Speaker 1: Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Shirtley You Can't
Be Serious podcast. We are here in Atoka, Oklahoma. Oh wait, no,
I'm sorry, that's where the rooster's from. We're not in Atoka,
but we are in Norman, Oklahoma, and we are being
joined by our good friend James Buckley, back from Louisiana,
joining us to attack Alison Chains versus Stone Temple Pilots. Yeah,
how you doing, James?
Speaker 2: I am doing wonderfully, guys. It's always a thrill to
talk to you, guys, and it's always a thrill to
talk about one of my favorite topics.
Speaker 3: Both of these albums are turning thirty in about a month.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just to let you guys know. Two days ago
it was what would have been Lane Stay's fifty fifth birthday.
Three days ago it was the thirty second anniversary or Facelift.
And by the time this episode comes out, it will
be September, which is when both Core and Dirt came
out on the same day, September twenty ninth, thirty years ago.
This September.
Speaker 3: It's incredible. I can't believe these albums are that old.
We're old, man, Yeah, I mean, we're alternative. Should not
be thirty years old.
Speaker 2: I distinct we remember buying both of these albums at
the record store, and my hairline also remembers, yes, because
I had one that's definitely changed over the past thirty years.
Speaker 3: Hey, you know the funny thing is that this was
originally slated for season two on the twenty ninth anniversary.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they were like, why would we do that?
That's dumb, you kid do twenty nine. No, let's do
thirty thirty.
Speaker 3: So here we are pushed from season two now in
season three, Stone Temple Pilot's Core versus Alsa Jains Dirt.
What were you doing in ninety two, James?
Speaker 2: I was in college. I had taken one of my
frequent sabbaticals and I had just come back. I was
trying to get wrapped up.
Speaker 1: What are you doing in ninety two? Deep in ninety two,
I was in a band myself. We were covering STP songs.
I was learning how to play Rooster on the guitar.
It would I love. Rooster taught me that chords don't
have to be regular chords. You can take a chord
and just throw it anywhere on the guitar and it
might end up sounding.
Speaker 2: Goof just added that to the set list again. So
if you ever come through Monro, We're gonna grab you
up on stage. I'm telling you now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm pretty sure I can still pull it out.
I don't know about a lead, but I can definitely
do the intro for sure. Yes, I'll be there for
that one man.
Speaker 2: Oh it'll be a fun show. I guarantee you.
Speaker 1: James, you are an admin on one of the nineties
groups on Facebook, right correct.
Speaker 2: That was a very special musical era for me. I
came up out of the eighties. I was huge metal head,
but I had a dark secret. I like bands like
depeche Mode, you know, The Cure, The Fix, the Police
at the same time, so when the nineties alternative stuff,
when I started hearing bands like Nirvana and Toad, the
Wet Sprocket and the Womenheads, that resonated with me because
it seemed to combine my two favorite things so fairly
aggressive guitar and drums, slightly more introspective lyrics. So I
was a happy man for about ten years.
Speaker 1: Before we keep going, I want to give a quick
shout out to my good friend Kevin Davis. Kevin is
a guy who one night as I was sitting down
to study up on one of our episodes, is like, hey,
then your kid Russell And I was like, uh, yeah,
he's there right now, and he goes, Yep, my grandson too.
And we got to talking and his grandson's name is Halen,
as in Van Halen, and I was like, we are
going to be best friends. Wow, We're totally going to
be best friends. And so I turned him onto the
podcast and he has been a avid listener since I
showed him the podcast. And he gave us a music review.
And James is back from our comparison of Girls Girls
Girls in White Snake, and he gave us a review
on that one. So I just wanted to read it.
Kevin says, I agree with the host that White Snake
was much better than Girls Girls Girls. The crew can
light their white Johnson's on fire and I wouldn't care.
Thanks for another great show. Now I must return to
my Marble arts.
Speaker 3: That's awesome, Kevin, Thank you so much. He does like
multiple reviews. He throws him out all the time.
Speaker 1: It's awesome. Just about every episode he'll give us a
new review, and I see him all the time. I
go to that same restaurant all the time, and we
just talked up. He is a fantastic guy. When I
told him we were doing Alison Chains, he was like,
Oh my gosh, one of my favorite bands. So decided
for that. This one's for you, Kevin, there you go.
Speaker 2: Speaking of which, the guitar player for my band saw
Motley Crue in Texas last night.
Speaker 1: What's the verdict, Well.
Speaker 2: He said there were still really entertaining. Vince was a
bit off, but he said that Tommy Lee, possibly in
light of recent online shenanigans, instead of encouraging the women
in the audience to flash him, he encouraged the men
in the audience to to expose their giraffes. Let's just
say it that lay.
Speaker 1: You Me and Mike Johnson, Yes.
Speaker 2: Exactly, Preston said, no one did.
Speaker 1: So, Oh my gosh, that's hilarious.
Speaker 2: Allison Chains. I distinctly remember back in the eighties and
nineties there was a magazine called Rip or Rip or
whatever so metal magazine yep. At the end they would
always have a really extensive selection of reviews. Because I
lived in a very rural area, I was always worried
I was missing out on something cool and I remember
reading the review for Facelift, the first Allison Chains out.
I was on a massive Sabbath kick at the time,
and they hit all the right notes with the reviews
said slow, doomy riffs, founding drums, black Sabbath influence. So
I went to a local record store over the next
few days and actually found a copy of face Lyft,
and ah, man, it was love at first Listen, that's cool.
