Alice in Chains: The Untold Story

Chapter 25

IN APRIL 2000, Argentinean journalist Adriana Rubio traveled to Seattle determined to track down Layne to write a book about him. This initial trip was unsuccessful, but she made a second trip in September of that year and made contact with Layne’s mother and sister Liz Coats.1 Layne was not happy about the book, or the fact that his mother and sister were cooperating with her. When Coats told Layne about it, he told her he wanted no part in it. Rubio returned in June 2001, when she met with Coats and Nancy Layne McCallum for several days’ worth of interviews in Seattle and Haines, Alaska, where McCallum was living at the time.2

Layne sightings were rare in his final years. According to Seattle music journalist Charles R. Cross, Layne, toward the end of his life, had lost most of his teeth, and his arms were covered with abscesses.3 He was also dangerously underweight. Although he was naturally skinny, people who knew Layne said that his normal weight ranged between 150 and 170 pounds. Those who saw him in his later years estimated his weight at 100 pounds or less.

It can be surmised that there were four things that formed his daily routine: his toys and video games; his cat, Sadie; his art projects; and his drugs. Less than a ten-minute walk from Layne’s apartment is a PETCO and an art supplies store. Both businesses were open during the time Layne lived in the neighborhood, and it is possible he frequented these stores. However, none of the employees at the PETCO were working there during the period Layne lived in the area; the employees at the art store say the business changed ownership in early 2002, and they don’t recall seeing him in the store. They also said there was another art store nearby at the time that has since gone out of business.

As you walk down nearby University Avenue, teeming with bars, restaurants, and shops, as well as University of Washington students, there are many businesses that might have had items of interest to Layne. Store employees said because of the constant turnover in students, employees, and businesses opening and closing, it would be unlikely to find stores frequented by Layne or people who might have seen him.

Morgen Gallagher ran into Layne at a Super Bowl party in January 2001. Layne told Gallagher he was going to clean up and go to rehab so he could audition for the newly vacant lead singer position in Rage Against the Machine. Based on accounts of Layne’s final studio sessions in 1998, it is unlikely this was anything more than his talking or thinking out loud.

In early 2001, Nick Pollock was buying groceries at a QFC supermarket in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. He saw someone wearing what he described as a “ridiculous costume,” consisting of a funky hat, a fake wig, and a long coat, shuffling like an old man. It was Layne. Pollock approached him, not sure what to expect because on previous occasions Layne had not recognized him. This time, Layne recognized him immediately.

“Nick!” he said, giving him a big hug.

Pollock was alarmed. “It was so disturbing to me that I had a hard time just putting sentences together,” he recalled. “He looked like a dead man walking. He had no teeth that I could remember. His skin was gray. He looked like an eighty-year-old man. He really looked like a skeleton with skin hanging off of it. If he weighed a hundred pounds, I wouldn’t have been surprised.”

The two spoke for about ten minutes, Pollock said, small talk that he tried to keep going. He didn’t ask about Alice in Chains. “I knew that I wasn’t going to ask him anything about girlfriends—not at all applicable—what he’s been doing, where he’s been … It wasn’t the Layne I knew. I mean really: it was like the ghost of him was in his body.”

Layne and Pollock made noncommittal plans to get together. Pollock was so shaken, he almost walked out of the store with his cart without paying for his groceries. He went home and broke down in tears.

Jeff Gilbert was walking down University Avenue looking for a place to eat and shopping for records in late 2001 or early 2002. Layne recognized him on the street, approached him, and said, “Hey, Jeff, what’s up, man?” Gilbert remembers it was cold, and Layne was wearing a long jacket, knit cap, scarf, and gloves. “His pants were too big on him,” Gilbert recalled. “He looked like an eighty-year-old version of himself, and it was frightening.”

They spoke for about ten minutes, and he said Layne was lucid. “He still managed to smile. Every so often, you’d see that little glimmer.

“He seemed tired, very tired, like he finished two forty-hour workweeks with no days off kind of tired.” He also remembered Layne smelled bad.

