Rockstars who tried to save Layne Staley of Alice in Chains

SIGN UP for 10 of the Craziest Stories in Rock N' Roll [Secret Playlist]: https://bit.ly/3vVPAEF

Check out our Top 25 Favourite Albums Here
https://rockandrolltruestories.com/

Have a video request or a topic you'd like to see us cover? Fill out our google form!
https://bit.ly/3stnXlN

----CONNECT ON SOCIAL----
Instagram:   / rocknrolltruestories  
Facebook:   / rnrtruestories  
Twitter:   / rocktruestories  
Blog: www.rockandrolltruestories.com

#laynestaley #aliceinchains #jerrycantrell

I cite my sources and they may differ than other people's accounts, so I don't guarantee the actual accuracy of my videos.

From 1996 to 2002 Alice in Chains frontman Layne Staley lived a pretty reclusive life. If you’ve read either grunge is dead or everybody loves our town there’s a handful of pretty depressing stories about what layne was up to in his reclusive years and how his appearance had drastically changed from years of drug abuse. It was during this time, especially towards the tale end of his life that several of his musician friends and bandmates tried to help him get clean. That’s what we’re going to explore in today’s video.

John Frusciante

It was around either 1999 or 2000 that, Bob Forrest and John Frusciante tried to help convince Layne Staley to get off drugs. Forrest would recount the story in his book Running with Monsters: A Memoir. Forrest who dealt with addiction previously became known as a person who could get through to addicts and Staley’s mom asked him for his help. Red Hot Chili Peppers john frusciante who was newly sober at the time didn’t think they could get through to staley, but joined Forrest anyways in visiting layne in his apartment in seattle.


Bob: “Hey Layne. What’s going on.”
Layne: “Nothing. I know why you’re here.”
Bob: “Your Mom’s worried, man. You don’t look too good.”
Layne: “I’m okay, though. Really.”
After leaving layne’s apartment forrest woul remark to frusciante in his book “I don’t think he’ll come out of this.” to which Frusciante responded, “It’s his life, man.”
Mark Lanegan
The former Screaming Trees frontman would talk to Rolling Stone and talked about getting sober in the late 90’s and tryingto help Layne. He would tell Rolling Stone The first time I saw him (referring to Layne) after I’d gotten clean, I’d been clean a year. I’m pretty sure that [Alice in Chains’] Jerry [Cantrell] and Mike Inez flew me up to Seattle because they were unable to get into his house. He had a camera and lived in the penthouse of this condo. So whenever anybody from that camp would come to see him, he would just ignore it. Jerry and Mike knew that when he saw me, he would let me in. I went along with that, and I also wanted him to see that I was clean, that it was possible to get clean, that his prediction that I would never be able to do it had failed [laughs]. Hopefully, maybe, it would give him the idea that he, himself, could do it. But he didn’t want to do it.
When I got there, I said, “Hey, man, it’s been a while. I’ve been clean for more than 12 months.” And he was like, “No, you weren’t, man. You just left, like, two months ago.” His sense of time had warped. And he wasn’t buying the truth from me. I remember him saying at that point, “I always just keep thinking I’m gonna get that same feeling I got the first time again.”Lanegan would go on to say that he hoped a medical emergency would force layne to change his ways but his medical emergency ended up being his death.
Finally his bandmates more specifically drummer Sean Kinney and Mike Inez tried to help Layne. Inez would reveal in the book how himself and Mark Lanegan would go beat on his door to talk to Layne but to no avail. with Kinney recalling Kinney said: “It got to a point where he’d kept himself so locked up, both physically and emotionally. I kept trying to make contact. Three times a week, like clockwork, I’d call him, but he’d never answer. Every time I was in the area, I was up in front of his place yelling for him. Even if you could get into his building, he wasn’t going to open the door. You’d phone, and he wouldn’t answer. You couldn’t just kick the door in and grab him, though there were so many times I thought about doing that. But if someone won’t help themselves, what, really, can anyone else do?”
It was also briefly mentioned in the book Alice in Chains the untold story that Krist Novaselic of Nirvana would sometimes take food over to Layne’s house. Hoping to save the frontman after losing his friend Kurt Cobain
In the book grunge is dead krisha augerot who worked for pearl jam singled out Alice in CHains manager and Chris Cornell’s wife at the time as being the person who tried to help Layne the most straighten out his personal life recalling “she was a constant in his life trying to get him clean unfortunately he just never accepted it.”