Speaker 1: It is a great album. And then of course that
Man in the Box off of that album is what
brought them into the spotlight.
Speaker 3: You know, the year that I graduated from high school
was nineteen ninety one, and so so fall of ninety
one is when the grunge thing really catches fire. You know,
Facelift predates that a little bit, and so we were
aware of Alison Chains or whatever. But when I left
my hometown and went to the university, there's a shift
in music, and so it's very easy for me to
split high school music in college music.
Speaker 1: And this is one of those that was very very college.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I was in early college, but that's still more transition.
I had a couple of cool friends who were much
cooler than I was, kept saying you need to listen
to this. You need to listen to that. They warped
me forever. I'm afraid.
Speaker 1: Were you guys ready to jump in?
Speaker 3: Absolutely, let's jump into the history of Alison Chains.
Speaker 1: Okay, history of Alison Chains starts March eighteenth, nineteen sixty six,
with the birth of little Jerry Cantrell. A little over
a year and a half later, we have the birth
of Lane Stay on August twenty second, nineteen sixty seven,
and then just almost exactly two years later, there's a
book that comes out by Doctor Seuss called My Book
About Me and Jerry Cantrell Little Kid, Lane Staley Little
Kid both had a copy of this book. And when
it got to the part of what I want to
be when I grow up, Blane Stay put I want
to be a singer, and Jerry Cantrell put, I want
to be a rock star. So as early as the
late sixties early seventies, these guys had predicted their future.
That's really cool.
Speaker 3: Did you guys have awesome lawyers written down in your
Dutchess book.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm pretty sure rock star was in my book too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, archaeologist or superhero.
Speaker 1: Badly, I want to be a stunt man, I definitely
had that book. Though my kids have that book. I
think it's required reading for everyone that exists. Yep. All right,
so we fast forward a little bit to nineteen eighty
six and the birth of a band called Sleeves. So
in nineteen eighty six, some high school friends Byron Hanson,
Johnny Bicholes, Zoli Samante, and James Bergstrom put together a
band and they needed a singer, and a friend of
theirs named Ken Elmer says, Hey, my stepbrother really wants
to be a singer. You should listen to him and like, Okay,
what's his name? And he says Lane Elmer because at
that point he was not using his own last names,
using his stepdad's last name. Well, there's a little bit
of argument about whether Laine actually wanted to be a
singer or not. He was a drummer. But he went
and did the audition for this new band that they
were going to name Sleeves. And do you know what
song he sang?
Speaker 3: He sang looks that Killed by Motley Crue.
Speaker 1: Yep. Also I saw that he also sang, now she's
a cool, cool black.
Speaker 2: There you go. There's some rumors that you may have
also sang the song love Machine by Wasp.
Speaker 1: I heard that as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just being a family oriented show, I'm not going
to translate.
Speaker 1: Well, whatever Motley Crue or Wasp song that he sang.
They realized, this guy has got the soul and the
timber and the voice that is going to make our band.
He said, we didn't know what we were looking for,
but when we saw him, we said, that's it. Yep, yep.
Speaker 3: So interestingly, Lane Staley, you mentioned Lane Elmer, which is
so funny because his name Lane Staley. That's his mother's
maiden name, and of course his father's surname, and so
Lane Staley is his parents' last names. I think that's
really cool. And then in high school he goes by
Lane Elmer. Right when his mother went back to his
twentieth high school reunion, of course Lane was dead. Yes,
she went back and people were like, wait a minute,
wait a minute, wait a minute, are you telling me
that Lane Elmer is the same guy as Lane Staley.
Speaker 1: They didn't even know. They had no friggin clue. That's crazy,
that is crazy. And to just bring Motley Crue back
into the mix again. His name, his birth name was
Lane Rutherford Staley. He had it legally changed to Lane
Thomas Staley. And do you know where the Thomas comes from? No,
Tommy Lee. He changed his name to Thomas because remember
he was a drummer before he was a singer. He
loved Tommy Lee, he loved Motley Crue. He gave himself
the middle name Thomas because of Tommy Lee. Wow, that's fantastic.
So Sleez ultimately changes its name. I got the impression
that they might have signed. And here's where I got
this impression. This is good. You guys are going to
appreciate this. There was a protest going on for the PMRC.
You guys know the PMRC, right, Yes, we've talked about
it multiple times, right, Yes, So they were having some
sort of town meeting there somewhere in Washington, and Frank
Zappa was the guest speaker, and Lane Staley is in
the audience with Backliss, and at some point he stands
up and starts ex berating the PMRC. And of course
he also plugs his band. Yes exact. A few times.
Speaker 4: I played for a rock band called Sleeves, and I mean,
there's enough controversy on our on our name more or
less than our songs. You know, we just signed a
local with a local record company. I don't feel there's
anything objectionable about any of our songs, But I don't
feel anyone anyone else has the right to rate our songs.
I mean, I'm the only one that has the right
to rate it. You know, my album, you don't have it.
Speaker 3: When I watched that interview, I'm like, this looks like
a seventeen year old kid who's just popping off about
something dumb, and that probably his thirty year old self
would be like that kid needs a shut up. But
it was funny to see though. Absolutely, you know that
Sleeves was really kind of a hair band.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it was glam metal. Yeah, it was glam metal.
And they had as I said they had. He gave
the impression that they had gotten signed with somebody, although
I didn't really see that to be true. Somewhere, but
they were doing it tour and they had some success.
