With Decibel‘s fun article on the rise and fall (and maybe re-rise) of nu-metal that ran last week, a pretty interesting fact about Taproot has come to light. A new book about Alice In Chains, Alice in Chains: The Untold Story, mentions that former Alice In Chains singer Layne Staley had been set to lay down vocals on a track on the band’s sophomore album, Welcome. The band’s then-drummer, Jarrod Montague commented on the ill-fated collaboration, which obviously never saw the light of day:

The new Alice in Chains book mentions how Layne Staley was set to record vocals to a song Taproot was going to put on our album “Welcome” right before he passed away. We never talked about this much because it didn’t seem appropriate. We had a “spacey-sounding” track which we didn’t have vocals for, but our producer Toby Wright, who had made several AIC records, liked it and passed it along to Layne for vocals. We called it “Kevin Spacey.” When he passed, Layne‘s mom told Toby that this demo was in his CD player. Very sad ending to a very talented individual’s life.

If you’re interested in hearing what the song would have sounded like, via Alternativenation.net, a video of them playing the song as an instrumental has been unearthed. It actually would’ve sounded pretty great with Layne’s vocals on them, but considering that he hadn’t sang on anything since 1998, it might have been a long time before he got around to ever making it to a studio to record it.

[youtube]https://youtu.be/zEpH_sm2z4U[/youtube]

[via theprp]