Turning the council caster adamantine to the appropriate and stomping his bottom on the gas, Alice in Chains' advance singer, Layne Staley, accelerates abounding acceleration into the aback of a chock-full car. Grinning widely, he slams his open-top agent into about-face and glances over his accept aloof in time to see a Wiffle brawl alight in an arc adjoin him. Staley accouterment his awkward hips, alcove his larboard arm out and catches the apple in a beat that resembles a cantankerous amid a annihilate agitation and a jai alai cesta. Again he floors his car aback to centermost court, area he passes the brawl to Alice's guitarist, Jerry Cantrell, who is cat-and-mouse beneath a baby goal. Cantrell flings the commodity from his beat and into the goal. A buzzer sounds, and a red ablaze illuminates. Two credibility for the Alice in Chains team.
The bold is WhirlyBall, a camp amalgam of basketball, bonanza cars and lacrosse that was invented in 1962 by a Utah automotive-shop buyer who accustomed all-powerful afflatus afterwards watching his son ad-lib a bold of hockey while active a golf cart. Although WhirlyBall didn't bolt on as apprenticed as the Hula-Hoop, today a dozen or so such accessories dot the country, including this one, which is about a half-hour alfresco of Seattle. Afore constant the bullwork of academic interrogations, including Staley's aboriginal aloft account in added than two years, the bandage wants to accept a little fun. Alice's drummer, Sean Kinney, came up with the abstraction of giving WhirlyBall a whirl, and although the added bandage associates were initially reluctant, appropriate now they're all smiles. Kinney and Cantrell assume hellbent on acquisition the opposing team, which consists of accompany and bassist Mike Inez, who somehow didn't wind up on the Alice squad. Alike Staley, who account afore was covertly artful and flipping off a drill-sergeant-like referee, seems to be accepting a acceptable time. But admitting a accomplished casual attack, Alice in Chains abridgement the airy and cutting adeptness to defeat their opponents. They additionally abridgement the teamwork, and by the alpha of the additional game, Staley has angled out to ball video abecedarian on his carriageable Sega system.
Photos: Alice in Chains in the Nineties
Alice in Chains may never accomplish the WhirlyBall all-star squad, but they've managed to adhere together, sometimes aloof barely, through about nine years of accident and continuing struggle. Starting out as a apprentice glam-metal outfit, Alice in Chains' abrupt move adjoin grunge afterwards one anthology and one EP acceptable the derision of Seattle scenesters, some of whom dubbed the bandage Kindergarten, due to their sonic affinity to Soundgarden. But Alice in Chains silenced best of their critics with the 1992 anthology Dirt, a absorption disc of slow, aboriginal riffs and Staley's agonizing lyrics, which abundant his action with heroin addiction. Released in November, the band's self-titled third anthology displays added growth, coupling improvisational jams with austere rhythms and intertwining dejected with menace.
Considering how aphotic their music is, you'd apprehend the associates of Alice in Chains to breed offstage as able-bodied as on. Instead, they ball off one addition like a abandoned ball troupe. "Since our music is so depressing, everybody expects us to run about in atramentous and beef about shit," says Kinney. "But that's such a misconception. We aloof get calm and fuck around. We're like the Monkees or something."
After they accomplishment with Whirlyball, Alice in Chains acknowledgment to city Seattle and stop at Umberto's, the affectionate of family-style Italian restaurant where, if you alcohol abundant bargain wine, you won't affliction what's beneath the absolute of red sauce. Appropriately, the bandage is built-in in a alien aback allowance that doubles as a wine cellar. Afore their aliment arrives the associates of Alice appoint in a archaic heavy-metal ritual: gross out the journalist. Cantrell brags about a babe he afresh best up who chewed tobacco, causing him to associate a appropriate but acceptable afire awareness during articulate sex. Staley counters with a chance of a associate who accustomed a draft job from an acutely bashed woman who vomited all over her accomplice amid through the act. Again we're on to the abutting topic: beastly abuse. Staley talks about a adolescence associate who captivated a kitten's legs with braid and threw it into a lake: "I screamed, 'No, man, booty it out,' but he was bigger than me, so I aloof watched it drown." But the accomplishment de grâce comes aback Cantrell recalls the exploits of a adjacency sicko: "He'd carve up these frogs and turtles and actuality on one side, but the added ancillary would attending absolutely normal. Again he'd arise up to you, and you'd be like 'Oh, wow, a frog.' Again he'd about-face it around, and all its audacity would be blind out." Needless to say, nobody's too athirst aback the aliment assuredly arrives.
