by Mark Yarm
MIKE INEZ I personally have never tried heroin. Everybody points at Layne, but I gotta tell ya, it was all of us. We were doing all kinds of different shit. Just the fuckin’ drugs, man. All of us were out of control. It was a really hard time, and that’s how we dealt with the pressure and the touring schedule. I wouldn’t trade a minute of it for the world, but certainly now, 20 years later, I’m looking back at it going, Okay, maybe my behavior was a little over the top at that time. But, hey, we were four young single guys, just banging chicks on first-class flights. At least we could say we did it.
We had a meeting, and it was really, really, really apparent that we shouldn’t go on that Metallica tour. It was one of those times where we needed to go, “Hold on a second. Let’s not sacrifice our health—let’s not go and literally kill ourselves.” For us to say no to Metallica, who were basically our older brothers, is a testament of the love we have for each other.
A poignant moment for me was after that meeting: It was raining outside, and I was walking down the alley one way and Layne was walking the other way. I turned around and looked at Layne, and that’s when I had a really big flash, like, Wow, we are not healthy here.
KEVIN MARTIN We opened for Metallica in ’94. The end-of-tour party was the most decadent thing I had ever experienced in my life. It was like, mounds of cocaine, strippers, high-class hookers—you got a golden ticket so you can go fuck them if you want. That was not my thing. I’ve never been with a prostitute. And I quit doing drugs when I was 18, so for me I was a wasted ticket—I ended up giving it to one of our guitar techs or something. I remember going into this back room and seeing this mound of cocaine, a basketball rim around and six to eight inches high.
PETER KLETT Layne wouldn’t answer the phone. The story I heard is that they’d call him to leave a message on his answering machine, then they’d call back and it’s a different outgoing message, so obviously he was fucking with them. Because of that, we also got their slot on Woodstock.
KEVIN MARTIN We play Woodstock ’94, and we’re the only band all weekend that’s got a record in the Billboard Top 10 or Top 20. We go to do a press conference and they introduce us: “This is Candlebox from Seattle. They’ve got a number-seven record on Billboard, they’re moving 125,000 units a week, they’re really pleased to be here. We’d just like to open the floor to any kind of questions.”
Not one person asked a question. We stood there for like two minutes. I finally joked, “Mr. Brokaw?” Everybody turned like Tom Brokaw was there. I was like, Why am I standing here? Nobody gives a shit. The only people that ever cared about Candlebox were the people that bought our records. It hurt, man. It was like, We’re never gonna fuckin’ win. We’re never going to be a reputable band regardless of what we do.
JOHNNY BACOLAS The weekend Alice in Chains was supposed to be playing Woodstock, I went on a camping trip with Layne and a friend of his, and a friend of mine named Alex Hart.
Alice in Chains were having some internal issues. I remember that the guys in the band were calling him and leaving voice messages for him, and he would just disregard them. Layne had other things going on. He was trying to kick heroin that weekend, as well. That was really the reason he went on that camping trip, to try and clean up. We went to Eastern Washington. And that’s where we ended up setting up camp, in a town called Twisp. It wasn’t much fun for Layne at all. He slept a lot on that trip. We were tending to him to an extent.
Later, we ended up in Lake Chelan, which was a big touristy spot. One night, Layne drank quite a bit, and him and I are on this beach. We ended up sitting at this little bridge over the lake. He was very, very depressed—it was basically the withdrawals—and he was really freaking out. He just grabbed me and started crying. And he told me that he wanted to kill himself. He, in my mind, was considering doing it right there and then at that bridge. We were just sitting there on the concrete, and I’m holding him for dear life.
Alex drives up, and the next thing I remember, all of us are going to the Safeway in Lake Chelan to get beer. Now it’s probably 2 o’clock in the morning, and some guy started giving Layne shit. Of all nights to start fucking with him. I can’t remember what they were saying, but they were badgering him. Layne clocked one guy in the jaw, just laid him out right in the Safeway aisle where the beer is. We bailed, got in the car, and left.