Mike Korjenek, a waterproofing-company employee, recalled seeing Layne twice at the Rainbow Tavern, a bar that was a less-than-five-minute walk from Layne’s building at the time. “He would hang out and sit in the corner” by himself in the late afternoon. He thinks this was in late 2001 or early 2002. Although Korjenek said other people spotted him at the bar during this period, calling him a regular would not be accurate.

“He looked ghostly. He looked very emaciated,” Korjenek said. “I remember us thinking that we shouldn’t be gawking at him.” Despite his appearance, he was still recognizable. Layne was sitting in a booth by himself about thirty feet away, slightly hunched over and looking downward, but not asleep.

An employee at a local comic book store, who agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity, said Layne would come in the store “semiregularly” between 2000 and 2002. The owner at the time told him, “That’s Layne Staley. He’ll spend a lot of money, so might as well stay open late for him.”

“He’d kind of wander around, look at stuff, leave stuff all over the store, every now and then knock stuff over. No big deal,” the employee said. “He looked pretty high. He was always kinda out there. So I figured he was just wandering around and go, ‘Oh, let’s look at this stuff!’”

According to the employee, Layne would typically buy comic books and action figures and paid with cash, but he could not recall what specifically Layne would buy, only that the selections were random. “Whatever caught his eye; there was no normal pattern,” he said. Layne had people with him when he came to the store. “There were usually a couple of people with him. They would kind of prop him up and help with him a lot.” He did not know who they were. The last time he saw Layne was in February or March 2002.

Layne went to Jim Elmer’s home in Bellevue in Christmas of 2000 or 2001 to spend the holidays with his family. There was a minor snag—he showed up one or two days late.

“He was funny,” Jamie Elmer recalled of this holiday. “For him to show up, and get himself together enough to show up and be out, and be in front of the family—I don’t know what it was like for him to mentally … go through that process. But when he did show up and was out and about, he was funny and on his game, and sweet, and just like I remember him to be.”

“I remember he arrived with bags of little Christmas presents—some stuff that he had bought for us, and some stuff that he made, like little craft projects that he had made for us with our names on them. He looked sick, but his mood and his energy and his whole disposition was as I remember him to be.” Jamie never saw him again.

A major family milestone happened in early 2002: Liz had given birth to her first child. Around Valentine’s Day 2002, Layne went to Jim Elmer’s home to meet his nephew, Oscar. He brought a camcorder for the occasion, although Jim doesn’t recall if he actually filmed anything that day.

“We hadn’t seen Layne for a while, and he looked pretty good. He certainly was shy about his teeth issue, but he looked good, and you could tell that he had a little spark in his eyes when he saw Oscar, because he hadn’t been through this before,” Jim said. “So it was kind of like he knows what life is and he knows what the next generation is and he can be a part of it or maybe not be a part of it, but it was a touching moment, and it didn’t last very long, but it was touching [to] see that next generation come up.”

A photograph was taken of Layne holding Oscar. This is the last picture the family has of him and is the only image that is known to exist of him from the final months of his life. It is likely this was the last photograph of him ever taken.

Jamie Elmer—who was not there but has seen the photograph—said of Layne’s appearance, “He looked like I remember him looking when I had seen him last. He was smiling and looked like Layne, but he looked older than he really was, and he looked like he was sick. He did not look well. He looked sweet, and he looked happy.”

Despite his poor shape, Jim Elmer said that the general mood surrounding Layne’s visit was hopeful and optimistic. “He was smiling, he was talkative, so there’s a good sign that either he was doing better or he was trying to do better, that there’s a more hopeful thing as compared to ‘We’re going to lose him in two days’ or something like that. I didn’t get that feeling at all.” Jim, Nancy, Liz, and Greg never saw him alive again.

