Alice in Chains
Alice in Chains recently announced that a very special guest would appear on their first album in 14 years, out September 29 -- and that person is Elton John, who plays piano on the record's title track "Black Gives Way to Blue," an emotional tribute to late frontman Layne Staley. It's a surprising collaboration, but one that guitarist/songwriter Jerry Cantrell tells SPIN.com was like an act of fate.
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"Elton John was Layne's first concert," says Cantrell, 43, sitting in a dim New York hotel bar, clutching an iced tea with a hand that has no less than three skull-and-cross-bones rings on it. "There's a lot of really weird things lining up here. And things like that have been happening all along during our reunion process. You get little sign posts pointing the right way."
One of those sign posts directed the band to William DuVall, former frontman of Atlanta rockers Comes with the Fall, who fills in for Staley on vocals and plays rhythm guitar. "Part of the healing process is sharing with other people who care," Cantrell says of DuVall, referring to Staley's 2002 death from a heroin and cocaine overdose.
Below, read SPIN's conversation with Cantrell, from the band's decision to reunite will DuVall to their relationship with Dave Grohl, who played a role in recording their new album.
How did the collaboration with Elton come together? It's a little surprising.
It makes a lot of sense to us. But the fact that it happened in the first place is something we didn't expect. We were in the studio and were getting near the end. "Black Gives Way to Blue" was one of the last songs we cut. We were trying to figure out if we wanted a piano track on it. Our friend Todd who was in the room suggested calling Elton just out of the blue and we all looked at him like he was crazy. Of course we would love for that to happen, but we were like, 'Nah that's not going to happen, that dude's busy. He's got his own thing going on.' But Todd was like, 'Hey man, you never know unless you ask. I think he might do it!' So we put that idea to the test.
How did you get him into the studio?
I wrote him an email and explained that the song was for Layne, and we heard that he was interested in doing it. Later, as we continued working on the record, it turned out that Elton was doing a session in the same studio as us in Los Angeles. [Drummer] Sean [Kinney] and I went out to lunch and we got a call from the studio manager saying, 'Hey, Elton wants to talk to you.' We're like, 'We'll be back after lunch,' and he said, 'No, he's taking off here in a few minutes so you guys need to get back here right now.' So we canned the lunch and tore ass back to the studio and walked into the room that Elton was tracking in. He got up and gave us both a hug and said, 'I just wanted to tell you that it's a great tune and I want to play a track on it.' We were totally blown away.
Was Layne a fan of Elton?
Yep. And, coincidentally, about a week ago Layne's mom reminded me that Elton John was Layne's first concert and she said he was blown away. Layne told me that once, but I had totally forgotten about it. It brought back some really cool memories. There's a lot of really weird things lining up here. Number one: the significance of Elton to Alice in Chains. Number two: it was Layne's first concert. And to have Elton play on a song for Layne, whew, it means so much to us.
