Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are opening
the files on a figure who Really, he essentially
defines a specific frequency of the 1990s. Oh,
for sure. You know the sound. It's that grinding,
harmonized dread that somehow, against all odds,
became pop radio gold. We are talking about Layne
Staley. The voice of Alice in Chains. And, I
mean, probably the most imitated voice in modern
rock history. I think that's fair to say. Absolutely.
Yeah, if you go into any bar with a cover band
right now, anywhere in the world, you're going
to hear someone trying to do the Layne Staley
growl. And almost... Certainly failing. Almost
certainly failing. But here's the thing. And
this is why I wanted to pull this stack of research
today. I feel like Layne Staley has been reduced
to a bumper sticker. You know, he's the tortured
grunge guy. He's the cautionary tale. He's the
tragedy. He's the tragedy. It's the saint of
the sad archetype. It's just very easy to box
him in there and leave it at that. It is. And
look, the tragedy is there. We have the source
material, the biography, the police reports,
the interviews, and it gets incredibly dark.
We aren't going to shy away from any of that.
No. But the mission today for this deep dive
is to dig past that headline. Because when I
was reading through all these notes, I kept finding
this duality, this conflict. It's the conflict
between the legend and the actual guy. Right.
The person who lived behind the voice. Right.
We're going to find a guy who wasn't just, you
know, born wearing flannel and brooding in the
Seattle rain. We're talking about a drummer who
desperately wanted to be a singer. We're talking
about a glam metal enthusiast. The glam metal
enthusiast who, let's not forget, dressed in
drag. We're definitely getting into the drag
for sure. But also a guy with a wicked sense
of humor. That's the part that I feel gets completely
lost in the shuffle. Oh, completely. So if you
think you know the story. If you think it's just
man in the box and then a slow fade to black,
you're missing like half the picture. We've got
connections between his childhood religion and
those famous lyrics that, I have to admit, I
never put together before. And some really, really
unsettling synchronicities regarding the end
of his life that are just... They're chilling,
frankly. They really are. So let's rewind. Let's
get out of the grunge era entirely for a second.
Because to understand the ending, we really have
to go back and look at the origin. Layne Staley,
Bellevue, Washington, born 1967. August 20, 1967.
So Pacific Northwest, local through and through.
But if we are really talking about origins, we
have to talk about identity. because he spent
the first chunk of his life trying to figure
out who he was, literally starting with his name.
He wasn't born Lane Staley. I mean, that wasn't
his full name. He was born Lane Rutherford Stahler.
Rutherford. Okay, I'm trying to picture a rock
star screaming, Hello, Seattle! And introducing
himself as Lane Rutherford. It doesn't quite
have the edge, does it? It really doesn't. It
sounds like a 19th century president or something.
It sounds like a banker or a history professor.
And apparently he hated it with an absolute passion.
The sources all mentioned that he would get visibly
angry if people used that middle name. It was
a real four spot for him. Okay, so he changes
it. So in his teens, he legally changed it to
Thomas. Lane Thomas Daly. Exactly. Now pause
for a second here. Why Thomas? I would assume
it's a family name. His dad, his grandfather.
Something like that. You would assume that. That's
the logical leap. But no, he chose Thomas because
he was obsessed with Tommy Lee. Wait, wait, wait.
The drummer from Metley Crue. The very same.
This is what I mean about breaking that grunge
stereotype right from the jump. Teenage Layne
Staley wasn't looking at moody poets for inspiration.
He was looking at the Sunset Strip. He was looking
at hairspray and spandex and, you know, rotating
drum kits that go upside down. The whole spectacle.
He idolized the showmanship of it all. That is
hilarious. It actually makes a lot of sense,
though, because Lane started as a drummer, right?
He wasn't always the guy out front with the mic.
Correct. That's a huge point. He started playing
drums at age 12. He was the kid in the back.
But the source material highlights his really
interesting tension. He was a drummer who played
in all these glam bands in his early peens, but
he secretly, desperately wanted to be the singer.
He wanted the microphone. He wanted the spotlight.