His mother told Greg Prato, “I think Layne knew he was dying, but he didn’t plan on it. He had just gotten his driver’s license renewed, and he was in the middle of art projects. I really expected that Layne would survive this ordeal.”4

In late March or early April, Toby Wright was in a Los Angeles studio producing Taproot’s sophomore album Welcome. The band had written an instrumental song with the working title “Spacey” because “it had a dark, spacey/ethereal feel to it,” Taproot bassist Phil Lipscomb wrote in an e-mail. Being fans of Layne, they wanted him to sing on it. According to Wright, “It was a really good song, and Layne really liked it, and he really wanted to sing on it. I had sent him some demos of it, and he said, ‘Yeah! Come on, let’s do this!’”

Wright said Layne’s mood seemed good during their phone conversations. “I think he was excited about the track, for sure, and honored that they wanted him to sing on it.” The members of Taproot wanted to be there for the recording session, but Layne requested Wright come alone, because “he wasn’t looking or feeling great, and he didn’t want to be seen.”

The plan was for Layne to “do his thing” and write his own lyrics, and then have Taproot singer Stephen Richards work off whatever Layne did. “Obviously anything he would’ve done would have been magical,” Richards said in a quote relayed by Lipscomb via e-mail.

Wright booked time at Robert Lang Studios in mid-April to record Layne’s vocals. Although he had set up Layne’s home recording studio, and Layne was known to prepare his vocals on scratch recordings, Wright doubts he recorded anything ahead of time. “I think it was all just in his head; it was going to be on the fly.”

Based on the available evidence, the last person to see Layne alive was Mike Starr. On April 4, 2002—Mike’s thirty-sixth birthday—they met at Layne’s apartment. “I’m sick,” Layne told his friend. In addition to the toll years of addiction had taken on his body, Layne also had hepatitis C, presumably the result of his intravenous drug use.

Layne was channel surfing and stumbled on the John Edward program Crossing Over, in which the psychic medium did readings for audience members. He turned to Mike and said, “Demri was here last night. I don’t give a fuck if you fucking believe me or not, dude. I’m telling you: Demri was here last night.” Demri’s mother, Kathleen Austin, heard this story from Mike Starr after Layne’s death and relayed this story. She said she believes her daughter was there that night “to be there with Layne as he’s doing his transition.”5 Jason Buttino, who also heard this story from Mike, corroborated Austin’s account of Mike and Layne’s conversation.

Mike, who was high on benzodiazepine, later said he was with Layne that day “trying to keep him alive” and offered to call 911. Layne refused and threatened to never speak to him again if he did. Layne got agitated, telling Mike he was too high. Layne would get mad at him when he took the drug. “You’re an idiot on these pills,” Layne told Mike.

Mike had had enough. “Fine, I’ll just leave,” he told Layne.

Layne, perhaps thinking he had made a mistake, said, “Not like this—don’t leave like this” or “Not like this. I can’t believe that.” Those would be his final words to his friend he had known for nearly fifteen years. Mike went to his mother’s house and blacked out in the basement. This final encounter would haunt him for years afterward.6

At some point on April 5, 2002, Layne used heroin and cocaine. Known as a speedball, this combination has killed other high-profile drug users, including the actors John Belushi and River Phoenix. Nobody will ever know precisely what Layne did on the final day of his life or his state of mind at the time. Layne reflected on spirituality and death during a Rolling Stone interview in 1996, saying, “I’m gonna be here for a long fuckin’ time … I’m scared of death, especially death by my own hand. I’m scared of where I would go. Not that I ever consider that because I don’t.” He contradicts himself in this interview, because he is also quoted contemplating the afterlife, declaring, “I believe that there’s a wonderful place to go to after this life, and I don’t believe there’s eternal damnation for anyone. I’m not into religion, but I have a good grasp on my spirituality. I just believe that I’m not the greatest power on this earth. I didn’t create myself, because I would have done a hell of a better job.”7

He would be dead a little more than six years later, at the age of thirty-four.

