Some consider Layne Staley’s February 1996 Rolling Stone interview as his last interview.
Jon Wiederhorn interviewed Alice in Chains for the piece. He gave an interview a couple of years ago where he was asked about some of the highlights of his career. He singled out the Alice in Chains’ cover story, “Writing a cover story on Alice in Chains at the height of Layne Staley’s drug addiction was exciting, harrowing and ultimately sad. It was a major lesson in bureaucracy.”
“I had a meeting with Rolling Stones’ Managing Editor Sid Holt and Alice in Chains’ manager Susan Silver in which we discussed the terms of the interview. The band was upset that a prior cover story in Spin magazine featured only Staley on the cover so they agreed to do the interview only if the full band would be featured on the cover.
As I recall, Holt agreed and I flew off to conduct the interviews. During the interview, I saw track marks on various parts of Staley’s body including his hands, forehead and fingers and he all but admitted he was still using. This wasn’t the crux of the story but it was clearly part of the piece and an indicator on why Alice in Chains wasn’t touring.”
To Hell and Back: The Needle and The Damage Done
When the magazine came out, the cover was a shot of Layne Staley looking like he had just fallen into a cactus and the cover line read ‘To Hell and Back: The Needle and The Damage Done’. The band threatened to kick my ass and Susan Silver freaked out and refused to grant me any access to any of her bands for a while after that.”
In David de Sola’s book about Alice in Chains, he goes a little bit more in detail in terms of what happened behind the scenes in the run-up to the interview. “A lunch was arranged with Susan at the China Grill restaurant in New York City to discuss the story and lay out the ground rules.”
Wiederhorn flew out to Seattle in late November – early December of ’95 where he spent 3 days getting material for the story.
Wiederhorn and the band went to an Italian restaurant for the first formal Q&A. He noticed that Layne Staley had come back from the bathroom and he had not put his gloves back on, exposing red round puncture marks from the wrist to the knuckles of his left hand. Wiederhorn would spend several hours interviewing the band members as a group and individually.
Sean Discusses Tensions in the Band
Sean drove Wiederhorn to Jerry’s house outside of Seattle for a one-on-one interview. Along the way, Wiederhorn and Sean smoked a joint. Sean was open about the tensions that led to the withdrawal from the Metallica tour and the breakup in the summer of ’94.
Wiederhorn was pretty open in his questioning of the band. He asked about their inability to tour. He asked Layne Staley about his heroin addiction, which he wouldn’t acknowledge was still a problem.
Layne gave a candid assessment of his drug use in the article saying, “I wrote about drugs and I didn’t think I was being unsafe or careless by writing about them.”
The cover story was worked on over the Christmas break and Rolling Stone sent a photographer to shoot the band.
The Rolling Stone magazine hit the newsstands in late January – early February of 96. Aside from mentioning the puncture marks on Layne’s hand, there really wasn’t anything particularly controversial about the piece.
The magazine cover, however, was a different matter. Rolling Stone put Layne on the cover by himself. The photo shows a bearded Layne looking directly at the camera with the sunglasses mounted high on his brow near his hairline. The caption on the left side read, “The Needle and The Damage Done. Alice in Chains’ Layne Staley.”
Layne Nearly Collapses After Seeing Cover
Layne and his girlfriend, Demri were shopping at a Seattle grocery store when they saw the issue on the stands. He nearly collapsed after seeing it. Staley was promised that the article would be about the entire band and not just him.
When he saw “The Needle and The Damage Done” on the front cover of Rolling Stone, his knees buckled, not for himself but for his family and his sister and the people that loved him. That really hurt him a lot.
The other thing that hurt him, said one of his friends, was the feeling of being singled out as an addict. His Alice in Chains bandmates had their own issues. They were all effed up on something, every single one of them.
Wiederhorn was dismayed when he saw the cover. He said he had nothing to do with it in terms of the photo selection or the caption and doesn’t know who is responsible for those decisions. It does to a certain extent, work for the story but it’s very tabloidish and not usually the high road that Rolling Stone takes with editorial decisions.
Wiederhorn said, “I contacted Susan to apologize about the headline and I wanted to let her know I had nothing to do with it and any decisions that were made in the art department or the editorial department, as far as the headlines, cut lines, even final edits of the piece were not mine to make.”
“That’s not Alice in Chains.” – Susan Silver
“Well, you hardly represented two of the band members. That’s not Alice in Chains,” Susan told Wiederhorn. She noted that Mike was barely mentioned and Sean was quoted only a few times.
Wiederhorn pointed out that the article had been cut down, “I wanted to assure her that my intention had been purely honourable. I was very dismayed that there wasn’t a full band shot. She asked me a little about why I chose to address what I addressed in the piece, as far as the drugs went and I explained that you can’t deal with the band without confronting that issue. It would be just a puff piece otherwise and I had an obligation to write about the band and what motivated them and what the band was dealing with and what some other demons were.”
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