DISGRACELAND - Alice in Chains' Layne Staley: The Rooster, the Jungle, and Dying Young

Episode Date: March 28, 2024

Though they were one of the first so-called “grunge” bands to sign to a major label, Alice in Chains were something of an outlier in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s Seattle scene. They didn’t fall directly into the punk camp, or the hair metal camp, and even the true metalheads thought they weren’t hardcore enough. This became painfully evident when the band opened a tour for Megadeth, Slayer, and Anthrax, and were hazed, spat on, and booed. Alice’s lead singer, Layne Staley, could take the criticism. He had a prankster’s spirit, not to mention a rock ‘n roll attitude that paired well with his killer rock ‘n roll voice. But newfound fame was overwhelming, as was the destructive addiction to heroin Layne developed to deal with it all. Soon Layne Staley found himself lost in a jungle of his own making, not unlike the jungle that he sang so convincingly about in one of Alice in Chains’ most endearing songs. This episode was originally published on March 28, 2024. Which Seattle artist or band hits you the hardest? Why? Let Jake know at 617-906-6638, [e-mail], or on socials @disgracelandpod. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at ⁠disgracelandpod.com/membership⁠. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - ⁠GET THE NEWSLETTER⁠ Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: ⁠Instagram⁠ ⁠YouTube⁠ ⁠X⁠ (formerly Twitter)  ⁠Facebook Fan Group⁠ ⁠TikTok To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about Alice and Chains as Lane Staley are insane. His Seattle rehearsal space was raided by cops, making the biggest drug bust in state history. He was humiliated by Megadeth. He dared fight back against a horde of angry Slayer fans. He fled Swedish authorities after punching a guy in the face.

He had a prankster's spirit, a killer rock and roll voice, and a destructive addiction to heroin. That addiction cost his band one of the biggest tours of their career and ultimately cost Lane Staley his life. A life defined by great music. Unlike that clip I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Mr. and Mrs. Matlin, M.K. 1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to Vision of Love by Mariah Carey. And why would I play you that specific slice of whistle register cheese could I afford it?

Because that was the number one song in America on August 28, 1990. And that was the day Allison Chains released their debut album, Facelift, a record that introduced Seattle's so-called grunge scene to the world and introduced Lane Staley to a world of pop stardom, pressure, and pain. On this episode, Megadeth, Slayer, Swedish authorities, drug raids, whistle register cheese, Alison Chains, and Lane Staley. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. Duff McCagan knew there was no scene here.

Not in Seattle. You were kidding yourself if you thought you were going to make it. You and your band. You know the one. Four dudes, all claiming to worship at the altar of armored saint, even though you all secretly wanted to be Motley Crew. Not that you'd admit that out loud to anyone. Didn't matter.

No one in Seattle was listening. Those wasteoids from the boonies, guys like the Melvins and later Mudhouni, not to mention that weirdo from Aberdeen. They were listening, but they were tuned into a different wavelength. King Buzzow from the Melvins and Kurt Cobain from Nirvana didn't want to be famous.

They'd never moved to L.A., which, as Duff McCaghan knew, was the only way to make it. At least in the 1980s, move to Hollywood, start a killer hair band, and maybe then you'd get some attention if attention was what you were after. Duff wanted it and Duff got it. First moving to L.A., and then graduating from playing drums in a little Seattle hardcore band called The Farts

to playing bass for the biggest fucking rock and roll band on the planet. But by the time Guns and Roses were dominating the charts and the culture, things up north were changing. Seattle was blowing up. That nothing scene Duff McCaghan left behind was anything but nothing now. Every major label was swooping in and snatching up any and all bands lucky to be part of what the music rags were calling grunge. Music is dirty and grizzled as the wind coming off the Puget Sound in the dead of winter.

The bands at the center of it all knew it was bullshit. Buzzwords coined by the media to sell magazines. Alternative, grunge. These are just stupid labels made up by stupid people. You plugged into your guitars and played loud. You were fucking rock band. End of story. Or so said Sean Kitty, drummer for Allison Chains.

