Gay4Grunge: Alice in Chains

Of the big 4 Seattle Grunge bands, Alice in Chains might be my favorite. There are many reasons for this, but the biggest is Layne Staley's voice. While Stone Temple Pilots are my favorite Grunge band and Shirley Manson of Garbage is my favorite person to come out of Grunge, Layne Staley is my favorite vocalist in Grunge. There is no other singer from that era that moves me emotionally more than Layne and on some days his vocals can bring me to tears. I know I'm not alone on this either, because the number of bands influenced by Alice in Chains are LEGION! People talk about the Nirvana rip offs and the Pearl Jam wannabes, but I don't think enough people talk about just how much Alice in Chains influenced the succeeding generations of Post-Grunge bands who started springing up in the late 90s. I know for a lot of millennials they are first introduced to all the bands inspired by Alice in Chains that were putting out new music in the new millennium before discovering Alice in Chains themselves.  

I know I wasn't too aware of Alice in Chains' music until 2002. My only real exposure to Alice in Chains came from.....wait for it.......yes that's right Beavis & Butthead. Once again that TV show was ground zero for me and Grunge. I remember specifically one of the early Beavis and Butthead episodes called Be All You Can Be that was collected on the Work Sucks VHS collection that I purchased in the late 90s. That episode begins with Beavis and Butthead headbanging on a sidewalk while singing the lyrics to Alice in Chains' Rooster. After that they say war songs are cool. Beavis and Butthead also watched many of Alice in Chains' music videos too and they were big fans. Alice in Chains was one of the few bands to not suck in Beavis and Butthead's opinion. Still Alice in Chains pretty much lay dormant from the moment I became a music fan in 1997 so I wasn't too aware of much else by them besides what I saw on Beavis and Butthead. 

In 2002 I was starting to transition away from modern pop music and into 90s Alternative and that's right around the time Layne Staley died. It was discovered that he died of a drug overdose and on the same day Kurt Cobain died. I remember seeing ticker tape at the bottom of MTV's screen saying that Layne Staley of Alice in Chains died, but that was about all I remember MTV doing for that. Now when Kurt Cobain died MTV turned into a Kurt Cobain tribute station and the entire world mourned his death. When Layne Staley died it barely made a ripple. Pop culture seemed to have moved on from Alice in Chains by that point and music as a whole was in a completely different place just 8 years removed from Kurt's death. This sadly feels fitting because it feels like despite how great and how influential they were, Alice in Chains are the most underappreciated band of the Seattle Big 4. 

Though maybe another reason Layne's death didn't resonate as much as Kurt's is that it felt like it was a foregone conclusion by that point. Alice in Chains had been inactive since 1997 and it had to do with Layne who had become a hermit by that point and was only seen by a few friends and family in the last 5 years of his life. I remember watching a 2001 Grunge documentary on Vh1 and more than a few people acknowledged that Layne was a hermit and no one knew what he was up to anymore, but that it couldn't be good either. Layne's death felt like a natural conclusion as well because of the music Alice in Chains created in the 90s. For you see in the 90s Alice in Chains' albums and EPs were the soundtrack to Layne Staley's self-destruction. Over the course of 1990-1996 you can literally experience Layne's journey into the abyss as a drug addict who is losing control of himself, his life and everything around him. It's some of the most powerful music you've ever heard, because it captures what it's like to be an addict better than almost any other music that has ever been released. The catch 22 of course is that eventually there was only one way this story was going to end, at least the way Layne was telling it on record. 

When the band first emerged at the very beginning of the 90s with their debut album Facelift, Alice in Chain's story wasn't quite as clear yet, but it had a level of darkness to it that made it stand out immediately. With song titles such as We Die Young, Bleed the Freak, Love Hate Love and Sea of Sorrow you know you're in for some dark and heavy songwriting. Still while the darkness was prevalent right from the start with Alice in Chains, they were just a little vaguer about it compared to what came later. We know Layne is haunted by his demons, but we don't know what the source of his struggles are yet. Now Facelift came out almost a year before Nirvana's Nevermind and Pearl Jam's Ten and therefore it's probably the first successful Grunge album. Facelift went gold within a year and eventually went double platinum, thanks mostly to the success of Man in the Box, which received heavy rotation from MTV back when MTV still had the power to make or break newer acts. 