Bacalus was having a conversation with a guy named Russ Klatt,
who was the singer for Slaughterhouse five. Butter House five.
They're talking about Sleeves and Welcome to the Wonderland tour
and just that word wonderland and they're whatever they were
drinking or smoking at the time. Somehow that transitioned to
Alice in Wonderland and Alice in Chains, and it.
Speaker 3: Was Alice in bondage first and then it became Alice
in Chains.
Speaker 1: So Laane Staley's mother was very religious Christian science yep,
very religious, and so he was like, Okay, I'm gonna
name this band Alice Change. She's like, that's female bondage.
By the way, if you're on Wikipedia and you see
female bondage in blue, don't click the link. Okay, puick
the link. I'm just giving you that advice, right, yes,
right there, there you go. All right. Anyway, his mom
was like, I don't really approve that. She she said,
sleez was bad enough, but this sounds like female bondage
and you shouldn't do it. But over her objection, he
called it Alice and Change. But he changed the end
to the letter in like guns in roses. Although it
was not a copy of them. They weren't even popular
yet at that point. Well, hey, one more thing on sleeves.
Speaker 3: Real quick sleeves was actually in a movie. There's a
movie called Father Rock shot in Seattle, okakay now and
they played a couple of their songs.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Lane even had a speaking part in this movie,
Shut the heck up. Yes, wow, Father Rock. I don't know.
I didn't see it. I haven't seen it. But is
this like a Maine for TV movie?
Speaker 5: You know, you know, I don't know, really, Wayne and
Garth's doing like the advertisements in all this public access
movie Steven Spielberg produced, Sleez.
Speaker 2: I love the name slaves compared to some of the
names that came later. That's that almost pure in nocense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, that's true. That is true. Some of the
other names that came later, we had Mathra and then
the F word, the F word, and it wasn't the
F word, it was the F word.
Speaker 2: Yes, they said they even had a great merchandise like
F word the band and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: But I don't think I don't think that'll fly Wmar No.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 3: I think it's interesting that initially Allison Chains really took
their cues from like Poison almost right. Their stage presence
was you know, flash and glam. They did stuff like
confetti and water guns.
Speaker 1: Lane Staley talks about two of his idols. Two idols
that he had David Bowie and Prince yep. Like I
just was like, what this is the this is the
guy that looks like the devil child in these videos.
And his influences were Ziggy, Stardust and the Purple One.
How about that. That's crazy, Let's go crazy.
Speaker 2: He had some female acquaintance at one time who actually
came across one of Prince's old suits. Yeah, Lane evidently
would wear it.
Speaker 1: He wore on stage. Oh my gosh, hey, listen to this.
I thought this was hilarious.
Speaker 3: So I guess Rob Halford from Jews Priest would ride
his motorcycle on like the big stage, big concert for juice.
Speaker 1: I'll bit for leather. There you go.
Speaker 3: And so during early Allison Chains concerts, Lane rode a
big wheel.
Speaker 1: Like you pulled out on stage. You know. That is awesome.
That is awesome.
Speaker 3: He was actually a very upbeat, sort of positive, fun
guy to be around.
Speaker 2: Yeah, even when you read interviews with people who knew
him later on at the height of his problem, they
said that his personality never really changed. He was always
a sweet, con generous guy. It's just that those demons.
Speaker 1: Man, Dude, he.
Speaker 3: Was in a fight with the dragon Hey, you mentioned Prince.
When they were rehearsing in the early early days, right,
they had this rehearsal space. They had a VCR and
two movies. One movie was The Terminator. I can check
out our podcast as the Terminator, and the other one
was Peple Rain fantastic.
Speaker 1: Was this in the music bank? Yes?
Speaker 2: Nice? Nice told the keys would just sit in the
office and watch them over and over and over again.
Speaker 1: Said there's Lane again, always watching Pearple Rain.
Speaker 2: Lane.
Speaker 1: Later on will meet a guy named Jerry Cantrell. So
before we get there, I got to give you a
little history on Jerry Cantrell. First memory three years old,
meeting his father when he returned from Vietnam. Four years later,
his parents would get divorced because of the troubles that
his dad had from returning from Vietnam. They ended up
on welfare and food stamps. But he found some musical
success in high school. He was the president of his
high school choir. That he had gotten a guitar when
he was in the sixth grade, but he really didn't
appreciate it and pick it up and start doing anything
until he got into high school. And so his success,
I mean his choir that he was the president of.
They were They sang the national anthem at shows and
were competition winners. And so his drama and his choir
teachers encouraged his career in music. As a gift when
he got his first gold record, he sent them each
copy of the gold record. That's fantastic now. That was
several years later. Right after they encouraged him to go
into a career in music, he quit college and went
to go work in a guitar store down in Dallas, Texas.
He had grown up as a kid on welfare and
food stamps, so he wasn't afraid to be poor. But
what the beautiful thing about what happened in Dallas was
is that working in this store, he got his first
what we call real guitar. It wasn't some Japanese knockoff,
It wasn't some cheap Korean model. This was a G
and L Rampage nineteen eighty four. And I can tell
you that having a real guitar is a key to
becoming a real musician. He had a couple of bands
over there in Dallas. One was called Rays, the other
one was called Sinister. But ultimately he ended up back
in Washington with the band Diamond Live.