Chapter 26

ACCORDING TO KATHLEEN AUSTIN, a drug counselor with nearly four decades of experience in the field, addicts will keep using as long as they are willing to accept the consequences. Once they aren’t willing to accept them, they quit. Layne once told Sean, “I’m never coming back. I’m not going to quit doing drugs. I’m going to die like this—this is it.”1

Layne’s wealth allowed him to indulge his addiction with little restraint. It also spared him from resorting to drastic or illegal measures to sustain his habit. Charles R. Cross reported it was the money that fueled Layne’s drug habit that tipped off his accountants something was wrong—specifically, the lack of activity on any of his bank accounts.2

According to Susan, “No one had heard from him, and the people that we were in touch with to let us know that he was still okay hadn’t heard from him. His little odd weekly habits had stopped. Sean got a call from one of those people and said, ‘I’m going over there, and I’m going to kick down the door. I have this sick feeling in my gut.’” She told him they needed to get Layne’s family involved.3

“I got a call from Susan that morning, and that’s when I called Nancy and explained the situation that this is not a band issue, it’s a family issue, and they can’t raise him and so forth,” Jim Elmer recalled. At 5:41 P.M. on Friday, April 19, 2002, Nancy Layne McCallum dialed 911 from her cell phone while standing outside Layne’s building. She told the dispatcher she had not heard from her son in two weeks and that he was a heroin addict, and she requested officers to stand by while she checked on his welfare.4

Officers Kevin Grossman and Joseph P. Mahar of the Seattle Police Department arrived at the building at 5:50 P.M. Officer Brett J. Rogers authorized a forced entry into Layne’s fifth-floor apartment. Mahar kicked the front door in, causing approximately two hundred dollars’ worth of damage to the doorframe, according to a police report obtained by The Smoking Gun.5 Upon entering, McCallum and Elmer’s worst fears were confirmed.

“I think we knew. I knew this was not going to be a pretty scene, because the door was bolted from the inside, and nobody had heard from him for a week, or a couple of weeks at least, and no activity on the charge card, and that does not bode well for what you’re going to find,” Elmer said. “So once the officers had got inside and took a quick peek, and they said, ‘You don’t want to see this,’ and so Nancy knew immediately. I said to the officers, ‘You cannot take a mother away from her child, so you let her see what’s going on.’”

Layne was on the sofa, holding what appeared to be a loaded syringe in his right hand, lit by a flickering TV screen and surrounded by several cans of spray paint on the floor and a small stash of cocaine and two crack pipes on the coffee table. When the body was moved, it was discovered he had been “sitting on numerous other syringes as well,” according to the medical examiner’s report. The body was described as being in “an advanced state of decomposition,” and the skin had “a darkened leathery appearance.” According to documents obtained by Seattle Weekly, Layne had morphine, codeine, and cocaine in his system, and his body weighed eighty-six pounds. The medical examiner would later conclude that “Acute intoxication … Combined effects of opiate (heroin) & cocaine” was the cause of death. When police checked his answering machine, it had two weeks’ worth of calls from people trying to check on him.6 Despite the horrific state of the body, Elmer said he could still recognize Layne.

Drug paraphernalia was found throughout the apartment. Brown stains of heroin led from the bathroom floor—where $501 in cash was found next to the toilet—to the living room.7 Taken in conjunction with the fact that the door was bolted from the inside, this evidence suggests Layne died alone. If another person had been there, he or she might have called 911 or taken whatever cash or drugs they could find before leaving the scene.

The medical examiner concluded that Layne died some time on April 5, 2002—eight years to the day Kurt Cobain committed suicide.8 According to Jim Elmer, there was no note or any other evidence to suggest Layne had deliberately killed himself. The fact that he had just gotten his driver’s license renewed and was about to record vocals for the Taproot song further supports the view Layne did not commit suicide.

