Alice in Chains: The Untold Story

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?”

“The way I look at songs is [not] for myself [but] if I was a different person playing the songs.” After listening to the song, he told Mike, “Okay, now I’m going to play it like I was John Paul Jones playing on the first Led Zeppelin album.”