They also considered Skywalker Sound, located on George Lucas’s four-thousand-acre ranch about forty minutes north of San Francisco, but it was too expensive.1 Ultimately, they decided to record it in Los Angeles. Jerden thinks the only reason for this was because he wanted to do it at One on One Recording Studios, which is most known for being where Metallica recorded … And Justice for All and the Black Album.
The band rented a house in the mountains near Malibu, where they lived and rehearsed for about five days before they went into the studio. Jerry had high expectations. “We were coming up with all this stuff that was just aggro. Superpowerful, very heavy lyrical content. It was a serious step up from Facelift—I equate it, as far as artistically, [to] … Nirvana from [Bleach] to Nevermind. To many people, it’s a record unto itself,” Jerry told Greg Prato.2
One factor that affected the making of the album was Layne’s relapse. Alice in Chains had been working with the addiction specialist Bob Timmins. In a 1994 Seattle Times interview, Timmins said that since the Seattle grunge scene took off in 1991, he had been called up to Seattle to work with six musicians in three prominent bands. “Interestingly, it’s all been for heroin.”3
According to Jerden, Timmins was Layne’s sponsor. Layne got word that Timmins had been bragging at a party about how he’s “got” the lead singer from Alice in Chains. Layne was furious and started using drugs again. Jerden was critical of Timmins’s modus operandi, saying, “He was notorious for doing interventions on bands where he would just show up at a gig where the band’s playing, where someone’s got a problem in the band, and he’d charge forty thousand dollars for one intervention. AA is supposed to be for free, and this guy was charging money for what Layne could have got for free.” Timmins died in 2008.4
By the time they went into the studio to start recording, Jerden said the songs were well developed and that the demo made at London Bridge was great. Work on the album began on or around April 27, 1992. Bryan Carlstrom spent the first two days getting sounds before outside events brought the studio and the city to a screeching halt. On April 29, a grand jury acquitted four Los Angeles police officers of beating Rodney King. Angry mobs took to the streets for hours of mayhem and destruction. Stores were looted, motorists were beaten, and more than 150 fires were ignited. By the next morning, four people were dead and at least 106 were hospitalized. Over a period of six days, more than three thousand structures or businesses were destroyed, resulting in $1 billion in property damage and fifty-four deaths.5
Jerry was in the middle of it when the riots began. “I was actually in a store buying some beer when some guys came in and started looting the place. I also got stuck in traffic and saw people pulling other people out of their cars and beating the crap out of them. That was some pretty scary shit to have to go through, and it definitely affected the overall feel of the album.”6
In a separate interview, he said, “We came down to LA, started tracking the record, and that Rodney King verdict came down. The fucking town went up in flames.”7
At the studio, there was a TV screen about the size of a huge wall. According to Carlstrom, it was showing images of Los Angeles burning, which the band members could see while they were tracking their parts. “At the time it didn’t seem that significant. Now, after hearing the vibe of the album, it’s just so symbolic of Layne’s life—literally, a city on fire—and the things that he was singing about. It was the perfect backdrop to what that album would be about.”
Jerden offered a similar account. “They were all set up, and then the LA riots started and we had to shut down for a week. We were watching it on television right from the beginning.”
They had started recording “Sickman,” which would be the most technically difficult song to record from the album. Sean didn’t play to a click, so the timing on his drum parts varied. Jerden found a bar and a half of drumming that was steady and would become the centerpiece of the song. He wanted the song to speed up gradually, so he had Carlstrom do the tedious copying and editing work. “I had to make copies of bars from one tape machine to another tape machine and slowly change the speed on one tape machine as I made copies of the bars. Make a copy of the bar at one speed, and then I’d have to do it again slightly faster. ‘Well, just gradually make that song speed up,’ which at the time I was thinking, ‘How the hell is this going to work? I’ve never heard [of] anybody doing this before,’” he said.
“Throughout the whole song, it’s the same bar and a half over and over and over again,” Jerden explained. “We had to make copies and copies and copies onto two-inch tape of that drum part and then edit that bar and a half over and over again, just loop it back in with a razor blade. And it took him like two days to do that. I think he was doing that in the studio when the LA riots were going on, but Bryan Carlstrom is like a wizard engineer.”
Carlstrom was under the impression that Jerden was making up this production technique on the spot, but Jerden said he had done it before, crediting that experience to his work on Brian Eno and David Byrne’s My Life in the Bush of Ghosts album. Carlstrom said those early sessions would have to be cut short to get the band members back to their apartment complex in Marina del Rey to beat city curfew. “It was basically martial law. I think it was after six o’clock at night, you weren’t allowed to drive in Los Angeles. You weren’t supposed to … but there was no police. I don’t know who would have enforced that.”
According to what Evan Sheeley heard at the time, Mike was clashing with Jerden, and the argument escalated to the point where Mike said, “I’m not going to play on this album unless you get Evan [Sheeley] down here.” The day after the riots started, Kelly Curtis called Sheeley, explained the situation to him, and told him, “I need to have you go to LA tomorrow.” Sheeley didn’t want to be down there, but he went because of his friendship with Curtis. He was flown down at management’s expense and paid for his services. Mike was supposed to pick him up at the airport, but Sheeley waited at the airport for two hours because Mike never showed up. Sheeley eventually got to a phone and got ahold of Mike.
“Where the hell are you, Mike? You’re supposed to be picking me up.”
“Oh … I forgot. I got a friend here. Can you get a taxi?”
“Yeah, but if you haven’t looked lately, the city’s on fire. There are no taxis,” Sheeley said. “I’m pissed off. I’ll see what I can do.”
When Sheeley arrived at Mike’s apartment, he saw a girl who looked underage leaving. Sheeley was furious and berated Mike. Sheeley laid down the law very clearly from the beginning: if he was going to help Mike, as he had been hired to do, he was going to take it seriously. He told Mike, “You treat me like your big brother here. I’m here to help you, and I will make you sound like a bass god. But I don’t want to see you doing shit in front of me that’s going to jeopardize my life or put me in potential trouble with the law.” Sheeley was referring to drug use—specifically, harder drugs like cocaine or heroin. Mike agreed to Sheeley’s terms and never did anything more than smoke an occasional joint when he was around.
Mike asked him, “Can you help me with some of these songs? Because I haven’t been able to come up with bass parts.” He handed Sheeley an acoustic bass that Sheeley had once sold him and started playing him a cassette with rough demos of the songs. The first song Sheeley heard on the tape was “Down in a Hole.” “What would you play if you were playing this song?”