It's the classic. Dave Grohl or Phil Collins
trajectory. You know, the guy in the back of
the bus knowing he can do it better than the
guy in the front. Exactly. But there was a lot
of instability in the background while all this
musical ambition was happening. His parents divorced
when he was seven. He was raised by his mom,
Nancy, and his stepfather, Jim Elmer. And speaking
of names, he actually went by Lane Elmer for
a while in high school, didn't he? He did. So
he's Lane Rutherford, then he's Lane Elmer, then
he becomes Lane Thomas, and then finally just
Lane Staley. That's a lot of shifting identities
for a kid. It really is. It suggests someone
who's just trying on different skins, you know,
trying to find the one that fits. But the biggest
influence on his psyche, and eventually his lyrics,
it wasn't the divorce or the name changes. It
was the religion. This was the part of the research
that really, really made me sit up. I always
knew Alice in Chains had lyrics that were, let's
call them skeptical of religion. That's a diplomatic
way to put it. Yeah. But I always just chalked
it up to, you know, standard teenage rebellion,
question authority, that kind of thing. It was
much more specific and I think much more personal
than that. Lane was raised as a Christian scientist
until he was 16 years old. Okay. And for listeners
who might not know the details. Christian science
isn't just going to church on Sundays. It's a
very, very specific worldview, right? It is deeply
rigorous. The core tenet, to put it simply, is
that the material world, and specifically sickness,
pain, and disease, is an illusion. It's an error
in thought. So you don't treat illness with medicine?
You don't. You treat it with prayer. You treat
it by correcting your thought patterns to align
with God's perfect reality where sickness doesn't
exist. Wow. So if you're a kid and you scrape
your knee or you get the flu, the messaging isn't
here's a Band -Aid or take some Tylenol. It's
this pain isn't real. Exactly. Your pain is an
illusion that you need to pray away. Now imagine
being a child who is naturally sensitive, perceptive,
and maybe feeling things very, very deeply. And
he's being told constantly that what he feels,
what his body is telling him, isn't real. That
is a recipe for a massive, massive disconnect
from your own experience. And that disconnect,
according to the sources, it fueled a lot of
anger in him. There's a really telling quote
from a 1991 interview where Lane just unloads
on this. He talks about seeing people being brainwashed.
Right. He says he had a fascination with how
people would give up their money, their time,
and their entire lives for a cause that he felt
was wrong. He actually said, and I wrote this
down, for a cause there sure is right, but I'm
sure is wrong. That's not confusion. That's judgment.
That's a firm stance. It is. He'd seen it from
the inside and he made a conscious choice to
reject it. He decided explicitly to stop believing
in anything apart from himself in his own experience.
And if you fast forward to his songwriting, I
mean, you see it everywhere. Look at a track
like Get Born Again. Which is a terrifying song,
by the way. The sound of it is just so bleak.
It is. And in 1999, Lane confirmed that that
song is about religious hypocrisy. It's a direct
shot. And then you go back to their biggest hit,
Man in the Box, and he's screaming, deny your
maker. That isn't just a cool, edgy metal slogan.
No. It's a direct rejection of the Christian
science God he grew up with. He is fundamentally
asserting the reality of his own pain. Deny your
maker takes on a whole new meaning when you think
about it as deny the God who tells me that my
suffering is an illusion. Precisely. He's screaming,
no, this pain is real. I am real. This box is
real. Okay, so let's pivot from that to the music
that actually shaped that sound. Because if his
ideological influence was this profound rejection
of religion, his musical influences were chaotic.
Eclectic is the polite word. Chaotic might be
better, yeah. He cites Black Sabbath as his first
and primary influence. Which, okay, that's the
obvious one. You listen to Alice in Chains, you
hear the sludge, you hear the down -tuned guitars.
That's Sabbath 101. No surprise there. But then
on the same list, he has Prince and David Bowie.
Prince? The purple one? I'm trying to connect
the dots between War Pigs and Raspberry Beret,
and I'm struggling. I know. But then you add
the Stooges to that mix, and then Industrial
acts like Ministry and Skinny Puppy. Hold on.
