Mike McCready’s short-lived 1994 supergroup Mad Season was formed partly to support Alice in Chains singer Layne Staley’s recovery from addiction, an experience the Pearl Jam guitarist later suggested he would not attempt again. The article presents the project as a well-intentioned creative collaboration whose personal stakes made its legacy particularly poignant.

Mad Season united McCready with Staley, Screaming Trees drummer Barrett Martin and Walkabouts bassist John Baker Saunders after McCready’s own rehabilitation. The group released one album, *Above*, in 1995, including the single ‘River of Deceit’, but did not continue after Saunders’s death in 1999; Staley died in 2002.