We ended up going to this parking lot, hiding, and there’s probably 30 cars there, all blaring music. People smoking weed and drinking beer. All teenagers. We had the windows down, we were just parked, smoking cigarettes. Some kids recognized Layne, and they were like, “Dude, there’s Layne Staley!” And the other guys were like, “No, it’s not. He wouldn’t be in Lake Chelan.”
And they all came up to the car, probably 15 kids, and they’re like, “If you’re Layne Staley, prove it.” And Layne was just looking straight ahead. Sunglasses on, 2 o’clock in the morning, wouldn’t even acknowledge them. Finally, one of the guys pulls up in a truck, cranks “No Excuses,” and he goes, “If you’re Layne Staley, sing along!”
And Layne started singing. Sang the verse, sang the chorus. Nailed it, exactly like it sounded on the record. All the kids were like, “Holy shit, it’s fuckin’ him!” He sang that, just to be, Get the fuck out of my face! Kind of proved who he was, and then he’s like, “Get out of here!” And then we drove off.
SCOTT MERCADO Sean and I talked for a long time and he’s like, “You guys probably get bummed by critics not liking you or people in the industry not liking you or people in the grunge scene not liking you. Now you know how I feel whenever somebody comes up to me and says, ‘Too bad your band is so fucked up they can’t go on tour.’ ”
JOHNNY BACOLAS The night that he was holding on to me and we were on that bridge there in Lake Chelan, Layne asked me to move in with him. He said, “I don’t trust many people. I trust you. Please, would you come live with me?”
JEFF AMENT The first record or two, Ed and I could talk. We roomed together, the whole first year and half that we toured, so we got to know each other fairly well. We were jamming on “Release,” and he started to sing this thing, and after we were done he said I need to talk to you and he laid the whole thing on me, acknowledged what had gone on with him and his dad. It was a heavy moment. But now communication was at an all-time low. I responded like I’ve always responded: just put my head down and played.…
STONE GOSSARD Vitalogy was the first record where Ed was the guy making the final decisions. It was a real difficult record for me to make, because I was having to give up a lot of control.
BRENDAN O’BRIEN Vitalogy was a little strained. I’m being polite—there was some imploding going on.
ADAM KASPER Vitalogy was when I started noticing that Eddie was not all too pleased with Dave musically. Dave was an extremely busy player, and Eddie likes a more raw sound. We even recorded a couple songs starting out with drum machines, and that’s sort of a slap in the face to a drummer.
And then there was Dave’s personality. I’m not really sure during which album this happened, but the classic story is when Dave Abbruzzese accidently knocked over Eddie’s guitar, which was a gift from Pete Townsend or something. He breaks it and just leaves a little picture of a boo-boo face on it, like, Sorry, and fuckin’ left the studio to go do a drum clinic or some self-promoting bullshit like that. He just had a bit of a rock-star attitude, and that didn’t go well with Eddie.
DAVE ABBRUZZESE Breaking one of Eddie’s guitars? That never happened. Nope. I never broke nothin’.
COLLEEN COMBS Pearl Jam really were a democracy as a band, but the way the democracy worked was that they were kind of all on the same page about what they wanted. Dave always wanted something different, and he was the only one who wanted something different. He was the person who would want to order a limo and not a town car. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But it was kind of a hard place for him to be.
DAVE ABBRUZZESE I really thought we should be playing music instead of participating in t
hat Ticketmaster fiasco. I thought it was a waste of time.
JOHN HOYT What happened with Ticketmaster was that all those extra add-on fees were exorbitant. Pearl Jam has never been concerned just about making money, so they took on the cause. With all the extra charges, it meant that if they wanted to have a $20 ticket, it would cost $26. We were trying to cut deals with Ticketmaster to decrease those charges, but never were able to do it, and finally just said, “Screw it.”
COLLEEN COMBS As soon as we started asking questions, we started having problems with booking our tours. Promoters or people we considered friends in business suddenly couldn’t help us or wouldn’t take a phone call. There were definitely strange things happening in the office. Honestly—and this is going to sound like a bad conspiracy movie—but I swear there was clicking on the phone line. It seemed like the phones were tapped.
