layne staley

“Dark.” That word came up the most as SPIN spoke to nine musicians about Facelift, the groundbreaking debut album from grunge gods Alice in Chains. Thirty years later, it's the ultimate description for the album's bleak sound, anchored by the tortured lyricism of frontman Layne Staley and guitarist Jerry Cantrell. While 1992’s Dirt is widely considered Alice in Chains’ masterpiece, 1990’s Facelift introduced the world to Staley’s hypnotic voice and the band's ominously groovy approach. The album — released this very day, three decades ago — explored somber lyrical themes like death, drugs and censorship. And on classic songs like “Love, Hate, Love,” “Bleed the Freak,” “Sea of Sorrow” and the MTV-endorsed “Man in the Box,” they helped define the genre with the imposing drumming of Sean Kinney, the dense bass lines of the late Mike Starr and Cantrell’s droning, crushing riffs. To commemorate the album’s anniversary, SPIN reached out to several musicians — some friends, all fans — to gain their insights and perspectives. Kim Thayil Guitarist, Soundgarden Kevin Winter/Getty Images We shared management, so at that time, I probably would’ve gotten an advance of the album. By that point, we had a demo cassette of earlier Alice in Chains, which was a little bit different — a little more rocking, and kinda had something in common with what was happening in L.A. at the time. When we heard the demos for Facelift, it was a totally different story. It’s heavier, darker and had some definite components of what was going on in Seattle then. I didn’t know that we would become successful or if Alice or Pearl Jam or Nirvana would become successful. We loved all those bands and thought they were great, but it didn’t fit the model at that time on rock radio or MTV. It was hard to anticipate it being that successful commercially because that was not the musical fashion at the time. My favorite song on the album is “It Ain’t Like That.” I always gravitate towards that song, and it’s one of those songs I wish I had written. Usually, when I love a song, it’s like, “Man, why didn’t I think of that?” Not always. There are great songs by Sly and the Family Stone that I love, and have loved since I was a kid, but it would not fit my writing style. But when I heard that riff, I thought, “Oh man, that’s the coolest thing.” I love the groove. I love that’s its slinky and psychedelic, and I’ve had the opportunity to play that song with them onstage. That was fun, to be able to go up there and play that riff. There are a couple of things that are very distinctly Alice in Chains. One is that harmony between Layne and Jerry — that interval, that was their thing. They influenced probably hundreds of successful commercial bands that have copped that harmony. The other thing is Jerry’s bend – writing riffs with this particular sort of slinky and druggy bend. He incorporates that into a number of riffs, and those are identifiers for me. If I hear a new Alice song or album, I can distinguish it from their imitators when I hear that riff, that bend. Brandon Boyd Singer, Incubus Courtesy of Incubus I remember buying Dirt because it was one of the first times that I went to the record store near my house in suburban Los Angeles, and I got Alice in Chains’ Dirt, the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Blood Sugar Sex Magik, Nirvana’s Nevermind, and Pearl Jam's Ten — all in one grab. I had just turned 15, and that grouping of music and lots of stuff around it basically forged my interest in modern music. The further away I get from that moment, the more fortunate I realize I was was popular at that moment. I still go back to all of those records and am amazed at how well they hold up. Alice in Chains were onto something before the rest of the world. They were one of those trailblazers. There are stronger moments than others on Facelift, but the whole album is really where it’s at. You get the full picture of this band by listening to it from the get. “Love, Hate, Love" is such a dark song — to me, that’s like quintessential Alice in Chains. One of my earliest impressions was, “This is not happy music.” There is something inimitably dark and kind of amazing about this band because they weren’t trying to be happy. It sounded like gloomy, overcast, depressive art-rock to me, so the movement from “Love, Hate, Love” to “It Ain’t Like That” to me is like the coolest one-two punch on this album. And I think “It Ain’t Like That” is my favorite track on the record. I was enthralled by Layne’s voice, and still am to this day. He had a pretty amazing versatility in his voice, but there was also something understated in the way he presented it. You could tell he could probably sing better than he presented, if that makes sense. He had a restraint. He would go into those deep vibratos, but he would fuck with you a little bit, or that’s how it felt. There was this little bit of a punk attitude, which also attracted me to it as well. Phil Anselmo Singer, Down and Superjoint Ritual Danin Drahos I thought that Alice in Chains had a damned good sound, with a real singer that delivered. Jerry Cantrell had a nice, raw guitar tone, and Layne Staley just wailed. They brought the beauty of the 1960s into the sneering 