One of the first of those Seattle bands that signed. into a major label. Allison Chains had more in common with Duff McCagin's hair metal side of the grunge tracks than they did with the wasteoid punk side. Though they were the first MTV Buzzbin band to wear flannel on television, they just weren't metal enough for the true heads, the fans of Megadeth and Anthrax, who found Sean Kinney, along with bassist Mike Starr, guitarist Jerry Cantrell, and singer Lane Staley to be a bunch of pussies.

Whatever. Now they were famous pussies, and they didn't even have to move to L.A. to be so. Not that they were looking for fame. But Allison Chains suddenly found themselves one of the unlikely success stories coming out of Seattle. And like Duff before them, they too found themselves in Los Angeles. Not to live, but to record their second album. At this point, however, L.A. was hotter than Seattle. In fact, it was on fire.

1992. Jerry Cantrell just wanted to grab a 12-pack to bring back to the studio. But this little convenience store was mobbed with an actual mob, one that was quickly mobilizing throughout the city, an angry, cathartic reaction to the verdict in the Rodney King trial. Four LAPD officers acquitted of assault, a vicious beating captured on videotape, one the entire world had watched over and over, and L.A. lost its shit when the acquittal came down. In this convenience store, looters were grabbing whatever they could carry. It was total chaos. Outside the store wasn't any better. Jerry quickly returned to his car to head back to the studio, just over the canyon in North Hollywood. There was smoke on the horizon, helicopters circling,

alarms, explosions. Jerry put it in drive and hit the gas. He drove like he was driving through a war zone, fast, never looking back. Now, safely, inside the studio, Jerry was busy thinking about another war zone, this one thousands of miles away and decades in the past. Writing this new song was the most emotionally challenging thing he'd ever done. It required him to get inside his father's head, a man he didn't really know and didn't even meet until he was a toddler. That was one of his earliest and most formative memories. Three-year-old Jerry on the floor, playing with his toys, his mother leading a man inside their house. over to Jerry who is staring up in confusion at this man, his uniform, his hat in his hands,

and that look on his face. A look that even a three-year-old knew was the look of a man who had seen things he couldn't unsee. The man in uniform looked 30 feet tall to young Jerry. Jerry, his mom was telling him now, this is your father. Jerry Cantrell Sr., aka. Rooster, that nickname given to him by his father, Jerry Jr.'s grandfather, on account of how Jerry Sr.'s hair used to stick up. But also, a nickname given to M-16 gunners in Vietnam, that cluster fuck from which Jerry Sr. had just returned. Roosters in the jungle, the muzzles on their machine guns flashing like the tail of a rooster

down on a farm. Jerry Cantrell, Jerry Jr. here, he didn't know anything about the service, about how it felt to be shipped to a foreign country, machine gun in your hand, isolated from the life you knew back home. But he put himself in his father's shoes to write this song, and then he fed that song in those lines to Lane Staley,

Alison Chains as lead singer. Lane loaded up on Jerry's words, loaded up with his ammo too. That voice, Jesus Christ, what a voice. So powerful. A voice belonging to a man that Mark Lannock, of screaming trees, once called the most singularly impressive hard rock singer he'd ever heard. And Mark Lanigan was a guy with a killer voice, so he knew a thing or two about a great set of pipes.

But Lane's voice wasn't so strong that it could destroy every challenge coming his way. Just like the roosters and nom couldn't beat back their own demons with just an M-16. Soldiers who returned home from the ship found that they were pariahs in the eyes of their fellow countrymen. Their anger, guilt, and shame easily vanquished by a needle in the vein. One plunge of the syringe, all that junk laying waste to your bloodstream, like napalm blanketing a Vietnam jungle. It was better than nothing, which was what Jerry Cantrell had when he first met his father he didn't know. He and his mom were on welfare, at times practically homeless. As teenagers, Lane invited Jerry to stay with his family over Christmas one year.