After dinner, Cantrell, Kinney and Inez acknowledgment with Staley to his house, area they break up until 5 in the morning, smoker pot and arena video games. Their brotherhood has helped the bandage mates abide the hardships of actuality corruption and claimed tragedy. Actuality so abutting has additionally about broken them apart.
In the summer of 1994, the day afore the alpha of a bout with Metallica, Alice about accomplished the end of their chain. At the time, Staley was in the affliction of heroin addiction, and Kinney was disturbing with the bottle. "We'd been activity abounding force, aloof active at top acceleration with our eyes closed," says Cantrell, analytical through a half-empty canteen of beer. "We had been way too abutting for too long, and we were suffocating. We were like four plants aggravating to abound in the aforementioned pot."
Things got worse aback Staley, who, according to Kinney, had aloof alternate from biologic rehab, came to convenance high. In response, Kinney threw bottomward his sticks and vowed never afresh to ball with Staley. Cantrell concurred, the bout was canceled, and the bandage beggared aggregation for six months. "Nobody was actuality honest with anniversary added aback then," admits Kinney, abnormal afterwards exhaling a billow of marijuana smoke. "If we had kept going, there was a acceptable adventitious we would accept self-destructed on the road, and we absolutely didn't appetite that to arise in public."
In the months afterward their breakup, the bandage associates went through the stages of affliction that accompany loss: denial, anger, abasement and, finally, acceptance. "At aboriginal I was dumbfounded," Staley recalls, blurred like addition alive by a late-night buzz call. "I aloof sat on my couch staring at the TV and accepting bashed every day. Aback we aboriginal got calm as a band, we were all brothers. We lived in the aforementioned abode and partied calm and drank as abundant as anniversary other. But again we started to breach afar and went altered ways, and we acquainted like we were betraying anniversary other."
Rumors of a abiding breakdown and worse began to circulate. "I begin out through the Internet that I accept AIDS," says Staley. "I abstruse I was dead. Area abroad would I acquisition out these things? I don't see a doctor regularly. I was in San Francisco at Lollapalooza, and this babe absolved up to me and chock-full like she'd apparent a ghost. And she said, 'You're not dead.' And I said, 'No, you're right. Wow.' "
During their time apart, Staley recorded an anthology with Mad Season, his ancillary activity with Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready and Screaming Trees bagman Barrett Martin; Inez scuba dived and formed with Guns n' Roses guitarist Slash on his anthology It's Five O'Clock Somewhere; Kinney snow boarded and recorded a clue with Krist Novoselic, Kim Thayil and Johnny Cash for the Willie Nelson accolade album, Twisted Willie; and Cantrell, who writes best of the band's music, holed himself up at his rural home alfresco of Seattle and wrote riffs initially advised for a abandoned album. By January 1995, he was alive on some of that actual with Kinney and Inez. Four months later, Staley was arrive aback into the fold, and the bandage began alive calm on Alice in Chains. If Clay was a account of the affliction and acrimony acquired by addiction, betrayal and hypocrisy, Alice in Chains chronicles the absinthian aftereffects of conflict, gluttonous to arouse the burst pieces."We let bits arise beeline out on this one," says Cantrell. "It was generally depressing, and accepting it done acquainted like affairs beard out, but it was the fucking coolest thing, and I'm animated to accept gone through it. I will admire the anamnesis forever."
"I'll admire it forever, too, aloof because this one I can bethink doing," says Staley. He's abandoned bisected joking.
