Transcript
Jake Brennan (0:04)
Double Elvis.
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Jake Brennan (1:07)
Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. The story is about Alice in Chains as Laying Staley are insane. His Seattle rehearsal space was raided by cops making the biggest drug bust in state history. He was humiliated by Megadeath. 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 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 MK1. 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 Alice and 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, Alice in Chains and Lane Staley. I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgrace. Duff McKagan knew there was no scene here, not in Seattle. You were kidding yourself if you Thought you were gonna 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. You all secretly wanted to be Motley Crue. Not that you'd admit that out loud to anyone. Didn't matter. No one in Seattle was listening. Those wastoids from the boonies, guys like the Melvins and later Mud Honey, not to mention that weirdo from Aberdeen. They were listening, but they were tuned into a different wavelength. King Buzzo from the Melvins and Kurt Cobain from Nirvana didn't want to be famous. They'd never moved to LA, which, as Duff McKagan 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 LA 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 N Roses were dominating the charts and the culture, things up north were changing, Seattle was blowing up. That Nothing scene Duff McKagan 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, as 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 a fucking rock band. End of story. Or so said Sean Kitty, drummer for Alice in Chains, one of the first of those Seattle bands that signed to a major label. Alice in Chains had more in common with Duff McKagan's hair metal side of the grunge tracks than they did with the waystoid 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 Steven Star, 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 LA to be so. Not that they were looking for fame, but Alice and 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, LA 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 LA 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 1000s 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. 3 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 30ft tall to young Jerry. Jerry, his mom was telling him now, this is your father, Jerry Cantrell Sr. AKA Rooster. That nickname name 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 M16 gunners in Vietnam, that clusterfuck 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. 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 and those lines to Layne Staley, Alice in 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 Lanegan of Screaming Trees once called the most singularly impressive hard rock singer he'd ever heard. And Mark Lanegan 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 Nam couldn't beat back their own demons with just an M16. The 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 vern 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 cleaned to record Alice in Chains, sophomore album, Dirt. His habit was one he'd grown to depend on. It helped him navigate fame that helped him cope with the death of his friend Andrew Wood, the singer for Seattle's Mother Love Bone. 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, Junk, Head, God, smack. Even this song about Jerry's dad in Vietnam, it resonated with Lane. Because Lane Staley was in the jungle now. Not Duffy McKagan's jungle. A jungle of his own making. And in that jungle, he'd been 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.