Speaker 2: I do remember reading that the reason he originally wanted
to play guitar was listening to a couple of early
Elton John albums, and interestingly enough, the first concert Lane
Staley iver remembered going to was when Elton John. His
stepdad took him to see Elton John, and he was very.
Speaker 1: Young around this time, huge tragedy in Jerry Cantrell's life.
His mother and grandmother both pass away within six months
of each other nineteen eighty six nineteen eighty seven, both
from cancer. He falls into a significant depression. Three weeks
after his mother's death, he meets Lane Staley. Now he
had seen Lane Staley perform earlier with the glam metal
version of Alison Chains.
Speaker 3: I've got May First in nineteen eighty seven. Okay, we're
talking about the summer of eighty seven.
Speaker 1: Well it might be April.
Speaker 2: What do you got?
Speaker 1: I got April eleventh? No, No, May first? Okay, go ahead, we'll.
Speaker 3: Go with yours somewhere between in April eleventh and May first.
Speaker 1: Well, yes, so. Then five to four months later, Diamond
LII played their last show. Jerry has met Lane at
a party and they're both a little drunk, and Jerry
somehow mentions that he's homeless, and so Lane says, Hey,
why don't you come stay with me? I am staying
at this rehearsal studio called the Music Bank.
Speaker 3: By the way, when Jerry saw Lane perform one thousand Chains,
he said, I want to be in a band with
that guy right there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, then, not too long after they've become roommates,
the a n C breaks up, Alice in Chains breaks up,
and so Jerry is trying to put together a new
band because his band's broken up, and Lane is trying
to put together a funk band and they reach disagreement.
They're like, hey, you know, I'll sing in your band
if you play guitar in my band, and that was
their agreement. So Jerry Cantrell's trying to put together this band.
Layne Staley is like, well, I played with this guy
named Sean Kinney. He's really good. You might could use
him as a drummer. And Jerry Cantrell is like, great,
do you have his number? And he says no, but
I have his girlfriend's number. He's like, okay, who's his girlfriend? Melinda? Okay, great,
calls Melinda she says, yeah, sure, he'll come meet with you.
So he comes plays drums for Jerry and Jerry's like,
you're great. I think I've got a great guy to
play bass for us. I used to play with him
in a band called Gypsy Rose. His name's Mike Starr,
and Sean goes, well, that's really interesting because that's Melinda's brother. Yeah,
Melinda Starr, that's awesome.
Speaker 2: And Melinda would have a key role to play later
on as well.
Speaker 1: Yes, And so they rehearsed together. They were playing well,
but it was becoming a problem that there were two
bands going on, and so at some point they just
decided they were going to basically trick Lane into becoming
only a singer for this. And they're like, okay, Lane,
you know you got your band and that's fine. We
just we can't have a guy with two bands, so
we're going to get another singer. And he's like, oh,
all right. And so they would audition the guys in
front of Lane, and they picked the worst singers that
they could find. Singer horrible singer after horrible singer, and
Lane's just going crazy until finally they top it off.
They throw the straw in that breaks the camel's back,
and they have a male stripper audition as singer for
the band, and finally Lane's like, forget it, forget it.
I will be your singer. I will get rid of
my funk band, and I will only sing for you guys.
I kind of want to see the Lane's Daily Prince band. Yeah,
you know, funk band.
Speaker 2: Heck yeah. Ron Holt the guy who started up that band.
It's called like forty Seconds Hate or something like that.
A few years back he actually tried to sell a
cassette he had online of some of their rehearsals. I
think some early demos he recorded with Lane. I think
the last it was up to about five thousand. I think, wow,
so maybe maybe your Prince cover is on there somewhere.
Speaker 1: Hey, let's go.
Speaker 3: Whoever bought that, if you're listening, put it out there
on YouTube for us.
Speaker 2: Sean had actually, I think met Lane several years previously.
The band had played a beach party sleeve Sead. I
think Sean cornered Lane after the concert and say, yeah,
your band's great, but your drummer sucks. You need me.
That's when the game is number Girlfriend's number.
Speaker 1: Keavin Melnda's number. I'm I'm in between bones right now,
here's my girlfriend's phone number.
Speaker 3: So Lane committed full time to the band Diamond Lie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they had entertained the name Mathra and the F
word as we had discussed. Then they became Diamond Lie,
which was Jerry's old band's name. But ultimately they all
decided they liked Alice in Change better. But they changed
the end to I D because they liked the idea
of female bondage. They would click the link. Okay, so
there're at the Music Bank and they just I mean
they're living in a rehearsal space. As a musician, I
can not imagine how awesome it would be to have
a place where you live with your bandmates and all
you do all day long is play music and try
to come up with new stuff together, you know, when
you're not watching Purple Ring exactly, or the Terminator. They
had this guy who was a local promoter named Randy Hauser,
and he was like, you guys are great. I will
fund a demo tape for you. Do the demo recording.
We're going to do it at the Music Bank. Problem
is is that the day before they were supposed to record,
Washington does its biggest marijuana bust in state history, and
of course there's some drugs over at the music Bank
shocker what yep? And they close it down.
Speaker 2: Evidently whoever had least the building somebody else at least
a different part of it. It built up a wall,
partitioned it off, and had quite the weed operation.
Speaker 3: Go okay, wait, let's back up, because there's a story,
a big story right before that.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, Yeah, Randy Hauser was in jail for dealing
cocaine as well.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, this is not the first time we're
going to talk about drugs in this episode, trust me.