It's the day afterwards the Whirlyball adventure, and Staley is built-in at a bend table of Cafe Sophie, a bizarre Seattle applesauce restaurant that served as a antipathy in the aboriginal 1900s. Afterwards acclimation a basis beer, he aeon out the window at the sun, which is afire a aperture through the concealment clouds and absorption on the sparkling baptize of Puget Sound.
Staley's breakable anatomy is swallowed up by a dejected warmup anorak and white T-shirt arresting with the scribbly architecture of his aboriginal watercolor self-portrait. His pants are active with Sesame Street characters. His arch is apprenticed by a white spotted bandanna, and a baby bandage aloft his appropriate eye sets off his anemic skin. A brace of atramentous gloves covers his hands. Yesterday he wore the aforementioned gloves. Aftermost night at banquet the gloves were gone, but the sleeves of his white cossack shirt were buttoned amid the thumbs and forefingers, absolute his uncut, dirt-encrusted fingernails. Aback he alternate from a cruise to the bathroom, his sleeves were unbuttoned, advertisement what arise to be red, annular break marks from the wrist to the duke of his larboard hand. And as anyone who knows annihilation about IV drugs can acquaint you, the veins in the calmly are acclimated abandoned afterwards all the added veins accept been broke out.
Despite the evidence, Staley won't accede that he still battles with heroin. "If I'm blockage busy, and if I'm accepting my job done, and I'm accomplishing things I anticipate are great, again I don't accept a botheration with anything, you know?" he asks. "If I alive on aloof a carefully amoroso diet, hey, I like it." He action abominably and nervously, again continues. "Nobody anytime asks Meat Loaf, "What do you eat? Why do you eat so much? Shouldn't you lose some weight?' No, he shouldn't. He's fucking Meat Loaf. He writes songs, and he has a abundant time, and none of your fuckin' business. Maybe he eats meatloaf every fucking night, you know?" He action a bit harder.
"People accept a appropriate to ask questions and dig abysmal aback you're affliction bodies and things about you," Staley continues. "But aback I haven't talked to anybody in years, and every commodity I see is blockhead this, aficionado that, whiskey this — that ain't my title. Like 'Hi, I'm Layne, attach biter,' you know? My bad habits aren't my title. My strengths and my aptitude are my title."
Staley's altercation ability backpack added weight if he didn't address about application drugs. Five songs on Clay were about heroin, and several advance on the new anthology affection curve like "Things go well, your eyes dilate/You shake, and I'm high?" ("Sludge Factory") and "No added time/ Aloof one added time" ("Head Creeps"). Yet Staley says he's afraid to allocution about his addiction — not because he's ashamed but because he's afraid his admirers will anticipate he's glorifying drugs.
"I wrote about drugs, and I didn't anticipate I was actuality alarming or absent-minded by autograph about them," Staley says. "Here's how my cerebration arrangement went: Aback I approved drugs, they were fucking great, and they formed for me for years, and now they're axis adjoin me — and now I'm walking through hell, and this sucks. I didn't appetite my admirers to anticipate that heroin was cool. But again I've had admirers arise up to me and accord me the thumbs up, cogent me they're high. That's absolutely what I didn't appetite to happen."
Although Staley won't go into any capacity about his accomplished or present biologic use, he admits to accepting an addictive personality. "When I'm not accomplishing drugs, I eat," he says. "And I binge, and I fucking accretion 20 pounds. And I assignment out. And aback I alpha alive out, I go crazy on it. I can't do annihilation in baby doses. If I sat actuality and said, 'I'm 90-days abstaining and accessible does it, break the course,' I'd be abounding of shit, because I'm not 90-days sober. But I'm not in the bath accepting high, either. And two years ago I would accept been. It's not commodity I anticipate about. It's not commodity I deathwatch up and accept to go find."
Staley was built-in in Kirkland, Wash., in 1967, and was aloft with two sisters in a common family. His aboriginal anamnesis is of attractive up at a agreeable carousel blind aloft his crib. At 5, he abutting a preschool accent accumulation that met already a week. Aback he was 7, his parents divorced, and his mother remarried, abacus a stepbrother to the family. "No deep, aphotic secrets there," Staley says. "I bethink sometimes apprehensive area my dad was, but best of the time I was too active active about and playing."
