Diamond Lie played their first show at Kane Hall on January 15, 1988.5 Not long after this, the new Diamond Lie was featured in a City Heat story by journalist Jenny Bendel, who had seen the Kane Hall show. This was probably the first time the band was covered in the press. Bendel wrote, “Diamond Lie’s attitude is a refreshing one. Most other bands around walk around with this ‘we are rock stars’ attitude. Sean sums it up by saying, ‘Ha! We’re not rock stars! We’re in Seattle!’”
“I feel really lucky to have been able to work with the quality of musicians whom I have because I love ’em all! We’re sticking together,” Jerry said.
Sean added, “As long as I can play drums with a beer on my head, we’ll be together!”
“Our stuff can hold up! I have the nastiest guitars in town!” Jerry said. “Our motto is, ‘We rock the deaf!’ Our music comes by instinct; we play the first thing that kicks in. If we’re not havin’ fun doin’ it, no one will have fun listenin’ to us.”
“We’re in it for the money and fame,” Sean added. “And anyone who says they’re not, they’re lying.”
Mike said he was in it for the women.
Besides the feature, the article includes a detailed account of that first show at Kane Hall. The set list included “Can’t Have You Blues,” “Killing Yourself,” “King of the Cats,” and “Some Girls,” during which Jerry split his pants.
They played a cover of the Hanoi Rocks song “Taxi Driver,” which Layne dedicated to Razzle—the Hanoi Rocks drummer who was killed in a car accident in 1984. Nick Pollock joined them onstage for “Queen of the Rodeo.” They also did “Suffragette City,” during which the band brought more than twenty people onstage for the song.
The idea for the “Suffragette City” cover can be traced back to the final days of the original Diamond Lie in Tacoma. “I said, ‘We need to do that cover,’” Diamond Lie singer Scott Nutter recalled. “We never ended up doing it. We broke up right before we started learning it.” Nutter later saw Alice in Chains perform it at the Grand Central Tavern in downtown Seattle.6
A few months later, Bendel helped put together a submission packet for the band to send out to record labels. The packet—which includes a photocopied band photo, biography, and letter from Bendel to Columbia Records—is now part of the Experience Music Project’s collection. The letter, dated May 17, 1988, and addressed to Brett Hartman, an A&R representative at Columbia Records in Los Angeles, reads in part:
Enclosed, finally, is Diamond Lie’s tape, picture, and their bios. More quality pictures can be sent to you if you’d like, but for the time being the band is broke and a photo-copy is the best we can do. We hope you like the tape. Please see what you can do so we can get these boys out of Seattle!
The band biography reads:
From the heart of Seattle and the Ballard Music Bank comes a band to reckon with: DIAMOND LIE. The band has been together in Seattle now for about six months, and has left a favorable impression on most of Seattle’s music enthusiasts. Their sleazy, bluesy, in-your-face, tough rock n’ roll is unable to be matched by any other band in Seattle. They bring new life to their cover tunes and put new hope in our local music scene with their originals. DIAMOND LIE’s live performances are overwhelming with the electrifying music and the raw attraction of the band. They’ve already taken Seattle by storm and have created a devoted following; keep an ear out in YOUR town for DIAMOND LIE!7
This packet is probably the band’s first submission in an effort to get a record deal with Columbia. When asked about it, Ken Deans—who would briefly comanage Alice in Chains later on—said he had never heard of it and that the mailing didn’t lead to anything.
Randy Hauser had been involved in the Northwest music scene in management, promotion, or production capacities off and on since high school. According to court documents filed by Hauser and his attorney in 1991, he was arrested and charged with cocaine distribution in federal court in 1977. In addition to dealing, he had a cocaine addiction. In the summer of 1979, he walked into another person’s deal and was arrested. He pled guilty in federal court to conspiracy to distribute cocaine, for which he was sentenced to fifteen years in prison, to be served concurrently with the 1977 conviction. He was paroled in 1985.8
In 1986, he was back in Seattle and decided to enroll in a local beauty school. While a student there, he met Melinda Starr, with whom he developed a friendship. After finishing the program, Hauser kept in touch with her and would occasionally see her.
“She was just amazing, and I got a little tired of hearing her talk about her boyfriend’s band,” he recalled about a conversation that took place in early 1988. (Her boyfriend at the time was Sean.) At the time, Hauser was involved with all-age dances and managed or booked thirty acts, mainly local bands that would never make it. He booked bands to play at small venues in the Seattle area: Patterson’s West, the Federal Way Skate King, and the Kent Skate King. The venue owners allowed him to do it because Hauser assumed responsibility for security and insurance.
Hauser estimates he would see between three and six bands play live each night and would often get two or three cassettes. One day at Melinda Starr’s beauty shop, she handed him a cassette of her boyfriend’s band and asked him to listen to it. He took it home and threw it in the box with the others.
About a month later, Nick Loft—at the time, an A&R man for Atlantic Records—was staying at Hauser’s home. He was going through the tapes in the box to gauge the potential of each band. He would listen to the first four bars of a song, and if he didn’t like it, would make a game show–esque buzzer noise and eject the tape. Hauser stepped out of the room while Loft was going through the tapes. Eventually, Hauser noticed Loft had listened to the first song on one cassette all the way through and was beginning to listen to the second.
“Who are these guys?” Loft asked him.
Hauser checked the tape and saw it was blank—no label with the name of the band or a contact person. “If my life depended on it, I had no idea where that tape came from,” he recalled. Loft made a copy of the anonymous demo and returned to Los Angeles. Within a few days, Loft called asking about the tape.
“Jesus,” he told Hauser, “I went into the office and put that on the intercom system. Everybody’s calling my office wondering, ‘Who is this? What kind of music is it?’”
Hauser still had no idea who the band was, and he was trying to figure it out. “I’m on the edge. I know I’ve got an act,” he said.
A few days or possibly a few weeks later, Hauser went to see Melinda Starr. When he got to the shop, she asked him, “Did you listen to my boyfriend’s tape?”
He put two and two together, matching the unnamed tape with Melinda’s boyfriend’s band. He named a few songs from the tape, which she confirmed was her boyfriend’s band.
“Okay, where do I find these guys?” he asked her.
“They’re practicing at the Music Bank.”
He arranged a meeting with the band, during which they would perform for him. When he arrived, his initial impression of them was, “Four more lowlife rejects you’ve never seen in your life.” He said they had been banned from several venues, including the OK Hotel, the Vogue, and the Grand Central Tavern. During a performance at a VFW, Layne had thrown a milk shake into the crowd, effectively blacklisting the band. Sean had allegedly punched the owner of another club. Hauser was able to get the bans lifted at these venues by cosigning for the band.
Hauser sat on the couch as he watched the band perform their five-song set. “My exact thoughts were, ‘What the fuck do I do now?’” Hauser said. “I’m sitting in front of what I know is the real deal, and I have no idea. I’d never been there.”