Alice in Chains: The Untold Story

“The weird thing about that story is that ten years later, as I started to encounter kids who grew up with that album, and even today, I’ve never bumped into one kid that said they used drugs because of the album,” Carlstrom noted. “In fact, it’s been the contrary every single time, not just like half and half, but every single kid is like, ‘Wow, I didn’t do drugs because of that album. Just listening to Layne’s lyrics was like this big sign that said, ‘Don’t come this way.’ That was a big shocker for me,” he admits. “I’m sure that people out there did drugs because of that album. It’s hard for me to imagine that that didn’t take place, but I haven’t met any of them.”

Vocals and guitar overdubs for “Down in a Hole” and “Rooster” were recorded on June 23. The next day, they did vocals and guitars for “Rain When I Die,” Jerry’s guitar solo for “God Smack,” the vocals for “Angry Chair,” and the backing vocals for “Rooster.” On June 26, vocals and guitars for “Dirt” and “Angry Chair” were recorded.

Layne’s vocals on “Angry Chair” are massive, unusually so compared to anything else on the album or in the Alice in Chains catalog. The reason for this? “On the part where he’s singing, ‘Sitting on an angry chair…’ there’s sixteen tracks of vocals going there,” Carlstrom said. “All different harmonies, and multiple layers of harmonies. Maybe there’s a harmony part and it’s tripled, and another harmony part and it’s tripled, and the lead part. It was crazy. And then I had to find space to record all those delays, because all the delays you hear on the vocals I actually printed … on tape along with the vocals.” The delay Carlstrom refers to is an echolike effect Layne used when recording his vocals.

Carlstrom had two other vivid recollections of recording Layne’s vocals. While working on “Them Bones,” Layne showed an improvisational element when he told Carlstrom, “Oh, I hear a little vocal part I want to stick in the song.” As he was hearing the music played back to him on his headphones, Layne began singing the “Ah!” screams timed to Jerry’s guitar riff. He tracked the screams once or twice. “He just made that up on the spot,” Carlstrom said. Jerry is credited for the music and lyrics to the song, but it’s difficult to imagine without those screams.

Layne also demonstrated an ability to innovate in using his voice as an instrument. “He sings on the verse on ‘God Smack’ with this effect that literally sounds like there’s a tremolo [effect] or a Leslie [speaker] on his voice, and he is doing that with his voice,” Carlstrom said. No studio wizardry was necessary. Carlstrom had no idea how he was doing it. He couldn’t see Layne singing because of the makeshift wall in the studio.

Cisneros also noted that Layne could be very sensitive. She recalls one day while on break, they were watching To Kill a Mockingbird on TV, and she noticed he started to tear up during a scene near the end of the movie.

Cisneros’s calendar shows no entries until the second week of July. Vocals and guitars for “Sickman” and guitars for “Fear the Voices” on July 7. July 9 is marked down as vocals, although the song is not identified. July 10 is marked explicitly as vocals for “Fear the Voices.”

“Mike talked to me before we did the album. He said he had these songs and he wanted publishing—he wanted to get more money,” Jerden said. “He wanted to know if as producer I would help him out and get these songs, make them really good so they could make it on the record. I worked really hard. I spent more time on those two songs, one in particular, than any of the other songs on the record. They just were not good songs. I tried to make them work for Mike, but I just could not do it. And Jerry and Layne were getting fed up with the whole thing.”

One of those songs—likely “Fear the Voices”—was referred to as “Mike’s Dead Mouse” by the band and Jerden. “It was like a kid bringing a dead mouse to school and showing it to everybody, and he pets it and it’s all dirty and all that stuff, and it’s like nobody wants to see this dead mouse anymore.”

There were two memorable and, in retrospect, foreboding incidents during the recording of this song. On a Saturday afternoon, Carlstrom was in the studio with Layne and Mike working on the song, which was already difficult because of technical issues. “That was actually a fairly stressful thing right there, because we’re trying to edit things that they had recorded from Seattle, edit together multitracks of things from Seattle with things that we had recorded here in Los Angeles, which I’d never done before.”

“Jerry and Sean didn’t like the song,” Carlstrom explained. He speculated that it was because the song “didn’t feel like it fit” on the record, but Mike persisted. “Mike really wanted that song on the record, and at the time Layne was the only one backing the song, so there was stress regarding that situation.”