How do you mix Prince and Skinny Puppy? One is
pure funk -pop perfection and joyousness, and
the other is literally the sound of a factory
imploding for 45 minutes. But that's the genius
of Layne Staley, isn't it? He took that theatricality
and the incredible vocal range of someone like
Prince or Bowie, that ability to project a persona
to perform, and he welded it to the raw, visceral
aggression of Iggy Pop and the Stooges. And then
he coated it all in the mechanical, repetitive
dread of industrial music. So he's not just a
metal singer. He's a performance artist who just
happens to like incredibly heavy riffs. I think
that's the perfect way to describe him. Which
brings us very neatly to the visual evidence
of that performance art. We need to talk about
the glam years. Yes, please. This is my favorite
part of the stack. Because I think people forget
that before 1991, before Nirvana broke, the entire
rock world. was swimming in Hairspray. Oh, it
was an ocean of Aquanet. And Lane was right there
doing the backstroke. He wasn't just swimming,
he was competing. In 1984, he joined a band of
students from Shorewood High called Sleaze. Spelled
S -L -E -Z -E, of course. Naturally. Yeah. Because
the letter A was clearly not cool enough. Incredible.
And this wasn't some, you know, jeans and t -shirt
garage band. They were fully 100 % committed
to the glam aesthetic. Makeup, crazy hair, the
whole nine yards. And they were on TV, right?
They were. In 1985, they made a cameo in a low
-budget public access movie called Father Rock.
And if you dig deep enough on the Internet, you
can find the footage of Layne Staley, the future
voice of Grunge Doom, looking like he just walked
off the set of a Poison video. It's amazing.
But Sleaze eventually morphed, right? They changed
members and became something else? They did.
In 1986, Sleaze morphed into Alice in Chains.
But not the Alice in Chains we know. There's
a crucial difference in the spelling. A huge
difference. This was spelled Alice, apostrophe,
and, quote, chains, like guns and roses. Got
it. And the concept, well, Lane described it
best himself. He said they dressed in drag and
played speed metal. Let me just stop you there.
Yeah. Dressed in drag and played speed metal.
Those are two subcultures that historically did
not get along. Not at all. You had the hair metal
guys over here and you had the thrash metal guys
over there. And they usually wanted to beat each
other up in the parking lot. And somehow Lane
bridged the gap. They were on stage, in dresses
and makeup, playing Slayer and Armored Saint
covers. That is bold. I mean, that is genuinely
punk rock in its attitude. It was all about shock
value. And it shows that Lays had this incredible
sense of humor. He wanted to provoke a reaction.
He wasn't this guy sitting in a corner crying
about his feelings. He was on stage in Fishnets
screaming Slayer lyrics. That is a vital part
of his personality that the sad sack narrative
completely erases. It totally erases it. He was
a showman. So how do we get from this? this drag
-wearing speed metal band to the real Alice in
Chains. It involves a chance meeting at a very
specific, very grungy location. The Music Bank.
This was a rehearsal studio in Seattle, a pretty
grimy place by all accounts. And in 1987, Lane
met a guitarist named Jerry Cantrell at a party
there. And Jerry was. He wasn't doing so well
at the time, was he? Jerry was effectively homeless.
He'd just gotten kicked out of his family's house
after a fight. Had nowhere to go. So he's at
this party basically couch surfing. Exactly.
And Lane, being the guy he was, found out Jerry
was homeless and just invited him to move in
with him at the music bank. So before they were
ever bandmates, they were roommates. They were
roommates living in this dilapidated 24 -7 rehearsal
space. Just two broke guys surrounded by instruments.
Probably not a lot of food. That creates a bond
that you can't just manufacture. You learn someone's
rhythms, their habits, their darkest humor. You
really do. They were living in each other's pockets
for over a year. But they weren't playing together
yet. Which seems crazy to me. You have Layne
Staley and Jerry Cantrell living in the same
room. Why weren't they writing songs immediately?
Because Layne didn't want to be in Jerry's band.
At that point, Lane was actually in a funk band.
A funk band. Okay, the journey continues. We've
gone from glam to speed metal to funk. The man
had range. He was exploring. He was trying everything.
So Lane's funk band needed a guitarist. He asked
Jerry to join. And Jerry said, okay, I'll be
your side man, but only if you join my band.
The old quid pro quo. The rock and roll tradeoff.
Exactly. And Jerry's band was the one that already
included drummer Sean Kinney and bassist Mike
Starr. The core was there. But Lane was dragging
his feet. He really wanted to make this funk
thing work. So Jerry and the guys, they came
up with a plan to break him. A plan of psychological
warfare. This is the stripper anecdote. I love
this because it sounds like a plot from a sitcom.
It's so ridiculous. It really is. So they wanted
Lane to be their lead singer. Lane wouldn't commit.
