Things That Came Out About Layne Staley After He Died

In the 1990s, the Seattle sound — characterized by loud, down-tuned, and feedback-drenched guitars coupled with dark and gloomy lyrics — reinvented mainstream rock music. The true story of grunge music can be told primarily through the arcs of four bands in particular: Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains. The latter skewed more metal than its grunge counterparts, and that was thanks in large part to the songwriting and vocal skills of frontman Layne Staley. His mournful, growling, and occasionally soaring voice amplified the pain and despair present in some of the most indelible rock songs of the era, including "Down in a Hole," "Rooster," "I Stay Away," and "Heaven Beside You."

Staley coped with substance abuse issues for most of his adult life, and he died at the age of 34 in his Seattle condominium in April 2002. While a very famous rock star during his band's rise and reign, a fuller picture of who he was as a person and musician didn't become clear until much later. Here's what the world learned about Layne Staley after his tragic death.

An affinity for heavy metal music, and the trappings of its sometimes debauched, big-haired subculture in the 1980s, are well-known elements of the Layne Staley backstory. Before he delved into thoughtful, experimental grunge, Staley fronted a mid-'80s metal band called Sleze, later renamed Alice 'N Chainz. After Staley died, his mother shared some stories about just how far back and how deep her son's love of metal stretched.

When he was in the fifth grade, Layne Rutherford Staley picked up his first instrument, the trumpet, but quickly abandoned it when a family friend let him borrow a drum set. "The drums he loved. And then our neighbor sold him a drum set and he changed his middle name to Thomas," Nancy McCallum told Northwest Music Scene in 2017. The reason for the change: It was a tribute to one of Staley's favorite musicians, drummer Tommy Lee of the '80s-dominant hair metal band Mötley Crüe.

In the late 1980s, vocalist Layne Staley and guitarist Jerry Cantrell, friends who shared a Seattle rehearsal space, moved on from the breakups of their respective bands to form a new one, which became the grunge group Alice in Chains. The duo served as their band's creative force and vocal team, with Staley usually singing lead and Cantrell providing harmonies and counterpoint.

It's part of Jerry Cantrell's true story that he competed in classical choir and a capella events as a student, but he still needed some encouragement to try singing in Alice in Chains. Staley provided that boost. "Layne was really responsible for giving me the confidence to become more of a singer. He'd say, 'You wrote this song, this means something to you, sing it,'" Cantrell told Guitar World in 2009. "He kicked my a** out of the nest." Cantrell launched a solo career in the 1990s and sang with a reconstituted Alice in Chains after Staley's death, all possible because Staley told him he could do it. 

Dismissed from Alice in Chains in 1993 due to his issues with drugs, Mike Starr continued to experience problems with substance abuse. While Layne Staley was also a heroin user, Starr credited the singer with saving his life after he took too much of the drug in his bandmate's presence. Just before he left the band, Starr traveled with Alice in Chains to play the Hollywood Rock Festival in Brazil, along with headliner Nirvana. One night, Starr spent several hours injecting heroin in a bathroom with Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain and Cobain's wife, Courtney Love. Then he joined Staley for another round of the powerful opiate. "I went to Layne's room, we shot up, and I OD'ed," Starr said on a 2010 edition of "Loveline."

Starr couldn't remember what happened after that. Staley told him that he'd stopped breathing and didn't have a pulse, and so he tried to revive him by striking him and placing him under a shower. Finally, Starr regained consciousness and learned that, according to Staley, he'd been technically dead for a total of 11 minutes. The bassist believed that Staley's actions brought him back to life. (In another chapter in the tragic real-life story of Alice in Chains, Starr died of a prescription drug overdose in 2011, nine years after Staley died from a similar cause.)

After Mike Starr was fired from Alice in Chains in January 1993 over excessive drug use, bassist Mike Inez joined the band in one of the most successful band replacements ever. In the fall of 1993, Alice in Chains played a series of shows in Japan, and lead singer Layne Staley took the opportunity to explore some alternate career options outside of music.

Inez talked about the late Staley's extracurriculars during a 2010s Alice in Chains reunion tour, and they were indicative of the kind of person Staley was. "Layne was just a fantastic human," Inez told Revolver. "He lived for humor. The main thing for me was just his laugh." While they were in Tokyo, Staley disappeared during a between-shows furlough. "And after a few days we couldn't find Layne anywhere," Inez recalled. "We're just, like, traveling the streets of Tokyo, looking in all the bars for him." They eventually gave up and went into a bar they'd been told was frequented by models. And that's where they found Staley. "True story, there's Layne blowing fire behind the bar and being a bartender." When his bandmates asked what was going on, Staley said that he wanted to feel like a regular guy for a while. "So he got a job at a bar for a couple of nights, just to tend bar and didn't even really tell people who he was," Inez explained.

Before it stopped playing music videos, and almost all musical content, MTV aired a show called "MTV Unplugged," in which major artists of the day would perform their songs in an intimate setting on primarily acoustic instruments. In 1996, it produced an episode showcasing the scaled-back songs of the generally loud and aggressive Alice in Chains. 

At the time of the "MTV Unplugged" taping, Staley was in the midst of a particularly difficult period in his ongoing heroin addiction. While talking from the stage during a 2018 solo concert, Alice in Chains guitarist Jerry Cantrell revealed that Staley was so intoxicated that he required multiple restarts and takes of a song off of its then-relatively new self-titled album. "Funny story, we did the 'Unplugged' in New York and Layne kept f***ing up 'Sludge Factory,'" Cantrell told the audience (via Alternative Nation). "We did it like eight times, he blew the same thing in the second verse." Staley didn't nail the version used in the broadcast either — he audibly mutters a profanity at a part of the song he kept flubbing.

