Alice In Chains singer Layne Staley found dead

http://www.canoe.ca/JamMusic/apr20_alicein...nchains-ap.html

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SEATTLE (AP) -- Layne Staley, lead singer and guitarist for the grunge band Alice in Chains, was found dead in his apartment, authorities said Saturday. He was 34.

Tests were required to establish the identity because the body, discovered Friday, had started to decompose. The cause of death had not been determined, a representative of the King County Medical Examiner's office said Saturday without giving his name.

Police did not immediately release details on anything that was found at the scene, and a spokesman did not respond to several messages.

With Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, Alice in Chains was one of the most prominent bands of the Seattle grunge scene of the early '90s. The group was known for its dark, menacing sound, which combined grunge and heavy metal, and often wrote about heroin.

In a 1996 interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Staley spoke of how his drug use influenced his lyrics.

"I wrote about drugs, and I didn't think I was being unsafe or careless by writing about them," he told the magazine. "Here's how my thinking pattern went: When I tried drugs, they were (expletive) great, and they worked for me for years, and now they're turning against me -- and now I'm walking through hell, and this sucks."

The group's first album, "Facelift," was released in 1990. It later released "Dirt" and "Alice in Chains." The group's hits included "Man in the Box," "Them Bones," "Rooster," and "Would?"

The latter song was about Andrew Wood, singer of the seminal grunge group Mother Love Bone. Wood died of heroin overdose in 1990.

Staley's body was found just over 8 years after Nirvana singer and guitarist Kurt Cobain was found dead in his Seattle home of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Heroin was found in Cobain's bloodstream, and his head had been so mutilated that he could not be immediately identified. (More on: Alice In Chains).

Shit man, I hope this isn't true....

bummer... their album SAP is definately near the tiop of my all-timers

the jar of flies ep was one of the first cds i ever owned. i think i was 11, very influential...

rip.

Originally posted by railroadjerk

the jar of flies ep was one of the first cds i ever owned. i think i was 11, very influential...

 

rip.

Me too man. I Stay Away was like all I played for weeks. Tragic......

Wow.. I remember rocking out to them a lot when I was in Junior High.

RIP

Dirt was one of my first CDs.

RIP.

holy shit...i was never a big fan of chains...but i do respect them ford definitely influencing rock as it stands today.rip

crappy

dangies.

RIP Layne Staley (alice in chains)

Alice in Chains Singer Dead

Sat Apr 20,10:58 PM ET

Layne Staley, whose dark, soulful voice defined pioneering Seattle grunge-metal band Alice in Chains, was found dead on Friday in his apartment in the city's University District. He was 34.

Staley had apparently been dead for several days when police officers called to his address found a corpse so badly decomposed that it took a full day before authorities confirmed the identity.

An autopsy will be conducted to determine the official cause of death. Seattle Police Department spokesman Duane Fish tells the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, "It was natural or an overdose--that's the way it was determined by our investigators."

Staley had a history of drug abuse, including a nasty heroin habit that he chronicled in the harsh, often morbid lyrics that made Alice in Chains nearly as successful as their Seattle scene contemporaries Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, and that ultimately sidetracked his music career.

Born on August 22,1967, in Kirkland, Washington, Staley became interested in music at an early age, learning to play the drums when he was 12, according to one fan Website, before fronting glam bands in his teens.

Staley had formed a band called Alice N Chains while he was in high school in the mid-'80s. It wasn't until he met guitarist Jerry Cantrell at a party in 1987 that the final lineup was solidified--with bassist Mike Starr and drummer Sean Kinney--and the name changed to Alice in Chains.

The band signed to Columbia Records just before the grunge-fueled feeding frenz. Alice in Chains showcased its hard-edged garage-metal sound on the three-song EP We Die Young in 1990. The band's first full-length release, Facelift, followed a few months later and spawned the single "Man in the Box." But it was 1992's multiplatinum-selling Dirt, with the hits "Would?" and "Rooster," that catapulted Alice in Chains to superstardom.

