{"id":266869,"date":"2025-11-02T12:31:17","date_gmt":"2025-11-02T12:31:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/266869\/"},"modified":"2025-11-02T12:31:17","modified_gmt":"2025-11-02T12:31:17","slug":"facelift-by-alice-in-chains-the-story-behind-the-album","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/266869\/","title":{"rendered":"Facelift by Alice In Chains: the story behind the album"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first time Dave Jerden heard Alice In Chains<\/a>, he thought they were a mess. It was 1988, and Dave, who had just produced Jane\u2019s Addiction<\/a>\u2019s groundbreaking Nothing\u2019s Shocking album had been given the band\u2019s demo tape by an A&R friend at Sony.<\/p>\n

Despite the growing buzz surrounding their hometown of Seattle, the band\u2019s music was all over the place, and no producer wanted to touch them. But there was one song in which he heard the sound of the future.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cI forget which song it was, but it was the closest to the Alice In Chains we know now, with the drop-D tuning,\u201d Dave told Metal Hammer in 2019. \u201cI met with the band and told them
what I thought, that their songs were a mess. But I also said to Jerry Cantrell<\/a> that I liked what he was doing. It was like if Metallica had sped Tony Iommi\u2019s riffs up, then brought them back down again.\u201d<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

Dave\u2019s foresight was bang on the money. Within 18 months, Alice In Chains had leapfrogged the likes of Soundgarden<\/a> and Nirvana<\/a> to become grunge\u2019s first superstars. With their debut album, Facelift, they became the first band from the Seattle scene to sell half a million records, opening the door for everyone to follow. And in Layne Staley<\/a>, they had a truly iconic singer: tortured, charismatic, ultimately doomed.<\/p>\n

\u201cFacelift was where Alice In Chains found their style,\u201d said Jerden. \u201cAnd Man In The Box was the first song that introduced the world to the grunge sound. It was never a case of luck. That record was meant to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"Alice\n<\/p>\n

Alice In Chains: (from left) Sean Kinney, Jerry Cantrell, Layne Staley, Mike Starr (Image credit: Steve Jennings\/WireImage)<\/p>\n

When Jerry met Layne, grunge was barely a twinkle in Kurt Cobain\u2019s eye. It was 1987, and the top dogs of the Seattle scene were prog-metal pioneers Queensr\u00ffche<\/a> and B-list thrashers Metal Church.<\/p>\n

Layne and Jerry had chequered musical pasts \u2013 the former as the singer of glam metal band Sleze, the latter as guitarist with bouffant-haired rockers Diamond Lie. But they had plenty in common. Both had troubled backgrounds. Jerry\u2019s mother had died of cancer when he was young, and he wasn\u2019t close to his father. Layne had been kicked out of his house by his mom. They bonded over family, drugs and music.<\/p>\n

Sign up below to get the latest from Metal Hammer, plus exclusive special offers, direct to your inbox!<\/p>\n

\u201cWe met at a party,\u201d Jerry told author Mark Yarm in the book Everybody Loves This Town. \u201cI didn\u2019t have a place to live so he invited me to this place where he lived called Music Bank. He was just such a cool fucking guy and his voice was amazing. I knew I wanted to be in a band with him right off the bat.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pair stumbled through various combinations of band names before settling on Alice In Chains, borrowed from a name Layne\u2019s old band had briefly used. The line-up was completed by bassist Mike Starr and drummer Sean Kinney.<\/p>\n

Their demo, The Treehouse Tapes, ended up in the hands of Nick Terzo, an A&R man with Columbia Records, who signed the band. Nick passed it on to Dave Jerden, who told the band they should go in and record another demo. A few months later, Dave received a new six-track tape. One of the songs was Man In The Box, destined to become AIC\u2019s breakthrough hit.<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

Alice In Chains – Man in the Box (Official Video) – YouTube
\n\"Alice<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I got that six-track demo, and it had Man In The Box and all the great songs from that first album, that\u2019s when I really thought we could be on to something,\u201d Jerden told Metal Hammer.<\/p>\n

The producer travelled up to Seattle to start working on Alice In Chains\u2019 debut album. The band took him out to the local clubs, where he saw grunge pioneers such as Soundgarden and Mother Love Bone.<\/p>\n

\u201cLayne was just such a fucking cool guy and his voice was amazing. I wanted to be in a band with him right off the bat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jerry Cantrell<\/p>\n

