Layne Staley: News, History & Updates

Biography by NANCY MCCALLUM, LAYNE STALEY’S MOTHER

Exclusively for Alternative Nation

Layne first heard the most beautiful voice in his environment when I was pregnant with him and I was taking voice lessons at Cornish School in Seattle. My voice teacher had been a voice coach in New York on Broadway for forty years. That was the first really big, full, male voice that he ever heard. I think I would credit that voice more than anybody else’s. I was in choir six years with very demanding choir directors. Thank God for them. David Sanarud was my junior high choir teacher and boy, I’m telling you, my choir teachers expected a lot. If your eyes left them, they stopped the whole practice and said, “From the beginning…” We got A++ for our regional competition. Then I took the year of voice at Cornish. I was chosen to be in the first musical to open The 5th Avenue Theater, but I was pregnant with Layne and it just wouldn’t have worked with me climbing on a ladder. So somebody else got the part and I got Layne.

Layne’s first music experience was he took trumpet, because, in fifth grade everybody got an instrument, and he used Uncle Bob’s trumpet. Our friend, Fred, had a set of drums and Layne was interested and he gave them to us. He loaned them. Then Layne bought a set of drums from the neighbor boy. So that’s how his interest in drums progressed, but I don’t remember him taking lessons.

Layne was pretty mild-mannered, even though he certainly had his opinions about people and things and events; but, he wasn’t a fighter. He didn’t make trouble. Nothing I knew about. I heard later funny stories about naughty things he did. And I went, “What!? I can’t believe that.” But you know, boys don’t tell their mothers all the naughty things they do. I knew of a few things that he did around the junior high age that make me angry. But I guess that’s to be expected.

When Alice In Chains formed and Facelift came out, and he and I were talking on the phone about it (because, I had listened to the tape several times) I said, “Layne I think there’s a sleeper on this album.” He said, “Which one, Mom?” and I said, “Man In The Box.” And he goes, “Oh that’s our next single.” And I said, “Oh Layne, it’s so beautiful.” And he’s like, “I wrote that, Mom”. So I am very proud of him for that song. He wrote the lyrics, I’m sure, is all I thought he meant. But I don’t know that for sure. I don’t know how much he participated in making the music. So, you’d have to ask another band member about that.

In his later years, I didn’t know I was saving him when we were checking on him. And the phone call that I got in 2002 said, “Now, don’t be overly concerned because it’s not unusual for Layne to take out a sum of money and then just use cash”. And when I got there, I had been there a couple of days before; because, Demri’s brother had died in February and I hadn’t known about it and I didn’t know if Layne knew about it, so I had been there a couple of days before to talk to him about it. There was no answer. I think that would’ve been a Wednesday, yeah. Then when I got the phone call to check on him on Friday, I wasn’t surprised that there wasn’t an answer. He had a little bit of mail by the door, but the kitty meowed, and she had never done that before and somehow that just alerted me. And when he didn’t answer after a while, I thought, well, I better have somebody come and check on him. So that’s when I made the 911 call.

The police first went in and then they said – I said, well, I need to go in and be with him. And they said, “Oh I wouldn’t do that.” And I said, “I can do this.” I’ve always promised myself that if anything happened to my children I would be there for them. And I went in, and he was tiny and I thought at first that he had made like a life-sized mannequin of himself because he had lots and lots of art projects always. And I thought, you know, somebody could have thrown that little guy over their shoulder and walked down the street and nobody would have even know that it was a real person.

So, and I sat with him for a few minutes. And I told him that I was really sorry how things had turned out. Because, of course we tried to not pressure him. We always felt like pressure would just push him to the wrong place, and he knew what he had to do. He had to go in treatment, stay in treatment, communicate with his sponsor, stay with healthy people – but the music industry doesn’t afford you the time to do that. And those aren’t healthy people – a lot of them are not. It was pretty tough to get cleaned up.

By then he had pretty much secluded, been secluded. So it was shocking to see my child like that. It should have turned out better. And it’s been amazing how many people have expressed their love and support. And they say, “Gee, I hope Layne knew how loved he was.” And I think, Wow, how could he not have known?” I’m sure he did. And then there was the crying and the storytelling and the making the plans. You know I think people who are sweet-hearted deserve to know the truth, and you know, “Warning, warning. Don’t kid yourself. The best of the best succumb to drug addiction. Stay away.”

Once Layne and I were on the phone and he was saying, “You know why, Mom? Why did this happen to me?” And I said, “Honey, that’s a witch hunt. Just go to treatment. And move on with your life. We have no idea. We have no idea of the why.” Believe. Don’t take yourself out to teach somebody a lesson. He didn’t. And I mean, everybody’s circumstances are different. I understand that. Don’t judge somebody else. Don’t think you know things you don’t know for sure. You were not there. But the whole why thing is part of a distraction that the world wants you to get distracted away from your purpose. Let it go. You don’t want to blame – what if you figured out the reason and it was someone’s fault? Are you going to go through life judging and blaming? No. Just drop the why and move on.

What would Layne say to his fans? He said it in his lyrics. He warned you. He described what he was up against. He said stay away. Don’t follow. And in the end, he said we’re alone. And I say we’re all alone together. Each of us has our own experience and past; but, we are walking alongside one another. And ask for help, for heaven’s sake. And for heaven’s sake go to 12-Step if you need help. 12-Step for anything. I don’t care what your obsession is. If your obsession is green and you can’t stand it anymore, go to a 12-Step program. It doesn’t matter what your obsession is. The 12-Step program is the same. If you do too much for others, if you don’t do enough for others, if you smoke, if you gamble, if there’s a sex addiction, if there’s a drug addiction or alcohol, or you can’t talk to people because you sweat, I don’t care what it is, the 12-Step problem solving process is for everyone and for everything.

We all have parts of ourselves that are not socially acceptable, that scare us in ourselves, that might not be acceptable in our families, or things that are hidden; because, we don’t want to talk about them or relive them or whatever. But I think that’s the nerve that Layne hits for some people in his music, (but) not everybody. I’ve heard people who said, “Oh, I get so much joy out of his music”. I thought, ‘Do you listen to the words? Because they’re not nice stories.” We know what was going on in some of that and it was very painful. And it’s a part of ourselves that need release and relief. Not that we had to go crazy and wild about, you know stuff, but stuff has to have some kind of outlet. You know maybe you just – maybe you cook or maybe you bang on the drums or maybe you run or ride your bike, whatever it is – stuff has to have an outlet.

I think people would be surprised that he was raised in the Christian Science Sunday School for twenty years. They asked if he believed in God? And I thought, oh, for heaven sake, listen to his music. Of course he did. And we’re all challenged to demonstrate our understanding, and I’m sure that he was very shocked to find that God isn’t going to dig you out of every tunnel that you put yourself in to. You’ve got to do that yourself. And I think that was where he was – that was probably in my world, if he is at all like me, he would’ve been very disappointed in himself for getting himself in something that he couldn’t dig himself out of.

And we hear about miracles every day. I even struggled with why didn’t our prayers work? Well there’s, you known, there’s – the universe has a bigger novel to write. And we don’t know about the afterlife, and we do not know what he’s up to these days; but, I’m sure it’s full of humor and trying to make things better for himself and others. If indeed there is an afterlife, and I tend to think there is, he better be behaving, because when I get there I’m checking on him.

All FAQ quotes are exclusive Alternative Nation quotes.