Staley's heroin use increased as the band became more popular. In a 1996 interview with Rolling Stone, the rocker revealed how his addiction inspired many of the tracks on Dirt.

"I wrote about drugs, and I didn't think I was being unsafe or careless by writing about them," Staley told the magazine. "Here's how my thinking pattern went: When I tried drugs, they were [expletive] great, and they worked for me for years, and now they're turning against me--and now I'm walking through hell, and this sucks."

Staley said after seeing the heroin-addled Kurt Cobain kill himself in 1994, he was motivated to kick the habit.

"I saw all the suffering that Kurt Cobain went through," he told the magazine. "I didn't know him real well, but I just saw this real vibrant person turn into a real shy, timid, withdrawn, introverted person who could hardly get a hello out...At the end of the day or at the end of the party, when everyone goes home, you're stuck with yourself."

His sobriety was short-lived. After releasing the five-song EP Jar of Flies in 1994 (which became the first EP to top the album charts), Staley fell off the wagon, forcing Alice in Chains to cancel its anticipated tour with Metallica (news - web sites).

The band split up after its 1996 Unplugged release, and Staley dropped out of sight, only surfacing briefly to contribute a cover of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)" to the soundtrack of the 1998 teen horror flick The Faculty. (After the band's split, Columbia released three more Alice albums, 1999's Nothing Safe: The Best of the Box, 2000's Live and 2001's Greatest Hits.)

In addition to his work with Alice in Chains, Staley recorded one album, 1995's Above, with Mad Season--a Seattle supergroup made up of members of Pearl Jam and the Screaming Trees.

"I'm gonna be here for a long time," Staley once told Rolling Stone. "I'm scared of death, especially death by my own hand. I'm scared of where I would go. Not that I ever consider that, because I don't."

:( this is horrible, any loss of life is horrible, wether they be famous or not

Dam this sucks..im listenin to them right now 2..:(

one of my all time fav. bands...

R.I.P.

fuck this shit. this is the worst news ive heard in awhile.

r.i.p. layne staley

that sucks, definately influential to my life.

RIP

Werd, this guys was awesome...

bump..

Rip:(

i heard about it this weekend and anyone that had followed his career knew it was coming, the inevitable....it fucking sucks., but in the same way no surprise..the guy battled and battled herion all through his career...i dont know....even when mad seasons was put together people thought that he would finally boot the drugs but they were to interlaced....the irony that he describes as drugs being the catalyst of creation and his destruction....

layne staleys voice was his instrument and its melancholy melodic drowning vocals came through in waves that rushed over me...the louder i played it the more i drowned....jerry cantrell may have been the music but layne was the voice and face of an epic rock and roll band...

i was 15 when the sounds of seattle broke down the doors in my suburbian bedroom....it salvaged rock and roll at a time when it had gone down the fucking toilets...mudhoney, pearl jam, nirvana, alice in chains, sound garden, sub pop records, etc....i will always credit this paradign shift in rock as one of my saving graces and it would lead me to believe that music was passion and ferocity, and was about the art form...granted at the end the leeches of the record industry tried to destroy as much as they could, but the years of 90-94 will always be one of the purest times for me not only in rock and roll music, but in art.....

rip layne staley....

thanks for reminding me, roe.

im listening to "touch me i'm sick" and "today is a good day" by mudhoney now, reminds me of those days...

this is hard, but it was inevitable, you know. live like a rock star until you dont want to live like a rock star, and then you die like a rockstar.

rip buddy.

OD's are nature's way of keeping the grunge population down

nah, seriously folks, if you didn't see this one coming you were just in denial. Yes, its sad, but it was a long time coming...

Love the music tho. When I was younger, me and a friend would sneak off to the forest to g drinking, and listen to SAP on a little stereo

Truly tragic that someone with so much talent goes like that. At least we have the great music to remember him by. We'll always have that.

*sigh*

:confused:

and yet we still have tease...j/k

wow. just mentioning the name alice in chains brings me wayyyy back into high school when we used to listen to nirvana and alice in chains. this is sad.

i just watched the unplugged on mtv2...its such a loss.