Maybe the reason no one thinks about Facelift as the first successful Grunge album is because no one called it Grunge when it came out. They called it heavy metal and this term stuck with the band even after the Grunge label got placed on them in 1992. Alice in Chains even toured with Van Halen and Poison in support of Facelift, which no other Seattle Grunge band would have been caught dead doing, but not Alice in Chains. Alice in Chains didn't shun the metal community the way the other Seattle Grunge bands did, they embraced it and it's why the metal community is still loyal to Alice in Chains to this day. In fact, Alice in Chains always came off as the least judgmental of all the Grunge bands from Seattle. Just about all of the other Seattle Grunge bands would talk shit and throw shade at plenty of other artists and bands, including other local Seattle bands. Not Alice in Chains though, because they just loved being able to play their music to anyone who would hear it and always had respect for other musicians no matter what. 

This is something that gets brought up again and again when you read about people who have met the band. They would say Alice in Chains was always generous and gracious, but they could also be really funny as well when they wanted to be. Everyone from their touring manager, to Ricky Ratman of Headbangers, to any other band they ever toured with (including Nickelback), says they were the nicest people you could ever hope to meet. While I love Grunge and 90s Alternative my least favorite thing about the era is how elitist and snobby many Gen Xers and Grunge bands could be from time to time. I'm someone who is trying to work on that myself, but being bullied at young age due to my gayness I understand what it’s like to be an outsider and not have anyone like you and I'm not as encouraging of negativity as a result. This may be another reason I feel a closer kinship with Alice in Chains than most of their peers, because I feel like they would be genuinely good guys if I met them. 

Of course, the band's kindness and sense of humor masked the turmoil they were going through as a band, especially as Layne's drug addiction worsened. In early 92 the band put out an acoustic EP called Sap that showcased a completely different side of the band than Facelift had and I gotta say it's my favorite side of the band too. While I love Alice in Chain's heavy metal songs, I adore their ballads and acoustic material. To me this is where Layne's voice always shined brightest. Sap proved Alice in Chains couldn't be as easily pigeonholed into a specific sound or style and that the best was yet to come. By the summer of 1992, Alice in Chains was featured in the upcoming Cameron Crow movie Singles. They not only performed 2 songs during a club scene in the movie, but they also had the lead off track and single to its soundtrack as well with the song Would? Alice in Chains inclusion on Singles is truly what got them labelled as Grunge, since that soundtrack more than any other album defined what the Grunge scene was all about and who its most important players were. 

Would? wasn't just the lead single off the Singles soundtrack, it was also set to be the lead single off Alice in Chains next album, which would be called Dirt. For many, Dirt is the definitive Alice in Chains record that captures everything that they are about. It's also the album where it became clear that Layne Staley was a struggling drug addict as almost every song made direct references to Staley's addiction. The album begins with screams into the void with Layne later singing about he's going to end up a big old pile of them bones. This opening track, Them Bones, set the stakes immediately with Layne now predicting his own death and the album continues to barrel ahead as you journey into the darkest corners of drug addiction. On the track Junkhead Layne sings:

"What's my drug of choice

Well what have you got

I don't go broke

and I do it a lot

I DO IT A LOT"

There's a reason though that Dirt became Alice in Chains' biggest selling album despite how dark it is and that's due to the group's strong grasp on melody. Throughout the album the juxtaposition between light & dark, metal & pop, and drug highs and drug lows, comes from the way the band is able to hit upon these amazingly melodic choruses that seem to come out of nowhere. I find this to be one of the group's greatest strengths, especially because being addicted to drugs doesn't always feel awful all the time for the user. There are genuine moments of happiness and euphoria when you take drugs, which is why most people end up taking drugs to begin with. They don't set out to destroy their lives, they either want to escape their lives or feel moments of bliss. Dirt is the perfect drug album, because those surprisingly melodic moments mirror the experience of a drug addict where you do get to feel these incredible highs before you come crashing back down to earth again.

The band's other secret weapon is the harmonizing between Layne Staley and guitarist Jerry Cantrell, who also wrote the majority of Alice in Chains' music along with Layne. Pitchfork once described Layne & Jerry as the Simon & Garfunkel of Grunge and for once I think Pitchfork nailed it. Jerry & Layne's harmonies are so hauntingly beautiful and can make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Most heavy metal bands didn't do harmonies like this before. This is something that Alice in Chains really pioneered themselves and it's another reason why their music was able to cross over to non-metal fans during the early 90s. No one had heard music like this before, but eventually they would hear it all the time when the Alice in Chains clones started to emerge at the end of the 90s. Still, none of those clones could harmonize the way Layne and Jerry did because their vocal chemistry felt otherworldly and mysterious and it still sounds like nothing else in music. 

