Musicians From The United States

"It's good to be with friends and family as we struggle to deal with this immense loss... and try to celebrate this immense life. We are looking for all the usual things: comfort, purpose, answers, something to hold on to, a way to let him go in peace. Mostly, we are feeling heartbroken over the death of our beautiful friend. He was a sweet man with a keen sense of humor and a deep sense of humanity. He was an amazing musician, an inspiration, and a comfort to so many. He made great music and gifted it to the world. We are proud to have known him, to be his friend, and to create music with him. For the past decade, Layne struggled greatly — we can only hope that he has at last found some peace. We love you, Layne. Dearly. And we will miss you... endlessly."

"It's something I'm still dealing with, and I still think like he's here. I miss him tremendously. I love him and have to move on. I'll remember him and respect the memories of what we did together and just enjoy life... and that's all I'll say about it."

"Yeah, it was crazy that it's called "The Day Seattle Died" because I didn't mean it to be that. I meant it to be as far as those two losses in Seattle [Kurt Cobain and Layne Staley's deaths] - to me that's the day Seattle died. I wasn't putting that together and thinking about the exact dates. I had met Layne Staley before when he was really sick. We were on tour with Jerry Cantrell, and Jerry knew I was a giant fan of Alice in Chains. It was Halloween night, we were in Seattle, and all of a sudden, a little dude comes up and he's got an old fishing hat on and he's kind of dressed up like an old dude - he is dressed for Halloween. I guess he didn't want people to see him because he's Layne Staley walking into a club in Seattle, and that would draw a lot of attention, so he got a little costume. He came backstage with me, and it impacted me so deeply to see him in that condition, because he was one of my biggest idols of all time. We opened a bottle of Jack Daniel's and drank it, and I just talked to him about everything for a long time. But the condition that he was in at the time affected me deeply - to see him look years older than what I thought he was. I knew when he left that night, that was the end - that he was going to go. I'm so thankful I got to spend that time with him. So that affected me, and I was like, "That's my hero, I'm going to write a song for him." And then the Kurt thing came in too. He was just as influential, but Layne I just felt more of a connection to - he was way darker, and I've always gravitated towards that stuff. Layne Staley's mom actually reached out to us to thank us for the song, and it was really beautiful. So, it had some impact. People really feel that song."

"God bless Layne. He was my favorite vocalist. I've never heard of a vocalist that had that much soul."

"I wrote about drugs, and I didn't think I was being unsafe or careless by writing about them. Here's how my thinking pattern went: When I tried drugs, they were fucking great, and they worked for me for years, and now they're turning against me - and now I'm walking through hell, and this sucks. I didn't want my fans to think heroin was cool. But then I've had fans come up to me and give me the thumbs up, telling me they're high. That's exactly what I didn't want to happen."

"I’m gonna be here for a long fuckin’ time. I’m scared of death, especially death by my own hand. I’m scared of where I would go. Not that I ever consider that, because I don’t. I was lucky enough to get a glimpse of where I was going to go if I did follow through with it. That makes me sad for my friends who have taken their lives, because I know that if your time is not finished here, and you end it yourself, then you gotta finish it somewhere else. There was a time when things seemed desperate, and I thought taking my life might be a way out. I made a couple of really weak attempts, mostly to see if I could do it, and I couldn’t."

"I was sitting with a friend one time, and I blanked out for about a minute. I had no control over my muscles, and it scared the shit out of me because I experienced what I guess could have been hell or, you know, purgatory or whatever. It was freezing cold, and I was spinning like I was drunk and trying desperately to take a breath. There was chest pain like I was gonna explode. If you gotta feel pain here, you gotta feel it somewhere else. I believe that there’s a wonderful place to go to after this life, and I don’t believe there’s eternal damnation for anyone. I’m not into religion, but I have a good grasp on my spirituality. I just believe that I’m not the greatest power on this earth. I didn’t create myself, because I would have done a hell of a better job."

"People have a right to ask questions and dig deep when you're hurting people and things around you. But when I haven't talked to anybody in years, and every article I see is dope this, junkie that, whiskey this - that ain't my title. Like 'Hi, I'm Layne, nail biter,' you know? My bad habits aren't my title. My strengths and my talent are my title."

"Los Angeles Times: And is Staley’s temperament as dark as his lyrics would suggest? Staley: Most definitely, at least from noon to 11 p.m. It’s a product of our generation. People are angry. But I seem to do OK between 11 and midnight."

"Kurt [Cobain] and I weren't the closest of friends, but we ran into each other at shows and hung out a lot. I knew him well enough to be devastated by his death. I just don't understand it at all. The last time I saw him, he gave me a ride from QFC on Broadway to a friend's house, the whole way there, which was about a fifteen minute drive, he talked about his daughter. For such a quiet person, he was so excited about having a child, he really loved that little girl. About a month later I saw on the news, that he was dead."

"I don't think any drug that can cause brain damage, failing kidneys, hardening arteries, pain, and suffering should be made available. Drugs are not the way to the light. They won't lead to a fairy-tale life, they lead to suffering."

