Molly Tumanic

Two years ago today, Alice In Chains front man Layne Staley was found dead in his apartment at the age of 34.

But most likely, you never heard much about it, nor did you ever get a chance to truly realize what he and the rest of the band did for music as we know it today.

When the news of Staley’s death broke, I remember sitting in my dorm room watching MTV, waiting for something more than a blurb from Gideon Yago about the gifted musician’s life. I found little more than an occasional news break.

At the MTV awards that year, I expected some kind of tribute. After all, Staley was the lead singer of the only band ever in the history of music to have an EP (“Jar of Flies,”) debut at No. 1 on the Billboard charts.

His band was one of the few in the 90s to successfully break through the “grunge” label that chained down and broke apart the majority of their peers.

Alice in Chains still is only one of a handful of bands out of dozens whose “MTV Unplugged” album went platinum.

And it was during this year, 2002, when pop-rock bands like Godsmack, Staind and Linkin Park all made successful headlining tours. All those bands, and a dozen more, owe their popularity to the influence of Alice in Chains music – the members of Godsmack even began their careers as an Alice in Chains cover band, after all.

But I found no tribute. While U2’s Bono managed to successfully mention the untimely death of Joey Ramone, there were no pop icons at hand to mention Staley’s death. But there was, thankfully, plenty of tribute for current-icon-of-the-week Aaliyah, who also died the previous year in a plane crash due to an overloading of baggage, according to CNN.

And while Aaliyah’s few albums managed to reach gold and platinum status, her level of influence in the R&B genre never will be more than a quiet “blip” in the minds of fans and recording artists alike during the coming years.

Alice in Chains, meanwhile, continues to influence bands even to this day. Without the heavy, sludgy guitar work of Jerry Cantrell or the Seattle-thick vocals of Staley, bands like the god-awful Creed and Puddle of Mudd would have a distinctly different, less attractive-to-the-rocker-wannabes style: Creed would have been blown off long ago as a Pearl Jam clone, while the members of Puddle of Mudd would be flipping burgers at their local McDonald’s.

So, was it simply popularity that clouded everyone’s judgment? Staley was, after all, more or less inactive during the few years preceding his death, not gracing the airwaves where MTV or Rolling Stone would see a profit in covering the story in-depth.

Or maybe it was Staley’s drug abuse. Those who have listened to the later Alice in Chains albums know he made no secret of his addiction to heroine, which most reports suggest was the cause of his eventual heart failure in his apartment some two weeks before April 19, 2002.

Regardless of the reason, Staley never received a proper eulogy in the media, but that doesn’t mean he still can’t enjoy one. To pay proper respects today and finally allow Staley to rest in peace, I suggest every rock fan listen to Alice in Chains’ “Would?”

Like the majority of their best songs, “Would?” was penned and composed by both guitarist Cantrell and lead singer Staley. The song is a homage to Andrew Wood, front man of Seattle grunge outfit Mother Love Bone. Wood died of a heroine overdose in 1990 and was chastised by the media for being a heroine addict rather than praised for being the musical pioneer he truly was.

Today, the song could very well have been meant for Staley all along. With lyrics like “So I made a big mistake/would you rather see it once my way,” this Alice in Chains song allows us to remember Staley for what he truly was: a talented musician whose work still impacts rock to this day.