ALICE IN CHAINS SINGER FOUND DEAD

SEATTLE - Layne Staley, lead singer and guitarist for the grunge band Alice
in Chains, was found dead in his apartment, authorities said Saturday. He
was 34.

Tests were required to establish the identity because the body, discovered
Friday, had started to decompose. The King County Medical Examiner's office
did not release his cause of death.

"It was natural or an overdose - that's the way it was determined by our
investigators," Seattle Police spokesman Duane Fish said.

Police did not immediately release details on anything that was found at
the scene, and a spokesman did not respond to several messages.

With Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, Alice in Chains was one of the
most prominent bands of the Seattle grunge scene of the early '90s.

The group was known for its dark, menacing sound, which combined grunge and
heavy metal, and often wrote about heroin.

In a 1996 interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Staley spoke of how his
drug use influenced his lyrics.

"I wrote about drugs, and I didn't think I was being unsafe or careless by
writing about them," he told the magazine. "Here's how my thinking pattern
went: When I tried drugs, they were (expletive) 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."

The group's first album, "Facelift," was released in 1990. It later
released "Dirt" and "Alice in Chains." The group's hits included "Man in
the Box," "Them Bones," "Rooster," and "Would?"