"Los Angeles Times: In a more recent phone interview, however, Staley proved more forthcoming, saying he isn’t at all surprised at the speculation inspired by the lyrics. Staley: I figured as much. People decipher our lyrics and take things too literally. It won’t change the way I write, though."

"At the end of the day or at the end of the party, when everyone goes home, you’re stuck with yourself. There was a time when I couldn’t deal with that, and I couldn’t go places by myself. I needed to call up a friend to go to a 7-Eleven. I just couldn’t approach people when I was alone. Getting a place on my own was a step toward learning how to do that."

"We [Alice in Chains] don't stuff our personal demons inside us, we get them out. It's therapeutic. I'm sure I'll never be completely 100 percent at peace with myself and the world. I'll always be bitching and moaning about something."

"[on Dirt] It's simple. One theme is: Drugs are bad. The other theme is relationships, bad. The last theme is: album, good. Maybe something this blatant and heavy and straight to the point might steer people away from being excited about the idea of trying heroin. There was nothing that blatant shoved in my face, discouraging me."

"From song to song, the album [Dirt] changes from glorifying drugs to being completely miserable and questioning what I thought once worked for me. By the end of the album, it's pretty obvious it didn't work out as well as I thought it would."

"I met Jerry [Cantrell] at a party, just out of the blue. I didn't think he was the coolest guy in the world or anything. He had no family in the area, so he's kind of struggling, didn't have any money or a place to stay or anything. And me being completely drunk, just offered this total stranger a place to stay and clothes, and food and musical instruments. I think two days later he moved his stuff up into the rehearsal room that I was working [out of]. And he's got himself a little 4-track, and kinda started out there, writing and jamming with some people. He was playing with some guys that I thought... you know, weren't up too pair with the music that he was writing. And I remember meeting Mike [Starr] and Sean [Kinney] prior to that."

"He was a one-of-a-kind singer. A lot of guys nowadays try to sound like him, but nobody can sound like him."

"Once it got really big with Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, there wasn't much mentioned about us. All those bands put out records around the same time, and we hadn't put one out in two years. I don't think it hurt us, though. I'm glad we didn't get lumped together with them, because we're not those other bands."

"I know that the guys in this band [Alice in Chains] would do anything for me and I'd do the same for them. I know that I can trust them, and I think now they know that they can trust me."

"The facts are that I was shooting a lot of dope, and that's nobody's business but mine. I'm not shooting dope now, and I haven't for a while.... I took a fucking long, hard walk through hell. I decided to stop because I was miserable doing it. The drug didn't work for me anymore. In the beginning I got high, and it felt great; by the end it was strictly maintenance, like food I needed to survive. Since I quit doing it, I tried it a couple of times to see if I could recapture the feeling I once got off it, but I don't. Nothing attracts me to it anymore. It was boring."

"I think our lyrics reflect reality. Maybe not someone else's reality, but definitely ours, you know? I don't write about bullshit and neither does my guitar player, Jerry Cantrell. I have a fascination with how brainwashed people get with religion and how they'll give up their money, their time and their whole life for a cause that they're sure is right, but I'm sure is wrong. I think there's a lot of people who are scared of life and living and they want to make sure they get to Heaven or whatever. I try to stay away from it as much as I can. I was raised in the church until I was 16 and I've disagreed with their beliefs as long as I can remember, so when I had the choice I chose not to believe in anything apart from myself."

"You gotta go do research on the way they treat like fucking chickens, man. Those chickens go through fucking torture before they’re processed and shit, have all sorts of fucking steroids injected in them and everything."

"At first, we were just going to call it "Kurt", but then I was like, "Why am I doing this? Staley dies and he doesn't even get on the front page of Rolling Stone. I have to do something" – not that I matter at all, but it matters to me."

"June 29, 2009, is the two-year anniversary of the first shipment of the iPhone. Not one of those people [whose 2-year service contracts expire] will still be using an iPhone a month later. ... I'm on a 10-year plan here. They are going to run out of gas way before we are."

"At the microphone he is truly a romantic figure. Faultlessly attired in evening dress, he pours softly into the radio's delicate ear a stream of mellifluous melody. He appears to be coaxing, pleading and at the same time adoring the invisible one to whom his song is attuned. The bare microphone seems strangely cold and unresponsive to his serenading."

"On my Fleischmann Hour from Rochester I went into a "rave" about the Victor record of ["It Must Be True"] as played by Gus Arnheim and his Cocoanut Grove Orchestra. From all reports that drift back to me, and from people that I know in California, Arnheim has the finest dance aggregation on the West Coast, and to my way of thinking, perhaps the finest in the entire world. It may sound like a rather broad statement, but I would be willing to back his organization against any other in any other part of the world. Although I have never seen them perform on the stage to what they have in the way of showmanship, from a pure musical standpoint I feel that they are unexcelled. Perhaps my great admiration for them is increased by the presence of Bing Crosby, formerly the lead in Paul Whiteman's "Rhythm Boys", who, in my humble opinion, has the finest recording voice to which it has ever been my pleasure to listen. If he doesn't capture all the feminine hearts in America through his records, no one ever will. He has the most unique style of singing I have ever listened to since I used to enjoy the records of Charlie Kaley."