KEN DEANS I can tell you what I told Kelly. I go, “You know, you’re fighting the wrong battle.” The battle was not with Ticketmaster. Ticketmaster wasn’t setting those fees. The promoters are. So the reason why the convenience charge went from a dollar to $3 was because a dollar and a half was going to the promoters. That whole thing was a valiant but misguided effort.
JOHN HOYT Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard testified in front of a House subcommitee about unfair ticket practices, and that became the big national story in all the papers. That elevated it to a completely different level. It was a bit of a circus. There was a fair amount of media, and an awful lot of congressional interns and people wanting to be present for this. There were softball questions and only a couple harder questions, because Ticketmaster had a lot of money and a pretty strong lobby and they put some pressure on members of Congress.
REP. LYNN C. WOOLSEY (Democratic congresswoman from California; during questioning at Pearl Jam’s antitrust complaint hearing before the House Subcommittee on Information, Justice, Transportation and Agriculture, June 30, 1994) I have to ask another question that has nothing to do with monopolies. What does Pearl Jam mean or does it have a meaning?
STONE GOSSARD (June 30, 1994, testimony) I am not going to answer that question.
JEFF AMENT That whole thing was a joke. The Department of Justice used us to look hip. Stone and I spent a week with this guy John Hoyt; he was drilling us with serious questions that we were [supposedly] going to get asked, and then it didn’t feel like we got to utilize any of it. It made me a lot more cynical about what goes on with the government.
DAVE ABBRUZZESE When those guys were testifying in front of Congress, I was in Indonesia just enjoying being alive. The more I read about the Ticketmaster situation, it’s like, It all sounds good and nice, but there are way more important, flagrant injustices we could have latched onto.
JEFF AMENT Dave was a different egg for sure. There were a lot of things, personality-wise, where I didn’t see eye to eye with him. He was more comfortable being a rock star than the rest of us. Partying, girls, cars. I don’t know if anyone was in the same space. Also, with Dave, musically, when you’d say, “I want this to sound more like the Buzzcocks,” I don’t think he related to that at all. He was a technical guy, and we all played by feeling, or by seeing bands.
DAVE ABBRUZZESE That statement from him is incredibly disrespectful, and untrue, as well. It’s such a crock of shit. I was the only one in the band who had the same girlfriend for eight years. I had bought a car that was used, and I kept it. But he makes it sound like I was the odd man out; it paints a picture of me as being pretentious. Shit, we worked our asses off to be successful. We were rock stars. Who cares? Jesus Christ. (Laughs.) Doing articles where you’re on the cover, and the article is how you don’t wanna be on the cover. That’s pretentious hypocrisy.
Forgive me for not giving a fuck about the Buzzcocks. (Laughs.) If anyone would’ve mentioned something like that to me, I certainly would’ve went and listened to what the fuck they were talking about. There was never an “It should have this or that kind of feel.”
STONE GOSSARD It was the nature of how the politics worked in our band: It was up to me to say, “Hey, we tried, it’s not working; time to move on.” On a superficial level, it was a political struggle: For whatever reason his ability to communicate with Ed and Jeff was very stifled. I certainly don’t think it was all Dave Abbruzzese’s fault that it was stifled.
DAVE ABBRUZZESE I called Kelly just to check in, and he said he was on the way to the airport with Eddie. They were goin’ to New Orleans ’cause Eddie had that court case where he had gotten in a scuffle outside of a bar. I told Kelly, “Hope everything goes well. Tell Ed hello.” And he said, “Everything’s great. Good-bye. Wait, I think Stone wants to talk to you.” So I called Stone up, and he asked if I wanted to meet for breakfast the next day.
When I sat down for breakfast, Stone just looked at me for 30 seconds and then said, “Dave Abbruzzese.” Then he had the balls to say it the way he did: “We’re looking for another drummer.” My reaction was complete and utter disbelief. I was devastated. But I thought that Stone was such a good person. Stand-up, strong. If he wasn’t there, it probably would’ve been a lawyer calling me.
