Obituary: Layne Staley of Alice in Chains

By PETER GRIFFIN

American singer/songwriter Layne Staley was found dead in his Seattle apartment on April 19 at age 34. He had been dead a few days.

It was the summer of 1992 and Nirvana were still soaring at the top of the Billboard charts with the Nevermind album when Layne Staley and Alice in Chains released their second slice of angry, grungy rock - Dirt.

The critics raved and so did new-found fans, but the passage of years finds Alice instantly stuffed into the post-Nirvana box, the bands riding on the wave made by Kurt Cobain and company.

From the beginning however, with the 1990 debut, Alice had a sound all of its own, a mix of menacing guitar riffs and the dark, anguished lyrics of lead singer Staley, whose deep melancholy would forever be interwined with an ultimately fatal love affair with heroin.

The aggression, creativity and humour of Staley powered Alice as it became an integral part of the Seattle grunge scene, taking its place alongside the likes of Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and MudHoney, famous for its electric live shows.

But even as the audiences grew and the radio airplay improved, Alice was beginning to come apart.

Staley's well documented battle with drugs continued through the mid nineties. Alice went on to put out two successful EPs and an eponymous, full-length album - more melodic and uplifting than their past efforts yet still dealing with the same themes of loneliness, despair, drugs and death. Themes that legions of young Americans found sadly relative to their own lives.

That final studio album dispelled rumours of Alice's imminent demise, as did the 1996 MTV unplugged session where a fragile looking Staley, bearded and disguising his eyes with wrap-around sunglasses, took to the stage to deliver a sombre but perfect performance.

By the late nineties Staley had slipped from view, Alice permanantly on hold as the frontman struggled to rehabilitate.

Already the band's enduring influence was obvious. Bands like Creed, Days of the New and Godsmack were displaying its traits.

It was good to hear Staley again in 1999 singing on a cover of Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall Part II, but a return to the studio with Alice failed to lead anywhere. Instead fans held onto an impressive range of songs that gave insight into a tortured soul.

"Into the flood again, same old trip it was back then. So I made a big mistake. Try to see it once my way," sings Staley on Would? - an ode to friend Andrew Wood, the lead singer of Seattle band Mother Love Bone who died of a heroin overdose.

"I feel so alone, gonna end up a big ole pile of them bones," he shouts on Them Bones.

For Staley life in the end imitated art, taking one of the best musicians of the last 10 years but ultimately ending a decade of despair for a troubled talent.