Layne Staley
August 22, 1967 – April 5, 2002
Layne Staley was the lead singer of hair band killers, Alice In Chains. The band was part of a new musical movement that exploded out of Seattle in the early ’90s. It was called Grunge and Alice In Chains ruled alongside Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Nirvana. It married the best elements of metal with punk and spoke to millions of disaffected teens of that era. Staley’s voice separated them from the pack. It was metal but it was also rock god. On stage, he quickly became one of the generations most captivating front men. Sadly, as the band’s success soared in the mid ’90s, so did Staley drug habits. And it only got worse in 1996 when his fiance died of drug abuse. As the decade came to a close, Staley was mostly invisible to fans of Alice In Chains, making sporadic contributions to soundtracks and such. On April 19, 2002, Staley’s lifeless body was found in his condo by his mother and step father. He was surrounded by various drugs and paraphernalia. The autopsy concluded that he had died of a deadly dose of heroin and cocaine, or “speedball.” The coroner determined the official date of death as April 5, 2002, two weeks before he had been found. It was amazingly eight years to the day after Kurt Cobain died just as tragically.
What You Should Own