So they started holding auditions for a new lead
singer right in front of Lane. in their shared
rehearsal space. Oh, that's cold. And they intentionally
brought in the absolute worst singers they could
possibly find. So Lane is just sitting on the
couch trying to, I don't know, eat a sandwich,
and he's watching these terrible vocalists just
butcher songs. And Jerry's looking at him the
whole time like, well, I guess we'll have to
hire this guy unless someone else steps up. It's
brilliant. But Lane just laughed it off at first.
He knew exactly what they were doing. He wasn't
falling for it. Until they brought in the final
straw. the nuclear option they auditioned a male
stripper who i assume was not a trained vocalist
he was not a trained vocalist and apparently
his performance was so egregious so offensive
to lane's musical sensibilities that he finally
just snapped he couldn't take it anymore he got
angry he basically stood up and said fine that's
it i'll join the damn band just get him out of
here So the legendary lineup of Alice in Chains
exists because Layne Staley could not handle
watching a male stripper try to sing. History
turns on the smallest, most ridiculous pivots.
And so they take the name from Layne's old band.
Eventually, yeah. They flirted with some other
names first. For a while, they were called Diamond
Lie. Okay, very 80s. Very 80s. And then, unbelievably,
they considered a band name that was just the
word fuck. Fuck, just the word. Just the word.
It's hard to put on a marquee. Hard to get radio
play with that one. Yeah, your marketing options
are a little limited. So they went back to Lane's
old name, Alice in Chains, modified the spelling
to one we know now, and the Beast was born. Okay,
so section three is the rise to stardom. And
it's meteoric. It happens so fast. But it almost
ended before it even started because of a very
Seattle problem. The drug raid. A massive one.
They had a local promoter, a guy named Randy
Hauser, who was going to pay for their first
professional demos. This is their golden ticket,
their big shot. And the recording was booked
at the music bank where they live. Right. And
the day before they were supposed to go in and
record, the police kicked the doors in on the
entire facility. What are they looking for? Everything.
It turned out to be the biggest cannabis raid
in Washington state history at that time. The
entire studio was shut down, declared a crime
scene. So the demo money is gone. The studio
is locked up. They're back to square one. But
they scraped it together. They found another
way. And they recorded what became known as the
Treehouse Tapes. In 1988. And those are the tapes
that got them notice. Those are the tapes. They
made their way to Susan Silver and Kelly Curtis,
who were managing Soundgarden at the time. So
that's the stamp of approval right there. That's
the co -sign from Seattle Royalty. And that got
them the attention of Columbia Records, who signed
them in 1989. And then in 1990, Facelift drops
and the world gets man in the box. The song that
changed the radio landscape. It sounded like
nothing else. I want to pause here and get technical
for a minute because Man in the Box sounds different
than Pearl Jam. It sounds different than Nirvana.
What exactly is Lane doing with his voice there
that makes it so unique? It's a technique that's
often described as tensed throat vocals. Okay,
explain that like I'm five. What does that mean?
Okay, so imagine you are trying to scream, but
at the exact same time, you are tightening your
neck muscles and your pharynx. You're constricting
the airflow to create friction and pressure.
It's like putting your thumb over the end of
a garden hose. That is the perfect analogy. The
water, or in this case the sound, comes out faster
and harder, but it's under immense pressure.
That sounds incredibly painful and probably terrible
for your vocal cords. It is extremely taxing
physically. Most vocal coaches would scream at
you for doing it. But the sound it produces is
this metallic, grinding, resonant tone. He sounds
like a human distortion pedal. And he's layering
that over the guitars. He's not just singing
on top of them. That's the absolute key. In Man
in the Box and a lot of their songs, he is singing
in unison with Jerry's guitar riff. Not an octave
above, not a harmony unison. He is matching the
frequency of the distortion. And then Jerry sings
the harmony underneath that. Right. And Jerry
has that drier, more classic rock, almost country
rock voice. So you have Lane's garden hose under
pressure scream layered exactly with the guitar.
And then you have Jerry's smooth, dry, lower
harmony underneath it all. And that friction
between those two voices and the voice and the
guitar, it creates a sound that is uniquely Alice
in Chains. It sounds huge. It sounds like a wall
coming down on you. And it resonated. Facelift
was a huge hit. But Dirt in 1992, I mean, that
was the monster. dirt is the masterpiece yeah
it's the defining statement quadruple platinum
yeah but it's also where the darkness becomes
the text not just the subtext he was still really
involved creatively though right it wasn't just
him showing up to sing oh absolutely he even
designed the sun logo on the album in layard
himself he was an artist in every sense but lyrically
This is basically a concept album about addiction.