And now, some five years later, they still had that bond. Jerry had this new song, Rooster, a song that his old friend Lane was now singing, while L.A. burned just beyond these studio walls. Lane sang that song like he had lived it, battling his own private Vietnam, mostly up north in Seattle, a heroin addiction that he'd managed to kick. Cold Turkey. Well, cold turkey by way of an intervention, so that Lane could be clean to record Allison Chains' his sophomore album, Dirk.

His habit was wanting to depend on. It helped him navigate fame. It helped him cope with the death of his friend, Andrew Wood, the singer for Seattle's mother-lovebone. And though Lane was managing to stay clean for the moment, his longtime struggle was laid bare in every song on this new album. Them Bones. Junkhead. Godsmack. Even this song about Jerry's dad in Vietnam, it resonated with Lane.

Because Lane Staley was in the jungle now. Not Duff McCagin's jungle, a jungle of his own making. And in that jungle, he'd be left for dead, misjudged, undervalued, fighting his way out, gunning down all weakness, every compulsion, the things that wanted to snuff him out, and doing it with his only weapon. His voice. Lane Staley, the rooster. 1988,

Seattle, three years before Grunge broke. Randy Hauser had a record. Not a record as in an LP, but as in a rap sheet. It didn't bother Lane, Jerry, and the other guys. Lane in particular was no stranger to fucking with the law. It was funny to him. The mushrooms he took,

the canine mud that the cop sicked on him, the back of a patrol car they stuffed him into. Even the jail cell. It was the, dumb, but also funny. All that for being a public nuisance. Randy Houser, on the other hand, was putting that nuisance ship behind him, supposedly rehabilitated from the drug scene that got unlocked up in the first place. Now he was out of the pan and interested in that other kind of record. Music, rock and roll, promoting the new sound of Seattle. Like Lane and Jerry's band,

which Randy Houser loved, he'd do anything to help them get their big break, manage them if they wanted them to. Whatever it was, they were calling themselves these days, no longer Diamond Lye or Falk, settling on Alice and Chains, which, look, doesn't matter what the story is behind it, but I'm sorry to say, remains an objectively bad, bad band name. This is also the opinion of the receptionist at the Rocket, the Pacific Northwest's bi-weekly music magazine at the time, who, when asked what she thought about the name Allison Chains, simply replied, hate it, don't like it. Remember, though, this is a bit. This is Seattle, circa the late 80s and early 90s, a time when bands thought it would be cool to call themselves

cat butt, gas huffer, quack, quack, stomach pump, and a pearl jam. But I digress. First, Randy had to rehabilitate the band's image. Their bratty attitude had gotten the band from local clubs, including one where Lane threw a milkshake at the audience. Again, Lane thought it was funny. Randy asked the clubs for forgiveness and he got it. and then the band got the work at getting better. Rehearsing as much as possible at the music bank,

a collection of rehearsal spaces in a warehouse down by the water in Seattle's Ballard neighborhood. The music bank was the scene's incubator, and there, Allison Chains' sound, quickly became a hybrid of their hairband past and the darker, sludgyer vibe now permeating their city as a whole. The next step in Randy's eyes

was to cut some new tracks that were strong enough to shop around. They had their sights set beyond local grassroots operations like Sub Pop and beyond Seattle. Columbia Records, Capitol Records, some big Los Angeles operation. The real deal. They wanted it. Tonight, however, it seemed like someone or something was doing whatever they could to prevent that from ever happening. Plainclothes detectives led the charge inside the music bank. Behind them, the boys in blue and big-ass German shepherds tethered to the leashes in their hands.

15, 20 cops, easy, moving fast through the hallways. They kicked open the first door they came to. Inside, a band was finishing that night's rehearsal. Sweaty punks, their ears still ringing. Some poor schmuck holding the joint in his hand. The cops, a dozen plus, raised their weapons. Stand against the fucking wall, all you! Scared shitless the band did as they were told.

