Layne Staley: Death Of A Hollow Man

Layne Staley, the 34-year-old lead singer of the grunge band Alice In Chains, lay dead for two weeks in his Seattle apartment before his stinking decomposed corpse, surrounded by heroin paraphernalia, was discovered by a relative on 19 April 2002.  Mr. Staley was a knock-off Kurt Cobain, an imitation of the Nirvana original created by Columbia Records to grab some grunge cash.  Whatever one thought of the hapless suicide Cobain (who was never as disdainful of *Stardom* as he claimed to be), it cannot be denied that his personal life was rooted in, and his musical ambitions were true to the aimless , depressed Northwest White Trash culture which spawned the Seattle sound that dominated American music from the late 1980s through the mid 1990s.  Mr. Staley, on the other hand, appeared more typical of most young American males who seek a *career* in music: Staley simply wanted to be *famous.*  And to that end, he would ape (skillfully, it must be admitted, for Staley was a fine mimic and crafted an effective grunge snarl/wail) whatever style was in fashion.

Cobain never *became* grunge. . .Cobain was Cobain, and grunge was, in large part, just the co-opting reaction of Seattle scenesters to Cobain.  The scenesters came from the same doleful culture as Cobain, but didn't have any talent or poetry of their own, so they co-opted Cobain's, which, of course, cheapened the whole scene, much like pseudo-punks in Britain co-opted Johnny Rotten's authentic punk expression in the 1970s.  Layne Staley *became* grunge because Columbia Records told him it was the thing to do if he wanted to become famous.  Prior to transitioning to grunge, Layne Staley was a laughable figure, a frosted front man named Candy Layne for the homoerotic glam hair band Sleze, whose trademark song was titled Lipstick Rock.  The A&R folks at Columbia ordered Staley to cut his hair and wipe off the rouge and lipstick and buy some plaid shirts.

Unfortunately for Layne, once he achieved his life's ambition, to become famous, he had no genuine identity to sustain himself. So once again, he simply followed fashion.  What do famous grunge vocalists do?  Heroin.  Staley got hooked and could never beat it.  How could he?  What could this Hollow Man call upon?  Nothing.  Kurt Cobain became as big a *star* as there was in the music industry, he ascended to the heights, and still found nothing to burn away the depression of life in America—but he did retain his own authentic identity and the ability to choose a course of action: he killed himself.  To Cobain, better to be dead than live in the phony atmosphere his music created.  The poor fellow was too talented for his own good, his music made him bigger than anything his poor depressed Northwest White Trash spirit could handle.  One could imagine Cobain living happily on only if he hadn't been so successful, if he had been, say, the Lemmy Kilmister of grunge.

As for Layne Staley, once he became a *star* and then embraced heroin out of fashion, he lacked the ability to take control of his life because his life was never truly his own.  He spent his few adult years role playing.  So Staley simply existed as an *star* for six or seven long years as a pathetic addict.  Wild rumors surfaced from time-to-time, such as the one depicting Staley living like a grunge Howard Hughes, isolated in a fleabag hotel with only a few trusted aids to bring him his daily dose of smack, wasting away to nothing, with a needle-scarred arm as hideous as that of Harry Goldfarb's in Requiem For A Dream.  The truth turned out to be quite a bit less colorful.  Staley lived a comfortable addict's life in a comfortable north Seattle apartment.

In the end, Staley couldn't ape Cobain one last time by committing suicide.  That action requires a certain kind of honest self-awareness and inner resolve that the chameleon Staley never developed.  So Layne Staley loitered about for 6 or 7 years, doing nothing, simply existing, like some Bartelby with a monkey on his back.  In the end, Staley died an addict's natural death, another burned-out *star* collapsing into eternal blackness.