Get Born Again : Alice In Chains revisited

There is never any shortage of people or events to dampen a new band’s spirit—from incensed neighbors to a dearth of gigs. And then there’s sheer bad luck, which can really put a spanner in the works. But surely, the heights of bad luck for a new band is being rudely woken up in their jam room/abandoned warehouse by the hulking figures of the Seattle police department. The reason: The room next door to the crude Alice In Chains ‘rehearsal space’ was host to the biggest marijuana operation in the history of Washington State.

The four twenty year-olds were wrongly accused to complicity in cultivating weed they never knew existed. The band found itself settling down under a bridge on packed cases of their equipment. Ironically, that equipment was for their first ever recording session, which was meant to have taken place later that evening. Who would’ve imagined that in three years, their first single ‘Man in a Box’ would find regular airplay on MTV, earn them a Grammy Nomination and support slots for Megadeth, Anthrax and Slayer?

Clearly, the band’s founding members never really envisaged any of this when they started out. Layne Staley, previously the vocalist of several glam rock outfits, bonded with ex-Diamond Lie guitarist Jerry Cantrell over their love for Black Sabbath. Cantrell recalls that their main motivation was to “get a band and play some clubs so we can get beer and women.” After a couple of jam sessions with Cantrell’s friends Mike Starr and Sean Kinney on bass and drums respectively, they began to find themselves as a band. Their name was born out of competition (initiated by the copious consumption of alcohol) to see who could come up with a name for “a speed metal band dressed in drag.” Eventually, they conjured up a name that would reflect the band’s sardonic, dark wit—‘Alice In Chains.’

Their earlier material, from the ‘We Die Young’ EP possessed a clear glam, 80s influence, which makes sense given that their childhood heroes Kiss were from Seattle. However, with the release of ‘Facelift”, their first full-fledged album with Columbia, the band began to throw in a good measure of diminished notes to riffs that would’ve otherwise been written off ‘as just another hard rock riff.’ The album was the first grunge record to reach the top 50 in the American Billboard 200. But just when critics thought that a successful, different sophomore album was well beyond Alice in Chains, ‘Dirt’ happened.

‘Dirt’, released in 1992, was a cathartic trip for the band that was trying to “exorcise and deal with its demons before they (the members) exploded”. Several deaths amongst the band’s family and friends, including the fatal overdose of Mother Love Bone front man Andrew Wood, provoked incessant drug use. Also, it was during the recording of this album that Staley was first introduced to heroin, a ‘demon’ that would eventually take his own life. Five singles were released from this record, the most popular being ‘Would?’, which would eventually be covered as a tribute by everyone from Dream Theatre to Opeth. The album also marks the arrival of Staley and Cantrell as a seminal frontman-guitarist duo that shaped 90s music. Continuing the legacy of Jagger-Richards, Daltry-Townshend and Ozzy-Iommi, the unique blending of vocal harmonies during placidly dark chord progressions gave Alice in Chains a niche sound within an overpopulated grunge scene.

However, the band’s future hit a downward spiral with Staley’s worsening heroin addiction. This sad phase is captured in their 1992 single, ‘Down in a Hole’, where Staley admits that he’d been “eating the sun” and his “tongue has been burnt of the taste.” The release of 1994’s “Jar of Flies” garnered even more success and was followed up by a hauntingly brilliant “MTV Unplugged” performance in 1996. But none of this could save Alice in Chains as Staley’s heroin problem put the band on hold. Cantrell even began working on solo material, giving up on ever playing with his bandmates again.

And then, the inevitable happened. Drummer Sean Kinney called it “the world’s longest suicide, lasting almost seven years”. On the 19th of April, 2002, Layne Staley was found dead from a heroin overdose. The autopsy revealed a rather morbid coincidence: Staley had been dead since the 5th of April, exactly eight years to the day that a certain Kurt Donald Cobain had taken his own life.

The band’s legacy notwithstanding lives on. They’ve spawned a whole generation of nu-metal bands. Post grunge act Tantric sound like a page right out of the ‘Nutshell’ book.  Then there’s Godsmack, whose name is taken from a track off ‘Dirt’. There’ve been several tributes to Layne Staley — including a song called ‘Layne’ by Aaron Lewis of Staind, whose daughter Zoe Jane died on the same day as the Alice in Chains front man. Closer to home, the name of Delhi outfit Themclones is word play on ‘Them Bones’, the first track from ‘Dirt’.

In 2006, the band reunited with Comes With The Fall singer William DuVall. This writer did everything short of putting a kidney up on eBay to score tickets to the reunion gig at Donnington. The band did not fail to disappoint, coming out to a crowd chanting “Jerry…Jerry…”—this was bizarrely reminiscent of audience reactions on the Jerry Springer show! DuVall certainly had a great set of pipes and hit every note with aplomb but was clearly no Staley. He lacked the raw aggression and gravel-like vocal tone that the late front man channeled in every performance. However, just the experience of seeing one of the biggest bands of the 90s on stage can best be described in one word: surreal.