Alice in Chains would hit the road to promote Dirt and as the tour dragged on Layne's drug addiction got worse and worse as did their bassist's Mike Starr. Eventually Mike was let go of, but Layne still continued doing drugs anyway. Towards the end of the tour the group had written enough songs to go back into the recording studio and what they came out with was a 7-song acoustic EP entitled Jar of Flies. When it was released Jar of Flies entered the billboard 200 at #1 and to this day it's the only EP to top the album chart. That said, Jar of Flies is a 30-minute EP, which in my mind makes it an album since there have been plenty of albums in the past and especially now that are only 30 minutes long, but I digress. What's important is that Jar of Flies expanded on the possibilities of the Sap EP and once again showed a completely different side of the band compared to Dirt. This was a much calmer album sonically, but it still dripped with darkness and saw Layne inching closer and closer to the abyss. Jar of Flies also gave Alice in Chains their first and only top 40 pop hit with No Excuses, which is my favorite Alice in Chains song of all time, which I'll get into later. 

Despite the success of Jar of Flies, the band stayed off the road which led to Layne participating in the Grunge supergroup Mad Season, which had a Jar of Flies styled hit in early 1995 with The River of Deceit. Mad Season didn't last long though and Alice in Chains reconvened to record their next studio album, which would be released in the fall of 1995 and was simply titled Alice in Chains. The album cover also showed a dog with only three legs as if the band was admitting it was on its last legs. By this point Layne was not in good shape and his presence on the album is a lot more diminished as a result. Jerry Cantrell sings a lot more on this record with Layne usually joining in on the harmonies. Layne did write and sing a few of his own songs such as Frogs and Sludge Factory, but these were pretty out there tracks that were both over 7 minutes long and are very strange to say the least. Frogs and Sludge Factory lacked the power and precision of Layne's songs on Dirt.  Layne was already becoming a former shell of himself and this was confirmed when the band performed on MTV's Unplugged in 1996. Like Nirvana's Unplugged, Alice in Chains' Unplugged performance is hauntingly beautiful as well as a bittersweet goodbye from the band (or at least the Layne Staley version of Alice in Chains). Layne sits very still for most of the show. He's wearing shades at first but even then, you can tell his body is starting to wither away. After that Unplugged, Alice in Chains did a few opening slots with Kiss, once again reaffirming their alliance with the heavy metal community, but those shows turned out to be the last time Layne Staley performed live. Shortly thereafter Layne would become a hermit for the last 5 years of his life.

This brings us back to Layne's death in 2002 and the moment I became a fan of Alice in Chains. A friend of mine asked for Alice in Chains' Greatest Hits for their birthday so I remember picking it up at Best Buy. They listened to that Greatest Hits a lot so I ended up hearing it a lot too. My passion for Stone Temple Pilots was already gripping me so I knew I was going to want to expand to other Grunge bands soon enough. I remember waking up early one summer morning and going downstairs to use the family computer and its dial up internet so I could learn more about Grunge from the website epinions. If that sentence doesn't date me to 2002 then I don't know what will. I remember reading about Alice in Chains a lot that morning and I was starting to get a better idea of who they were and what their music was about. 

Eventually I too bought the Greatest Hits and I also ended up buying a DVD of all of Alice in Chains music videos. Along with the Smashing Pumpkins DVD, which I bought that same summer, those DVDs got massive playtime in my house for about 2 years. Through this DVD I was able to witness the band's evolution and I could also appreciate the artistry of their music videos as well. Alice in Chains' music videos also reflected their songs perfectly, which is not always the case with music videos, but with Alice in Chains the videos captured the mood of the songs so perfectly it made me like those songs even more. The videos could be scary, pretty, charming or perplexing, but they were always interesting to watch. 