And at this exact time, Lane Staley was coming around the corner out in the hallway, looking for the exit. Rehearsal for him was over, and now he was thinking about tomorrow's recording session and the slick demos that would soon serve as Allison Jane's his calling card. He was also thinking about the two women hanging off his arms, and what trouble they could get it to that evening. Look at these fucking pigs, when the woman said. Lane told her to cut the shit.

This wasn't just some stupid bust. Whatever was happening here was huge, best to stay the hell out of it. The cops kept kicking down doors. They found Jerry Cantrell and Alice's rehearsal, passed out on a couch, no harm, no foul. Allison Chain's bassist, Mike Starr, however, was in the middle of a line of Coke in another room when he heard the commotion. He put the remaining powder up his nose in the nick of time.

But it wasn't Mike's Coke the cops were here for. In the 14,000 square foot industrial space located in the same warehouse, directly next to the music bank, someone had set up a serious marijuana grow operation. We're talking $30 million a year serious. At the time, it was the biggest drug bust in the history of Washington State, and it affected Allison Chains, not because they were implicated or arrested, but because the cops locked down the entire building for their investigation, including the music bank, which meant that everything inside, including all of Allison Chains' gear, could not be removed, and thus, Alice and Chains

could not record their demos the following day as planned. Not that it stopped Lane, Jerry, Mike, and Sean from pressing on, even when things got tougher. When they moved the rehearsal space out of the music bank and into a house with a toilet that didn't work, even when Lane was so broke that he had to choose between food and cigarettes, and even then could only afford to buy one cigarette at a time with loose change. When Allison Chains is biggest fan and one-time financial supporter Randy Houser suddenly found himself back in the big house this time for cocaine. Lucky, for them, they had the support of a new ally, Susan Silver, Soundgarden's manager.

And they also had Lane's voice, flashing like a rooster's tail on the chorus of the song, Man in the Box. An incredible song, so raw, so authentic, pure Allison Chains. In many ways, the definitive version of the band that they'd spend the rest of their career chasing and never duplicating. Those huge verses, the soaring chorus, drenched in Jerry Cantrell's Talk Box and Wawa Battle. Released as a single in January of 1991, Man in the Box put Alice and Chains on the map and sent their debut album on Columbia Records, Facelift, released five months earlier, to a respectable number 42 on the Billboard chair. Facelift was the first so-called grunge album to reach gold status,

a status that Alice hit just weeks before. Nirvana dropped Nevermind, and then the whole scene went nuclear. Man in the Box also helped get Allison Chains on the Clash of the Titans tour during that same year, opening for Megadeth, Slayer, and Anthrax. But just because Alice and Chains were Seattle heavy, they were not anthrax heavy. They weren't even Megadeth heavy. Dave Mustaine and Megadeth reminded them of this fact with the posters he had printed up and pasted all over the massive arenas that they played in.

Posters of Alice and Chains from years back, hair teased, spandex tight, still spelling their name Alice N chains. That's apostrophe capital N. Getting trolled by fucking Dave Mustaine of all people, that must have stung. But not as bad as the physical violence Alice and Chains endured up on that stage. Hased by Slayer fans, fans that did not give a shit for Alice and Chains, N or no N. They pelted them with all manners of subterfuge, spit on them, threw them mercilessly.

Lane Staley, for one, wasn't just going to stand there and take it. He started throwing all that shit back at the crowd, and he jumped the barricade and got right in their faces and spat back at them. Lane Staley fought back, fought off the hordes, did well in the process, stood up for himself, and had the last laugh. Or so he thought.

