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The sad history of the mid 90's grunge supergroup Mad Season featuring Layne Staley of Alice in Chains, Mike McCready of Pearl Jam, Barrett Martin of Screaming Trees and John Baker Saunders of The Walkabouts.
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Mad Season with their lone record Above. And like a lot of bands to come out of Seattle drugs played an important role in the history of the band not just in its formation but in stopping the band in it's tracks. The formation of Mad Season really began with Pearl jam's third record Vitalogy. During the making of the album Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready was struggling with alcohol and substance abuse and would head to Minnesota to go to rehab. it was there he would meet Walkabouts bassist and fellow seattle resident John Baker Saunders. Following their treatment, the pair agreed to start a band together to help them both remain sober. They would seek out Screaming Trees drummer Barrett Martin to start writing material and all the band needed now was a singer so McCready would reach out to Alice in Chains front man Layne Staley who was deep in the throws of heroin addiction. Now McCready was hoping that the trio would have a positive influence on Staley and help him get clean and 1994 had been a disastrous year for Alice in Chains as the band had started off the year releasing their hugely successful EP Jar of Flies and the band was supposed to tour that summer with metallica but addiction and infighting forced the band to split up for about 6 months. With lots of time on his hands, Staley agreed to front Mad Season and at that point in his life Staley was living with a roomate named Johnny and the members of Mad Season would drop by Layne's place to discuss the band nad have him listen to instrumental tracks the trio had come up with and Layne's roomate would recall in the book The Untold Story of Alice in Chains how Layne and John Baker Saunders didn't exactly get off to a good start as Saunders use to come over to Layne's place and fall asleep on his couch. Layne would take guitarist Mike McCready aside and tell him that Saunders couldn't keep coming over and falling asleep at his place because then Layne would have to tip toe around his apartment and that one little misstep aside the band would get together several times to jam and based on the great chemistry the group had booked their first gig. Now the band would play their first show at the Crocodile Cafe in october of 1994 and most of the songs played at the first gig would end up on Mad Season's Above album, but they also threw in a cover of Jimi Hendrix's Voodoo Child. And since the band didn't have a name yet and by the time their first gig rolled around they called them selfs the Gacy Bunch named after the serial killer John Wayne Gacy. Now it would be guitarist Mike McCready who would suggest that the band record a demo, but it would be Layne Staley who would raise the stakes suggesting the group record an album instead. Now the group knew they had to come up with a legitimiate name though. McCready would look back at Pearl Jam's first albumTen, which was mixed in Surrey, England. The name of Mad Season originated and i won't go too deep in to it. When we were mixing the first record, the Pearl Jam record in Surrey, England, the people who worked at the studio said oh it must be the mad season and that's the season when all the hallucinogenic mushrooms come out over in Surrey, England and I thought ah I'll keep that title for something, someday. Now the band would head to Bad Animals studio to record with producer Sam Hofstedt and Hofstedt would remember the recording of the album saying Layne was still working on his lyrics and vocal parts when it came to actually recording the album. He would go into the studio by himself and have no one else around him and he could operate the tape machine himself and do a little bit of experimentation without feeling like anyone was listening to him or watching him. So Brett Ellason who worked with Pearl Jam also worked with Mad season in the studio and also recalled Layne's drug use at the time saying Layne was not healthy. Heavy heavy drug use. Such a sweet guy and such an amazing talent we were in cahoots with his roomate who would get layne off the couch and point him in our direction and Layne would show up and he would go back to the studio