It's harrowing. I mean, you listen to songs like
Junkhead and Godsmack. He's not being metaphorical
at all. There's no poetry hiding the meaning.
It's a direct diary entry. And then you have
Jar of Flies in 1994. I really want to emphasize
how crazy the success of this record was. Because
it was an EP. It was an EP. Seven songs. They
recorded it in a week just to see what would
happen. Right. Usually EPs are just, you know,
throwaways. B -sides for the hardcore fans. Exactly.
But Jar of Flies debuted at number one on the
Billboard 200 chart. Number one. An EP. It was
the first EP in history to do that. That just
shows you the appetite the public had for this
band. They didn't just want the heavy screaming
stuff. They wanted the acoustic, atmospheric,
beautiful, sad stuff too. And Lane was writing
a lot more by this point too, correct? He was.
He wrote about half the lyrics across their catalog
before the reunion. But he was also picking up
the guitar more. On tracks like Angry Chair and
Hate to Feel, that's Lane playing guitar. And
Jerry Cantrell, who is an undisputed guitar god,
was totally supportive of that. He was incredibly
supportive. He went on record calling Angry Chair
a masterpiece. He loved that Lane was stepping
up musically and bringing in his own riffs. I
love that dynamic. Jerry wasn't territorial.
He wasn't like, I'm the guitar player. He was
like, yeah, Lane, pick up the axe. Let's hear
what you've got. They really pushed each other.
But as the artistic peak was happening, The personal
valley was getting deeper and deeper. Which brings
us to section four, the struggle. We can't avoid
it, the addiction. It's the elephant in the room
of his entire biography. But I want to be careful
here not to just, you know, list drugs and be
sensational. I want to talk about the impact
it had on him and the people around him. The
impact was devastating. But what's important
to remember is that there are these moments of...
Let's call it functioning heroism right in the
middle of the mess. We have to talk about Brazil,
1993. This was during the Dirt Tour. Yes. The
band is in Brazil headlining some huge festivals.
And Mike Starr, the bassist, overdoses. And it's
a bad one. I mean, he is dying. His heart is
stopped. And who's the one who steps in to save
him? Lane. The guy who's deep in his own struggle.
Lane Saley, who is struggling with his own massive
demons, has the presence of mind and apparently
the medical knowledge from his own experiences
to resuscitate his friend. He saved Mike Starr's
life. That is such a heavy, tragic irony. The
guy who needs saving is the one doing the saving.
It shows that he wasn't just a zombie. He wasn't
gone. He cared so deeply about his friends and
he was still in there. But then 1994 hits. April
1994. Kurt Cobain. Kurt Cobain. is found dead.
And the entire Seattle music scene just freezes.
For Lane, this wasn't just a news story about
another rock star. This was a peer. This is a
guy his age from his town in the same boat. And
it scared him. The source material says Cobain's
death scared Staley into temporary sobriety.
It must have felt like looking in a mirror. A
terrifying mirror. I can't imagine what that
must have felt like. But, you know, fear is a
motivator that eventually wears off. He relapsed.
And here is where we see the band's integrity
really shine through. Right, because Alice in
Chains had the world at their feet at this point.
They could have toured Jar of Flies and made
millions of dollars. They could have been the
biggest band in the world. But the managers and
the rest of the band, they said no. They turned
down the tour money. They refused to put the
band on the road. They canceled a huge tour with
Metallica. They knew that if they put Lane on
a tour bus with all the access and the pressure,
he might die. They chose his life over the money.
That is incredibly rare in the music business.
I mean, usually the machine just keeps grinding
until the wheels fall off. It speaks to how much
they loved him. They were trying to protect him.
But since Alice in Chains was on hiatus, Lane
needed another outlet, a safer outlet. And this
is where the band Mad Season comes in. I adore
the Mad Season album above. River of Deceit is
one of the most beautiful songs ever written,
period. But I didn't realize the band was essentially
formed as an intervention. It was basically a
musical safe house. It was formed by Mike McCready
of Pearl Jam. And McCready was sober at the time.
He grabbed Barrett Martin from Screaming Trees
and a blues bassist named John Baker Saunders.
And the idea was, let's surround Lane with sober
musicians. Let's just get in a room and play
blues. Let's keep it low pressure and positive.
