As the Alice in Chains deceived Layne Stley

The guitarist of Alice in Chains, Jerry Cantrellin an interview with Gibson TV he told about the strategy implemented by the band to recruit Layne Stley as a singer.

Cantrell recalls that at that time, the mid -eighties, more month less month, Staley was involved in other musical projects, including a band called Alice ‘n chains It is a group oriented on dance music. “Layne had his band, who used more or less the same name, but was more similar to the Guns n ‘Roses, Alice’ n chains instead of Alice in Chains. Then he had another band with a guy named Ron, who was similar to the Dead or Alive, Dance stuff.”

Cantrell explains again: “We tightened an agreement to play together in this third project. But after a while, I, Sean and Mike were a tired of all this. We were arrogant and we said: ‘We are better than them'”. A plan was needed to make Layne join them permanently. The three implemented a stratagem. “So we wondered: ‘How do we convince him to leave his other projects?’ We thought: ‘We begin to try singers in his room, where I live’.

The 59 -year -old continues that the stratagem was successful. “After the last guy, he went on. He said, ‘Okay, I’m the case, I’m there. I can’t afford to play with these guys’. We told him, ‘We weren’t serious. We just wanted to get pissed long enough to get you with us.’ And he, ‘well, you caught me.

Cantrell and Stley, as reported by American Songwriter, met at a party in Seattle in the summer of 1987. Jerry Cantrell he had already seen Layne Stley Performing with his glam metal band and was very impressed. Their friendship ceased after they went to live together. The coexistence led them to write songs together. With the drummer Sean Kinney and the bassist Mike Starr they formed the Alice in Chains. The band, with other groups such as Nirvana, Pearl Jam And Soundgardengave birth to the Grunge movement.

Layne Stley He died on April 5, 2002 at the age of 34. The Alice in Chains I am still in business, their latest album, “Rainier Fog “ (Read the review here), was published in 2018. The group is now composed not only by Cantrell and Kinney, by the singer and guitarist William Duvall and the bass player Mike Inez.