Alice in Chains: The Untold Story

Following the success of Black Gives Way to Blue, the band took time off. They had a few musical ideas they had come up with during the course of touring—Jerry came up with the guitar riff for “Hollow” while warming up for the last show of the tour in Las Vegas—but a follow-up album would have to wait. Jerry had to undergo surgery for bone spurs and cartilage in one of his shoulders—having already been through the same procedure for the other shoulder six years earlier. He recorded a demo for “Voices” before the surgery. While he was in rehab after the surgery, he came up with the riff for “Stone” in his head, but since he couldn’t play guitar at the time, he started recording on his iPhone and hummed the melody.33

Once Jerry recovered, work on the album began in earnest, with Nick Raskulinecz producing again. Before that, on May 31, 2012, Jerry was honored by MusiCares—a foundation established by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences to act as a safety net for musicians during financial, medical, or personal emergencies. He was awarded the Stevie Ray Vaughan Award for “his dedication and support of the MusiCares MAP Fund and for his commitment to helping other addicts with the addiction and recovery process.” The MAP fund allows musicians access to addiction treatment and sober living resources. He would be presented with the award at that year’s MusiCares MAP Fund benefit in Los Angeles, at which Alice in Chains would be performing. Mike jokingly referred to the honor as the “Junkie of the Year” award. Although Jerry was honored by the award, he noted his band’s history in an interview with Rolling Stone: “‘I am nobody’s fucking role model,’ he says. It’s too much pressure: ‘Everybody’s human, everybody has flaws, everybody falls down. It’s just a fucking fact of life. And a lot of people stand and get the fuck back up after falling. Some people don’t get that chance. My band’s been a harsh example of that—what happens when you don’t deal with it.’”34

He gave a brief acceptance speech thanking his bandmates; Susan; the band’s comanager, David “Beno” Benveniste; the other musicians who were performing at the benefit; and his sponsor. He also told the story of how he got sober: “I crash-landed here almost nine years ago, in Los Angeles. Sean was at the door with my brother. So my choices were open the door and go to rehab, or jump out the back window down a cliff into some blackberry bushes—that’s the choice I took. Luckily they caught me, because I couldn’t go anywhere. I was stuck in a bush at the bottom of a cliff, bleeding, and I ended up here.”

He noted, “I’ve had a lot of help, and all I can claim is showing up and doing the work. I am as imperfect as they come. I just try to do what I can to not get high today, and that’s pretty much gotten me to where I am today. I just don’t get high today and wake up the next day to try to do the same thing.” Jerry celebrated the tenth anniversary of his sobriety while on tour in Vancouver on July 1, 2013.35

Work on the album continued. The song “The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here” found the band dabbling into social commentary, criticizing religion. It was also chosen as the album title, which was announced on the band’s Web site after rearranging the letters into an anagram and encouraging fans to decode it. The album was released on May 28, 2013, and debuted at number 2 on the Billboard chart.36 When the band began touring in support of the album, Sean had a new kick drum with the letters LSMS—Layne Staley and Mike Starr’s initials—stenciled on it.

Nearly four weeks before the album’s release, Nancy Layne McCallum filed a lawsuit against the Alice in Chains partnership, as well as Jerry, Mike, and Sean as individuals. In doing so, she was seeking a letter of direction from Jerry and Sean asking for payment directly to her, without deduction, of half of the royalties due to Layne under the band’s 1989 record deal; for an accounting of all the money received by the partnership relating to the 1989 contract and the sale and use of Layne’s works; for an inventory of all individual assets belonging to Layne or the partnership under the control of Jerry, Mike, and Sean, a request that covers “film, video, unreleased recordings and mixes, photographs, posters, merchandise and artwork”; and for a court-granted temporary injunction that would prevent the band from “licensing or otherwise exploiting Mr. Staley’s personality rights without Plaintiff’s written permission” or from retaining any of her royalties from Layne-related income. The lawsuit does not specify the monetary value being sought, only that it would be “proven at trial.”37