ALICE MAY BE IN CHAINS, JERRY IS NOT
by Rich Maloof
From Guitar Magazine • May, 1998
Transcribed and contributed by Suzi
With 150 watts of Alpine power coursing through the speakers in his 4x4, Jerry Cantrell is bouncing down a one-laner in his hometown. Rough mixes of 'Boggy Depot', his new solo album, fill the truck. From the driver's seat, he looks out the broad windshield and sees his career opening up on the road ahead. In his rearview mirror, Alice In Chains. He eases the volume up until the windows shake.
"I ain't scared!" laughs Cantrell, as the Alice questions come up on him fast. For a forerunner of a scene that has run its course, that's saying something. Even the most promising and talented bands that sprang from this Pacific Northwest have broken up, cracked up, or otherwise checked themselves out. They came, they revitalized rock... they disappeared. Had they not self-destructed, the music industry still would have spit them out as it does any music not long after gobbling it up. Why not be scared?
Cantrell is feeling courageous because he's full of potential. The prolific songwriter who has led Alice In Chains through an enormously successful, decade-plus career is not about to turn it in just because Seattle has settled back into its pre-1990 roll as a small city with a regional music scene.
"In a way, it's nice to have the spotlight off of this town," he says in a voice just loud enough to hear over the motor's hum. "It was definitely a lot different before the big thing happened, and it was really crazy while it was going on. It was pretty special to be a part of that. But there's a natural evolution. It has to go full circle: to rise, you're going to have to fall and complete the circle again. Hopefully, you get another shot. Some people get more shots than others."
With 'Boggy Depot', Cantrell has assured himself another shot. But the future of Alice In Chains is being called into grave doubt, and appropriately so. While Jerry insists that Alice still exists and could very well come up with an album in the future, indications are that their existence is a little more than hypothetical. Before the band's 1996 Unplugged performance, they hadn't gigged together in two years, and they haven't played since. Amplified rumours of vocalist Layne Staley's personal consumptions have drowned out the music; there was more talk about why he wore the bug-eye glasses on the Unplugged show than how good he sounded. But of course, the rumours spread because fans fear that another great Seattle band might be writing itself out of music history, and spiraling down into the misery of which they so often sing. While those fans are eager to get their paws on 'Boggy Depot', they can't help but wonder why they're getting a Jerry Cantrell album and not the new Alice In Chains record.
"Why not?" Cantrell responds with another laugh, though he knows it doesn't get him off the hook. He continues: "Well, Alice has been together for 11 years now, and that's a long time. That's a good run, and we've had a better run than many. In these last two or three years, things have kind of wound down as far as the touring aspects of it, for our own reasons. It's just time - it's been time for a while - to grow and do other things. Layne did a record with Mad Season, and that was part of the growth and moving out. I spent the whole year before this last one just writing."
"The inactivity of the last couple of years kind of wore on me a little bit. But at the same time, I stick with whatever we decide as a band. I don't think it would've been a good thing for us to have been on the road. So it's all working out. You've got to be thankful for what you've got, and I am. As far as Alice goes, we're - what's the word? - we're on hiatus, I guess. We're not history."
Jerry's words echo those he declared for MTV recently. Though he stated adamantly that AIC was simply on the back burner, it was widely interpreted as an indication of closure.
"I'm just speaking about today, right now. When will we get the next one out? Who knows. Anytime I try to figure out what the hell is going on with Alice In Chains, we end up planning to do it rather than trying to accomplish it," he says, more mystified than angry about it. "It's really best not to try to predict those things. Basically we're just four kids from Seattle who had a bar band that turned into a pretty big deal in some places. You can't perpetuate that forever. Hopefully, we'll be able to do some more things. I fully expect that we will, someday. But for the meantime, we'll do our own thing."