Speaker 1: So he was. He was in jail for dealing cocaine.
Speaker 3: He gets out, gets his life back together, he goes
to beauty school.
Speaker 1: Beauty school drip.
Speaker 3: So, So he went to beauty school, and there he
met Melinda Starr. She knew that he was this sort
of local promoter and he was looking to kind of
do this. She gave him a cassette and asked him
to listen to it. Keep in mind, her boyfriend at
the time was Sean Kenney. Okay, he takes that cassette home,
tosses it in a box full of other demos from
a million different groups that he never listens to.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: Now, then flash forward about a month from then. Nick Loft,
who is an A and R guy from Atlantic, was
staying at Randy Hauser's house. Okay, don't know the story there,
don't really care, but he's going through this box of tapes,
just kind of looking for something. And when he pops
in that tape that Melinda Starr had given him, yeah,
he's like, who are these guys? And these guys got
something and the tape was not labeled, and so Randy's
looking at the tape like, Okay, I have no freaking
idea where I got this tape, but he knows he's
got something, right, right, He's got something here, uh huh,
And so he can't.
Speaker 1: For the life of him, remember where he got this tape, okay.
Speaker 3: And so he's at the beauty school racking his brain,
racking his brain, his brain, and Melinda goes.
Speaker 1: Did you listen to that tape I gave you? And
it all clicks nice. Just when he finds the band
that is going to he's going to be able to
break the music bank, gets busted for drugs. Well, and
that's when Susan Silver steps in. Kelly Curtis was managing
Mother Love Bone and Susan Silver was managing soundguard. Soundguard
married Chris Cornell. That's right. Yeah. They ultimately got a
copy of the demo that they ended up doing, called
The Treehouse Tapes. So Randy Houser misses out, so Susan.
Speaker 3: Silver steps in and says, this guy's a drug dealer.
He's going to get you guys in trouble. I think
I should do this. Yeah, And so they're like, we
agree with you. He's out right, and so she passes
us on to Colombia. Colombia signed them after some negotiations,
signed them on September eleventh, nineteen eighty nine, exactly two
years to the day later, their debut album, Facelift, goes gold.
So before they're signed, Alis in Chains plays their first
show July twenty fifth, nineteen eighty eight. The same summer,
Lane meets a woman named Demri Perot.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, okay, she's working on Saturdays. She is cute
as a button.
Speaker 3: She looks like she just came right out of the
sitcom Friends, very very pretty girl. Got it all together.
She's going to play a part in this story.
Speaker 1: Yes she is.
Speaker 3: Okay, Now listen to this. June one, nineteen eighty eight,
Jerry Cantrell attends a Guns N' Roses and Iron Maiden
concert in Seattle.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 3: He manages to get backstage. He hands a demo tape
to Axel Rose. He then watches Axl Rose walk about
ten feet away.
Speaker 1: And throw that demo tape directly in the trash can.
So I called you the other night. We're going to
I'm in a total sidebar here, total sidebar, yep. So
I called you the other night because I had come
across this thing and I really have no idea where
to put this, so I'm just gonna put it now. Right. So,
when they were supposed to record Facelift, Sean Kenny had
broken his hand. Yes, and he's the drummer, so his
hand's kind of important. He's broken his hand, and so
they get a guy named Greg Gilmour to come in
to replace him for the recording of the drums for
this album. Sean Kenny's going to miss out on recording
drums on their very first album, right, So this guy
named Greg Gilmore. He was the drummer for Mother Lovebam,
the bands that we're talking about today. Have Lot both
have lost their singers to heroin. Scott Wiland, Lane Stay
both gone because of heroin. Heroin was involved in Kurt
Cobain's death, and Jason pointed out, He's like, wow, Pearl
Jam has made it through all of this and didn't
have a heroin death. And I'm like, nope, because Pearl
Jam started off as Mother love Bone and Andy Wood
died of a heroin overdose. Heroin has taken almost every
lead singer of these major bands that we have of
the day of that time, we threw in Sublime and
Blind Mellon a ton of them. But anyway, back up,
Greg Gilmour also was the drummer for a punk band,
punk band out of Seattle, and the punk band out
of Seattle had a bass player who went down to
LA after that band broke up and joined a band
called Guns n' Roses and Duff McKagan. We talked about
this in our Appetite for Destruction Guns and Roses, we
probably did. He went down there joined this band and
they were just starting out, but he had a band
that had broken up and said, hey, hey, we've got
some dates that we have set with my old band.
We can go up to Seattle and play those shows
as Guns and Roses, and they all talk about how
this bus ride up there where like the van breaks
down and everybody gets angry at each other, and nobody
shows up to the shows because they haven't done any
self promoting. That made them jell as a band. It
was that thing that caused them to jell as a band.
Greg Gilmour was the drummer for the band whose sets
Guns n' Roses took over Wow. But when he came
in to play for Alison Chains, Sean Kenny is trying
to show him how to do the drums with one hand,
and eventually they just said, uh, never mind, we'll just
come back in a month or two when Sean hand
works again. That's great.
Speaker 2: I remember an interview with Sean. He said he kept
out when he finally started playing, he kept the ice
bucket right beside the drum set so between the song
or said he had to shove that hand in, and
evidently the problem was I don't know if y'all ever
seen Sean. Kenny's a real tall, kind of big guy.
He's a hard hitter, and evidently Gilmour just could not
reach his levels myself to subscribe to the Sean Kinney
school of playing. But that's another story.
