Assistant engineers Dave Hillis and Jonathan Plum both credited Rick Parashar for helping Layne and Jerry develop their vocal harmonies, possibly as far back as the original 1988 demo that helped get the band signed. “Doing so many records on the other side of the glass with Rick, part of his whole production style and technique is to sit down with the singers at the piano and help write harmonies. I think he did some of that with Temple of the Dog as well. That’s just part of almost any record that he works on. That’s definitely one of his strong points, one of the main aspects of hiring him as a producer that he’s known for,” Hillis said, who also worked with Parashar on Pearl Jam’s Ten album. “There wasn’t a time that I worked with him that he didn’t do that. It was always part of his production style to really work the vocals, comp vocal-track takes together, then build on them from that, come up with harmony ideas, sit at the piano, do harmony parts, or sing them over the top back to him.”
According to Hillis, Parashar ran a tight ship at the studio. “When Rick was there, it was all business. There were a couple of parties we had at London Bridge with the Alice guys involved, but it was not during a recording session. If there was any type of drug use during some of the other, like the Dirt demos and whatnot, that was Layne sneaking off in the bathroom or something like that. When we were working on the record, there was no partying.”
Jonathan Plum was a twenty-year-old student at Central Washington University who had been working as an engineer with other bands when, through mutual connections, he found out that Rick Parashar was looking for an assistant engineer. He applied and was accepted for the position, which started as a three-month unpaid internship. “It was like sixteen hours a day, every day, and then the salary was terrible, but I was working with Alice in Chains,” he said.
Within his first two weeks on the job, Plum noticed that a week and a half of studio time had been blocked out on the calendar for Alice in Chains. By his own admission, Plum was “superexcited,” having been a fan since he saw them perform at Bumbershoot in 1990. Layne was friendly and polite with the studio staff. “He seemed very down-to-earth of all those guys, the most down-to-earth, the most humble,” Plum recalled. “He would always show up sort of late because it was always like the Jerry show. Jerry seemed to be doing everything, and Layne would come in later. But Layne was superfriendly to me, and he’d ask about my background, how I got a job there, and how my day was. I always thought that was really cool.”
Plum added, “Jerry was very focused; he was the creative force of the band from what I could tell, and he’s just very intense. He wasn’t the kind of guy to stop and say, ‘Hi, how are you doing?’ or get to know me at all, so I was sort of in awe of him a little bit. But I also sort of stayed away from him a little because I knew he just wasn’t interested in my existence at all unless he needed coffee or needed me to help set something up or if I happened to run the tape deck, he’d have to deal with me.”
Though Layne was probably already using heroin by this point, Plum never saw any evidence of drugs during the making of Sap. The only drug anecdote he had direct knowledge of was when he first met Mike, who told him he was high on Ecstasy from the night before.
Hillis noticed that Layne was different. “He wasn’t like the Layne I knew from the Music Bank days; he wasn’t, like, totally in the mix. Now, in hindsight, he’s probably definitely dealing with drugs. But he wasn’t as involved—he’s more quiet, out of the way. I don’t remember seeing him a lot. I think there [were] some issues of him being in the bathroom way too long. I think Jerry and them were trying to keep it on the down low because they didn’t want Rick to know. Rick totally frowned on anything like that, especially in the studio, and in general. Really, really antidrug, in general.” Multiple sources who worked with Alice in Chains on later releases consistently describe Layne’s habit of locking himself in the bathroom for long periods of time.
Plum also recalled Mike rerecording a bass track that Jerry had done. “He told me the main reason he wanted to redo the bass track was because he was afraid his mom was going to hear it and would be able to tell that it wasn’t him playing bass on the record.
“Jerry had recorded this bass track, and Mike wanted to come back and replace it. He said he was happy with the bass track, it sounded fine, he just wanted to play it himself because he was worried his mom would hear it and say, ‘That’s not you!’ I think that was sort of a joke.” A highlight was when Ann and Nancy Wilson came to the studio to record their vocals. “I remember this really clearly because we were all so excited and sorta nervous,” Plum said. At one point, Sean asked Parashar, “Can we get her [Ann] to do the ‘Barracuda’ song?” referring to Heart’s signature song.
“I’m not going to ask her. You can ask if you want.”
Parashar handed Sean the talkback, so Ann could hear him from inside the studio. “Ann, at the end of the song, can you do the ‘Ooooh, barracuda’?”
According to Plum, “Ann took the headphones off, walked in the control room, and sat down next to Sean and whoever else, probably Sean and Jerry.”
“‘Look, in ten years, when you’re fucking sick of playing your song “Man in the Box,” the last thing you’re going to want to do is have someone ask you to sing “Man in the Box” on someone else’s song,’” she told Sean, according to Plum’s account.
“Basically schooled them on … why that wasn’t a good question to ask. The whole room was sort of quiet, like ‘Okay, you’re right; we’re sorry.’”
Chris Cornell and Mark Arm came to the studio to record guest vocals for “Right Turn,” a song that would be credited to Alice Mudgarden—a mash-up of the three bands involved: Alice in Chains, Mudhoney, and Soundgarden.
“It was Jerry Cantrell who called and asked me to sing on Sap. I was surprised, like, ‘Why would you want me to sing?’ I could understand why they’d want Chris Cornell to sing,” Arm told Greg Prato.3
“I remember Mark coming in being very nervous,” Hillis said. “We started talking in the lobby and he had a six-pack of beer with him, and he started drinking a beer because he was nervous. I was like, ‘What’s up, man? Why are you so nervous?’ He was nervous about the fact that Chris Cornell was there, and Layne and Ann. ‘They could all really sing, and I don’t fit in. My voice doesn’t come out as a singer like that.’ I remember kind of giving him confidence, ‘Man, you’ll do great. You’ll be fine.’
“I was also curious of how Rick, the producer, what he was going to think of Mark, because he was quite different, and I know that Rick wasn’t really familiar with that kind of music, with Mudhoney and Mark’s style. I remember as soon as he sang, he looked at me and goes, ‘This sounds great!’”
On the other hand, Parashar had to encourage Cornell to show some restraint during his performance. “When he came in, he kept really wanting to belt it out like he does, and I remember Rick kind of messing with him a lot. ‘Well, let’s try this,’ kind of having fun with him, not letting him belt it out with the classic Cornell high scream and stuff,” Hillis said.
Plum said that he and Parashar spent time together one evening and the following morning setting up microphones and getting sounds right for Sean’s drums. When the band came in, Plum and Parashar were working on overdubs and thought that they were going to play. They had other plans. “They were fucking around all day, and eventually they played a song, but they were each playing different instruments. Layne was playing drums, Sean was singing, and it was ‘Love Song.’ [Jerry and Mike traded places on guitar and bass.] It was stupid. I mean, they were just fucking around, and I was pissed that we spent all this time and effort trying to get these drum[s] [to] sound amazing and they wrote this stupid song. It was a joke. They were bored. I don’t know why they did it—they just did it,” Plum recalled.