As I stumbled out to the living room on Saturday morning to collect my thoughts and start my day, I saw some disturbing news on the television.

The ticker on the bottom of E’s “True Hollywood Story” on Heidi Fleiss read that a body had been found in the residence of Alice In Chains singer Layne Staley. At that point, the body was so decomposed no one was able to positively identify him. But common sense told me something I had expected to hear for years, and that was that Staley had allegedly overdosed after years of coping with drug addiction.

Staley’s death, pardon the pun, was but the final nail in the coffin for one of the most influential bands in recent history. Guitarist and co-founder Jerry Cantrell said the door would always remain open for Alice to get together and make a new album as long as all the members were still alive. That idea was put to rest with the news of Staley’s death.

Of the big four to come out of Seattle’s grunge scene, Alice never garnered the respect or notoriety that Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden received. But its influence, for better or worse, is heard in many mainstream rock bands today, including Godsmack, Adema and Staind. Yet, none of these bands have been able to capture the versatile sound Chains was able to achieve.

Staley’s wide vocal range, especially his beautifully whiny, high-pitched screech, always complemented Cantrell’s bluesy voice well. The heavy guitar riffs and bleak lyrics were always contrasted with uplifting melodies and harmonies that hooked the listener in. The music always seemed to be in the “it’s always darkest before the dawn” vein. It was truly a unique band.

From my calculations, Alice In Chains should be up for induction in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015. In a perfect world, it would be inducted on the first try, but if it doesn’t, it wouldn’t be a surprise. It’s considered the Susan Lucci of the Grammy’s after being nominated numerous times and never winning. But it seemed to be the story of the group’s place in music history. The band never got the respect it deserved. Even though the last two albums of original material it released, one of which was an EP, went to No. 1, it was rarely mentioned in the same breath as its Seattle cohorts.

I was surprised by the coverage Staley’s death received from MTV and the Internet. Most music websites had the story as their top headline, and MTV even ran a ticker across the screen informing viewers of Staley’s passing while MTV2 replayed its Unplugged taping. I wasn’t expecting Kurt Cobain death type coverage, so the coverage Staley’s death did receive was a pleasant surprise.

Staley, as a musician, will not be remembered in the same category with Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, or Jim Morrison. To some he might just be another dead junkie or another dead rock star, but that is not a fair assessment. In fact, I always liked to call Staley the best background singer in music, but he was more than that. Staley was part of a band that was a small but important slice in music history. He helped create good songs that people liked to listen to, and that should be commended.

The major problem I have with this story is it seemed that everyone in the world was trying to help Scott Weiland from Stone Temple Pilots and numerous other “celebrities” get clean after numerous drug arrests, but I never heard about anyone helping Staley. Maybe it was because he did it in private and didn’t get caught (at least I never heard of him getting caught), but someone must have tried to help. It just seems odd that people knew of his addictions, but nothing was ever mentioned about Staley receiving help.

I cannot even imagine what it is like to be a drug addict, let alone a heroin addict. Interviews with Cobain and Pantera singer Phil Anselmo, who has battled drug addiction, make it sound as if you are born an addict and you will die an addict. I’d like to think there is a way to beat the addiction, but I can’t speculate on something I know so little about. But Anselmo said in an interview after Staley’s death with Billboard.com that Staley wasn’t strong enough to “shake it off,” but there is help out there to beat the addiction.

I guess Staley put it best in the song “Junkhead” off 1992’s masterpiece Dirt, when he sang “You can’t understand a user’s mind/But try, with your books and degrees/If you let yourself go and opened your mind/I’ll bet you’d be doing like me/Ain’t so bad.”

This would have been sad even if Staley wasn’t a “rock star” but just some average guy who couldn?t kick his habit. But he was extremely talented, and at 34 years of age, he still had a long life ahead of him to do something important in the music world. Fortunately, the music he did help make will always be around.