Speaker 1: He said.
Speaker 3: He kept standing there off stage going hit it harder, No, no,
no harder. So you mentioned that they signed in September
of eighty nine. Yes, that summer of nineteen eighty nine
they opened for Get This Bullet Boys, Tesla, Great.
Speaker 1: White Wow, cutting their teeth with the eighties hairbands a
little bit. Well, I don't know. I call it Tesla hairband,
but yes, that's right. Sorry, don't hit me for saying that.
Speaker 2: This is evidently a time where Jerry Cantrell has approached
from writing music began to change. They'd all come up
in the glam heavy metal scene, but Jerry was evidently
very inquisitive. He would talk to other musicians like punk bands,
try to find out about their influences. He allegedly talked
to Kim Thale, the guitar player for Soundgarden, about some
of the songs he played off their Louder Than Love album,
and Kim says that he showed Jerry the drop D tuning.
Jerry disputes. Jerry later said he earned it from Van
Halen's unchained, but Kim was doing some really creative riffs
at the time. So I can see Jerry being intrigued
by that. The guys who were with him in Diamond
Law said that after his mom and his aunt died
that his songwriting also changed. It was less about girls
and partying and more about personal issues.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm going to just keep the digression going because
you mentioned Van Halen, okay, And so I saw an
interview just a couple of days ago with Sammy Hagar
and he was talking about Alison Chains and he was
talking about how it was obvious to him that they
were a part of the hair band glam metal scene
that everybody was turning off. And then Alison Chains was
the new up and coming band and so as opposed
to fighting them, he decided to join them. And he
called them up and said, why don't you guys open
up for our show? And so Alison Chains opened up
for Van Halen and they were fantastic friends. And I've
also seen a picture where Van Halen is doing their
typical you know, where they marched behind each other doing
the little shuffle back and forth. Well, Alison Chain snuck
up behind them, dressed in nothing but g strings to
do the Little Dance with Them's hilarious. Yeah. Jerry Cantrell
said that during that time he became very good friends
with Eddie van Halen, all very down to earth guys,
and he said, hey, you know it was when they
had that music Man guitar. It was that time period
for Eddie. He says, I really love that guitar. Would
you ever let me buy one from you? And Eddie's like,
buy one? Are you kidding me? He goes, this is
the problem with the world. He goes, when you really
need a guitar and nobody will give you one, and
when you don't need it, everybody gives you all of them.
And he says, I'll send one to you. And so
Jerry had been staying. I believe it was at Chris
Cornell's house. No, it was his manager, his manager at
the time. When he gets home, the manager's like, hey,
welcome back. Can you get all your crap out of
my garage? And he goes down and his garage is
full of guitars and amps, including a gold top music
Man guitar, which I mean it's beautiful and amazing in
all sorts of ways. Sad part is just a couple
of years later, somehow it got stolen on one of
their tours and he did not have it until the
Internet and people being able to search things, and so
twenty eighteen, somebody figured out what guitar had been sent
to him by Eddie van Haalen, tracked it down in Florida,
got it back and got it to him. He's now
got it back again. Wow, that's cool.
Speaker 3: Okay, So after they've signed, it's now time to make
a record. Dave Jorden was one of the many producers
who is possible for this Allison Chains record. Nobody wanted
to do Alison Chains because Guns and Roses was super
hot at the moment, and the high vocals of Axel
is what everybody kind of gravitated towards. Well, Dave was
attracted to the low vocals of Lane. He thought, man,
this is really cool. This sounds like Black Sabbath. This
is what I grew up on, and so he wanted
to do their record. So they were playing in La
and he goes to check him out. Okay, so I
thought this was really funny. When he goes to check
them out, there were four people in the audience. Four Dave,
Dave's manager, a guy on acid, dancing on the floor
like going crazy and.
Speaker 1: Rick Rubin what.
Speaker 3: R DJ double r our man deaf Dave just had
a baby right there when I said that. But yeah,
the guy who produced Run DMC and Slayer. He was
there as a possible producer as well. After a few songs,
He's like, Nope, these guys aren't for me.
Speaker 1: I'm out. Down to three people in the room. Rick
Rubin passed on Alison Chane. Yes he did, Yes, he did.
That is tragic, And at that time he decided instead
to go to Wolf the Wolf Spain. Yeah Spain, you know,
world famous, Yeah, Wolf Spain, all right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, famous for their singer filling in for Bruce Dickinson
for a while, an iron mate. That's so.
Speaker 1: Jordan ended up as the producer and their first album
is Facelift. It comes out with a smashing single Man
in the Box, and all of a sudden, everyone in
the country knows who Alison chains is.
Speaker 2: They I think with We Die Young as a single
and it didn't quite catch on. I think in the
first few months they sold maybe forty thousand copies, but
when they released Man in the Box, within six weeks
I think they'd sold four hundred thousand copies.
Speaker 3: So I've got a couple of things I want to
talk about Man in Box real quick. Dave Jorden was
driving to the studio one day thinking about the recording
that day.
Speaker 1: For Austin Chance.
Speaker 3: What comes on the radio Living on a Prayer by
bon Jovi. As he's listening, he's like, you know what,
Man in the Box needs a voicebox.
Speaker 1: You're telling me that the voice box in Man in
a Box came from Living in a Prayer by by Joby. Yes,
Oh my god.
