Layne Staley’s chilling viewpoint on drug use: “It’s a very difficult thing to explain”
Although the grunge era definitively changed music and popular culture, it is inextricable from an immense amount of tragedy. It might seem remarkable, but out of the four frontmen of the scene’s central bands, only one survives: Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder. As for his three fallen comrades, Chris Cornell, Layne Staley, and, of course, Kurt Cobain, their lives ended in heartbreaking ways.
Concentrating on the Alice in Chains frontman, Layne Staley, his life, like many of the most prominent names in the Seattle scene, was informed by strife when he was a child, which left an indelible mark on him as an adult. His parents divorced when he was seven, leaving him to be brought up in his mother’s Christian Scientist household, all the while estranging from his father, a drug addict.
Sadly, despite all of his rare talent, Layne Staley, like his father, would become addicted to drugs, with his story closely connected to heroin, which would wreak havoc on his bandmates and their peers in the Seattle scene. Although he tried to get clean on numerous occasions, the narcotic would severely impact band operations at points and ultimately lead to his death from a speedball overdose at the age of 34.
The pained Staley told Adriana Rubio not long before his death: “I’m not using drugs to get high like many people think. I know I made a big mistake when I started using this shit. It’s a very difficult thing to explain.”
While the above statement is chilling enough, arguably the most haunting interview Staley ever gave was when Alice in Chains spoke to Rolling Stone in 1996. At the time, Staley claimed he hadn’t used heroin in a while, with the band in the middle of promoting what would become their final album with him, Alice in Chains. The discussion arrived in February, two months before their iconic MTV Unplugged appearance, where the pink-haired frontman looked severely unwell but still gave a rousing performance – his first in two and a half years. Interestingly, from mid-1996, Staley exited the public spotlight and played three more shows opening for Kiss, with his final concert in July 1996.
In the interview, Staley remembered making such dark music with Alice in Chains at their peak, saying that the most recent album was without any “deep message” as they “recorded a few months of being human”. It was documented that was all the frontman longed for. He didn’t want to be a rock god and certainly not a martyr. It was then that he commented on the death of Kurt Cobain, which was greatly influenced by heroin addiction. Unfortunately, what Staley said would become hauntingly true for himself in the following years.
“I’d hate to be stuck up there,” he said. “I saw all the suffering that Kurt Cobain went through. I didn’t know him real well, but I just saw this real vibrant person turn into a real shy, timid, withdrawn, introverted person who could hardly get a hello out.”
“At the end of the day or at the end of the party, when everyone goes home, you’re stuck with yourself,” the frontman added. “There was a time when I couldn’t deal with that, and I couldn’t go places by myself. I needed to call up a friend to go to a 7-Eleven. I just couldn’t approach people when I was alone. Getting a place on my own was a step toward learning how to do that.”
Following this, the interviewer pointed out the contrast between endearing, childlike aspects of Staley’s conduct and the marks on his hands that suggested he hadn’t beaten his addiction. “I don’t know anything about the puncture marks on his hands,” Alice in Chain manager Susan Silver commented. “All I know is that this sort of journalism creates an environment that is dangerous to the youth who read it.”