Type to search

Features

Looking Up and Ahead

Guitarist and singer of Alice in Chains, Jerry Cantrell talks about their new album, moving on as a band after Layne Staley’s death, and what Black Gives Way to Blue really means

May 10, 2010

The late Eighties and early Nineties saw a fairly new sound that emerged in Seattle, Washington, starting to gain popularity, enough to even notch up major label signings. Grunge ”“ as this movement was referred to ”“ was the punk rock of the Nineties. The music took a direction opposite to that of the prevailing stylised glam metal of the Eighties, both in terms of content and presentation. Very soon, this offshoot of alternative was almost mainstream. Suddenly everyone wanted to wear flannel shirts and workman’s boots and churn out this raw, fuzzy and loud sound. The movement faded away almost as quickly as it came on. Nirvana’s frontman Kurt Cobain killed himself in 1994, Alice in Chains last performed with their singer Layne Staley in 1996 (Staley later died of a heroin overdose in 2002), and Soundgarden disbanded in 1997. But certain bands made an indelible mark on the pages of rock history. If there were to be a Big Four of Grunge, it would be Soundgarden, Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains.

We caught up with Jerry Cantrell, founding member of Alice in Chains, to speak about their first album in about 14 years, their new singer William DuVall and the resurgence of Nineties rock.

Hi Jerry, how have you been?

I’ve been really well. We’ve had a couple of weeks off in between tours and we’re just getting ready to starting a three-week run on the East coast of the States tomorrow. And then we will be looking forward to coming over to Europe and the UK for about a month and a half.

Awesome”¦ Coming to the album, fantastic album in Black Gives Way to Blue, Jerry”¦

Oh, thank you”¦

Was it particularly a difficult or painful album to work on? I mean, it seems like a very cathartic album.

[Laughs] Yeah, it wasn’t very easy. You know, most good work is not easy. And obviously we had a lot to kinda sift through. You know, what the band was where we left it and the death of our friend Layne [Staley]”¦ There were a lot of questions that had to be answered, before we even thought about doing this. And one was ”˜Should we do this?’ And then when we answered that question, the next one was ”˜How do we do this?’ [laughs] The cool thing is about life in general, the rule of thumb the guys and myself have always followed is to just do what feels right to you. I’ve been lucky enough to be part of a great band. And it’s been a great journey, even the tough stuff. It’s a real life. And it’s not lost on us – what it took to do this. We didn’t take [the new album] lightly, and we took it as seriously as we took any of the other records we made in the past. And obviously we had more to deal with in this one. So we’re very proud of this record.

Right. In fact, in the very first song [”˜All Secrets Known’], the very first words are “Hope, a new beginning”¦” Was that really something deliberate?

Sure, probably”¦ Yeah, obviously”¦ That record, it’s a great record itself. It stands right alongside any Alice record that we’ve done. We’ve never really pulled punches or tried to do anything but write from our own experience. And this record isn’t any different. Obviously there’s a lot of things to address and we’ve been through a lot and we hadn’t made a record in a while. So that record has a lot to say. It really does have a lot to say, about where we’ve been, where we are now and where we are going.

A common question that came about while you were doing interviews for this record is about [new vocalist] William [DuVall]. And the fact that a lot of people feel that he sounds like Layne. And that you don’t quite share that viewpoint. You don’t think that he sounds like Layne?

No, I don’t think he sounds like Layne at all. He sounds like William. You know, this band has a certain way that we sound and I write in a certain way and also I have been part of that vocal sound, with Layne. And I sing a lot of stuff myself. So the three of us carry over; Sean [Kinney], Mike [Inez] and myself are the musical core of the band, and the writing partnership and vocal sound of that had Layne. That still remains, even though Layne is not here. And of course, we’re not gonna start playing the old songs differently [laughs]. They were written a certain way, so you’re gonna get that. The only way it’s gonna work in our mind is if William just was himself and kinda related and got into the older material. Like I said, you can’t play ”˜Rooster’ any other way than how it was written [laughs]. You know what I mean?

