Grunge God
Layne Staley wasn’t the rock icon of his era, but he was the sound and fury of grunge music.
The same fire that drives the best musicians to reach the zenith of their creativity can sometimes also be the blaze that ultimately consumes them.
Layne Staley died twenty years ago today, April 5, 2002. He lived alone in his Seattle apartment where he lived in isolation for years after his girlfriend, Demri Parrott, died of an overdose in 1996. His body went undiscovered for approximately two weeks. It was a tragic, lonely death for one of the rawest voices in all of rock and roll.
I became an Alice In Chains fan at a young age, around 11-years-old, peak grunge music era. I’m talking 1993. I reveled in the scene. They were one of the many bands introduced to me by my older siblings.
Too young to understand most of the content those grunge bands were singing about, I definitely didn’t fully grasp the weight of Staley’s lyrics. I thought “Down In A Hole” was about a toxic relationship with a girl. I was half right. It is about a toxic relationship, but Staley’s lover was a bitch named Skag, someone he wished he could purge from his life. She wouldn’t let him go, and he couldn’t walk away.
The entire second half of Dirt, from “Junkhead” through “Would?”, plays like the life cycle of a drug addict, scoring the dope, using it, feeling it, regretting it, rehabbing from it, and reflecting on the experience. None of that shit hit me then, in ’93, like it does now because I have a more complete perspective on life and struggle, and I realize what Layne Staley was going through.
His family remembers him fondly. The last time his mother and sister saw him alive was not long after his nephew was born in February of 2002. This was a happy moment for them, a memory they will hold onto until the end of time.
I remember Layne Staley as one of the figureheads of grunge music, the lead singer of a band who had their fingerprints all over the scene. He poured himself, all of his pain, into his craft, and thus helped reshape the sound of rock music and push the genre forward.
He died young, too early for any human to move on to the other realm, so today I’m taking a moment to acknowledge the twentieth anniversary of Layne Staley’s passing and recognize his best work with Alice In Chains.
Favorite Tracks
Facelift is AIC in their most raw form. It sounds heavier than Dirt. “Man in the Box”, “Bleed The Freak”, and “Sunshine” are bangers, but they didn’t make the cut.
Jar of Flies brings us “Nutshell”, “I Stay Away”, and “No Excuses”, three cuts worthy of top ten mention, but they fell short of being one of my three favorite AIC songs.
Unplugged has acoustic versions of a couple of those songs, as well as other AIC jams from the aforementioned albums, but though their songs sound powerful without the distortion and electric charge associated with being “plugged” (because even a toned-down Layne Staley still conveys raw pain), the acoustic songs don’t hit with the same force as their original versions.
So which AIC songs did I pick?
“Would?”
Into the flood again. Same old trip it was back then.
Considered by some fans as the end of the five-song “drug cycle” on Dirt, “Would?” represents the rehabilitated drug, or at least the addict considering staying clean or getting clean, reflecting on their experience, considering the mistakes that lead them down the path of addiction, and (possibly) asking another addict if they would consider the same path.
“Would?” simmers under the low heat of Mike Starr’s bass, which bubbles over as the drums and guitar drop in. Things hit overdrive when Staley hits the chorus, and the track elevates to supreme-level grunge.
“Rain When I Die”
Slowly forgive my lie, lying to save me.
Guitarist Jerry Cantrell and Layne Staley often wrote vague lyrics that contained raw imagery and left the audience to fill in the gaps with their imagination. That’s good songwriting because more folks can relate to what they interpret a song to be about. They make it personal.
In “Rain When I Die”, Staley is singing about a relationship with a girl, perhaps his own, and I believe the chorus is both a reference to the Seattle weather and the tears of Staley’s loved ones, but I’m not sure if the death that he’s singing about is literal or a metaphor for the end of his relationship. Neither difference in these interpretations matters much because the song rips, and no one could convey pain through a song quite like Staley.
“Rooster”
Ain’t found a way to kill me yet.
One of the most moving rock songs ever recorded, “Rooster” is based on Jerry Cantrell’s dad, who served in the U.S Army 101st Airborne Division during the Vietnam War. According to Genius.com, Cantrell’s dad had been nicknamed “Rooster” since childhood because of the way his hair stood up. However, that website also states that “rooster” was the term some Vietnamese people ascribed to the 101st Airborne because of the “Screaming Eagle” patch they wore. Bald eagles aren’t native to Vietnam, so the bird resembled a rooster to some people.
Staley sounds like a soldier lurking in the shadows of the jungle, stalking the enemy, as he pushes and pulls the energy of the song, from silent menace to thunderous roar. It smacks you in the face.