High up on Magnolia Bluff, a short ride north of downtown Seattle, Cantrell turns the truck down a picturesque residential street. With the winter sun beaming off the Puget Sound, the Olympic Mountains in silhouette ahead, and Mt. Rainier watching maternally over the entire region, it's hard to understand why Seattle is known for its gloom. Maybe it's a real-estate plot, so people like Cantrell can have it to themselves. Here in Washington he can enjoy the wildlife he loves, whether it's rock-climbing in the mountains, hiking through the forest, or dropping a few crab pods in the Sound from the small boat he keeps downtown. He grew up shuffling between the military bases his father worked in, but Spanoway, down south of Tacoma, was long considered home.
"I'd love to get a place around here someday," he says, pulling into a park where he and his friends used to suck down beers and look out over the water. "I was up here just recently with an old friend, Billy Carter. He was in my first band. He played milk cans and plastic buckets and shit with wooden spoons! I had this old Mustang copy - a Victoria or something - that I played through an 8-track stereo. I had this shitty bass, too, that my buddy Rick used to play. Back in junior high, we used to sit around in my girlfriend's basement and jam."
Far as he's come, Cantrell's relationship with his drummer remains his closest musical connection. Sean Kinney, who hit the skins for Alice, is Jerry's right hand man.
"Sean is the only constant on the whole 'Boggy Depot' album," he says. "Me and him played on all the songs. We have an army of bass players, and some of the best: Norwood [John Norwood Fisher] from Fishbone is on a couple of tracks that just kill. Les Claypool played on a couple, Rex Brown from Pantera is on there and [AIC's Mike] Inez played on a couple. Plus we've got Angelo [Moore] from Fishbone playing some great horn stuff. The Fishbone guys we got to know when we were out together for Lollapalooza [in 1993], and Pantera I've known since I was 19, living in Texas. Good friends, good guys, great players. But Sean is the constant. I'm really connected to him."
Quite uncommonly, Kinney's drumming has even been responsible for delivering some of AIC's greatest hooks: Think of his playing on the opening of No Excuses and Would?, for example. For all the Page & Plants and Tyler & Perrys of the world, there's no denying that Cantrell & Kinney are joined at the hip.
"There's something weird with us. I've jammed with some good drummers, but there's nobody like him. We follow and lead each other, and complement each other's playing really nicely. Even live, I rarely have anything in my monitors more than Sean, and he has mostly me. We jam all the time, just me and him, without bass players. A bass is not necessary for us to have a good jam - we don't give a shit! And when I started thinking about this project, he right off was like, 'Fuck yeah, let's do it.' He was fully supportive. It was really important for me to have Sean in order to feel comfortable."
Kinney has also been a good sounding board for Cantrell's songwriting, and has no problem whatsoever responding with a hearty "That sucks" if a tune isn't cutting it. Then again, penning great songs has never been a problem for Cantrell. 'Boggy Depot' (named for the town where his grandmother lives) finds him hitting all the marks you'd hope he would, but also stretching out to explore ideas beyond the scope of Alice In Chains. Cold Piece, the album's 8:29 closer, is the launching pad for a decidedly outside wah excursion. Settling Down, with it's arpeggiated piano intro, contains familiar elements in an unfamiliar setting. Plus, Jerry's been listening to a lot of Hank Williams (yup), and Between features a cow-pokey acoustic under lyrics like "On my way to Texas/Drive up on my ranch/Gonna take you fishing up in Branch/Well now you're my catch". When the song blows into it's major-chord, big-smile chorus, you still know it's Jerry, but in a dandy new outfit.
"I've done most of the writing [for 'Boggy Depot'] over the last two years," Jerry says, "but there are some riffs and ideas that have been around for a long time. You can have something around that you don't think works, and then seven years later, it does. Sludge Factory, off of the dog record, is a perfect example of that: We'd had that around for years before it made it onto an album. So it's not that certain things didn't work for Alice that now worked for me, but that the song just works one day, when it hadn't before. It's like, you get up one day and you don't feel good - maybe you feel angry. And the next day you feel great. The song definitely tells you what it needs and where it needs to go. You just listen for it."