Amazingly, Sadie was still alive and very hungry, considering it had been as much as two weeks since she’d been fed. “It scared her to death,” when police officers broke down the door, Jim Elmer said, so she was “a little skittish” at first. Sadie was adopted by Jerry and lived out the rest of her days on his Oklahoma ranch until her death in October 2010.9

“When we found him, I walked into the dining area of his home. I walked over and I asked the police if I could move things off the couch, and they said, yes, I could,” McCallum would tearfully recall years later. “And I sat down with Layne, and I talked with him, and I told him I’m so sorry it turned out like this, because I always believed because he was smart, and he had the money, and he had the time, and he knew he’d been to treatment thirteen times, he’d been in the emergency [room] three times, he’d died three times—I knew he had what it took. And still it took him out.”10

According to Elmer, “We saw Layne on the couch and the needle in his leg, and he was certainly deteriorated in color. And Nancy went outside and just caved in to the corner of the room, and she was just devastated, as you can expect. I said my last good-byes to Layne, told him that Demri was waiting for him, and that was that.”

Chapter 27

WITH THEIR WORST FEARS confirmed, Jim Elmer and Nancy Layne McCallum began the process of notifying Layne’s relatives, friends, and bandmates. Jim spoke with Susan and wound up leaving messages for Liz and Jamie.

Jamie Elmer was in a movie theater in Santa Monica, California. After the movie was over, she saw her parents had called several times. Her mother left a voice mail saying, “Honey, you need to call me and your dad.” The fact that they were together was a sign that something was wrong, because they had been divorced for nearly fourteen years.

“I knew that it was the phone call I had thought about getting for years,” Jamie said. She called her mother back, who calmly told her, “Layne’s passed away.” Jamie flew up to Seattle the next day. “We were all obviously just incredibly sad and heartbroken, but also relieved. Because I think we all knew that Layne was suffering so much, to see him physically so sick and just not well. I would say that most of us all felt some relief, for sure, to know that he wasn’t suffering anymore,” Jamie recalled.

The consistent reaction to Layne’s death from friends and family was that although tragic, the outcome was not surprising. “When somebody’s in that position for years and years, you know what the end result is, so that was not a surprise. Was it still a shock? Of course it was, but it was something that you would expect,” Jim Elmer said.

Ken Elmer was at home when he got the call from Jim. “Dad called fairly quickly after it happened. I don’t think he wanted me to see it on the news. He was in shock, but it was one of those ‘We knew this day was coming’ type of shocks,” Ken said. He had not seen Layne since the late 1980s or early 1990s and was blown away. “Over the next twenty-four hours, it was, ‘What could I have done? What could we all have done?’”

“I loved him and will always love him,” Susan told Charles R. Cross. “He was like a brother to me. He was this little broken but gentle spirit. We did everything we could think of to help him choose life, but sadly the disease won instead.” Jerry and Sean told Cross they hadn’t spoken with Layne for at least two years.1

Mike Inez had just returned to his home in Big Bear Lake, California, from his former Ozzy Osbourne bandmate Randy Castillo’s funeral in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He got a phone call from Sean telling him Layne was dead. Mike was in disbelief.

“Are you sitting down? Layne’s gone.”

“Oh, my God, you’re kidding.”2

Johnny Bacolas got a call from Nancy Layne McCallum or Jim Elmer and spoke to both of them. “It’s going to be on the news very soon. Layne’s gone; he passed away,” he was told. Bacolas turned on his TV, and within twenty minutes it was breaking news.

James Bergstrom was driving across the Tacoma Narrows Bridge when he found out. He thinks he heard it on the radio or got a call from Johnny Bacolas. “It hurt deep, because that’s part of your childhood,” Bergstrom said. “We all knew the direction his life was headed. We’d pray for him, but still, when you hear that news, things go into reflection instantaneously. My mind just relapsed. I just remember for a long while that I just listened to his music, and that voice, every time I hear it my eyes well up, and tears would come out for a long time. They still do.”

Someone tried to contact Nick Pollock at his mother’s house. This person told his mother what happened, and she immediately got in touch with her son before he found out through the media. “I was devastated by that news and was not in a good state upon hearing the news. Probably for a number of hours I was extremely distraught. And so it was good to hear it from her. It was good to hear it from my mom instead of getting it from the news, because I don’t want to fall apart when I’m at work or school or whatever I was doing at the time,” Pollock said.