At 12, Staley started arena drums. It was at about this time that he aboriginal affiliated sex and drugs with bedrock & roll. "I apprehend my aboriginal commodity about [a aloft '80s bedrock star], and he was in a limo accomplishing curve of draft on a mirror, and he had babes beneath anniversary arm," says Staley. "And that's aback I absitively I capital to be a bedrock star. I capital to do blow, and I capital those babes beneath my arms. I didn't apperceive what draft was, and I didn't apperceive what sex was, but it looked absorbing to me because it was accounting in the magazine."
During aerial school, Staley switched from drums to vocals, swapping his boom accessory for a PA. He sang with a cardinal of barn groups, including one that accomplished at the home of a bandage affiliate whose mother was a adherent Christian woman. "I had a pentagram on my jacket, so I usually had to bastard into bandage practice," Staley recalls.
For Staley, music provided an escape from the boredom of academy and the annoyance of actuality unpopular. Afterwards aerial school, Staley confused into a bounded alarm flat alleged the Music Bank. One night at a affair in 1987, he ran into Alice in Chains' approaching guitarist, Jerry Cantrell.
Almost 40 afar alfresco of Seattle, accomplished a arrangement of agee anchorage amidst by emu and llama farms, is an old clay alley bigger ill-fitted to horse and buggy than automobile. Aloof off this alley is Cantrell's house, a bashful three-bedroom abode that sits on 20 acres. Aback he's home, Cantrell spends abundant of his time on the rec-room couch, staring at his 57-inch projection-screen television, which is absorbed up to a accessory basin in his aback yard. "We absolutely apperceive how to lounge about here," he says as he fires up his aboriginal basin of the afternoon. Accepting aloof woken up, he's barbate and cutting a Suicidal Tendencies jersey and dejected diaphoresis pants — acceptable the aforementioned accouterments he wore to bed aftermost night. "The abandoned affair added adequate is fishing. That's the one affair I can do area I don't anticipate about the bandage or my bills or nothing. It's aloof quiet fucking peace."
"Jerry's a actual circuitous person," says his sister, Cheri. "He's actual attentive of himself and abnormally of those whom he cares about. It's actual hard, because he has so abounding altered abandon to him, and it aloof depends on what ancillary you get in the morning. I never, anytime anticipation he would be as big as he is today. I anticipation he would end up alive for Safeway or at a video abode or something."
Adds a abutting associate of Cantrell's, Metallica's drummer, Lars Ulrich: "He's a lot like me. There's consistently commodity activity on in his head. In agreement of affection swings, I anticipate we're both like a VU meter, bouncing aback and alternating amid actuality absolutely blessed and an asshole and actuality absolutely into commodity and not."
Cantrell, whose great-grandfather was a Agrarian West alternation robber, was built-in in Tacoma, Wash., in 1966. At the time, his ancestor was a soldier affronted in Vietnam, and his mother, an abecedarian organist and melodica player, was adopting Cantrell, his earlier brother and adolescent sister. "One of the aboriginal memories I accept was my dad advancing aback from Vietnam in his compatible aback I was 3 years old," says Cantrell, "and my mom cogent me that he was my dad."
After the war, Cantrell's ancestor bounced from one Army abject to another, including stints in Germany and Alaska. But three years in Vietnam took their assessment on his father, and aback Cantrell was 7, his parents got divorced. "My dad was accomplished to be a fucking killer," says Cantrell. "After that, you can't aloof arise aback home and say, 'OK, everything's cool. I'm activity to assignment 9 to 5 now.' That bits scars you forever. We had a lot of problems and occurrences because of that." On Dirt, Cantrell wrote about his father's Vietnam adventures in the song "Rooster," which sparked a new bandage amid Cantrell and his conflicting dad, who agreed to arise in the video and afterwards catholic with Alice in Chains on the alley to acquaint the song.
After his parents separated, the Cantrell ancestors confused aback to Tacoma to alive with his grandmother. "We had some asperous times," Cantrell says. "We were on abundance and aliment stamps. We'd accept like one jar of tomatoes that we grew in our fucking garden, and my mom would try to accomplish banquet out of that by affairs noodles from a next-door neighbor. It was absolutely adamantine on us."
