After they finished filming, Wilmar had to go to South Korea to assist with coverage of the Olympics. Hamann and Stark worked on the story while she was away, getting her feedback from abroad as the script came together. The finished story was unconventional for two reasons: first, it would run longer than five minutes; and second, there was no voice-over narration. They used sound from interviews with the band members to move the story along. It aired on October 14, 1988. Stark would later win the National Press Photographers Association National Award for Editing for his work on it. Hamann ran into Jerry after Facelift was released. “I don’t know if we would’ve gotten in the door with CBS if we hadn’t had that video, if you guys hadn’t done that for us,” Jerry told him. “I can’t thank you enough.”
Layne turned twenty-one on August 22, 1988. His bandmates and David Ballenger took him to a strip club to celebrate the occasion. On the milestone nature of the age, specifically the ability to buy alcohol and go to strip clubs, Ballenger told him, “Now you get to legally do what you’ve been doing for years.” Also at some point during this period, Ballenger recalls Layne and Jerry coming back from a night out in Seattle with their first tattoos—skull-shaped designs on their upper left and right arms respectively.
With Layne now of legal drinking age, going to bars and clubs became a much more frequent and easier endeavor. Before, he technically wasn’t even supposed to be in some of the venues where the band had played. The compromise solution, according to Jerry and Sean, was Layne had to stand outside until the band was ready to perform. He would go straight to the stage, play the set, and then have to leave immediately.17
Alice in Chains still had their room at the Music Bank and owed rent. Because Layne wasn’t working as many hours, Ballenger gave his job to somebody else. “I didn’t figure I’d ever get paid, because normally there was never, ever any money that changed hands,” Ballenger said. To his surprise, Jerry came back one day with cash to pay the outstanding balance.
In the months after the drug raid, Bengt Von Haartman and Gabriel Marian were trying to hand over ownership of the Music Bank to Ballenger, even going so far as to present legal documents to the city of Seattle. At the same time, Ballenger was still friends with Scott Hunt, who was involved in a lawsuit against them. Hunt was confident about the prospects of getting the building back and asked Ballenger if he would keep running it.
Ballenger politely declined, saying he had no interest in running the Music Bank and that there wasn’t enough money in doing so. Von Haartman and Marian got wind of this discussion, and about a week later they told Ballenger, “We put you in place here. We can kick you out just as easily.” Ballenger called their bluff. “And who would run it?” Ultimately, nothing changed.
Ballenger was nervous about possibly getting involved in litigation in connection with the marijuana operation and sought advice from an attorney. “I told him about what I was doing, about the pot bust. I told him I was worried about getting sued, about losing my equipment. I was terrified of [Von Haartman] and [Marian] at that time,” Ballenger explained.
According to Ballenger, the attorney’s response was, “Just go. They don’t have a better case than you. You don’t have a better case than them. It’s not in their best interest or moneywise for them to chase you.” He began making plans to leave Seattle. According to Music Bank accounting records, the final rent payments were received in late February or early March 1989. On February 6, 1989—a date Ballenger remembers because it was his sister’s birthday—he told Scott Hunt he was shutting down the Music Bank.
“You kept it open way longer than it ever would have been,” Hunt responded.
The decision had been made, but not the date. Ballenger eventually packed his things and got out of there, taking everything to a motel room in West Seattle. Ballenger called a few friends, said his good-byes, and moved to Portland.
The federal government’s case in the Ballard marijuana operation went to court at the beginning of 1991 but never made it to trial. According to the terms of a plea bargain negotiated by his attorney, Gabriel Marian agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy to grow marijuana. He was sentenced to a thirty-three-month prison term and had to pay a $7,500 fine. Court records show that Bengt Von Haartman failed to appear at his initial court arraignment. The prosecutor handling the case subsequently discovered that Von Haartman had left the United States and was residing in a country that would not extradite him.18
Chapter 8
We’re fucking happening!
AS A CONDITION OF HIS parole, Randy Hauser was subject to regular urine-analysis testing. Because of this, he wasn’t using any drugs himself, although he admits to having kept some around in case anybody wanted some. “Drugs and alcohol have always been part of my life, but money was the most important part, and so it was nothing for me to have coke around and not use.” At some point in fall 1988, Hauser’s drug test came back positive for cocaine. Hauser’s parole officer tested him again, and it came back negative. About two weeks later, Hauser tested positive again. A second test yielded the same result, and Hauser went to jail. Despite his denials, Hauser spent the next fourteen months in prison and wasn’t released until January 1990.1 By that point, the band was already signed and working on their debut album.
By late 1988 or early 1989, Ken Deans and Kelly Curtis’s business relationship was falling apart. At that point, Deans said he approached Susan with a proposition: “I’m not confident that Kelly has enough interest to see the Alice in Chains project all the way through. I want you to take my half of the partnership of the band, and I’m going to go into concert promoting. If we do this deal, then I want to be the promoter of Alice in Chains in the Northwest for as long as the band exists.”
Susan explained how she got involved with Alice in Chains. “Ken gave me a cassette tape of some of the songs that Alice had done, and they were so catchy and so wonderful. I went to see them live and thought they were great fun and very energetic and entertaining and spent a little time with them, and they were hilarious. In a matter of time, the fellow that they called their manager, who was a hairstylist slash coke dealer, took a second vacation to prison. Ken asked Kelly and I if we both wanted to work on the project together, so we said we’d give that a try.”2
Hauser disputes both Deans’s and Susan’s accounts. According to him, he was sitting in a county jail in Everett, Washington, where Kelly Curtis and Susan came to visit him. Hauser says they offered to take care of Alice in Chains for him while he was in jail, an offer he gladly accepted. Hauser spent the next several months incarcerated while challenging and appealing the parole violation. Nearly twenty-five years later, he still insists he had not used cocaine at the time he tested positive, nor would he have had any reason to do so. Regardless of which account is accurate, it was the beginning of a long professional relationship between Susan and the band that continues to the present day.