Another time, Bergstrom and some of the other band members were spending the night at Layne’s house. They snuck out to go to a party, walking to Aurora Avenue and down to Richmond Beach several miles away. Layne’s mother woke up in the middle of the night and saw they had gone out. At that time, there were no cell phones, so she called Bergstrom’s mother and went out looking for them. Layne, Bergstrom, and the others were walking back and had almost made it home when they saw Nancy driving by in her van at two o’clock in the morning.
By early 1985, the members of Sleze felt they were ready to perform live. In a scene straight from Back to the Future, Sleze auditioned for the Shorewood High School talent show and didn’t make the cut. “We tried out for the school talent show, and we flunked. They wouldn’t let us do the school talent show,” Semanate said, laughing. “We brought all our shit to the auditorium. We just blasted it out, and they’re like, ‘No fucking way.’”
Sleze eventually got to perform a forty-five-minute set on February 4, 1985, during lunchtime in the Student Activities Center—colloquially dubbed the SAC—at Shorewood High School. Hansen remembers Semanate had designed a hand-drawn poster to promote the show and, as a joke, drew a different version that he showed Hansen first—for “Satanic Sleze,” which featured pentagrams and inverted crosses. On the day of the show, the band members went to Bergstrom’s parents’ house to get ready for the performance. They crowded into a bathroom to put on their stage outfits, makeup, and hair spray.
“We showed up to school like it was Halloween basically. Lunchtime and everyone was just like double-taking us,” Bacolas said, laughing. They had stage fright, since this was their first show. He estimated the crowd size at between two hundred and four hundred students. The set list consisted mostly of covers: “L.O.V.E. Machine,” “Looks That Kill,” Armored Saint’s “False Alarm,” Wrathchild’s “Stakk Attakk,” Venom’s “Countess Bathory,” and Slayer’s “Black Magic.”
Layne was nervous, according to Bacolas. He barely looked at the crowd and mostly paced back and forth onstage, looking down while singing, or else had his back to the audience while looking at the drummer. Despite his nerves and inexperience, he pulled off the performance. The four surviving band members don’t think he forgot any lyrics or hit a wrong note.
After the show, they were feeling pretty good about themselves. “We were high on life! We thought this was it, man. We’re on our way!” Bergstrom said. This was the first and only performance featuring this lineup of the band.
Not long after this show, Semanate went out partying with his bandmates. “We went to this party and we were drinking; we were having fun. It was like a keg. We get in this room, ‘Where’s the bong at?’” Semanate recalled. “This was the first time I smoked weed with them. I even got James high, which blew my mind. It was a lot of fun. Kind of a little bonding thing.”
Shortly after this, according to Semanate, Bergstrom’s mother called a band meeting, where the members and parents would get together at a local pizza restaurant. The concern was that Semanate was a bad influence on the other four.
“I was the bastard child in that band,” Semanate said. “I’d just smoke weed and drink, typical shit I do today.” As soon as the food was served, Semanate said, Bergstrom’s and Hansen’s mothers began expressing their concerns about Semanate. “It was just harping about me. I’m the negative influence in this band, they don’t want their kids looking like me, ending up like me, et cetera, et cetera. So me and my mom, we just left, said, ‘Fuck this. We’re out of here.’”
Bergstrom doesn’t recall too many specifics about that dinner. “I don’t really remember what the whole thing about it was. ‘His hair was too long and he was a bad influence!’ Something silly.” Bacolas has a similar recollection.
Layne was at the dinner, accompanied by his mother and possibly his stepfather, but no one remembers what, if anything, they said. Semanate recalled, “Nancy was pretty cool. She just kicked back and she was on the sidelines.” The next day Semanate went over to Bergstrom’s house to pick up his gear in the basement, still bitter about the dinner.
“It was weird, man, because it was like back then, I was a diehard,” he said. “I would die for my band. I believed in rock and roll that much. I was just a kid who … it was like being a superhero. It was all I had.” On top of that, Semanate was the one who came up with the band name.
Layne called Semanate the next day, telling him he was quitting, too. The two discussed starting a new band, which would be called Fairfax. A day after that, Semanate got a call asking him to join a punk rock band, with hints of a possible record deal, an offer he accepted. Layne went back to Sleze, who would fill Semanate’s spot with Chris Markham.
Bergstrom and Hansen recall another show from 1985 at the Lynnwood Rollerway, where they were competing in a local Battle of the Bands—presumably the same one Layne told Rick Throm about. Layne’s voice was shot, and he was struggling to get through the set.
“He like lost his voice, just kind of hoarse and hurting. He had this spray bottle of Chloraseptic or something like that. He was constantly shooting it in his throat, trying to get it to where he could sing,” Hansen said. According to Bergstrom, Layne had strep throat.
Sleze did another show at the SAC the same year and performed at the Lakeside School talent show, where Markham was a student. They also performed at Shorecrest High School for what Bergstrom described as a pep assembly, during which Sleze performed a cover of the Kingsmen’s “Louie Louie.”
Several members of Sleze turned sixteen that year, which meant they could get their driver’s licenses, which provided greater freedom and mobility. Sleze didn’t tour in a van—they played only in the Seattle area and got to and from gigs in their own cars. Bacolas estimates the band was getting a few hundred dollars a show from local promoters. They didn’t have a manager, so they did their own bookings, a responsibility handled by Bacolas with a landline at his parents’ house or by networking with other bands.
At the end of the 1984–85 school year at Meadowdale, the industrial woodworking class had an awards banquet at which certain students received recognition for their work. Layne got Most Improved Student because, according to Rick Throm, “he really did blossom.”
Layne was supposed to graduate in the summer of 1985, but it turned out that he was one course or one credit short of being able to graduate. According to a school record, there is a note saying that Layne “did not graduate” dated June 5, 1985—most likely graduation day of that year. Layne’s school records were sent to the Chrysalis School in Woodinville on December 4 of the same year, where his sisters were enrolled. “It was a way to keep Layne engaged in some intellectual activity, because he was certainly growing up and so forth,” Jim Elmer explained. “It was an idea that did not come to fruition, because I don’t remember Layne ever going out there.” Layne’s formal education ended when he left Meadowdale.2
When Nancy went to Layne’s twenty-year high school reunion, she spoke to several people, many of whom were surprised to find out their former classmate went on to be the lead singer of Alice in Chains. “They said ‘Layne Staley was Layne Elmer? He was the quietest boy in our class!’ They were shocked,” she told The Seattle Times.3
Hansen started his junior year of high school in the fall of 1985. By this point, he was meeting new people and was getting into different kinds of music and skateboarding. That fall, Sleze was booked to perform at the Rock Theater, a heavy metal–oriented club in downtown Seattle, a big deal at the time. Hansen had a change of heart and told his bandmates he wanted to quit after the show. The only point of dispute was that he wanted to be reimbursed for his share of the PA and audio equipment they had bought as a band. He was replaced by Jim Sheppard.