Yeah, I get that”¦

But you can approach it differently and of course William does. And I think he’s been very very successful at that. And it’s become more comfortable for him to exploit the opportunity to make new music with us, and put his stamp on that along with us. But you know, using one of my all-time favourite bands’ example. In AC/DC, Brian Johnson doesn’t sound like Bon Scott; they sound like AC/DC. [Similarly] William doesn’t sound like Layne to me; he sounds like William. They both are unique individuals and we were all very happy to have William on. I know more than probably anybody, how hard he’s worked at being a musician. It’s something that he cares about. He hasn’t had a whole lot of huge success. He’s had a lot of personal success, with his dedication and how hard he works and how much he’s appreciated. He cares. He’ a lifer like we are, you know [laughs]. So it made sense to me to invite William to come along and he thought about it and jumped on”¦

You’ve been working with him personally for a while anyway”¦

Yeah, sure. I met William in 2000. So I’ve known him for ten years – five years before we ever thought about this [record]. We did some touring together on Degradation Trip, my last [solo] record, and we became friends and kept playing with each other. We’d do a couple of Alice songs here and there. And well, we kinda learned how to become a team together vocally. Even though it’s a different relationship”¦ obviously it’s not going to be the same thing [as was] with Layne. With William, we’re working on a new relationship in an old established template, let me put it that way”¦

But you do have to take on a larger share of songwriting responsibilities, I guess?

Yeah, I did”¦ I mean, I don’t really think it’s any different [laughs] than any other record that we’ve done. I am lucky enough to be part of a band with a lot of great creative guys, great ideas, and also very lucky to have been as prolific as I’ve been. And there’s a real sense of pride about being able to come up with something that the other guys dig and that they’d be able to. I like to play the role that I’ve been playing”¦

Jerry, I see this resurgence of rock from the Nineties. I’m not really calling it grunge, I’m not calling it metal. I’m just putting an umbrella term of ”˜rock.’ Soundgarden is back, you guys are back. Do you see that in the gigs that you go to? In the way the audiences are reacting? I see kids who are probably not even born when you guys came out with your first album, who are headbanging away to Alice in Chains now”¦

Yeah. Well, I think it’s all about the music. You just mentioned Soundgarden, and all of the bands that made music that I really liked, that I really cared for, that was close to me, you know”¦ Even after these bands decided to not continue for various reasons, that music continued to work. So it’s a great thing about music. It’s hard enough to make it and get it out – to get it to a point where it has the possibility to reach people – and put the effort into it. But if you get the opportunity to do that, I think, the reason it connects with a lot of people is because it’s good [laughs]. I would hope. It strikes a chord. And the music of the Nineties”¦ not just in Seattle”¦ There was just a heavy creative output of music in the Nineties. I think that music still reverberates you know. And I’m very proud to have been in one of those bands”¦

I know you are running short on time, so my last couple of questions. One is, there have been a whole lot of interpretations of the title of the album, Black Gives Way to Blue, and the title track itself. I just want to hear it from Jerry Cantrell himself – what does ”˜Black Gives Way to Blue’ mean? As a title and as the song”¦

Well, the song is obviously to Layne. That was the end for him and for us. And this is also a new beginning. Going through that, losing a friend, losing your best friend, and losing your creative partner as a consequence of his death, the band was finding a way without really a plan. We were just starting to come back to life. We had ended in a pretty dark place, and we’re far from that point now. In five years we’ve moved from there, from making the effort to let this band and let the music live again. And we’ve come a long way. Things are a lot lighter today and a lot more hopeful. Although we don’t forget our own story at the same time. We aren’t hiding anything, we aren’t pulling any punches, this is just our story, specially what’s happened in the last five years.

My very last question, Jerry. Does India feature on your tour plans at all? You know what, I really hope so. We’ve been lucky enough on the tours that we’ve done in the last couple of years, to be able to work in some countries that we haven’t been to. India obviously would be amazing to go to. I think William may have made a trip to India, as a student possibly”¦ I know he made a trip to Africa and Egypt. And I wanted to say that he may have made that trip but the rest of us haven’t. But it definitely is on my list of places I want to see and people I’d really like to play for. And we certainly hope that we can do that. The difficult thing with playing internationally is that logistically it’s just so hard to get over there [laughs] and cart so much, to get everything you have over to some place to only play like one show or two shows. We will certainly. It’s in our minds. We want to go everywhere that we’ve never been and India is certainly at the top of that list.

Tags:
Previous Article

You Might also Like