1990s. Nobody had an idea about all the great records they’d eventually make at the time, so Facelift was a fine start. As for my favorite track, it’s between “We Die Young” and "It Ain’t Like That." Dallas Green Guitarist, Alexisonfire/Everything, City and Colour Vanessa Heins My parents got me into music lessons pretty young. So, around the time I turned 9, 10, 11 years old, I had been playing guitar for a couple of years. And then the grunge explosion happened — Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Nirvana, Alice in Chains — and I was like, “Okay, this is it for me.” But I just gravitated toward Alice in Chains more than any of those other bands. Looking back, I have always been drawn to darker, more melancholy stuff, and out of those four bands, Alice in Chains was always the moodier, darker band. They were so heavy, but the music was so beautiful. Like the harmonies between Layne and Jerry were just — it just got me. And as I got older, I became a singer, and it just made sense to me. After I saw a video for “Them Bones,” that was it. Dirt was the first album I bought with my own money. And then, going back, I realized that “Man in the Box” song I loved so much was on Facelift, so I went and got that. It’s been a love affair ever since. I loved how Facelift was darker than Dirt — and that’s a pretty dark record. There’s something really ominous about the way Facelift sounds. The opening chord progression to “Bleed the Freak,” or songs like “Sea of Sorrow”…I mean, even the “Man in the Box” video is super creepy and almost scary when you’re that young. I just loved how epic it was. You sort of always equate these records in your life to the moment you heard them and how they affected you. With Facelift, it was nice to go back and hear where it came from. I know that they were on the tail end of that ‘80s glam scene, and Facelift is them transitioning into that moodier : “Let’s start singing about our heroin problems.” I was a child, and I felt like they were speaking to me, even though I know they were singing about this really dark affliction. Something about it just made sense to me, and still does. Mikael Åkerfeldt Singer, Opeth Jonas Åkerlund I was 16 when Facelift came out, so of course, I was hanging out, drinking beer with friends. My group of friends would spend a lot of time at my house, and it was actually David Isberg, the singer who formed my band, Opeth, who introduced me to them. I remember he came over with three records: Metallica’s black album, Nirvana’s Nevermind, and Facelift. I loved all of them. I was really impressed with them and became a fan instantly. They had a Sabbath-y type grittiness. It was heavy, really heavy, and it was dark. They were also something fresh. For me, at the time, I was into death metal. There were a few bands I really that weren’t death metal bands, like Candlemass, Saint Vitus, and the Obsessed, that were kind of “okay” to listen to, even if you were into death metal. Because, at that age, it was really important to listen to the right shit. Alice in Chains provided something I guess I had been missing. They kind of meshed the darkness from some of the more extreme metal bands I was listening at the time with that melodic sense, which, of course, was just normal vocals. His voice jumped out at me, because it was a great vocal. It was something that had been missing for me. Out of all of those grunge bands from that time, Alice in Chains are my favorite. They have that rare talent where they have sing-along-y type songs: very melodic, lots of harmony vocals, which I’ve always loved, ever since the Beatles and Abba and all that stuff. If you listen to those vocals, they are very complex, and the riffs are, like, weird. To this day, if I listen to Alice in Chains, I listen behind the vocal sometimes, and I go, “How the hell could they write a vocal line to that riff?” They were very inspirational for me — maybe the biggest inspiration on me from the 1990s. Ben Burnley Singer, Breaking Benjamin Chris Yankton I think “Them Bones” was the first Alice in Chains song I ever heard — and it was back when they played videos — and I was really into the video and their whole look. From there, it happens a lot – bands will come out with stuff, and you’ll hear one song maybe later on, and you will go back and get all of the older stuff, and that’s what happened with me. They have a really cool way of combining notes and bends that you didn’t hear back in those days. When Alice in Chains came out, with what Nirvana was going through, there were all these hair metal bands around and Jerry Cantrell with his really unique style of playing. Then, you mix that with Layne’s vocals, and the drums were always on-point, and the bass carries the guitar — they have a lot of songs where the bass is silent while the guitar is playing, and I love stuff like that. They’re very simplistic in the sense that there’s one guitar, one bass, one vocal, and what they do with that is just genius. When Jerry plays a solo, he will just play it over just the bass, and it will work; he won’t lay down a rhythm guitar track. Stuff like that is hard to pull off. I like it when bands have new music that sounds new but still sounds like them. I don’t like it when a