Eventually I started dipping my toes into Alice in Chains' albums and the first one I got was Jar of Flies since I had become quite fond of its two singles No Excuses and I Stay Away. Jar of Flies soon became one of my favorite albums of all time and my second favorite Grunge album after Purple by Stone Temple Pilots. One of the reasons I latched onto it so strongly was because by the end of high school I was deep in the closet and feeling isolated from all my peers. I felt I had no real friends or people to turn to in my life at that point and while music had always been a comfort and escape for me, I hadn't felt as emotionally connected to an album like I did with Jar of Flies. Jar of Flies sees Layne feeling the after effects of his drug abuse as he is also slowly closing off to all those around him and feeling like he is losing his sense of self. While Layne's struggles with drug addiction were different from my own struggles in the closet, the result still felt the same. One of the album's most beloved songs is Nutshell, which is one of the most devastatingly sad songs ever recorded. Here Layne feels he has no one or nowhere to turn to and if he can't be his true self anymore, he'd rather be dead. That final lyric where Layne says he'd rather be dead is maybe the most heart wrenching moment I've ever experienced as a music fan. 

Not everything is doom and gloom on Jar of Flies. In fact, the album's centerpiece and big single No Excuses is one of the few Alice in Chains songs that projects hope despite the darkness. Sure, things are bad according to No Excuses, but not all hope is lost yet especially if you have people in your life who are able to lift you out of the darkness and into the light. No Excuses feels like the moment where the sunlight is able to shine through the storm clouds, even if just for a brief moment and that's a big reason why it's my favorite Alice in Chains song of all time. It also helps lift my mood whenever I listen to Jar of Flies. Over the years, even after I came out of the closet, Jar of Flies became my go-to album whenever I felt depressed or sad. I would put the album on and wallow in my sadness for the first couple of songs but by the time No Excuses comes on my spirits would be lifted just a little bit, but enough to help me get out of that depression most of the time. I've turned to Jar of Flies whenever I'm really sad so much over the years that it's become shorthand among my friends and family. If I post online that I'm listening to Jar of Flies with maybe some kind of cryptic message it raises red flags immediately for those close to me. They know I must be going through something bad. 

Over the next few years, I would accumulate the rest of Alice in Chains' catalogue including the SAP ep, which sounds similar to Jar of Flies and combined they made one full album of acoustic Alice in Chains, which is my favorite mode for Alice in Chains. As I got to college I came out of the closet and started making friends. I also started doing a radio show on the school's internet station and writing reviews for the school paper. I met a lot of my friends through those extracurricular activities and many of them were either already fans of Alice in Chains or became fans after hanging out with me, especially many of my girl friends who also loved Layne's voice. When I studied abroad in London for one semester, 2 of my friends took over my radio show for me and on one of the episodes I was able to listen to my friends played No Excuses and dedicated it to me. This was such a uplifting moment for me because when I first listened to that song I felt isolated and alone, but now I felt like I was finally coming into my own as a queer person and having friends as a result too. 

Now throughout the 2000s Alice in Chains lay dormant, but their legion of followers had overtaken rock radio in the meantime. As I met people my age or younger who liked modern rock then, but were not too familiar with Alice in Chains, I would play some Alice for them. They would usually say something to the effect of this sounds good and this sounds like most of the bands I've been listening to for the last few years. Like I said people talk about the Pearl Jam and Nirvana rip offs, but let's go through some of the Alice in Chains rip offs. First there's Days of the New who's entire sound and aesthetic seems to be based solely on acoustic based Alice in Chains since Days of the New only use acoustic instruments in their music, but they still come off as a hard rock band. Then there is Staind who's emotionally charged and gut-wrenching music pulls so much inspiration from Alice in Chains. Staind even has a song dedicated to Layne Staley on their 2003 album 14 Shades of Gray that's simply called Layne. Then you have Godsmack whose very name is taken from an Alice in Chains song title off Dirt. Plus, Godsmack even recorded their own 7 song acoustic EP 10 years after Jar of Flies and its lead single Running Blind sounds like a cross between Nutshell and No Excuses. Then there is Puddle of Mudd who sound like a cross between Nirvana and Alice in Chains but with more toxic masculinity, but on their ballads such as Drift & Die and Blurry they really sound like 90s era Alice in Chains. 