I got home and Mike called and Jeff called. I think it was difficult for everybody in the band, except for the one person I never spoke with after that, which was Eddie. The only time I ever had two words with Eddie since I got fired was two or three years later. I was sitting with Alain Johannes from Eleven on the curb after a Chris Cornell show in Seattle, and Eddie came up to us. He said, “Dave Abbruzzese,” and kinda put his arms out in greeting, because he couldn’t hide from me. And I stood up and realized how much shorter he was than I remembered. I think it was a one-armed hug. He started rambling and tried to join in our conversation, and he ended up toddling off. There was a little part of me that would’ve loved to clobber him and another part of me that felt like I already had, just by the fact that I could still sleep at night and I was still proud of everything that we accomplished.
A lot of people have asked me about the stick-man tattoo: “Do you regret it?” When I got it, it was a profound time and I felt free. No matter what would have happened with that band, that tattoo still signifies the same thing to me. I have no regrets at all.
JACK IRONS Eddie wanted me to be in the band earlier, and so did the other guys. I would get a phone call every now and then from Eddie: “We’re looking for somebody. Are you interested?” And I would ask him, “How long you gonna be on the road?” And he goes, “Well, we’re kind of booked for the next year and a half, off and on.” I was committed to Eleven, and my wife and I had just had our baby. The idea of being on the road for that long was hard to swallow, and I still had some traumatic stress from the Chili Pepper days and I was trying to keep my life balanced.
And then in June ’94, my wife and I left L.A. We bought a little cabin in Northern California. I didn’t know what my future would be with Eleven at the time. And then in August, someone hipped me to the fact that Pearl Jam were looking for another drummer. So I thought about it, and I realized that it was now or never for me, to at least put myself out there. As I got older and had a family, I knew I had to produce and make money for the future. And it wasn’t just about that. This was as Vitalogy was coming out and I knew that they didn’t want to do it like they did it on Ten and on Vs. Eddie said the band wasn’t going to tour at the same insane pace. And them being successful allows a certain amount of comfort and ease on the road.
I wasn’t a shoo-in at that point anymore because everybody had a couple guys they had wanted to try out. I went up to Seattle, and there was an audition process, so to speak, but it did very much help that I was Eddie’s guy. We played Neil Young’s Bridge School Benefit, and I think at that point I was committed to do the tour in Australia in the beginning of ’95. If I went to Australia and I did these gigs and it went well, then we’ll just keep going. Eventually, I was in the band.
COLLEEN COMBS If there was ever something that might’ve caused that band to break up, it might’ve been
the pressure of putting together and pulling off that 1995 U.S. tour. Ticketmaster had contracts with all the major venues, so a band the size of Pearl Jam had to build from the ground up. We hired a company to print our own tickets.
JEFF AMENT We’d be playing parks and racetracks. And somebody would be yelling, “The fence is down a mile in the east corner!” and we’d have one guy trying to fix it. It was absolutely stupid.
ERIC JOHNSON In San Francisco, Eddie got food poisoning. I remember he called me at like 6 in the morning and said he had been sick all night and he needed to go to the hospital right away, so I went up to his room to get him and the telling sign was there was half a tuna sandwich still sitting on the tray. I thought, Eww, that’s bad. We were at the hospital for a couple of hours—they put several pints of fluid into him because he was really dehydrated—and then we went pretty much right from the hospital to the show.
We were in a town car, and he was in so much pain that he was on his knees on the little floor well in the back. He was grabbing the seats, and you know how taut the leather seats are—you can’t pinch them or grab the leather? He was grabbing wads of leather in his hand and squeezing, he was in so much pain. When he got to Golden Gate Park, one of the guys from Rock Med that’s always at the shows gave him a shot that kind of eased him back for a little while.
EDDIE VEDDER I thought I was going to die. We’ve been in some pretty tense situations as far as crowd control, and usually I pull it off. I think they just thought I was going to pull it off.
I’m not being a martyr or anything, but it was hard. And then I was looking through the set list. Well, maybe I can pull this off or that off. And then it was like, “I can’t. I just can’t do this. It’s crazy.” That was one of those low moments. That was a really tough thing. But there was nothing, just nothing, I could do. I’m human.
