covered ninety-four compositions and one hundred and fifty-nine recordings. Layne's and Mike Starr's estates sold their shares separately.[1]

Disputed stories

These stories are told often but the accounts don't agree. Here are the versions and who says what.