After the show, he and the others were greeted by a grudely. group of Slayer fans waiting outside their tour bus, Slayer fanatics, that is. And fanatics being the operative word, these dudes were hard. Lane braced himself, ditto for Jerry and the others. No longer protected by the stage, they were about to endure an extreme ass kicking by a bunch of pissed-off metalheads. Lane and the boys got closer, and the Slayer kids were blocking the entrance to their bus.

Lane's pulse quickened. He looked around for some kind of blunt instrument that he could use if shit went the way. thought it was going to. And then, one of the Slayer fans gave the Allison Chains guys a head nod. Hey, the kid said, you guys are all right. You didn't puss out back there. The hardcore Slayer dudes parted and let Alice and Chains get onto their bus. And then it was off to the next stop to do it all over again, to be humiliated, attacked, and ultimately forgiven, a roller coaster of emotions that took its toll on Lane Staley, despite the brave face he put on night after night. And soon, he would need more than just a brave face and a big voice to keep it all at bay.

A different kind of coping mechanism. We'll be right back after this word, word, word. Just how and when Lane Staley began using heroin is up for debate. According to the biographer for Allison Chain's bassist, Mike Starr, it was Demri Perot, Lane's longtime girlfriend and eventual fiancé who introduced him to the drug. If you ask Al Jorgensen, he'll tell you. that his band ministry showed Lane the ropes back at a show, but Alice's timeline of events doesn't quite add up. A third and perhaps more likely scenario comes from Johnny Bacolus,

Lane's bandmate in his pre-Alice and Chain stays. According to Johnny, Lane began using heroin in the second half of 1991 when Alice and Chains were on tour opening for Van Halen. Per Johnny, Lane reported back saying, quote, Johnny, and I took that first hit. For the first time in my life I got on my knees and thank God for feeling so good. At this point, heroin was making its mark on Seattle. In the 1980s, the city plunged into a recession. Junk and pills were suddenly commonplace. At that time, heroin's purity was around only 4%, but by the early 90s, it had increased to 65%. For someone like Lane, who had always experimented with drugs as a teenager, heroin was easy to try out and hard to shake.

Heroin-related deaths in Seattle jumped from 32 in 1986 to 59 in 1992, an increase of 84%, including Lane's friend, Andrew Wood, as well as Stephanie Ann Sargent from the band's seven-year bitch. In 1993, the city would see a record number of overdoses, 410 in the first six months of the year alone. But back in 1991, Lane Staley was beginning to rely on dope the way Allison changed. James fans relied on the band's songs. Heroin for Lane was cathartic. It was a way to deal to handle people in crowds and success in general.

Pressure, anxiety, pain, you name it. A shot in the arm got rid of it all. Heroin, however, wasn't the only issue taking root on Allison Chains' tour with Van Halen. Mike Starr, Allison Chains' bassist, was putting a lot of names on the guest list, which was odd. Van Halen's crack security team began to invent. investigate. And what they found was way worse than an inflated VIP section. Mike's star was busted scalping tickets to his own band's shows, selling and trading backstage passes in exchange for money for drugs. When he was caught, he said he was doing it to score dope for Lane, which may

have been the truth or may have been deflection, seeing as though Mike was struggling with his own addiction that would plague him for the rest of his life. In the end, it didn't matter. Mike violated the trust of Allison Chains. of the mighty Van Halen, a band that was doing Allison Chains is solid by taking them out on tour, who believed in Allison Chains even though the Van Halen masses proved just as cruel as the Slayer crowd. Lane understood on a professional level that Mike had to go. But on a personal level, it fucked him up. Mike had been there from the beginning.

