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Mike bought his bass guitars and equipment from Evan Sheeley, formerly the bassist of Seattle hard rock band TKO, who at the time was working at Seattle Music. Sheeley was at home when he got a call from Jerden, who said they were having problems with the bass and amplifier he had sold Mike and asked him to come in. Once at the studio, Sheeley noticed Mike had set the levels on the instrument and the amplifier all the way up to 10.

“You can’t do that because that’s going to make it sound like crap. It’s going to sound all distorted,” Sheeley explained. “I’ve been in the studio a lot, so I just took the bass—there’s the tone. Dave Jerden came on the talkback and said, ‘That’s the sound I want. That’s perfect.’” According to Sheeley, after getting the right levels on the bass and the amplifier, they put duct tape on the bass knobs so Mike couldn’t touch or change them. The knob settings on the amplifier were marked with a knife so they wouldn’t be forgotten. More than two decades later, those markings were still visible on Mike’s amplifier.4

Champagne vaguely recalled this episode. Jerden doesn’t recall it but doesn’t dispute Sheeley’s account. At the same time, he points out that besides being a bass player himself, “I had extensive experience at recording bass in terms of techniques. At that time, I’d recorded Bill Wyman from the Rolling Stones and I’d worked with tons of great fucking bass players, so I knew how to get a bass sound.”

During separate interviews with Greg Prato and Mark Yarm years later, Susan said, “The only one that was difficult to manage was the original bass player—he had that notion that if you sign a major record deal, you can go and spend a lot of money. The rest of the guys were really great about being money conscious and realizing that the money you get is your money, and the way you spend it is going to be how much you have at the end.” Beyond her criticism of Mike, Susan said Jerden had something of a profligate attitude regarding the budget and encouraged the band to buy gear.5

Jerden disputed Susan’s claim, saying only two pieces of equipment were bought for Facelift. The first was a six-string bass that cost around five hundred dollars, which Jerden bought from Sheeley and paid for himself. This bass was used for the choruses to make the songs sound heavier.

The second piece of equipment was the Voice Box for “Man in the Box,” which the band paid for so Jerry could use it to perform the song live. “I think that Voice Box cost like a hundred dollars, and that was the hook sound for ‘Man in the Box,’ and to me it made the whole difference in making a hit record. I had them buy two things totaling maybe six hundred dollars for a hit song that sold millions. I didn’t tell them to go to the store and just start buying shit. Anything else they bought after that, I don’t know about and I had nothing to do with.” Jerden and Susan were getting along during the making of Facelift, but they would have a falling-out several years later.

Champagne backed Jerden’s account, saying they went to American Music in Seattle once because Jerry needed to buy picks and strings. Regarding Mike’s spending sprees alleged by Susan, Sheeley backed up Jerden’s account, saying Mike did not spend a lot of money on gear.

Champagne went to a club with the band members one night. As they were about to leave, Champagne saw Layne go in the bathroom, light a paper towel on fire, and throw it in the garbage can. “He’s like, ‘Run!’” Champagne recalled. “I’m like, ‘Oh, shit.’” They left and piled into Layne’s car, a station wagon Champagne thinks he borrowed from his mother. “It seems like everywhere that we went, we were running for our lives to get out of there.”

A frequent hangout for all of them was the Vogue. One night the bathrooms were so full, women were using the men’s room. At that point, either Layne or Jerry decided it would be easier to go outside. He was in the parking lot urinating when a woman sitting in the car behind where he was standing turned the lights on. Layne or Jerry, whoever it was, turned around and peed on the hood of the car. The woman was furious and started yelling. She followed him inside, still screaming. At that point, everyone bolted out of the club. Layne went into getaway-driver mode, got the station wagon, and drove up and down the street picking people up. “We are literally diving into the car, because people are chasing us. It was that bad. I swear to God. It happened almost every time we went there … some crazy shit,” Champagne said. It got bad enough that he started going to the Vogue by himself.

Champagne stopped by the band house once. His reaction was “Holy shit.” He remembers one girl going downstairs with Mike to have sex. After she had left, another girl came over and went downstairs with Mike. Champagne got the impression that Demri didn’t like that Mike was such a womanizer, because she thought he might be a bad influence on Layne. Jerden and Champagne said Layne was not using heroin at the time. However, they heard unconfirmed rumors at the time that Demri was using. People who knew Demri well do not know when or how her heroin use started.

The sessions at London Bridge wrapped up in December 1989. Jamie Elmer vividly remembers Christmas of that year, although it might have been 1990 or 1991. “Layne and Demri came over to where my mom was living, and my sister and I were there. And they had actually bought Christmas presents, because it was the first time Layne had money to buy Christmas presents.”

The band, Jerden, and Champagne relocated to Los Angeles after the holidays to finish the album, mainly vocals and guitar overdubs. “They had just rebuilt Capitol Records Studio A, and I was the first client in there, and my wife managed the studio.”

Bryan Carlstrom was an assistant working at Capitol Records, floating between three different projects at the time, one of them being Facelift. Carlstrom had not heard of the band before they came to the studio. Because he was hearing only bits and pieces of the record, he hadn’t really formed much of an opinion on the band. Outside the studio, Carlstrom hung out and smoked pot with Layne. Carlstrom’s impression at the time: “Kind of a Birkenstock kind of hippyish kid, really skinny, pretty innocent kid, to tell you the truth. He looked really young, really childlike, aside from I think he had a goatee, a goatee with a couple of beads in it or something, very childlike.”

Champagne described the remodeled Studio A as “a million-dollar coffin,” meaning that if you went into the middle of the room—which was about the size of a gymnasium—and spoke, “you could see your words stop in the air like a cartoon word bubble.” He had Layne go out in the middle of the room with only a stool to place a water bottle, an ashtray, and his sunglasses.

“Turn the lights down low so you can barely see me,” he told Champagne, who was in the control room. He agreed, and responded, “Okay, I got to turn down the control room lights, too, so you can just barely see me.” Champagne said Layne nailed his vocals on the first take pretty much every time. Jerry was the same. According to Jerden, “When I was doing lead vocals, I’d double them. And then any harmonies we did, which were not extensive, we’d just do maybe a third harmonic harmony, but it wasn’t that stacked vocals that came out on Dirt.”

Phil Staley came to the studio while Layne was recording his vocals. Champagne thinks there might have been an element of surprise to the visit. Layne was happy to see him. Beaming with pride after hearing his son sing, he turned to Champagne and asked, “Man, where the fuck did he learn how to do that? I just got the chills!”

The band asked Jerden where they could find a strip club. “Go to the Tropicana,” he told them, which he described as “a tourist strip bar.” Champagne went with them the first time. “I started half of that mayhem,” he said. “The first night that we went there, Mike was goofing around with this one stripper, and he paid her to walk up to me, grab the back of my head, and shove it—she had massive breasts—shove my face and rubbed it, and she had the worst perfume I’ve ever smelled, and it was all over me.”