Speaker 3: It's one of the two pieces of equipment they bought
for this album. They bought like a five hundred dollars
based guitar and a one hundred dollars voice box.
Speaker 1: And that's the reason why. Wow wow wow wow wow
wow wow wow wow. That's it.
Speaker 2: Dave Jorden's had he had some credibility coming into this.
He had already done James Addictions Nothing shocking back in
nineteen eighty eight. Yep. But he was one of my
favorite albums. He did the first Social Distortion album. He
done some stuff for Anthrax, so they got he clearly
knew his way around the guitar based band.
Speaker 3: The other Man in the Box story. I want to
tell real quick. The CEO of MTV, they brought in
a new guy and he wanted to change what they
were doing at the time. So there was a conscious
shift to move away from hair metal and move to
something different. So one day they had two videos that
they were deciding whether or not to get into heavy rotation.
Speaker 1: One of them was by Blue Murder. Remember them, Yeah,
Blue Murder is Sykes, John Sykes, John Sykes who is
responsible for the White Snake album. Yes, it's his band,
Blue Murder.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: So they had a Blue Murder video that they wanted
to play or Allison Chain's Man in the Box, and
they chose to move away from hair metal with that selection.
Moved that Allison Chains Man in the Box song to
their what they called the buzz clip of the Week
or buzzband or whatever, and that contributed to their massive
rising popularity.
Speaker 1: How about that John Sykes Cannot Catch a Break? John
Sykes Cannot Catch a breakd go fired from White Snake
and shunned by MTV.
Speaker 2: I did read an in a cool interview with Jordan
talking about it later. So one of the reasons he
thinks he got the jobs he's talking to Jerry Cantrail
and said he probably I'll at your approach. He said,
what Metallica did by speeding up Tony almeis riffs you're
doing by slowing him down, said Jerry Candrel, say you
got it, man, that's it, And Jordan said, that's how
we got the job.
Speaker 1: That's fantastic.
Speaker 3: Okay, I got a couple of things for you. On
Facebook's Really Quick. There's a song on there called real.
Speaker 2: Thing that is a very prophetic song.
Speaker 1: Okay, well tell me about it.
Speaker 2: Well, it's most of the songs on that album don't
really seem to be more observational talking about bad things
in life. But I mean that song has lines like
played around as a boy, grew up and made the
blade Manu toy and later early talks, I went to
rehab and the doctors didn't do me no good and
wow yeah, and so even then there was some suggestion,
even though Lane's all his friends say that Lane's drug
use wasn't that bad at this point you really hadn't
touched heroin, there were some hints.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, I want to talk about the lyric at the
very end when Lane Gille's sexual Chocolate Baby that is
a clear reference to Coming to America.
Speaker 1: Have we done it? Coming to America? That was one
of our first episodes. I gotta check that one out.
Speaker 2: Okay, it's a fantastic one.
Speaker 3: Okay, I got one more facelift story for you. The
guys were recording in La and at night when they
got done recording, you know, hard day at the office,
they would go to Motley Cruz's favorite joint, the Tropicana.
Speaker 2: Right discussed in the travel All Girls, Girls Girls.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 3: They apparently that Trapicana is where they lost their heart
as well. But they got a calendar that had pictures
of all the Tropicana girls and they would put big
red x'es over each girl that they slept with from
the Trappicana's.
Speaker 1: Kind of like an advent calendar.
Speaker 2: What are we opening today?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 3: One date I've got to bring up is March fifteenth,
nineteen ninety. That is the day that Andrew Wood of
Mother love Bone died of a heroin overdose. Mother Lovebone
was on the cusp of maybe breaking big and all
these guys went through the funeral. Yeah, and they knew
what he died of.
Speaker 1: Yep. I mean the sign says warning ahead. Well, there's
a reason they call it a monkey on your back,
some living thing that you can't control and can't get
to you.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: In August of ninety is when Facelift was released and
it was dedicated to Andy Would. It was also dedicated
to Jerry Cantrell's mother, Gloria, whose name comes up in
one of their songs on the album We're going to
cover here in just a little bit yep. But before
we get there, we had a little bit of stuff
that happened in between Facelift and Dirt. And one of
those things is that these guys were in a real movie.
They were in a movie called Singles, and while they
were in there making that movie, Cameron Crow said, Hey,
I need you guys to get a song together for
this soundtrack, and I will of course pay the fee
for you to record it. And so, just like Huey
Lewis had done years before, they came in and they
used their studio time to record that song, along with
about ten other songs, mostly acoustic stuff, did some demos
for Rooster and another couple of songs. But during that
recording process, Sean Kenney comes in and he says, I
had a dream last night that we released an EP
and it was called SAP, and all the guys said, well,
we can't mess with fate. Let's do it. And they
took all of those songs that they had recorded on
the sly while they were just supposed to be recording
Wood for the single soundtrack, and they turned that into
an EP called SAP. And that album is awesome, one
of my favorites.
Speaker 2: Well, oh, it's amazing. It was released on my birthday
in nineteen ninety two. I remember that well for some reason, huh,
and it's can we make a brief digression back towards singles? Sure?
That movie, I mean, it was a typical nineties rom
com but with worst wardrobe, even worse hair, but just
an amazing soundtrack. When that was released in that summer
prior to release of Dirt, I picked it up and
hearing Wood and seeing the direction Alison James are taking
their new music, I was so excited. Now I could
not wait for Dirt to come out a few months later.
