Alice in Chains: The Untold Story

“On the day they kicked me out, I was like, ‘[Kurt] Cobain, shoot me up,’ because we were playing with Nirvana and the [Red Hot] Chili Peppers down in South America.… Layne shot me up first a couple of times. Then Kurt shot me up, and then Layne shot me up after that same night, and I died, for like eleven minutes.…‘Dead for eleven minutes,’ Layne said. I woke up, I was all wet and I was in a different room. I was in the bathroom and Layne just punched me in the face, crying.”13

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Mike Inez was born in San Fernando, California, into a very musical family, with relatives who played in church bands and “old Filipino folk bands.” He was delivered by his grandmother, a nurse at the hospital. After Mike and his mother were released from the hospital, Mike was brought to his grandmother’s house, where his uncle was living at the time and practicing in a Top 40 band with members of Earth, Wind & Fire. His grandmother got “really pissed off,” and told the band to stop rehearsing because the new baby was home. In Mike’s words, he went “from the hospital straight into a live-band situation.” Mike credited his parents with letting his musical interests blossom and his relatives for having places where he could practice his craft.

He started out on clarinet and saxophone in fourth or fifth grade. One of the first songs he learned was the Commodores’ “I’m Easy” on piano. By junior high school, he was getting into hard rock and heavy metal. He grew up in the late 1970s in Pasadena, just as Van Halen was taking off. By high school, he knew he was going to be a musician for a living. He was in the marching band in high school and at Pasadena City College but was also involved in rock bands. Around the time he was twenty-two, he was rehearsing with his band when an employee at the rehearsal space told him he had tried out for Ozzy Osbourne’s band and encouraged him to do the same. Mike’s reaction: “I’ll never fucking get that gig!”

When Mike arrived at the audition, his attitude was, “I’m just happy I’m going to get to jam with the man!” He learned the songs by listening to other people playing them through the wall. When it was his turn, he wasn’t nervous because he had no expectation of getting the job. As he was in his car about to leave, he saw Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne in the rearview mirror, walking toward him. They asked him to come back the next day, because he was one of the top five.

By the next day, the finalists had been narrowed down to three. Even then, Mike still wasn’t expecting to get the job. About a week later, he auditioned for the job again. The plan was for the new bass player to go to Europe and play with Ozzy Osbourne at Wembley Arena. Mike was at his grandfather’s house when he got the phone call from Osbourne. He beat two hundred bassists for the job. In Mike’s words, “I went from playing the Coconut Teaser [a club in Los Angeles] to living in a castle with Ozzy Osbourne in one week and playing Wembley. It was an amazing experience.” He also worked on Osbourne’s No More Tears album.14

According to Mike, he and his new Alice in Chains bandmates spent his first day in London smoking “killer hash.” The band rented out a room at a rehearsal studio, where, for the next two days, they gave Inez a crash course in the Alice in Chains catalog. Biro was impressed—he thought Inez knew the songs better than Starr did. The band began a two-month European tour with the Screaming Trees.15

During the February 8 show in Stockholm, Sweden, there was a skinhead in the audience making Nazi salutes and beating people up. According to Randy Biro, “He was doing that thrashing in a circle, just elbowing people in the face, just punching people out.” Bootleg video of the concert shows that after “It Ain’t Like That,” Layne spoke to the audience, saying, “We love you fucking Swedish people.” He then walked over to the edge of the stage and knelt down to talk to a security guard. He pointed the skinhead out and invited him to the stage.

“Come on up onstage. Come on, man. Come join the band—have a good time.”

According to Biro, the skinhead was incredulous, pointing at himself and asking, “Me?”

“Everyone’s looking at him going, ‘Why the fuck is Layne being nice to this douchebag?’” Biro recalled. “The local security’s looking at him—‘What the fuck’s going on?’”

Layne walked to the edge of the stage and squatted, repeatedly motioning with his hands for the skinhead to come up. He took him by the hand and pulled him up onstage. As soon as he got up, Layne punched the skinhead in the face twice, who fell back into the audience, which was roaring with approval. Security hustled him away. Layne went back to the microphone and said, “Fucking Nazis die!”16