Despite the hardships, Cantrell knew from an aboriginal age what he capital to do with his life. Shortly afterwards he abstruse how to write, he accurate his ambition in a Dr. Seuss book alleged My Book About Me, bushing in the book "When I abound up I appetite to be a ..." with the words bedrock brilliant in sprawling cursive letters.
A few years later, Cantrell confused aback in with his mother and began vandalizing his adjacency with accompany — egging cars and smashing mailboxes with baseball bats. Soon after, he apparent sex. "I was bankrupt by the cops, aggravating to get a draft job in a esplanade aback I was 17," he says. "The affair that afraid me best was that my grandmother had a fucking badge scanner, and she acclimated to accept to it every day and acquaint me aback my accompany got busted. But that night one of her crystals went out for that channel, so she couldn't apprehend anything. That was a godsend."
By that time, Cantrell was jamming consistently with accompany and acting in advance roles in aerial academy plays. At the age of 20, he suffered his aboriginal abundant accident aback his grandmother died of cancer. Six months afterwards he begin out his mother was terminally ill with pancreatic cancer. "She and my grandmother both spent best of their time in the abode in the medical bed benumbed up on morphine and crumbling abroad daily," he remembers, his articulation arise slightly. "My added ancestors would arise over, and there were some appealing close times amid us because they didn't accept me at all. I played the guitar 10 to 12 hours a night. It was a way of artifice the affliction that was appropriate in advanced of my face. I wasn't arena loud or anything, but they said it was apparently bugging my mom, which is bullshit. She wasn't alike conscious. If anything, it was allowance her because I was arena for her, and maybe she could apprehend me aloof a little bit while she was bottomward there."
A few months later, Cantrell got into a concrete battle with his uncle and was kicked out of the house. A few canicule afterwards that, Cantrell's mother's activity abutment was shut off, and he wasn't able to be with her on her deathbed. "I was absolutely affronted with them for a continued time," he says. "It was brainless adolescence anger, but it acquired a lot of ambit amid me and my family. That's a annoyance because I absolutely adulation them all."
Shortly afterward his mother's death, Cantrell confused in with Staley at the Music Bank. The seeds of Alice in Chains were buried a little while afterwards aback Cantrell met the aboriginal Alice bassist, Mike Starr, afterwards the two abutting a bounded metal outfit, Gypsy Rose. They absitively to anatomy their own bandage with Staley, who was backbreaking of the glam accumulation he was in. Starr alien them to Kinney, who was dating Starr's sister.
Kinney had been couch surfing aback the age of 17, aback his mom kicked him out of the abode for actuality disrespectful. Kinney may accept lacked a home, but he had a acceptable boom kit and affluence of talent. The aboriginal Alice calendar backward calm until 1993, aback Starr abdicate the band. He was replaced with Inez, who had been arena bass with Ozzy Osbourne. "I was alive on some demos with Ozzy, and I told him that Alice had asked me to go to Europe with them," remembers Inez. "I asked him if he anticipation I should go, and he said, 'If you don't go, you're activity to be in the hospital for about seven days.' And I said, 'Why?' And he said, 'It's activity to booty them that continued to get my bottom out of your ass.' "
Seattle's Pike Abode Market is added than aloof a stop for the city's tour-bus companies. It's a abundant atom to buy bounded crafts, beginning vegetables and biologic paraphernalia. Appropriate now, Staley and Cantrell are beneath absorbed in macramè and zucchini than they are in pipes and bongs. Cantrell picks up a simple amber copse backing box with a one-hit pipe, and Staley spends $141.42 on a Quantum ambit and lighter set, a bright Graffix long-tube bong, three canteen pipes and a basin that looks like a aroma bottle. "My bodies consistently beating 'em over and apprehension 'em," says Staley, who started smoker pot and bubbler as a boyhood afore experimenting with and afterwards acceptable absorbed on heroin.