But anyway, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: No, I think it's important. I mean because the reason
that Allison Chain's is predominant in that movie is because
they were an established band at that time, Soundgarden was
also an established band, so much so that the Matt
Dylan part was supposed to be played by Chris Cornell,
but then they realized Chris Cornell can't act, and so
they gave the part to an actor, and they gave
Chris Cornell this small part where he's watching the car
explode from the speakers, which is a great part. I
love that part. You've got the guys from Pearl Jam
in it before their Pearl Jam, I mean, before they
have done anything. They're in the band as Matt Dylon's band.
Speaker 6: And you'll remember, Yes, that's it, Citizen Dick. Yes, and
you'll remember that when we talked about Pearl Jam and
Nirvana at that time, those guys in Seattle, they were
so secluded and it was just that kind of weird
subpop managed to get somebody from a major magazine to
do a story on the Seattle Sound and that's really
what caused that whole group of bands to explode. But
before that they had worked together like they weren't in competition.
They were deepest friends, right. That's why they all went
to Andy Wood's funeral.
Speaker 1: That's why they would all ultimately go together to Lane
Staley's Funeral. But all of those guys were involved together,
and because Alison Chains was the band that was most
established at that time, that's the one that's why they
were so predominant in that movie.
Speaker 2: That soundtrack was amazing, but we even had early Pearl
Jam material on there that was really fun. But going
back to SAP, I remember listening to that the first time,
and I was so used to all the doomy riffs
off Facewift that it took me out one listen to
it just what they're doing. But then you realized, Wow,
these guys are really talented musicians and they've written some
beautiful songs on this album.
Speaker 1: I can remember when I started listening to these guys,
I thought to myself, this guy is a genius. He
is a genius guitar player.
Speaker 2: He makes this weird combination of blues, metal and some
kind of psychedelic texture. It just has a sound all
his own. SAP for an EP had pretty good. You
had Ann Wilson from Heart singing back up.
Speaker 1: On one so it Blows Me Away Man.
Speaker 2: On Brother and Inside, you had Jerry Cantrell making his
first lead vocal appearance on the song I think as
a brother.
Speaker 1: Hey, they knew that Alice mud School choir.
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly, YEA had Alice Muddgarden, which was Alison Chains
Mark arm from the band mud Honey. So if you
ever looked at him, he looks kind of like a
Borgain basement Tom Cruise and then you've got Chris Cornell
wailing away in the background. Is all he could. It
was just such a fun album and such a surprising album.
And I think it actually sold within two weeks that
had gone gold, sold over five hundred thousand copies, So
that's not a bad fell in.
Speaker 3: So fall of ninety one, they're touring with Van Hill.
This is when the big h comes in. Heroin shows
up right here. According to Mike Star's dad, Demery Perrot
introduced it to Lane, and Lane introduced it to Mike Starr,
the manager of Alison Chains got a phone call one
night and it was Lane and he was telling him
how much he loved Heroin. He and Demery could not
talk enough about it. They were just going on and
on about how great it was. He's like, as soon
as I heard that they were fighting a losing battle.
According to one friend, Lane got down on his knee
and thanks God for feeling so good.
Speaker 1: And from there it just never stopped.
Speaker 3: At this time, Mike Starr started like scalping Van Halen
tickets in front of his own concert to raise drug money.
Speaker 2: It said. His guest list started growing longer and longer
for each show because he was adding people who I
guess bought tickets off of him.
Speaker 1: It's crazy.
Speaker 3: Right when the money started coming in from their first
album and from these EPs, I thought this was interesting.
They were pretty conservative with their money. Jerry Cantrell, going
with his Oklahoma roots, bought a Dodge pickup limited.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: So right before Dirt comes out, there is an intervention
conducted on behalf of Lank. His family meets with him,
his band meets with him, even though his band is
doing drugs as well, right and they say, look, dude,
you got to get this problem taken care of. And
so Lane says, okay, I will get this problem taken
care of.
Speaker 1: And that's when he went to rehab the first time,
the first time, and then he didn't never have to
go again, and everything's okay.
Speaker 3: Lane went or thirteen times in his life and it
never ever tuck well apparently was the greatest thing in
his life.
Speaker 1: It really was. As a matter of fact, it was
so good it was worth dying for. Yep, all right,
we are ready to jump into dirt track by track
next week.
Speaker 2: James, thanks for being everybody always have last to hang
out with my Oklah homies.
Speaker 1: You're coming back so we can do track by track together.
Speaker 2: This is an album. Sometimes it's a tough listen, but
it's one I listened to over and over a year
after year, so I can't wait.
Speaker 1: Awesome guys, We will see you next week. Be sure
and hit that subscribe button on your podcast app or
follow if you will, be sure and check us out
on Twitter at Shirley Podcast, on Facebook at Shirley Podcast,
send us an email at shirleypodcast at gmail dot com.
And if you loved this episode and want to become
an executive producer like our good friend James, you can
go to our Patreon page that is Patreon dot com
slash Shirly podcast s U R E L Y P
O D C A s T and for as little
as five bucks a month, you can become an executive
producer and you get access to our super secret sneaky
episodes where we are covering one hit wonders and some
extras just for our Patreon subscribers, so be sure and
check that out. Guys, we love you. Can't tell you
how much we appreciate you listening all the way through.
We will see you next week for Dirt track by
track or.
Speaker 7: Wow boom bum boom boom bum bum bum bum bum
Speaker 2: Bum bum Up