Following the death of his girlfriend Demri Parrott in 1996, the same year that Alice in Chains went on a hiatus in part over Layne Staley's drug-based declining health, the singer retreated into his Seattle apartment almost permanently, sending out employees to buy him the illegal drugs to which he was profoundly addicted.

But Staley also worked on music extensively, writing, playing, and even recording several compositions over the years. "I'd f***ing go over to his place and he'd be playing me s*** he'd be writing all the time," Alice in Chains guitarist Jerry Cantrell said in a 2010 interview recounted in "Alice in Chains: The Untold Story" (via Guitar World). "I would too. He'd play me stuff, I'd play him stuff, vice-versa." However, none of the material that Staley made during this period of time outside of Alice in Chains, was ever publicly distributed. In 2016, plans were announced regarding a collection of eight heretofore unheard Staley songs, but those were never officially released.

The last original material that Layne Staley would sing on and release during his lifetime: "Died" and "Get Born Again," new songs teasing the release of a 1999 Alice in Chains boxed set. To get them recorded was a monumental task, requiring the band to end a years-long hiatus and navigate sessions in which Staley fought with his bandmates and production staff over creative direction and then skipped out on some recording dates in Los Angeles to attend his sister's wedding in Seattle.

Producer Dave Jerden told Rolling Stone at the time that Staley had shown up looking extremely emaciated and "white as a ghost." Only later was Staley's drug-related physical degradation fully described. In the last year of his life, Staley had developed abscesses all over his arms from injecting so much heroin, and the majority of his teeth had fallen out.

Layne Staley was known to be a drug user during his lifetime, particularly when he was leading Alice in Chains. Many of the band's songs were about substance use and abuse, and their lyrics reflected Staley's tumultuous and regrettable real-life experiences. "I wrote about drugs, and I didn't think I was being unsafe or careless by writing about them," he told Rolling Stone in 1996. "When I tried drugs, they were f***ing great, and they worked for me for years, and now they're turning against me — and now I'm walking through hell, and this sucks."

Staley frequently attempted to find sobriety, and while he was alive, the public wasn't aware of the efforts he undertook to quit doing drugs. According to Staley's mother, Nancy McCallum, the musician enrolled in drug treatment facilities on 10 occasions, but none proved to be effective in the long-term. He also nearly died from overdosing on substances five times, and he was revived because other people had been in his presence and took the initiative. On April 5, 2002, the day that he died of a heroin overdose, McCallum was working at a Seattle rehab facility and was a few days out from attempting to enroll Staley in a new recovery program.

Layne Staley died on April 5, 2002. On April 4, 2002, he welcomed a visitor to his home: former Alice in Chains bassist Mike Starr, who wanted to spend his 36th birthday with his friend and colleague. They watched TV together, including the show "Crossing Over," in which a purported psychic attempted to help studio audience members reach their dead relatives. That prompted Staley to discuss how the previous night, he believed he was visited by Demri Parrott, a romantic partner who died in 1996. "Demri was here last night. I don't give a f*** if you f***ing believe me or not, dude," Starr said Staley proclaimed (according to "Alice in Chains: The Untold Story," via Alternative Nation). "I'm telling you: Demri was here last night."

Starr was more concerned with Staley's alarmingly degraded physical state, which suggested he could be nearing death. "I was with him all that day on my birthday, trying to keep him alive," Starr said on a 2010 episode of "Loveline." "I even asked him if I could call 911, and he said if I did he would never talk to me again. Of course, I didn't know he was gonna die, or I would've called 911 anyway."

Just before his death, Layne Staley had spent a lot of time on a high-profile collaboration with an emerging act. David de Sola's 2015 biography "Alice in Chains: The Untold Story" revealed that Staley had made plans to lay down a contribution for a song by Taproot, an alt-metal band in the vein of Alice in Chains. "Layne Staley was set to record vocals to a song Taproot was going to put on our album 'Welcome' right before he passed away. We never talked about this much because it didn't seem appropriate," Taproot wrote on its band's Facebook page. Described as "spacey-sounding," the instrumental song titled "Kevin Spacey" impressed Taproot's producer Toby Wright, who was still close with Staley after working on some Alice in Chains projects.

Staley died before he could prepare any lyrics or record his vocals. The band has since performed the song as an instrumental. The demo Staley received for reference may have been the last song he listened to before he died in 2002 — the disc was found inside his condo's CD player.

In the early 2000s, an increasingly withdrawn Layne Staley only occasionally left his home in Seattle. On April 19, 2002, accountants working for the musician noticed that he hadn't touched his bank accounts in two weeks. Alarmed, they contacted Staley's mother, Nancy McCallum, who hadn't seen or spoken to her son in that same period of time. Seattle police escorted McCallum on a wellness check at the condominium, and after breaking down the door, they found a decomposing body sitting upright on the couch. The remains sat amidst drugs and equipment used to take drugs, including crack pipes and syringes, with a heroin-loaded one in the hand of the deceased and several beneath. In the body's state, the identity of the person wasn't immediately discernible; an autopsy conducted the next day proved that it was indeed Staley.

According to the autopsy, Staley died of an overdose of drugs. At the time of his death, his weight had dropped to 86 pounds. The analysis also proved that Staley had died about two weeks before his body was discovered. The Alice in Chains frontman was 34 years old.

If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).