Since then, addiction has been the cancerous force that has fabricated Alice in Chains' songs so arresting and has become the annihilative ability that consistently threatens to do the bandage in. "Layne battles all the time with that shit," says Kinney. "He apparently will for the draft of his life. I acclimated to wig out on him all the time aloof out of actuality afraid about him. But again I'd be fucking bashed all the time. What's the difference, you know? Everyone's got to be accustomed to alive his own life. We try to accumulate an eye on anniversary other, but you can't acquaint addition what to do."
Alice in Chains was recorded in four and a bisected months, but few of the songs had absolutely been accounting aback the bandage entered the flat aftermost April. Application the riffs that Cantrell had accounting as beacons, Alice in Chains awash until they had a framework for the tunes. Again they handed the tapes to Staley, who cobbled calm best of the lyrics. "I aloof wrote bottomward whatever was on my mind," says Staley, "so a lot of the lyrics are absolutely loose. If you asked me to sing the lyrics to apparently any one of them appropriate now, I couldn't do it. I'm not abiding what they are because they're still that fresh."
One of the best affecting songs on the record, "Heaven Beside You," was accounting abandoned by Cantrell as a way of arresting with his contempo breach from his adherent of seven years. He met her at a Guns n' Roses concert while he was aggravating to duke Axl Rose a bandage demo, and Cantrell still describes her as "the best admirable babe I've anytime apparent in my life." The two beggared means aftermost year because Cantrell was clumsy to abide affectionate to her. "I still adulation her, but I'm too abundant of a fucking wolf — kill, attack, move on," he laments. "It's so boxy aback you're so acclimated to actuality hard. You can't acquaint an oak to be a pine."
Staley had a agnate associate with a woman he was affianced to a few years ago. "I can absolutely say bedrock & cycle was a huge agency in us breaking up," he says. "When you're in a relationship, the babe usually instigates the big abstraction that you were built-in abutting at the hip. So aback the affronted comes, it's absolutely painful.
"This isn't a dig on women," Staley adds afore ablution into a sexist theory, "but I anticipate women are so altered chemically from men, and that makes it adamantine to sustain a relationship. They accept periods, they go through horrible, abominable affecting swings, and aggravating to be analytic with a actuality that's got a accomplished altered argumentation active about in her academician is aloof impossible."
But Cantrell and Staley accept been captivated with added than aloof accord woes recently, adverse an alike added aching and alarming prospect: death. Aftermost year one of Cantrell's cousins, adversity from abysmal abasement and on Prozac, attempt himself amid the eyes. Five of Staley's accompany additionally accept died during the aftermost two years. He won't say whether the deaths were biologic related.
"I'm gonna be actuality for a continued fuckin' time," Staley asserts. I'm afraid of death, abnormally afterlife by my own hand. I'm afraid of area I would go. Not that I anytime accede that, because I don't."
Well, maybe not, but two and a bisected years ago, Staley ability calmly accept taken his activity had it not been for a brace of near-death adventures that he claims affected him to amend his lifestyle. Afresh he refuses to say whether the incidents were biologic related, but he agreeably and vividly describes the experience. "I was advantageous abundant to get a glimpse of area I was activity to go if I did chase through with it," he says frankly. "That makes me sad for my accompany who accept taken their lives, because I apperceive that if your time is not accomplished here, and you end it yourself, again you gotta accomplishment it about else. There was a time aback things seemed desperate, and I anticipation demography my activity ability be a way out. I fabricated a brace of absolutely anemic attempts, mostly to see if I could do it, and I couldn't.
"I was sitting with a associate one time," Staley recalls, "and I blanked out for about a minute. I had no ascendancy over my muscles, and it afraid the bits out of me because I accomplished what I assumption could accept been hell or, you know, affliction or whatever. It was freezing cold, and I was spinning like I was bashed and aggravating badly to booty a breath. There was chest affliction like I was gonna explode.
"If you gotta feel affliction here, you gotta feel it about else," he continues. "I accept that there's a admirable abode to go to afterwards this life, and I don't accept there's abiding damnation for anyone. I'm not into religion, but I accept a acceptable butt on my spirituality. I aloof accept that I'm not the greatest ability on this earth. I didn't actualize myself, because I would accept done a hell of a bigger job."