Alice in Chains' older music was still played frequently on modern rock radio though, which proved how timeless and influential their music still was, but with Layne dead no one thought the band would ever get back together until they actually did. When it was first announced that Alice in Chains was getting back together and had hired a new vocalist by the name of William Duvall, I was very skeptical. In my mind Layne had been the heart and soul of Alice in Chains and there was no way they could go one without him. What I wasn't thinking about though was how much Jerry Cantrell actually contributed to the group. Jerry wrote more of the songs than Layne. Jerry also sang harmonies on every single song and as the band progressed through the 90s Jerry sang lead vocals more and more, especially by the band's 1995 album where Layne was starting to really struggle. When I heard the first preview track A Looking in View, I wasn't too taken with it, but by the time the album's first official single, Check My Brain, got released to rock radio I began to change my tune. Check My Brain ended up becoming Alice in Chain's first #1 Alternative rock hit in 2009, which proved that people really did miss this band and that maybe there was more life in them than anybody thought possible after the death of Layne. 

Eventually I bought the album, which was called Black Gives Way to Blue, and I was pleasantly surprised by it, not only from a musical standpoint but from an emotional standpoint as well. As I said early, Alice in Chains' 90s albums were the soundtrack to Layne Staley's self-destruction and it felt like with him dead the story was done, but I was happy to be proven wrong. Black Gives Way to Blue continues Alice in Chains' story, but it now shifts perspective to the other band members who had to live with the grief of Layne's passing and find a way to mourn him and move on. This album is about what happens when you lose someone closest to you and the flurry of emotions you feel after that. On Black Gives Way to Blue the group addresses not only Layne's death, but also their own struggles with grief and trying to pick up the pieces and still make a life for themselves afterwards. 

While many of the tracks allude to Layne, most are in a mournful way except for the album's second single Your Decision. On this song we hear Jerry sing about Layne's descent into darkness that left everyone around him stunned and paralyzed. There's even a sense of betrayal in this song too, which is a very real emotion many people feel after something like this. When I first listened to this album, I was driving into work that morning and when this song came on, I began to get really emotional to the point that I started crying in my car. That's when I realized that this was still the same band I had always loved, it was just a new chapter in their story, one that was filled with more hope and perseverance. The album was successful enough to bring lots of new fans to the band who then went back and discovered the band's 90s albums. That's when many people again realized how influential and groundbreaking Alice in Chains had been for Alternative Rock as a whole. 

As soon as the band announced a tour to promote Black Gives Way to Blue, I knew I had to go. My brother who had become an Alice in Chains fan by that point, especially once he realized most of his favorite bands had been inspired by Alice, accompanied me to the show, which was in Boston. I will say it was a good show, but I was disappointed that they didn't perform No Excuses, though I don't blame the band for that as much as the venue itself. Alice in Chains had been doing a 2-hour setlist on most of their shows on that tour and one of my friends saw them at another venue where they played for 2 hours and performed No Excuses. The venue I was at seemed to have an early curfew so the band was only allowed to play for 90 minutes and as soon as they were done performing the ushers, rather rudely, rushed us all out of the venue. So yeah, I was sad about not getting to hear No Excuses but it wasn't really Alice in Chains' fault. 

As the 2010s marched on Alice in Chains released 2 more albums with The Devil Put Dinosaurs in 2013 and Rainier Fog in 2018. Both albums were solid though the singles on both of them were the definite standouts by hey at least the band knows which songs should be singles and which shouldn't be. It's also kind of crazy to me to think about how this second version of Alice in Chains with William Duvall has now lasted twice as long as the Layne Staley led Alice in Chains. I'm happy for the band though because much like the Jeff Gutt led version of Stone Temple Pilots, Alice in Chains now has a more stable frontman, which allows them to be the working and touring band they've always wanted to be. I also got married in 2014 and one of the songs I gave to the DJ to play was No Excuses. I like to think we were the first gay wedding to play Alice in Chains on the dance floor and until I hear otherwise that's a fact! That said, if I learn of another gay wedding to play Alice in Chains then I will probably want to be best friends with those people. 

As of this year Alice in Chains is back on the road, this time with Bush and Breaking Benjamin, 2 post Grunge bands that I will be discussing on Gay4Grunge at some point. I'm very tempted to go to this concert, especially because it might give me a second chance to finally hear No Excuses live. Despite the setbacks and tragedies, Alice in Chains is still standing tall as one of the last Seattle Grunge bands still left. As long as Alice in Chains keeps touring and putting out music I and many others will keep following them because this band is the real deal. Join me next week when I present the first of 2 countdowns for Alice in Chains' music. The first being a countdown of my top 20 Alice in Chains songs with Layne Staley and the second countdown being my top 10 Alice in Chains songs with William Duvall.