During this time, much of the attention among musicians was on the Parents Music Resource Center. Cofounded by Tipper Gore, the PMRC was created to raise awareness about the violent, sexual, or occult content in popular music, which the group argued could have a negative impact on children. The PMRC was lobbying for the creation of a voluntary ratings system for explicit content. Their efforts culminated in the famous hearing before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation on September 19, 1985, which featured testimony from the PMRC on one side and, as a counterpoint, the musicians Frank Zappa, John Denver, and Dee Snider. In retrospect, two years later, Tipper Gore told the New York Times that the hearings were a mistake. “The hearings gave the misperception that there was censorship involved.”4
A few weeks after the hearing, KOMO’s television talk show Town Meeting did an episode about the controversy. Layne and Bacolas were in the audience. The Seattle Times did a write-up on the episode and noted Layne’s comments, writing, “Layne Staley, a Lynnwood teen who plays in a heavy-metal group called ‘Sleze,’ says, ‘Our lyrics are all positive—we don’t use bad language or sing about drugs and sex—but I just want the freedom to write about what I want.’” This is likely the first time he appeared on television, and the first time he was quoted in a newspaper.5
At some point during this period, Sleze played a show at Alki Beach. The significance of that show was not the performance itself, but rather who was in attendance—a nineteen-year-old drummer from Renton named Sean Kinney.
Of his childhood, Sean said, “My dad’s a cop. My mom’s a city official. They got divorced in your typical [white-bread] suburban upbringing for a hyperactive son. I got in trouble. I wouldn’t get in too much trouble. They both worked, so my sister pretty much raised me. They were gone all the time,” he recalled during an interview for an electronic press kit made to coincide with the release of the band’s self-titled album.
He showed an interest in music because of his grandfather, who was a member of a band called the Cross Cats and allowed him to sit in with the band when he was nine years old. “They’d play like country and swing or whatever, and I’d always be over at their house. When they’d take breaks, I’d play. I’d get up and try to play the drums.
“That was the only other band I was really in, the Cross Cats. Nine years! I wore a bow tie. From when I was nine, I took over for the Bob Holler guy. He left. They’re all older, of course, my grandfather. I took over and played for years with them, until I was about twelve or thirteen. I got to do a little road work, my first tour. That was the only other band I was ever in. I did that, and then this [Alice in Chains].”6
“I first met Layne around 1985 when his band was playing at Alki Beach. I told Layne that I thought he was cool but his band sucked. I also told him he should get a different drummer—me” is how Sean recalled their first meeting in an article published in Guitar Legends magazine. Sean—who didn’t have a phone at the time—gave him his girlfriend’s number on a piece of paper.7 Layne hung on to it, unaware of the impact it would have on both of them two years later.
In late 1985, Nick Pollock was a senior at Lindbergh High School when Layne and Bergstrom were looking for a guitar player to replace Chris Markham. According to Pollock, “James and Layne heard from somebody that I had cool hair and played guitar.” They arranged a meeting, where they hit it off, and Layne and Bergstrom invited Pollock to a rehearsal.
“I remember meeting [Layne] in person. I thought he was a totally cocky dude and just totally fit the singer persona. He was a really cool guy,” Pollock said of his initial impression. “I remember hearing him sing on the demo tapes that James gave me, and I thought, ‘Holy shit! This guy’s got some serious pipes!’
“He had a grind to his voice that was just unbelievably cool. It was totally natural. You could tell that he was just star material right there, but just young.” Pollock got the job. Layne and Pollock became friends, each the other’s wingman when going out to meet girls. “I would say that I thoroughly sowed my oats, and Layne was thoroughly my partner in crime in doing so. We happened to be in a popular band and we were able to inspire some very lovely young ladies to do whatever the hell we wanted them to do. So that worked out well!”
Regarding the girls who went to their shows, Bergstrom joked, “The benefits of rock and roll—no such thing as medical and dental.” Bacolas—who left Sleze at one point and later returned as their bassist—offered a similar account. “We had a lot of fun with a lot of girls back then,” he said with a grin. “All of a sudden, we had hundreds of girls at the shows, and it was whatever we wanted, whoever we wanted.”
Pollock got to see a side of Layne most didn’t see in public. “He was a very caring and feeling individual. He cared about people around him and friends and things like that, but at the same time he’s this cocky, irreverent rock-and-roll guy that’s going to be telling people to screw off, being an anarchist, that kind of thing.”
Pollock said Layne never had anything bad to say about his stepfather. “He may joke about [him] irreverently, because he was a parent and we were seventeen and all adults are stupid at that age.” He also said Layne had good relationships with his sisters. Layne and Pollock would sometimes tease Jamie, who was about seven or eight years old at the time. “We called her Chewbacca, because her hair was like round on the top. It was just a way to tease her, and it got at her.”
Inevitably, the two friends would turn on each other. Pollock says Layne made fun of his last name, calling him Polack. One time, he randomly called Layne “Lance Rutherford Elmer” and touched a nerve. “It would make him madder than fuck. He would get so angry at me, he would be ready to get out of the goddamn moving car,” he recalled. “Whenever he would be shitty to me and piss me off, I would start going down that road and then he’d shut up.”
Pollock had forgotten what the Rutherford name meant until he was interviewed for this book. James Bergstrom doesn’t recall how they found out about it. “I think he confided in us. I think we were having one of our band talks. I don’t know if it was just him and I, because I don’t think I told anybody because he asked me not to.” He did confirm Pollock’s account that Layne’s middle name was a very touchy subject. “He hated that. He basically swore to us, ‘Don’t you ever tell ANYBODY.’” Layne turned eighteen on August 22, 1985. At some point, he went to court and legally changed his name to Layne Thomas Staley—the name he would be known by for the rest of his life—to get rid of the Rutherford middle name he so disliked.
By this point, there were tensions between Layne and his mother. Pollock witnessed a few of their arguments when he was at the house. “His mother is very strong-willed and has her own definite opinions, and they clashed a lot with Layne, and Layne rebelled against that.”
What was Layne rebelling against?
“I would say that it pretty much centered around her sense of morality and how that connects with religion. I believe she was a Christian Scientist at the time.
“I have in my mind these images of sitting at the bar with him in the kitchen, witnessing a fight build up between the two of them and how he would get snarky with her, and how she would push back. I think I got a really good relationship with my father, but she reminded me of him in the sense that she had an agency to her that was like a man, and she wasn’t going to take any dissent whatsoever. The more he escalated with what he was saying, the more she would try to hammer him down.