Did it work? Musically, it was an absolute triumph.
It proved Layne could do so much more than just
scream. He could sing the blues. He could be
vulnerable and quiet. His voice on that album
is heartbreaking. It really is. Personally. It
helped for a while. It gave him a focus. But
the addiction was just too entrenched at that
point. I think there's a misconception that Lane
thought drugs were cool, you know, that he was
promoting the lifestyle through his music. And
he absolutely hated that perception. There is
a quote from a Rolling Stone interview in 1996
that is just... It's absolutely essential to
understanding him. He said, drugs worked for
me for years and now they're turning against
me. I didn't want my fans to think that heroin
was cool. That's the key. Now they're turning
against me. That is such a clear, lucid, and
self -aware realization. He knew he was trapped.
He wasn't glorifying it. He also said, I'm walking
through hell and this sucks. He talked about
how fans would come up to him and give him a
thumbs up and say, hey, man, I'm high, too, thinking
it would, like, bond them. And Lane was horrified
by that. He didn't want to be the poster boy
for heroin. He wanted to be a musician. Let's
move to the slow retreat. This is Section 5,
roughly 1996 to 2002. This is the period where
he really fades from public view. And the catalyst
for the final withdrawal was another tragedy,
October 1996. Demaree Laura Parrott, his former
fiance, died of an overdose. And they were soulmates,
by all accounts. Even though they had broken
up, they were still deeply connected. Mark Lanigan,
another Seattle musician and a close friend,
said that Lane never recovered from her death.
He was placed on 24 -hour suicide watch immediately
after he heard the news. It seems like whatever
fight he had left in him, a huge part of it died
with her. We did get that one last incredible
performance, the MTV Unplugged show in April
in 1996, just a few months before she died, which
is now just iconic. It's iconic, but it is so
hard to watch. You see the frailty. He's wearing
sunglasses. He's wearing gloves to hide the track
marks on his hands. He's incredibly thin. But
the voice. The voice is still there. That was
basically the end of the road for live performances.
It was. His final show ever was on July 3, 1996
in Kansas City, opening for Kiss of All Bands.
After that, he went home to his condo in the
University District of Seattle, and he basically
just closed the door on the world. The rumors
from this era are gruesome. They are. And unfortunately,
many of them turn out to be true. In 1998, he
briefly went back into the studio to record two
final songs with Alice in Chains, Get Born Again
and Died. And the producer, Dave Jordan, was
absolutely shocked by his appearance. What did
he see? He said Lane weighed 80 pounds. 80 pounds.
He was six feet tall. That's skeletal. He was,
in Jordan's words, white as a ghost. He had lost
several teeth, which affected his singing. and
gave him a noticeable lisp. His legs had atrophied
from lack of use. But he still sang. But, and
this is the miracle and the tragedy of Lane Staley,
he stood in front of that microphone, and he
delivered. The power was still in his throat,
even if the rest of his body was completely failing
him. His friends tried to reach him during this
time, right? It wasn't like everyone just gave
up on him. No, not at all. Sean Kinney, the drummer,
was relentless. He said he would call Lane three
times a week, every week. He would go to the
condo building and stand on the street and just
yell up at his window, Lane, pick up the phone,
I'm here. But Lane wouldn't answer the door.
He wouldn't answer. Why? Do you think it was
shame? I think it was likely shame. And also
maybe a form of protection. He didn't want his
friends to see him in that state. He wanted to
preserve their memory of who he was, not what
he'd become. But we should correct the record
on one point. He wasn't completely alone. His
mother, Nancy, insisted that the narrative of
him being totally cut off wasn't true. That's
right. She visited him. She was there as late
as February 2002, just two months before he died.
So he had his family's love, but he was locked
in a battle that he was losing day by day inside
that apartment. Which brings us to April 2002
and the timeline of the discovery is just, it's
brutal. It's a forensic timeline. It's cold and
sad. In mid -April, his accountants were the
first to notice something was wrong. They saw
lack of activity in his bank account, no money
had been withdrawn for two weeks. And for an
addict, that's a huge red flag. So they contacted
his mother. They contacted his mother, who then
went to the apartment. This was April 19th. And
before they even opened the door, she knew something
was wrong. She knew. Because of the cat. Sadie.
