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Unbelievably, Alice in Chains would rise from their ashes. Starr would die from a prescription drug overdose in 2011. The bassist was still wracked with guilt for not calling 911 for his sick former bandmate. Drew and claim that he was the last known person to see Staley alive, visiting the singer on April 4, Starr’s birthday.
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In 2010, Starr, who would go on to have multiple drug-related arrests, would join the cast of the VH1 reality series Celebrity Rehab With Dr. That’s exactly what I didn’t want to happen.”Īlice in Chains, Little Mix & John Fogerty Bound For Top Five on Billboard 200 Chart But then I’ve had fans come up to me and give me the thumbs up, telling me they’re high. “I didn’t want my fans to think that heroin was cool. “I wrote about drugs, and I didn’t think I was being unsafe or careless by writing about them,” Staley told Rolling Stone in 1996.
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But in this context, it’s hard not to give its lyrics double meaning: “Ain’t found a way to kill me yet / Eyes burn with stinging sweat / Seems every path leads me to nowhere,” Staley pleads. On “Angry Chair,” Staley sings of solitude and addiction: “So I’m strung out anyway / Loneliness is not a phase.” His primal snarls of “Heyyyyyy!!! and “Ohhhhhh!,” right in unison with Cantrell’s mimicking riff, make it among the album’s most memorable moments. “Would?” rumbles with bass and showcases one of Staley’s most explosive vocals: “Into the flood again / Same old trip it was back then / So I made a big mistake / Try to see it once my way!!!” “Rooster,” the LP’s best-performing single, is perhaps the only song not directly about drug addiction, having been written about Cantrell’s dad’s tours in the Vietnam War. “Down in the Hole,” one of the band’s signature tracks, opens on a tender note, before diving down the well with spiraling electric guitar: “Down in a hole / Feeling so small / Down in a hole / Losing my soul.” Others were less direct, but clear enough.
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