They'd struggled together when they didn't have two nickels to rub together in the old days, when the police squads were raiding the rehearsal space, and when their house had a backed-up shitter, and now, Mike was out. Bad timing, too. Just as Allison Chains' second LP, Dirt, hit Stores, and bumped the band up a notch, regardless of what the critics were saying. Pompous, Turgid, no riffs, a bore is how the LA Times described Dirt in their one-and-half-star review. But what did the critics know? Not much, as usual. Didn't matter. Dirt debuted on the Billboard album chart and number six, so the L.A. Times could get fucked. Dirt was heavy.

musicly and lyrically. It made good use in the eerie harmonies that only Lane and Jerry could create together, and it gave Lane an outlet to speak from the mind and heart of an addict. Getting clean to make the record gave him clarity and perspective, made him think that perhaps there was life after dope, or that perhaps he could be a different person, someone who kept coming back, against all odds, clawing his way out from the jungle of his own mind. February, 1993, Lacom. Lane Staley, aka the rooster, was fully in his element. Standing next to him on stage, Jerry Cantrell on guitar. And to his other side, Mike Inez borrowed from Ozzy Osbourne's band on bass.

Behind him, Sean Kinney on drums. Allison Chains, a force, that voice rising above the trolls, the haters, Dave Mustain and his stupid posters, Van Hagar's frat boy Ermi, the L.A. Times. Allison Chains did not pus out. That's right, not then and not now. Lane had triumph on his mind, but there was something else. Some Hitler youth-looking punk down in the crowd, elbowing and kicking everyone around him, tossing up the Nazi salute. The rooster narrowed his eyes. He singled out the skinhead and told him to get up on the stage.

And of course, the guy jumped at the opportunity, desperate for attention. The rest of the band, the fans, the security guards, no one knew why. Lane was giving this dirt bag the time of day. In Lane, the rooster, did give that dirtbag attention and did give him that space. And then he gave that Nazi shit heel what he had coming to him. Two pops to the face with his fist. The skinhead's nose gushed blood as he fell back into the crowd. And Lane grabbed the mic.

Fucking Nazis die. He shouted, and the audience roared their approval. And that would have been that. But this particular Nazi went crying. to the police. Lane took off, running with a security guard to catch a ferry to Finland. Stockholm PD, meanwhile, found the rest of the band at their hotel, and they seized all their passports. They wanted to know where Lane was at. The guys gave him up. The cops got the lane before the ferry left and placed him under arrest. That is, until the Skinhead's brother appeared

and made an appeal, explained how what Lane had done was a good thing. And now the cops were doing a 180. They suddenly had Allison Chains' back, just like those Slayer fans a few years prior. Just like another megawatt band, this time Metallica, still riding high on the crossover success of their Black album, an album that Alice and Chains loved so much that they purposefully recorded dirt at the same recording studio. Metallica tapped Allison Chains to open their 1994 tour. Allison Chains now riding high on the release of their seven-song EP, Jara Flies, the first EP to ever debut at number one. But Lane's priorities had shifted again, away from being clean, away from triumph, once again

shooting up and nodding off. He showed up the band practice for the Metallica tour so fucked up on heroin that Sean threw his drumsticks to the floor and walked out and said he'd never work with Lane again. It was hard for Jerry to follow, but he knew he had to. Alice and Chains were forced to cancel. In the summer of 1994, James Hetfield and the dudes of Metallica mocked Lane Staley on stage in front of thousands. I can't tour, I can't tour, Hetfield whined, while the other guys in Metallica made cartoonists shooting up gestures into their arms. This, just months after the heroin epidemic in Seattle claimed another victim, Kurt Cobain, dead at the age of 27.

and Lane Staley, the rooster himself, also 27 years old at this exact moment, went back into the jungle, wondering if he'd ever make it out again. The first person to realize something was wrong with Lane Staley was his accountant. Lane's bank accounts were stagnant for weeks, no purchases, no withdrawals. For a junkie who had completely given himself over to his addiction, this was strange. Lane had the money to score dope whenever he wanted. Enough money, in fact, to purchase a 1,500 square foot condo in Seattle's University District for $262,000. That was five years ago, and now it was 2002, April 19th, to be exact, just before 6 in the evening. The two cops at Lane Staley's condo door found that it was bolted from the inside.