Lane's cat. She said Sadie was known to be a
very quiet, silent cat. But Lane's mother could
hear her meowing in distress from down the hallway,
just screaming, basically, behind the locked
door. That detail, the cat crying behind the
locked door, it grounds the horror in something
so domestic and so sad. It really does. She called
911. They broke the door down. And they found
him on the couch. He'd been dead for two weeks.
He weighed 86 pounds. And the cause of death
was an overdose. a speedball, heroin, and cocaine.
And the medical examiner, based on the state
of the body, estimated that the date of death
was April 5th. April 5th, the exact same date
that Kurt Cobain died eight years earlier. You
couldn't write that in a movie script. People
would say it was too contrived, too on the nose.
But that is the reality. The two defining voices
of Seattle grunge gone on the same calendar day.
There is one last piece of this puzzle that just
makes it even heavier. The Mike Starr confession.
This came out years later, didn't it? Yeah, this
was in 2010. Mike Starr, the original bassist,
was on the TV show Celebrity Rehab. And he revealed
a secret that he had been carrying for eight
years. He was the last person to see Lane alone.
He was. On April 4th, it was Mike's birthday,
he went over to Lane's condo to see him. And
Lane was clearly in very bad shape. He was sick.
Mike wanted to call 911. He begged him, let me
call 911 for you. And Lane refused. Lane refused.
He got angry. He threatened to never speak to
Mike again if he made that call. They got into
a huge argument. And Mike, who was high on benzodiazepines
himself at the time, was emotional and confused.
So he stormed out. And Lane's last words to him.
As he was leaving, Lane yelled, not like this,
don't leave like this. And Mike Starr carried
that guilt to his own grave. He did. He died
of an overdose himself in 2011. He said in that
interview that he blamed himself every single
day for not making that call. It's just a tragedy
compounded by tragedy. So after all that darkness,
we are left with the legacy. Section 7. How do
we remember him? Well, the immediate aftermath
in Seattle was just this huge outpouring of love
and grief. There was a public vigil at the Seattle
Center. Jerry Cantrell dedicated his solo album,
Degradation Trip, to Lane's memory. And in a
really touching personal gesture, Jerry adopted
Sadie the cat. He took the cat. He took the cat
home with him. He did. He gave her a home for
the rest of her life. That makes me feel a little
better about everything. Me too. And the musical
tributes were everywhere. Pearl Jam wrote a song
called 42 ,002. Stain had a huge hit with a song
just called Lane. Metallica has said that the
title of their album, Death Magnetic, was inspired
by him. It shows the respect the entire heavy
metal community had for him. He wasn't just a
grunge guy to them. He was a titan of vocals.
He really was. And of course, Alice in Chains
eventually came back. They did with William Duvall
on vocals, and they handled it with so much grace
and respect. The title track of their comeback
album, Black Gives Way to Blue, is essentially...
a funeral dirge for Lane. It's a beautiful heartbreaking
song. And who do they get to play piano on it?
Elton John? It's for Elton John. Which is an
incredible full circle moment. It's the perfect
full circle moment because the very first concert
Lane Staley ever attended as a little kid was
an Elton John concert. And now all those years
later Elton John is playing him out. That is
beautiful. So as we wrap this up. We started
this deep dive looking for the human being behind
the tortured artist headline. And I think he's
there. He's in all those details. He's the kid
who changed his name to sound like a Muttley
Crew drummer. He's the guy who laughed while
a male stripper auditioned terribly for his band.
He's the guy who saved his friend's life in Brazil
in the middle of his own chaos. He was funny.
He was complex. He was kind. And he was undeniably
earth shatteringly talented. He was a singular
talent. There will never be another voice like
that. Never. So here's the thought I want to
leave you with tonight. We often look back at
the 90s and we romanticize the darkness. There's
this myth that the heroine made the music better,
that the pain was the fuel. But Lane Staley told
us explicitly that the drugs turned against him.
He told us point blank that it wasn't cool, that
it sucked. So when you listen to Man in the Box
or Nutshell tomorrow on your drive to work, try
not to hear it as a glorification of that lifestyle.
Hear it as a warning. Hear it as a distress signal
from a guy who knew he was losing the battle
but kept singing through the static anyway. That
makes the music not just heavy but brave. Incredibly
brave. Exactly. Thank you for listening to The
Deep Dive. Go listen to Jar of Flies deeply tonight.
We'll catch you next time.