band completely flips the script and doesn’t even sound the same anymore. When I think about Alice in Chains’ catalog, it all had that really awesome familiarity but done in a brand new way, and that’s what I respect about them. Robb Flynn Guitarist/lead singer, Machine Head Courtesy of Atom Splitter PR I went to a Foundations Forum in the early ‘90s, trying to get Machine Head signed, and they were passing out samplers of Alice in Chains, and I remember Alice in Chains played, but I didn’t really get it when they played. But I ended up listening to the sampler and I was like, “Oh, man.” And Facelift blew my face off. It was just such a dark record, with so many great songs: “We Die Young,” “Man in the Box,” “Love, Hate, Love,” “Bleed the Freak.” The song “Sunshine,” I didn’t really get it immediately, but man, like three months into the record, that was my favorite song, and still is. I caught them on that tour at the Omni, and they played to 30 people. We ended up getting backstage, me and my friend, and I was in a band called Vio-lence at the time, so I brought them a Vio-lence shirt, and they wore it on stage. We ended up talking to Cantrell for a second, and they weren’t very happy with the turnout. And then they played the next night with Screaming Trees at a club called the Ivy in San Francisco and opening was Mookie Blaylock, who my friend, Rob Cavestany from Death Angel, was like, “Oh my God, that was the best band I’ve ever seen.” And I was like, “They sucked.” I totally hated it because it was too happy. Alice in Chains came on and they were awesome. Layne was a phenomenal singer, with incredible range, incredible emotion. Obviously, the harmonies between him and Cantrell were amazing. It was very melodic. It’s pretty much like a pop song, but the lyrical content and the nature of how it’s sung is just so dark. I have a connection with that for some reason. Dave Jerden did a great job with that record. The guitar tone…it was freakin’ savage for its time. It was so heavy, so dense, and so layered, and that was a big part of it. The music, it wasn’t metal, and we knew it wasn’t metal, but it just had that thick bass tone that was distorted and heavy and deep. Alice in Chains were, and continue to be, a massive, massive influence on Machine Head. Jami Morgan Drummer, Code Orange Jimmy Fontaine We have a radio station here in Pennsylvania called WXDX, and I heard “Man in the Box” when I was in middle school. Alice in Chains were more influential to us, musically, probably around 2012 or 2013, when we were getting out of high school. The thing that struck me about Alice in Chains was the different use of dark melody and harmonizing. That was really the first thing that jumped out as being different from any of the bands that they came up with – the harmonies on almost every single line, the super dark lyrical content that’s obviously rooted in a lot of drug issues and real world problems. Aesthetically, I loved how all of those first records looked and felt. That’s pretty much the one common thread a lot of the bands I like have, not just the songs — and they’ve obviously got a million great songs — but that linear aesthetic that’s rooted in reality. On our I Am King record, we have a dark, ethereal song called “Dreams and Inertia” that was super influenced by Alice in Chains. We also have a song “Autumn and Carbine” on our latest record — the goal was not for it to sound like Alice in Chains, but to have that Alice in Chains stomp that you can hear on fucking “Sea of Sorrow” or “Man in the Box.” It’s like a double-time kind of feel that carries through many of their songs. They had one of the greatest vocalists that ever lived, and it has been emulated, I feel, almost as much as Kurt ’s voice — especially corporate, kind of festival rock. I think the vocals are what set them apart, combined with that amazing guitar work, and it also has swagger to it. Their music had everything that’s great about rock. At its best, rock has this badass swagger to it, and they really had that. Bryan Funck Singer, Thou Gonzales Photo/Peter Troest/PYMCA/Universal Images Group via Getty Images I was young and remember seeing the video for “No Excuses.” Later on, I caught the video for “Man in a Box” or “Would?” Alice in Chains was one of the first bands that grabbed me. I was listening to all the stuff of that era on repeat. At the time, I was probably like 12 or 13 and just looking for aggressive, sort of heavy music, but stuff that still had some pop elements to it. Specifically, with Alice in Chains, I think I was drawn to the stronger lyrical content versus a lot of those other bands in their peer group. I’m not a musician, so in terms of me composing stuff, probably not, but in terms of finding the emotive feel I was going for. At least with Thou, the stuff we go for is sort of melancholic — sad songs put through a heavy-song filter. Sonically, we definitely owe more to bands like Alice in Chains or Nirvana than we do Eyehategod or Sleep or something. On Facelift, “Love, Hate, Love” was always a standout track for me, and I like “Sunshine,” “We Die Young” and “Sea of Sorrow,” which was a real rocker. An amazing album by an incredible band.

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