The Alice in Chains’ album, Dirt is possibly the darkest and most honest grunge album that has come out of Seattle. Released in September 1992, the album was a success, however, the making of the album was plagued by bad luck.
LA Riots Halt Recording of Dirt
The band travelled to Los Angeles to be near David Jerden, producer on the record. Recording began in April 1992. When the LA riots first broke out, various band members had to flee to safer environments. The band had to bring work on the album to a halt.
In addition to the riots, Layne Staley’s drug abuse led the singer to a failed rehab visit and finally quitting cold turkey on his own while reading the book, The Bad Place by Dean Koontz.
Layne Staley was reluctant at first to discuss his heroin issues when doing press for the record, particularly in light of a recent Rolling Stone story about the drugs revival in Seattle which mentioned Layne by name. According to Staley, the article causes family and friends much grief but he also welcomes the chance to clear up any rumours and gossip.
“The facts are that I was shooting a lot of dope…” – Layne Staley
Layne Staley told Rolling Stone magazine in 1992, “The facts are that I was shooting a lot of dope and that’s nobody’s business but mine.” He went on to say, “I’m not shooting dope now and I haven’t for a while. I took an effing long hard walk through hell and I decided to stop because I was miserable doing it. The drug didn’t work for me anymore…”
According to the Rolling Stone reporter around this time, “He’s gained some weight. The colour has returned to his skin and the muscle man on tour keeps an eye on him in case the old urges returned.”
Layne Staley also says he deals with the feelings through his music about what he was doing in the past. He’s upset by comments that suggest his music advocates drug use. Staley would say, “From song to song the album changes from glorifying drugs to being completely miserable and questioning what I thought once worked for me and by the end of the album, it’s pretty obvious that it didn’t work out as well as I thought I would.”
“Basically, it’s the whole story of the last three years in my life.” – Layne Staley
Layne Staley talked about the two themes that are found on the album Dirt, “There’s two basic themes. The first theme is about dealing with a kind of personal anguish and turmoil which turns into drugs to ease the pain and being confident that that was the answer in a way. Then later on in the song that starts to slip down closer and closer to hell and then the main character figures out that drugs were not all they were cracked up to be and that was not the proper way to ease the pain.” He would continue, “basically, it’s the whole story of the last three years in my life.”
Staley described the other theme as being about painful relationships and involvement with persons.
Even when Layne Staley was recording the vocal tracks for Dirt, he would surround himself with death. According to a studio engineer who worked on the album, Staley had built a shrine of inspirational items in his vocal booth and asked production staff to build a wall around his area so that he could have complete privacy.
According to Dirt engineer Brian Carlstrom, the shrine included candles and pictures of the Last Supper and then a dead puppy in a jar.
“…I decided the singer had literally surrounded himself with death.” – Annette Cisneros
Assistant engineer Annette Cisneros said, “It was scary to be back there. I tried not to go back there. By keeping a dead animal, I decided the singer had literally surrounded himself with death.”
Dirt had at least four songs that dealt with Layne Staley’s struggle with drugs including “Junkhead”, “Godsmack”, “Hate to Feel” and “Angry Chair”. Staley wrote all of the lyrics to the tracks and followed the typical story of a junkie.
Staley sings about the joys of getting high in the song “Junkhead” with the line, “What’s my drug of choice, well what have you got” and then talks about becoming addicted, “Lost my mind but I don’t mind.”
“Hate to Feel” with the lyrics and music by the singer goes into Layne Staley’s heroin habit as well as his past.
When Layne was young, his father had left the family and became a drug addict causing the musician to vow that he’d never follow suit. He soon found himself later succumbing to similar temptations. His father would come back into his life once he saw Staley on the front cover of a music magazine.
“All this time I swore I’d never be like my old man…” – Layne Staley
Staley sings in the song, “All this time I swore I’d never be like my old man, what the hey it’s time to face exactly who I am.”
The album ends with “Angry Chair” which basically recognizes the drug is now destroying him. It’s killing him and making him insane and ruining both his innocence and his life.
Some people have claimed that “Junkhead” is a pro-heroine song or a pro-drug song but others have interpreted it as more of a tongue-in-cheek kind of song, being sarcastic with very dark humour.
The song mocks the drug addict’s justification for using the drug so the singer has convinced himself that drugs aren’t so bad and they make him better. If you listen to the way Layne Staley sings the song, it seems like he’s already high and miserable. He’s just lying to himself.
Despite being a tumultuous time for the band, Jerry Cantrell was still grateful for Layne’s ability to share a bit of an addict’s journey with Alice in Chains fans saying, “In the Music Bank box set, I had a lot of pride in seeing Layne grow as a guitarist and songwriter to create something so heavy. He’s always been so honest in his songs which is like all of us. We don’t bullshit in our music and we’ve always pushed each other to say it as we needed to say and we’ve always been fully for letting it all out.”
“I wrote about drugs and I didn’t think I was being unsafe or careless by writing about them.” – Layne Staley
Layne Staley would reflect on Dirt in a 1996 interview with Rolling Stone saying, “I wrote about drugs and I didn’t think I was being unsafe or careless by writing about them. I didn’t want my fans to think that heroin was cool but then I’ve had some fans come up to me and give me a thumbs up telling me they’re high and that’s exactly what I didn’t want to happen.”
Cantrell gave an interview to Rip magazine in 1993 regarding the criticism of the album’s lyrics saying, “I think ‘Sick Man’ is not that bad and I thought most of the hassle that would come from ‘Junkhead’ and ‘Godsmack’.
Those songs are all put in sequence on the second side and those five songs from ‘Junkhead’ to ‘Angry chair’ are there for a reason because it tells a story that starts out with a really young naive attitude with ‘Junkhead’, like drugs are great… Then as it progresses, there’s a little bit of growing up and a realization about what it’s all about… It’s really easy to die and it’s really hard to live and it takes a lot of guts to live and it doesn’t take a lot of guts to die.
There’s a lot of stuff on it and a good portion of it is a story and it’s meant to be that way. It’s kind of overwhelming and unpleasant at times, unsettling maybe but that’s why all the songs are together, even if it is disturbing. It’s not something anybody else needs to worry about or the way somebody else needs to live their life.”
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