“It was terrible,” Biro said, adding, “Extreme was, like they really thought they had made it big. And Nuno Bettencourt, the guitar player, he really didn’t belong with them. They were just really, really, really cheesy guys. Their music was exactly like they were.”
As the tour progressed, Alice in Chains began winning over Extreme’s audience. One detrimental factor was the shoddy treatment they were getting from the headliners. “Extreme were from the old school of rock, and that was you pretty much screw over the opening act,” Shoaf said. “You turn down the PA on them, you didn’t give them as much lights as you got, they didn’t get treated necessarily with open arms. Grunge kind of changed that, too. It was more kind of punk rock: we’re all in this together—it’s a smarter attitude. Today’s opening act is tomorrow’s headlining act.”1
In Atlanta, the bands were playing at a venue where the physical space onstage, specifically the lack thereof, became an issue. “They had this cheesy drum riser. They called it their set, and it took up way too much room,” Biro said. The stage was so small, Layne had to stand stage left of Sean, whose kick drum had to be nailed down so it wouldn’t fall off the stage. “They refused to move anything, to make our life a little bit more bearable. And they’d say, ‘You’re just the opening act.’ And thanks to assholes like that, we never treated people bad.”
According to Jerry, “We’d gotten attitude about what we could do, what we couldn’t do onstage, because the singer did his set barefoot. So we drank, spilled shit over the place, smoked. We were like, ‘What are you going to do, kick us off the tour? It’s the last gig!’ And Mike Starr would get a case of the nerves and puke. I think he had some beers in him, so he turned around and puked all over the drum set. That was our last gig with Extreme.”2
There was another incident involving Extreme’s gear. “I remember the bass tech for Extreme freaking out because Mike Starr had gotten drunk and jumped up on Extreme’s bass cabinets, had fallen down and knocked over Extreme’s bass rigs right before Extreme played,” Shoaf said. “Mike’s stuff is in front of theirs. He’s not supposed to be back there on or near their crap. I remember they were pretty upset about it and understandably so. They haven’t done the show yet, and there’s only fifteen minutes technically between Alice in Chains and Extreme. If something’s broke, you’re trying to fix it in fifteen minutes—good luck.”
Further complicating matters was the Extreme crew’s inexperience. According to Biro, except for two members, none of them had ever toured before. “It was like they had hired professional friends.” On top of that, they had no sense of humor. Before Extreme’s homecoming show at a theater in Boston, the Alice in Chains members and crew were walking into the venue when they came across Extreme’s production manager.
“Wow. You ever been in a room this big?” the production manager said to Biro.
Biro, a veteran crew member who had played large and small venues before, looked at Sean and facetiously asked, “Wow, is this as big as a stadium?”
“Fuck you,” the production manager said, and walked away.
Jerry was happy to be there performing on that first tour, Shoaf said, but he was also his own biggest critic. “I think Jerry was a little hard on himself and a perfectionist. Like after a show, he’d think he fucked up here or he fucked up there. He would take his own CD after the show, put a set of headphones on, and practice getting better.”
Regarding Sean, Shoaf said, “He can play anytime, anywhere. He knew the songs backwards and forwards. Generally, when the drummer knows the songs backwards and forwards, he’s a great drummer. He’s one of the nicest guys you could ever hang out with, unless he’s got twenty-four beers in him, and he just doesn’t pass out.”
One of Shoaf’s most vivid memories of this tour was when Layne made him a Neil Diamond fan. They were at a truck stop and heard an elevator-music version of “Love on the Rocks.” While walking out, Layne did a pitch-perfect imitation of Diamond’s vocals on that song. Shoaf bought a cassette copy of Diamond’s greatest hits at the next truck stop.
“He’d sit there and make jokes. And he would sing anything,” Biro said. “He used to make fun of Styx songs, but he did it so well. The guy was just an incredible singer. He was ridiculing it, but it was so good that it was perfect. I don’t know what it was. But his sense of humor—that band was constantly, constantly, constantly, twenty-four hours, joking around.”
Shoaf remembers Jerry working on new material backstage or on the bus. “Hey, Jimmy—what do you think of this?” It was the beginnings of what would eventually become “Rooster.”
“I’m like, ‘Fuck, dude…’ I remember them doing it at sound check, going, ‘Holy shit, another one…’ because of the vocal part. Layne busted that shit out at sound check in front of me and six other people. He’s singing that stuff, and I’m like, ‘Holy moly…’ I was ready for that second record by October of 1990.”
After a show in Denver, Biro saw a girl get on the band’s tour bus, which he and Shoaf were following in a rented Ryder truck full of gear. By the time Biro and Shoaf arrived at the hotel where both Extreme and Alice in Chains were staying, someone had a video camera and was filming what Biro characterized as a sex tape in that pre-Internet era. Members of Extreme were in the hotel room watching the mayhem. According to Biro, “They were watching, and the video camera got them a few times. They waved at the video camera, laughing—you know, showing a beer, being, ‘Yeah, we’re cool. We’re one of the guys.’”
A day later, they approached the Alice in Chains crew, begging them to get rid of the tape. “They didn’t want anything of them being in those situations going public, ever,” Biro said. They didn’t do anything on the tape, Biro said, beyond possibly posing with the girl. Not long after this incident, Alice in Chains was doing an interview with Z-Rock, the Dallas-based syndicated radio station. The band was taking questions from callers on the air.
“Hey, I met you guys once in Denver,” a female caller said, according to Shoaf’s account of the conversation.
“Yeah, really?”
When she mentioned the debauchery that had taken place in the hotel room, the station cut her off and hung up on her.
While the band was on tour, Susan celebrated a personal milestone in her life. After five years together, she and Chris Cornell got married on September 22, 1990, during a ceremony at their Seattle home, according to a brief mention in The Seattle Times. They went to Victoria, British Columbia, for a short honeymoon before Cornell had to go back to work on Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger album.3
For the next leg of the tour, Alice in Chains would be supporting Iggy Pop and playing in small theaters with a capacity of one to three thousand. There was a noticeable improvement in the relationship between the headliner and the opening act. “They were much more welcoming. They treated us a lot better on ego stuff. We got cut back on lights somewhat, but it’s Iggy’s show, and the sound was boosted up a little better,” Shoaf said.
Both bands were in Louisville, Kentucky, for Thanksgiving and stayed in the same hotel, where they would be spending a day off. Coincidentally, Pantera was touring with Prong and Mind over Four, and they were staying at the same hotel. After eating their Thanksgiving meals, the bands and crew members had to wait until one o’clock for the hotel bar to open.