Lead singer of Alice in Chains dead at 34
Layne Staley, lead singer of Alice in Chains, was found dead in his apartment last Friday.
His body was badly decomposed and heroin paraphernalia was scattered nearby. He died as he had lived, alone, completely enraptured in a drug that had hollowed out his eyes and stripped the muscle from his bones.
Unlike Kurt Cobain, who killed himself at Nirvana’s commercial peak, the notoriously reclusive Staley was forgotten in recent years, like a used syringe littered in an alley.
Alice in Chains had not released an official album since 1995’s self-titled offering, and had not toured since 1992.
Still, Staley’s death was tragic, the final blow to a Seattle music scene that was disassembled one band at a time.
In the late 1980s, Andrew Wood of Seattle’s preeminent grunge group, Mother Love Bone, died of an overdose, and Cobain followed suit in 1994. Soundgarden broke up in 1998, an album removed from their commercial heyday. Mudhoney, a group that was never popular in the MTV sense, quietly fell off the map. Only Pearl Jam remains, a diluted representation of their former selves and the once blistering Seattle scene as a whole.
Contrary to the lack of attention Staley’s death garnered, in most instances little more than a short news clip or a sidebar paragraph in a newspaper, Alice in Chains was one of the best rock groups ever.
In 1989, the group plunged into metal’s mainstream with “Facelift,” an album that featured their greatest hit Man in the Box. “Sap,” an acoustic four-track EP followed. Although it was short, “Sap” was a complete artistic statement: melodic, intricate and subtle, unlike anything ever released by a hard rock group.
The group reached what many consider to be their pinnacle with 1992’s “Dirt,” an album on which Staley’s addiction became the primary creative outlet. Staley’s deep, rich voice, snarling on one track, strangely vulnerable on the next, was perfectly utilized on the album. Many of his lyrics sound sadly prophetic in retrospect. On Sickman Staley sang, “Ah, what’s the difference, I’ll die. What the hell am I? A leper from inside.”
In 1994 “Jar of Flies,” a seven track masterpiece recorded in a little more than a week. The album was the only EP to ever debut at No. 1 on the Billboard chart, and for good reason. The interplay between acoustic and electric guitars coupled with Staley’s incomparable vocals made every track distinctive. The six minutes and 56 seconds of Rotten Apple in particular, on which Staley’s multitracked vocal harmonies are layered to sound like a swarm of hornets, may be the best song the group ever recorded.
In recent years, the group’s output trailed off noticeably, usually little more than commercially-intended repackaging of the band’s seminal work. Still, 1996’s MTV unplugged appearance was flawless, if not a premature funeral viewing of Staley, who wore a long-sleeved shirt to cover up track marks and looked noticeably sick.
We are left with generic facsimiles of Alice in Chains, bands like Godsmack and System of a Down who steal from the group’s commercial appeal while ignoring the group’s emotional depth.
Another rock star is dead too young, his eulogy a collection of songs that defined a generation of teenage angst.