Toby Wright and his wife were halfway to the Burbank Airport, en route to Seattle to record Layne’s vocals. He got a call from Susan saying Layne had passed away. They all cried. Wright told her he was already on his way, and she told him to come for the memorial service. “Spacey”—the song Layne was supposed to sing vocals for—did not make the cut for Welcome or any subsequent Taproot release, although the band has performed it live in its original instrumental form.3

Dave Jerden heard about Layne’s death on the news and started getting phone calls and e-mails. “I was crushed, of course—I still am. I felt terrible. All I heard about was in the news. It was just a really sad thing. The world lost a major talent. That’s what heroin does. That’s the reason I hate drug dealers—[Layne’s dealer] who came in and told me to change the mix. He didn’t get that mix changed, but he changed Layne, that fucker. That guy should die.”

Randy Biro was in a San Diego–area prison watching the news when a story was read, with words to the effect of “Rock star dies of heroin overdose,” without identifying Layne. Biro’s initial reaction was “Oh God, no. Please don’t let it be him.”

“When they came back and they said it was him, I almost passed out. It was probably one of the saddest moments of my life, just looking back at it right now. I remember where I was sitting,” Biro recalled. “I knew he had been dead for a while, but at the time, I’m sitting in prison. You can’t cry over it or anything. So I never got to let it go, never had the opportunity.”

Randy Hauser was in a medium-security federal prison in Sheridan, Oregon, when another inmate who had been a musician in Seattle approached him privately and told him. “I was devastated,” Hauser said. “I’m crying, and he’s making sure that nobody sees me. I’ve got this reputation to keep up to survive in prison. Here I am crying because one of my kids died.”

Chrissy Chacos was in the hospital, having just given birth to her second son. She had to remain hospitalized an extra week because she had undergone hernia surgery. “I was watching the news. They said, ‘Body of Layne Staley, Alice in Chains, dada, dada, da.’ I completely lost it, right then and there. I couldn’t believe it.” One coincidence that made Layne’s death hit even closer to home was the fact his body was discovered on April 19—her oldest son’s birthday.

Ron Holt got a phone call from Dave Hillis. “Two nights later, Raj Parashar and Dave came out to my house in Everett, and we drank my homemade absinthe, and I took Xanax, and we went out and partied in Layne’s honor.”

Pearl Jam was in the studio working on their Riot Act album when they heard. Eddie Vedder wrote the song “4/20/02”—about Layne’s death—the same night. According to McCready, “He recorded it at, like two or three in the morning, just with producer Adam Kasper. I think he was just so angry and he wanted to get it out.” The song would appear as a hidden track on some editions of Lost Dogs, the band’s B-sides compilation. “I think the reason it’s hidden is because he wouldn’t want it to be exploitative,” McCready explained. “I think he wants it to be hidden so you have to find it and think about it.”4

Fans gathered to mourn at the International Fountain at Seattle Center at a vigil organized by Cain Rarup, an Alice in Chains fan. The event began at around 6:00 P.M. on Saturday, April 20—approximately twenty-four hours after Layne’s body was discovered. Attendance was estimated at about two hundred people. The three surviving members of Alice in Chains came, as did Mike Starr, along with Susan and Chris Cornell. Jerry hugged friends and fans but didn’t speak much. Sean was quoted as tearfully saying, “My heart is broken. I’ve lost a lot of friends. But this…”5

Jeff Gilbert attended the vigil. “It seemed like everybody was kind of in a daze. We knew it was just going to be a matter of time for him, but when it happened, you can’t ever prepare yourself for that, and it was wretched.”

Three days after his body was discovered, the surviving members of Alice in Chains released a statement on their Web site that said they were feeling “heartbroken over the death of our beautiful friend” and described Layne as “a sweet man with a keen sense of humor and a deep sense of humanity” and “an amazing musician, an inspiration, and a comfort to so many.” The statement concluded, “We love you, Layne. Dearly. And we will miss you … endlessly.” The statement also asked that the media honor the privacy of Layne’s family and gave the name and address of a rehab center in Bellevue where people could send donations in Layne’s name.6

A few days later, Jim Elmer and Nancy Layne McCallum organized a group dinner at the Ruins. Besides Layne’s family, other guests included the other members of Alice in Chains and their management, as well as members of Pearl Jam and Soundgarden and other close friends of Layne’s. Jamie Elmer praised Eddie Vedder in particular, calling him “the nicest, most supportive person there in the whole crowd, and I will never forget that.”