"I think the way that you develop your own sound is you go through a process by which you imitate people sometimes very closely. With me, I would mimic people to the note. And then I think you form a collage of all these different players that you imitate, that you learn, and you form your own recipe. I think anybody that has an originality to them, it came from a pool of taking stuff from their predecessors."

"I think Ammons is a very great poet. I have a real quarrel with him, though... He's too rational for me. His poems proceed with a great, brilliant, rational mind. And for me... there's no peril in there. The irrational and the rational together make the kind of peril that gets enacted in poetry."

"Ammons poetry at Poetry Foundation"

"The colon was Ammons 'signature', using it as an all purpose punctuation mark."

"Ammon's poetry combines three unique types of diction, the 'normal' range of poetic language; the demotic register(including folk-speech); and the Greek/Latin derived phraseology."

"Poetry is everlasting. It is not going away. But it has never occupied a sizeable part of the world's business, and it never will."

"[On inspiration]: I think it comes from anxiety. That is to say, either the mind or the body is already rather highly charged and in need of some kind of expression, some way to crystallize and relieve the pressure. And it seems to me that if you’re in that condition and an idea, an insight, an association occurs to you, then that energy is released through the expression of that insight or idea, and after the poem is written, you feel a certain resolution and calmness. Well, I won’t say a “momentary stay against confusion” (Robert Frost’s phrase) but that’s what I mean. I think it comes from that. You know, Bloom says somewhere that poetry is anxiety."

"In the long poem, if there is a single governing image at the center, then anything can fit around it, meanwhile allowing for a lot of fragmentation and discontinuity on the periphery. Short poems, for me, are coherences, single instances on the periphery of a nonspecified center. I revise short poems sometimes for years, whereas, since there is no getting lost in the long poem, I engage whatever comes up in the moment and link it with its moment."

"Somewhere along the line, I don’t know just when, it seems to me I was able to manage the multifariousness of things and the unity of things so much more easily than I ever had before. I saw a continuous movement between the highest aspects of unity and the multiplicity of things, and it seemed to function so beautifully that I felt I could turn to any subject matter and know how to deal with it. I would know that there would be isolated facts and perceptions, that it would be possible to arrange them into propositions, and that these propositions could be included under a higher category of things — so that at some point there might be an almost contentless unity at the top of that sort of hierarchy. I feel that you don’t have to know everything to be a master of knowing, but you learn these procedures and then you can turn them toward any subject matter and they come out about the same. I don’t know when I saw for myself the mechanism of how it worked for me. Perhaps it was when I stopped using the word salient so much and began to use the word wikt:suasion."

"I’ve always been highly energized and have written poems in spurts. From the god-given first line right through the poem. And I don’t write two or three lines and then come back the next day and write two or three more; I write the whole poem at one sitting and then come back to it from time to time over the months or years and rework it."

"Unless I have something already moving through the mind, I don’t go to the typewriter at all. The world has so many poems in it, it has never seemed to me very smart to force one more upon the world. If there isn’t one there to write, you just leave it alone."

"Artist should be left alone to paint or not to paint, write or not to write."

"MIRRORMENT Birds are flowers flying and flowers perched birds."

"SMALL SONG The reeds give way to the wind and give the wind away"

"THEIR SEX LIFE One failure on top of another"

"I write for love, respect, money, fame, honor, redemption. I write to be included in a world I feel rejected by. But I don’t want to be included by surrendering myself to expectations. I want to buy my admission to others by engaging their interests and feelings, doing the least possible damage to my feelings and interests but changing theirs a bit. I think I was not aware early on of those things. I wrote early on because it was there to do and because if anything good happened in the poem I felt good. Poems are experiences as well as whatever else they are, and for me now, nothing, not respect, honor, money, seems as supportive as just having produced a body of work, which I hope is, all considered, good."

"I couldn’t avoid being a poet. I was really having a pretty rough time of things, and I had a lot of energy, and poems were practically the only recourse I had to alleviate that energy and that anxiety. I take no credit for all the poems I’ve written. They were a way of releasing anxiety."

"CALLING Wind rocks the porch chair somebody home."

"Trying to make a living from poetry is like putting chains on butterfly wings."

"I learned from my dad that when you walk in front of an audience, they are the kings and queens, and you’re but the jester — and if you don’t think that way, you’re going to get very, very conceited."

"He keeps imitating himself, but he has much talent and I think in time he will do first rate comedy. I hope so. But he he's going to have to learn artistic discipline."

"I'm telling you about a child in trouble. If it's pity, we'll get some money. I'm giving you the facts. Pity. You don't want to be pitied because you're a cripple in a wheelchair; stay in your house."

"Ollie's projection of emotions like frustration, agitation and shyness was masterful, and so was Stan Laurel's conception of the harried, ineffectual soul."