Often associated with grunge music, Alice in Chains' sound incorporates heavy metal elements. The band took its name from Staley's previous group, the glam metal band Alice N' Chains. William DuVall joined the band in 2006 as co-lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist, replacing Staley, who died in 2002. “As soon as it was over, I went back to feeling crappy again.Alice in Chains (often abbreviated as AIC) is an American rock band from Seattle, Washington, formed in 1987 by guitarist and vocalist Jerry Cantrell and drummer Sean Kinney, who later recruited bassist Mike Starr and lead vocalist Layne Staley. Oh, and as for the headline power of rock’n’roll? Not so much, says Jerry, whose illness was paused rather than stopped altogether. “Those guys have always been in our inner circle of rock’n’roll brothers, so to have the whole band there meant a lot.” “Having Metallica watching the gig helped,” Jerry reflects upon their game-raising presence.
Other onstage tributes, meanwhile, such as snatches from Battery and Enter Sandman being played between songs, paid tribute to the thrash legends more respectfully. The ailing guitarist was carried by an audience that featured fans and famous friends alike, including Metallica, who’d finished making their Load album a couple of months earlier, their controversial short new hairdos prompting AIC’s Mike Inez to have the words ‘Friends Don’t Let Friends Get Friends Haircuts…’ scrawled on his bass. “But when the lights went green, the cameras started rolling, my body gave me some adrenaline and dopamine I needed to get through it.” “Oh yeah, I had ‘ food poisoning’,” he deadpans. But while internet lore suggests Jerry was felled by a dicky hot dog, he recalls it as an accumulation of the physical, mental and emotional rigours of being in a band. His health had taken a nosedive not long after the band reached New York, where it was to be taped, at the Brooklyn Academy Of Music’s Majestic Theatre. Unfortunately, Jerry wasn’t feeling too good as the recording approached. “Boiling it down reveals the heart of the song, without all the bells and whistles, and if it still hits in that environment then you did good.” “There’s no safety net, so your songs better be pretty good,” he says of his reasoning. Meanwhile, its songs No Excuses and Don’t Follow would become highlights from Unplugged.įor Jerry, the Unplugged gig wasn’t about shaking off the rust of inactivity but an opportunity to show the world the solid foundations his band’s songs were built on. Two years later, Jar Of Flies saw the band perfect the art of stripping back, becoming the first EP in musical history to debut at Number One on the Billboard 200 chart in the process. 1992’s Sap found AIC forging new territory and introducing a fascinating roster of co-vocalists to proceedings in the form of Ann Wilson of Heart and fellow members of the grunge fraternity Chris Cornell of Soundgarden and Mark Arm of Mudhoney. “ intentionally went out and played in that field,” recalls Jerry of this diversification. The band turned the offer down “a good handful of times” before relenting in the face of MTV’s persistence.Īlice In Chains were no strangers to going acoustic, of course, having made the EPs Sap and Jar Of Flies, no doubt informed by Jerry’s love of the singer-songwriter tradition of the 1960s and ’70s. “We were thinking: ‘No disrespect, but hasn’t this been done by everyone? We don’t need to do that!’” recalls the guitarist/co-vocalist of a franchise that had already played host to their contemporaries in Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots and, most famously, Nirvana. Just ask Jerry Cantrell.ĭespite Alice In Chains being perfectly suited to the Unplugged treatment, at the time the only people who weren’t so sure were the band themselves, their scepticism not simply because they hadn’t played live in two-and-a-half years at that point. Back then however, things weren’t quite what they seemed on either front.
The former because of its perfect meeting of band and format, given the grunge legends’ proclivity for acoustic tracks and adeptness with melodies the latter because it was one of the final live shows from Layne Staley, who would succumb to his heroin addiction in 2002.
A quarter of a century on, Alice In Chains’ MTV Unplugged appearance (and subsequent live album) are considered iconic and bittersweet.
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