For all the affliction that went into Alice in Chains, there's a abrupt adorableness to the way the active guitars circling about the beating beats. "Our music's affectionate of about demography commodity animal and authoritative it beautiful," Cantrell explains.
"I do that every day aback I'm dressing," jokes Staley. "I booty an animal face and accomplish it beautiful."
Such absurdity occasionally finds its way through the cracks of the new record. "For a continued time I let problems and acerb relationships aphorism over me instead of absolution the baptize cycle off my back," says Staley. "I anticipation it was air-conditioned that I could address such dark, atramentous music. But again instead of actuality therapeutic, it was starting to annoyance on and accumulate hurting. This time I aloof felt, 'Fuck it. I can address acceptable music, and if I feel accessible and I feel like laughing, I can laugh.' There's no huge, abysmal bulletin in any of the songs. It was aloof what was activity on in my arch appropriate then. We had acceptable times, and we had bad times. We recorded a few months of actuality human."
These days, that's all Staley longs for. He doesn't appetite to be a bedrock god, and he absolutely doesn't appetite to be a martyr. "I'd abhorrence to be ashore up there," he says. "I saw all the adversity that Kurt Cobain went through. I didn't apperceive him absolute well, but I aloof saw this absolute active actuality about-face into a absolute shy, timid, withdrawn, alienated actuality who could hardly get a accost out.
"There was a time aback we played out aggregate we anytime dreamed of," Staley continues. "After I got my aboriginal gold record, my associate came over and pulled out a brace curve of blow, and I pulled the gold almanac off the wall, because that was a dream of mine. If I anytime got a gold record, I was activity to do my aboriginal band of coke on that. I had a abundant time benumbed about in limos and bistro lobster and accepting laid. I went hog agrarian for a while. I mean, sex is not commodity I crave so abundant anymore. I had a abundant time, but I can't physically or mentally alive that affairs constantly."
In acknowledgment to the barrage of absorption that accompanies fame, Staley confused into a abode in the suburbs and now spends abundant of his time abaft bankrupt doors. "At the end of the day or at the end of the party, aback anybody goes home, you're ashore with yourself," Staley says. "There was a time aback I couldn't accord with that, and I couldn't go places by myself. I bare to alarm up a associate to go to a 7-Eleven. I aloof couldn't access bodies aback I was alone. Accepting a abode on my own was a footfall adjoin acquirements how to do that."
Troubled and withdrawn, Staley angle himself as a little kid who won the action and confused into his own clandestine fun house. "I run about and ball all day long, and I don't accept to arise in and ablution my calmly and face," Staley says proudly. "And I don't go to beddy-bye until I've watched all my cartoons, and that's usually not until 9 in the morning. Aback I aboriginal got a acclaim card, I maxed it out for the aboriginal three months at Toys "R" Us. I bought a lot of video abecedarian and Brilliant Trek phasers and Batman dolls."
While aspects of Staley's conduct are alluring and childlike, the marks on his calmly advance that he hasn't baffled his addiction. "I don't apperceive annihilation about the break marks on his hands," says Alice's manager, Susan Silver. "All I apperceive is that this array of journalism creates an ambiance that is alarming to the adolescence who apprehend it."
With their new album, Alice in Chains may accept triumphed artistically, but they haven't had abundant time to celebrate. They're too anxious with whether they're activity to be mentally and physically advantageous abundant to bout (no dates accept been appointed yet) and what force may abutting abuse their existence. The added annal that Alice in Chains sell, the beneath they accept aggregate about them. "Fuck, I don't apperceive what the hell I'm doing, man," admits Cantrell. "I never took Bedrock Brilliant 101 in school. I never alike saw the textbook. The way I appearance it, the abandoned way to acquisition out what's activity on in activity is to go through it abounding force with your arch bottomward and to accurately into a few walls on the way. That's the abandoned way to learn. Then, hopefully afterwards a while, you amount out which ones not to accumulate hitting."
This chance is from the February 8th, 1996 affair of Rolling Stone.
