Cobain was an incredibly important figure in music history. Nevermnd changed the industry in ways that even Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band didn't. When Sgt. Pepper was released, groups like the Dave Clark Five were still allowed to exist, they just sold fewer records and played smaller rooms.
That wasn't true of what happened in the wake of Nirvana. The hair metal bands that dominated the world before Nevermind didn't just take a hit in the popularity, they almost immediately lost their record deals. Most of them (the obvious exception being Bon Jovi, which was always more akin to Bruce Springsteen with louder drums than hair metal) saw their careers vaporized forthwith. You can't even find, say, Winger on the back of a milk carton anymore. When was the last time you listened to Skid Row without irony?
Of course this was back when the music business was even worth caring about, which it hasn't been in over a decade. It's almost as if the bullet that killed Kurt went through the wall behind him and took down anything even sort of exciting about music. Cobain's impact, whether you liked him or not, is something that should be remembered and honored.
Because record labels are populated by some of the least creative people on earth, they went on a binge of signing pretty much anything from Seattle that even remotely resembled grunge. They too wanted to cash in on the popularity of Nevermind, and they would do so in any way that they could. Most of those acts - and most of them were acts - followed the hair farmers into obscurity.
I've already written the best thing that I probably ever will about Kurt Cobain, so I'm not going to focus on that anniversary today.
One of the groups that rose after the explosion of Nirvana was Alice in Chains, who actually turned out to be a pretty good band. Dirt was a pretty exceptional album for its time, and it stands up today. Unlike Cobain, who was always coy about being a junkie and never admitting the extent of his problem in public, Dirt was almost entirely about Layne Staley's addiction. On the other hand, he really liked heroin.
Unfortunately for Staley, journalists are the only people less creative that music executives, so following Dirt, all anyone wanted to talk to him about was smack. As Rick Perry would say, "Oops." Making a record about being a junkie defined him as a junkie for the rest of his life.
Alice in Chains did three proper records and two EPs in six years, which is a a pretty impressive output in an age where major labels demanded three years between albums. That being said, they couldn't tour very much. You'd be surprised how logistically difficult it can be to schlep a singer that can't stand up around the world. The scheduled tour in support of their 1996 self-titled album was cancelled just as it had begun.
Instead of touring, Alice in Chains did an episode of MTV Unplugged and Layne Staley vanished for the rest of his life. For all intents and purposes, he wouldn't be seen in public after Unplugged. He did a few shows opening for KISS and that was it.To be fair, it must take a significant opiate intake to tolerate being around Gene Simmons for any length of time, let alone every day.
Shortly after Staley was taken off the road for good, his ex-fiance died of bacterial endocarditis, a secondary complication of her own heroin addiction, he seemed determined to follow her. He locked himself inside of his Seattle condo and proceeded to do just that.
However, it took longer than anyone expected, five and a half years. In that time, he managed to record about three songs. When the video was shot for his supergroup cover of "Another Brick in the Wall, Part Two" for The Faculty soundtrack, four year old live footage of Layne was used. No videos were shot for the two songs recorded for the Alice in Chains box set that year, nor were there any new pictures in it. By 1999 that cat was gone.
Some people, like Keith Richards, can live fairly-tale lives as junkies, touring the world, making a fortune and writing a great book about it when he was done. Other than the fact that it's illegal and the lifestyle isn't especially good for you, opiates are among the least physically destructive drugs you can take. Their effect on the body (if you know how pure your junk is, which criminalization makes impossible) are neutral, unlike cocaine, tobacco, alcohol, or even marijuana.
For Layne, the entire point of heroin seemed to be to get debilitated. And for those last five years, he stayed as debilitated as he possibly could. By the time he gave his last interview in early 2002, the 6'1" Staley weighed 86 pounds, his skin had no color, and his teeth were rapidly falling out. He readily admitted that he knew that he wasn't long for the world.
"I know I'm dying," he rasped through missing teeth. "I'm not doing well. Don't try to talk about this to my sister Liz. She will know it sooner or later."The last person to see Layne Staley alive was former Alice in Chains bassist Mike Starr, who was ironically fired by Staley during the Dirt tour for being too fucked up on drugs. Starr himself would be dead of a drug overdose in nine years. He never stopped blaming himself for Layne's death, not having called 911 upon seeing the condition his friend was in.
Staley, suffering from fever and nausea, told Rubio that his need for heroin was all-consuming, even though the effects of the drug were no longer enjoyable. He added that smack had completely ravaged his system and left him empty and filled with regrets.
"This fucking drug use is like the insulin a diabetic needs to survive," he said. "I'm not using drugs to get high like many people think. I know I made a big mistake when I started using this shit. It's a very difficult thing to explain. My liver is not functioning and I'm throwing up all the time and shitting my pants. The pain is more than you can handle. It's the worst pain in the world. Dope sick hurts the entire body."
The most chilling passage of the interview reads like a suicide note.
"I know I'm near death," he said. "I did crack and heroin for years. I never wanted to end my life this way. I know I have no chance. It's too late. I never wanted [the public's] thumbs' up about this fucking drug use. Don't try to contact any AIC (Alice in Chains) members. They are not my friends."
It took roughly fifteen days for Staley's body to be discovered on April 20, 2002. He had so isolated himself from the rest of the world that the only indication of a possible problem was his accountant noticing that he hadn't withdrawn any money in that period. He was found by police and his mother on his couch, surrounded by his drugs.
After a few days, the decomposition of human remains makes determining a precise time of death almost impossible. Staley had been dead for over two weeks, but the authorities believe that - based on his encounter with Starr and his lack of subsequent bank transactions - he had died sometime on April 5, 2002, eight years to the day after Kurt Cobain committed suicide. He was 34 years old.
Cobain died a few months before the Rolling Stones started their 1994 Voodoo Lounge tour. Of course, the press couldn't stopping themselves from asking Keith Richards about it, who seemed genuinely exasperated by the question (skip to 9:03 in the linked video.) You might be too, if you suddenly found yourself the authority on dead junkie fuck-ups.
"Somebody should have been taking care of the man" Richards said. "You know, he was obviously a lunatic in the first place. You know, the guy tried to do himself in in Rome. Nobody was there, he bought a shotgun, boom. Hey, maybe he's better off. Who knows? He'd make a lousy plumber."
There are people out there who are determined to do themselves in. That's just a cold fucking fact. Two of them had their death anniversaries yesterday, 18 and 10 years respectively.
While Kurt Cobain and Layne Staley would've made lousy plumbers, it doesn't make their deaths any less sad.
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