They made quick work breaking it down. It was dark. all 1,500 square feet stretching into shadows that made the place look twice as big. They turned on their flashlights and stepped inside. Reruns flickered on the television set. The answering machine's red light flashed like a distress signal. The cops kept walking. Cans of spray paint on the floor.

White powder and crack pipes on the coffee table. They followed stains from the living room to the bathroom, where cash was spayed out near the toilet. $501 exactly. Then they get to the heart of the condo, the heart of the darkness, the couch. The smell, so overpowering. It got worse, the closer they got. The cops knew it before they stepped one foot inside this place.

But this grisly discovery sealed it. The rumors were, at long last, true. For years, there were all kinds of rumors going around Seattle about Lane Staley. Lane had AIDS. Lane had no fingers or toes. Lane was dead. Those rumors were out there for good reason. When Allison Chains buried the hatchet to make their third full-length album,

the process took an agonizing eight months, always waiting for Lane to show up, for Lane to come out of the bathroom, for Lane to either be high enough or sober enough to get through a session. And sometimes, he really did show up, like at the taping for the band's episode of MTV's wildly popular, their unplugged series. Although Lane needed a fix to make it through that taping, a stash he brought with him in a little jar, pre-cooked. Not all nights went so smoothly. In Missouri, after Allison Chains

opened a show for Kiss, Lane overdosed. He managed to pull through. Demery, however, his long-time girlfriend and fiancé, recently his ex-girlfriend and fiancé, to be precise, she wasn't so lucky. The pills she was taking, in turn, took her life. Lane was overcome with guilt and regret. The same feelings of guilt and regret he'd experienced when Allison Chains fired Mike Starr. But this time it was way worse. If only he'd gotten out of here, both of them, out of Seattle, away from everyone. The users, the pushers, the fans banging on the doors of his condo now.

They were here to get high with him. He knew it. Anyone could find out where Lane Staley. left. Seattle talked, and then Seattle walked, right up the lane's front door, and knocked, scared to open it, scared to acknowledge that some of those rumors were finally coming true, that Lane had lost most of the teeth in his head, that Lane was well under 100 pounds, and that Lane looked like he was 80 years old, not 34. He hid there in his condo, his lair, that jungle of shadows and junk, a jungle fit for a rooster who longed since

given up the fight. But still, he had a little energy left in that shriveled up body of his. The necessary energy required to sink a needle in his arm. A speedball set coursing through his veins, big enough and fast enough to make everything stop one last time. The cops looked over Lane's staley stiff body where it sat on the couch, the leathery skin, the advanced state of decomposition. The autopsy confirmed that he had died exactly two weeks earlier. On April, April 5th, eight years to the day since Kurt Cobain took his own life. Years later, when explaining why he made the decision to continue Allison Chains without his original lead singer, Jerry Cantrell said this.

Here's what I believe. Shit fucking happens. That's rule one. Everybody walking the planet knows that. Rule two, things rarely turn out the way you planned. Three, everybody gets knocked down. Four, and most important of all. After you take those shots, it's time to stand up and walk on to continue to live.

That fourth point, the most important point, that was the hardest, hardest for anyone, but way too hard for some in particular. Like Lane Staley, fighting his way out of the shit with his only weapon, his voice. But when that voice was silenced, so was the fight. Lost somewhere in the weeds. What a disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan. It's disgrace land.

All right. Thanks for crawling down into the hole with me in this Allison Chains episode. This week's question of the week is which Seattle artist band, singer, songwriter, hits you the hardest. Is it Allison Chains? Our boy, Lane Staley here. Kurt, Eddie. Hell, what about even Jimmy Hendrix? Hit me up and let me know.

617-906-66-38. Leave me a voicemail. Send me a text. Hear your answer on the after-party bonus episode. It's coming up right. after this one. All right? You can also send your answers to me at Disgracelam Pod on Instagram X and Facebook. Leave a review for the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and win some pre-merch. All right. Here come some credits. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in

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