Former Guns N’ Roses guitarist Gilby Clarke detailed how Layne Staley and Alice In Chains were no longer the prominent type of band his record label wanted him to fit in with when recording his second record in 1996. Layne Staley ended up retiring from touring in 1996, never performing live again before his 2002 death, marking the end of an era.
Clarke told Ultimate-Guitar, “Not at all. They wanted me to make the record I wanted to make. They were so supportive. But the second record I did have a lot of pressure. As a matter of fact, I didn’t do my second record for Virgin because of that.
The times had changed by then, I believe that was probably like 1996 when we were talking about a second record and yeah, they were playing me… I can’t remember the bands… but it had taken over and they weren’t necessarily playing me Alice in Chains or Nirvana.
I don’t remember the bands that were big at that time. I want to say it was like Nickleback or something. Bu the songs they were playing for me, I was just saying, ‘Guys, this is not me. Look, we should all be out there trying to write the next great song. But this is just not me.’
I had to give it a good long think because I had a lot of songs written already and I didn’t want to switch gears. So I had to make that internal decision to go down swinging. So that’s the decision I made.
I said, ‘Look, in our lives, you’re not always number one. Sometimes you’ve got to have the bad years.’ But I thought it was important to be true to myself and say, ‘This is what I do.’ Obviously, we should always try to be looking for new things, but I wasn’t comfortable making that change.”
Deftones dropped a Layne Staley bombshell yesterday. Clarke recently posted on his Instagram page, “Congrats to @dodgers on an amazing #worldseries win. Los Angeles is a Championship town this year with @lakers Finals win also. I was able to watch every game & support these wonderful teams during this incredibly difficult year. we are so lucky to have sports to bide our time. who knows maybe live music soon?”
