Fact 21: The Killer is me was written in the unplugged soundcheck
Did you know the new song, The Killer is me was written in the soundcheck?
According to Sean Kinney: We saw The MTV thing as any other gig. I remember we didn´t rehearse much. It was weird, because we made a song that afternoon (The Killer is me) and we played it in the show. I think we rehearsed once or twice. It was a great evening, I´m grateful we've done it.
Did you know Got me wrong was done in 4 takes and Sludge Factory in 6 takes*?
According to Jerry Cantrell: We were on stage for almost three hours. It took us a few takes to get "Sludge Factory" right, and we did "Got Me Wrong" four times. It's good to do different takes sometimes so you can have a choice of which versions you want to put on the Unplugged album later. But it was cool; it extended the show, and since everyone was having such a good time, it was great. Anything to keep playing!
*According to attendees and website bacus.net
Fact 22: Got me wrong was done in 4 takes and Sludge Factory in 6 takes
Did you Know We Die Young and Love, Hate, Love were supposed to be played on Unplugged?
According to Jerry Cantrell: We almost tried "We Die Young" and "Love, Hate, Love" from that album (Facelift), but we decided not to at the last minute. That was mainly because an Unplugged show is only about 45 minutes when it airs, so you don't have the time to everything.
Fact 23: We Die Young and Love, Hate, Love were supposed to be played on Unplugged
Did you know Alice in Chains played acoustically before the unplugged show?
According to Jerry Cantrell: We did a benefit show in L.A. a while ago and we played four songs* from Sap acoustically. This was before Jar of Flies and all the fans were pissed because we weren't playing the heavy stuff. [laughs]
*The band played actually 2 songs from SAP and 2 from JOF. We kept the original text to be faithful to the source
Fact 24: MTV unplugged wasn´t the first time the band played acoustically
Did you Know Jerry Cantrell used Guild Guitars on Unplugged?
According to Jerry Cantrell: A couple of Guilds I got hold of. They were real nice -- I took them home after the taping. [laughs] But since I only played them once, I really don't remember much more about them other than that they sounded great.
Fact 25: Jerry Cantrell used Guild Guitars on Unplugged
¿Did you know Layne loved english poetry, poetry and children ?
He loved art and he loved English poetry. He was connected with people who taught him all those subjects. He´s always had an extreme softness with pets and little children. Little children just love to be with him. He makes funny faces. It´s a common thing in our family, that if a child is on your lap, it´s like an extension of you, it´s like having a part of you sitting on your lap and it´s just comfortable. He used to baby-sit and people would tell me how sweet he was to their children!
Fact 30: Layne loved english poetry, poetry and children
¿Did you know Layne´s father didn´t like to play with him?
I said to him (Phil), when Layne was a little boy: “Why don´t you just go outside and, you know, play with Layne?” and he said: “I´ll play with Layne when he´s old enough to catch a ball.” When Layne was 7 and Liz was 4, one Sunday morning I said: “Why don´t you throw a ball to Layne, he can catch a ball.” He put a double drink in his left hand with two ice-cubes, went outside, threw the ball two times and came back
in…I just knew there was no hope.
Fact 29: Phil Staley didn´t like top play with his son Layne
¿Did you know Layne and Liz had a very powerful bond between them?
According to Nancy McCallum: He loved his baby sister until she started taking his tools. I made the mistake of telling Layne: “You wanna share, don´t you?” No, he did not! And in that situation, I was raising two kids again, and I would explain to Lizzy: “No, this is Layne´s favorite toy”, and I would tell him: “You have the perfect right to put away anything that you don´t want your sister touching.” At that time, I thought I was teaching him
to share and instead, I was teaching him to just run the other way with his toys...(laughs).But they were very close. Liz was very large for her age and Layne was small for his age. When he was six and she was three, people thought they were twins, and they would look alike. They were very close and they had an ability to communicate without really talking. I think Layne and Lizzy experienced it more than I realized it, maybe they didn´t talk to me too much about it, but Lizzy had indicated to me that it was very strong. Also I think the love we had in our lives
has been strong between family members, specially between them.
Fact 28: Layne and his sister had a very powerful bond
¿Did you know a dog bit Layne´s face when he was just a child?
According to Nancy McCallum: When he was two, he was standing in front of a grocery store and a dog bit him. He had lowered his jaw and the dog bit into Layne´s face. He had severe bites in his cheek and his lip, and tooth marks on his throat. Something told me...you know...your instinct or what you thought would be right, it would be to grab the child away, but my instinct said: “don´t touch him”. I think the dog went around Layne a
little bit and realized that it wasn´t another dog, it was an innocent child and it stopped! I picked Layne up; he went into shock a little bit as we were going to the emergency room. The doctor put some stitches in his cheek and...then the heating pad had to be on his pillow at night for two weeks and I said: “Honey, you have to leave your cheek on the heating pad so that it keeps warm and it will heal better, the doctor asked us to do that”, and I would check him in the middle of the night to be sure and…you´d expect him to be turning around and find him in all kinds of positions, but there he would be with his little cheek sleeping on the pad! I always thought that that was a lot of discipline for a two year old boy, to discipline himself to do that...!
Fact 27: A dog bit Layne´s face when he was a child
Did you Know that Nancy used to leave Baby Layne crying, because the doctor recommended it?
According to Nancy McCallum: I have four regrets, maybe five...occasions of regrets. One time I left Layne crying rather than just go get him, which would have been my instinct, but my doctor had said: ”You can´t get him every time he cries, so let him cry and only feed him every two hours”… As you can imagine, this actually takes quite a while. You have to feed, clean the baby, you know, take care of all that and pretty soon time has gone by and you put it back down…(laughs). He was crying really hard and I locked him in his room. He was a new baby. I don´t know how many weeks old, but he would cry hard enough that he actually had tears in his eyes. When I walked into the room he had calmed down a little bit, but his body was kind of popped off the mattress, not off under the mattress. I was so...just personally upset letting my baby cry cause it wasn´t my instinct, but the doctor had told me and I was trying to do what he said, but I know that wasn´t right but I made my mind up and assumed the situation.
Fact 26: Nancy, Layne´s mother used to leave him crying when he was a baby, because the doctor recommended it