He's had Layne Staley's powerful, haunting vocals out in front of his music for a long time, so you might assume Cantrell was a bit nervous tackling all the vocal duties for his new project. True, he's sung a few leads and oodles of backups for AIC, but this was a new venture entirely. (Little known fact: Jerry was the president of his high school choir. Give that kid a gold star.) Patient as ever, he made it work, and even found new outlets for his love of vocal harmonies.
"It just took time, and I knew it would take time," he says, modest but confident. "I wanted to be comfortable knowing I was doing the right thing. Creating a new entity, I felt I had to take the time to let it be natural rather than forced. It would have been a grave error to do it any other way, and I'm lucky to have been able to take the time. But patience wasn't something I was born with, I can tell you that."
Rather than sweating out the vocals, Cantrell wrung his hands over more than a few guitar parts. But you'd never guess he had any concerns about his playing. The album is soaking wet with guitars, not only in the expected riffs and rhythms, but with the leads - some raging with rock abandon, some of them harmonic adventures, some of them long, legato exhales.
"God, sometimes the playing was tough!" he laughs. "On some pieces it took me a while to get the right voicing and to get comfortable. I think it feels relaxed, yet... intense. I'd have to say my chops probably weren't up to snuff. When you're touring, you're like butter at that point, and I haven't had that live outlet for a while. That's one thing I'll be very glad to get back into. You have to be playing live to really get that fluidity going. Plus, when you're reacting to other players, stuff comes out of you that you never could plan on."
Cantrell's philosophy in laying down guitar tracks is, simply enough, to put a lot of them down, so there's a full palette to paint from when it comes time to mix.
"I've always really liked to layer. Like I said before, the song will tell you what needs to be there, and I'm not afraid of using a lot of ingredients to get the best result in the end. It doesn't scare me. Plus, I plan on having another guitar player with me out on the road, so it won't be hard to represent any of this stuff live."
The sun is getting ready to dip behind the mountains, and it strikes Cantrell that there's nowhere better to watch it go down than from the top of the Space Needle. The radio plays Zeppelin's Hey, Hey (What Can I Do?), and he sings along as he winds through his 'city by the bay', heading for the tower.
The mouths of a few young tourists drop open as Cantrell buys a ticket for the observation deck, though they're intuitively respectful and repress the urge to say hi, Cantrell shoots a charismatic, if slightly shy smile to them, and nods politely to the elevator operator. On the ride up, Cantrell proudly points out Seattle landmarks, prompting the tour guide to joke that his job is in jeopardy. ("You in a band?" the guide asks later. "No, no," Cantrell responds, grinning at the floor.)
Out on the deck, high above the city, Cantrell gets a bit pensive about the rollercoaster ride he's been on over the last few years and the role fame has played in his life.
"It's strange sometimes, I won't play that it isn't. I still don't have the hang of it. But y'know, I can think of a lot of worse things to be doing in life, and I'm really thankful and grateful for what I've got. Everything comes with ups and downs, and fame is no different. And if you don't have the down parts, what's good? I couldn't enjoy this sunny day if I didn't know what rain was like."
"But some of the shit people try to find out about you - personal stuff that people choose to write about and discuss really irresponsibly..." He trails off for a moment, staring at the low sun. "You know, I've got a family, too. Just because you're at a level where people are conscious of you and interested in you doesn't give them a green light to wreck your life. Who gives a fuck what someone else is dealing with personally or what's hurting them personally? It's their business. Put yourself in their shoes. How would your grandmother feel, or you mom and dad, about a lot of the shit that gets written? The fame is not an excuse to write like that about somebody. You dig deep enough in anyone's closet and you're gonna find something. It never ceases to amaze me how deep and dark our appetites are for that shit."
The sun is down now, and Cantrell's mind is wondering toward tomorrow.
"I think you have to be aware of those things, but you don't let it take over your life. You try to find a balance. I think that's part of everybody's goal and search, to find a semblance of peace and ease with yourself. You just move on, and do the best that you can. And what you find out is that it's really not too bad."