Jamie said, “He and his girlfriend sat outside with my sister and me, and [he] was just so nice and real, where most of the other people in the band didn’t even talk to us in the family. It was very odd. But he was so warm and nice to us, and was very—he came up to my parents and—he had manners, like coming up and giving parents condolences, and he was just really kind.”

A second vigil at Seattle Center was organized for Friday, April 26, promoted through fan sites and word of mouth. Despite rainy weather, about four hundred people came out. Layne’s parents, stepfather, and sister talked to people, gave hugs, and accepted condolences.7

Layne’s body was cremated, his ashes in the possession of his mother. A private memorial service was held at Kiana Lodge on Sunday, April 28. Located on Bainbridge Island along the shore of Puget Sound, the property is often booked for events like weddings, receptions, or proms. This is the same venue where Layne and Demri were supposed to be married several years earlier.8

As the preparations were being completed, Nancy Layne McCallum called Kathleen Austin the day before and said, “Kathleen, I just want to prepare you, there’s going to be a lot of pictures of Demri.”

Austin explained, “Because Layne basically became a recluse after Dem died, a lot of the stories about Layne ended when Demri died. So the people that got up and talked, a lot of the stories were ‘Layne and Demri and I,’ and there were photographs of her I’d never seen before. It was like being at a memorial service for my daughter six years later.” As people walked into the room, there was a large bulletin board where guests could display their photos. Jamie Elmer estimated that about half of the photos included Demri.

There was a small wooden stage in the middle of the room for people to speak. Jim Elmer’s father, the Rev. William Elmer—a minister in the Evangelical Church of North America—spoke. Jim Elmer, Nancy Layne McCallum, and Liz Coats also spoke. According to Jim, “I had made comments to the effect that if there was one thing to remember Layne by it was his courage to be himself, and he was no phony. That was the word that I typically thought of, of Layne, not as a little child—I mean, as a little child, he had courage. As he grew up, he knew what he wanted to do somewhat, but he had the courage to go for it, and that was my word of the day; that’s how I’ll always remember him.”

“Looking back on it, a number of us obviously [mentioned] Demri when … speaking at the service. I think that most people had the sense, like, ‘Well, at least now they’re together,’” Jamie Elmer said.

Ken Elmer didn’t speak, but he took solace in childhood memories of his stepbrother: family vacations, playing together, private moments from long before fame or drug addiction had entered Layne’s life. “At the funeral, I was very anti–wanting to give that Layne up. And that’s still the Layne that I know in my head, and I am very content with that,” he said.

After Layne’s family spoke, there was an open microphone. Barrett Martin wrote the eulogy.9

Jerry and Susan both spoke, according to multiple sources who were present, none of whom recall the specifics of what they said.

Johnny Bacolas was having a difficult time. “That day was like a bad nightmare for me. I was pretty much in shock. I wanted to speak, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t get up there. I literally felt like I was frozen, almost. Like I just went through the motions, somehow got there, experienced it, and got back home.”

For Nick Pollock, who had stepped away from the public eye and kept his distance from his musical past, this was the first time he had seen many of his friends from the music scene, including Bacolas and Bergstrom. “It was still kind of surreal to be going through that. I still can’t believe this is happening and we’re doing this.”

Chris Cornell joined Ann and Nancy Wilson for a cover of the Rolling Stones’s “Wild Horses.” They also performed “Sand,” a song the Wilsons had originally recorded for the Lovemongers album Whirlygig. The song was written several years earlier for Ann’s gardener, who died of AIDS.10

Alice in Chains was done, for the time being.