Heart’s Nancy Wilson discussed writing a tribute song for late Alice In Chains singer Layne Staley before he died because she saw his death coming.
She told Eddie Trunk, “We met all these guys at this kind of wake that was at this big Seattle house.
“My friend Kelly, who managed Pearl Jam before they were Pearl Jam, said, ‘Come and bring your dogs and meet these guys, everybody needs cheering up, and everybody would love to meet you.’
“So we were kind of indoctrinated into the Seattle scene that way, and it’s still a brotherhood and a sisterhood all the way around for us, I mean, [Alice in Chains bassist] Mike Inez was in Heart initially for five years or so.
“And we at the time we could all tell that Layne [Staley, vocals] was going down the addiction road, and he could not get back.
“When I saw that, and having met him and know how sweet a person he was, I wrote that song [‘The Dragon’] for him even before he was gone because I saw it coming.
“It’s kind of a sad song, and it sounds very Seattle, like the tuning and the guitar parts and the structure of it.” Ultimate-Guitar transcribed her comments.