\u201cYou could tell that something was in the air,\u201d he recalled. \u201cI had kind of been aware of this \u2018Seattle sound\u2019 that people were talking about, but to be there felt very exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not that Alice were entirely accepted by their grunge peers. Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil recalled their early demos \u201cowed a little bit more to Poison<\/a>\u201d. He claimed that the band changed their approach when they heard Soundgarden.<\/p>\n

\u201cJerry asked me how to play songs like Beyond The Wheel [from Soundgarden\u2019s 1988 debut, Ultramega OK],\u201d he remembered. \u201cI said, \u2018There\u2019s this thing called drop-D tuning. A short time later they recorded a demo of the songs you hear on Facelift and they had that drop-D tuning on them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"Alice\n<\/p>\n

Alice In Chains\u2019 Layne Staley and Jerry Cantrell in the early 1990s (Image credit: Jeff Kravitz\/FilmMagic)<\/p>\n

Work began on Facelift at London Bridge Studios, out in the woods a long drive from the centre of Seattle. Despite Layne\u2019s escalating drug use, the problems were physical rather than pharmaceutical.<\/p>\n

\u201cSean Kinney had broken his arm and couldn\u2019t play,\u201d Dave Jerden remembered. \u201cWe got the drummer from Pearl Jam to cover him but he couldn\u2019t do it, so Sean played on that record with a broken arm.\u201d<\/p>\n

The darkness that would descend on Alice In Chains was still a way off. The producer told Metal Hammer that there being a real camaraderie between the bandmembers. \u201cThose guys came from the same sort of crazy backgrounds, and they banded together like a family,\u201d says the producer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey came from the same sort of crazy backgrounds, and they banded together like a family.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dave Jerden<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re all outcasts,\u201d Jerry later told Spin magazine. \u201cWe just want to be able to look each other in the eye and go, \u2018This is pretty cool.\u2019 That\u2019s all you need \u2013 everybody grooving on the same thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Songs such as Man In The Box, We Die Young and Bleed The Freak were shot through with dark imagery, but the band subsequently denied they were about drugs or the attendant lifestyle.<\/p>\n

Layne claimed that Man In The Box was inspired by mass media censorship, while Jerry claimed We Die Young came about after he spotted a gang of pre-teen drug dealers on the way to rehearsals. \u201cSeeing all these 9, 10, 11 year-old kids with beepers dealing drugs equalled \u2018We died young\u2019 to me,\u201d he wrote in the liner notes to 1999\u2019s Music Bank box set.<\/p>\n

Alice In Chains – We Die Young (Official HD Video) – YouTube
\n\"Alice<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI believe that Layne was a sensitive person attracted to darkness,\u201d Dave said, \u201cbut I never saw any evidence of drugs in the studio. Not once. I believe that on Facelift, Layne was portraying a dark world from the outside looking in. It\u2019s only later t hat they were right inside it looking out.\u201d<\/p>\n

We Die Young was released as a radio single in July 1990, and Facelift followed a month later. It sounded like nothing else at the time. Black Sabbath were seen as an over-the-hill joke by the turn of the 1990s, and few bands wore the Birmingham icons\u2019 influences as openly as Alice In Chains.<\/p>\n

Even more unique were Layne and Jerry\u2019s intertwined harmonies, either heavenly or hellish depending on the song. But with grunge yet to take root in the broader public consciousness, it was a tough sell, as the band found out first hand.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were out in front of 15,000 Slayer, Anthrax and Megadeth fans pelting them every night with crap.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scott Ian<\/p>\n

The Clash Of The Titans was one of the landmark heavy metal<\/a> package tours of the early 90s. The US leg kicked off in May 1991 and featured Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax. San Francisco thrashers Death Angel were due to open, but cancelled following a tourbus crash. Enter Alice In Chains \u2013 not only a relatively unknown name, but not even a thrash band.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were out there in front of 15,000 Slayer, Anthrax and Megadeth fans that were pelting them every night with crap,\u201d recalled Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian. \u201cBut they never
let any of it get to them. And then of course, Man In The Box broke and all those people that were throwing beer cups at them went out and bought their record. So Alice, they got their revenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Released in spring 1991, Man In The Box was a slow starter. \u201cAt first, radio wouldn\u2019t touch it because they said that Layne\u2019s voice was wrong,\u201d Dave Jerden said. \u201cIt was just a station in Texas that put it on syndication and the reaction was wild, so everyone followed suit.\u201d<\/p>\n

MTV eventually picked up on the song, and Facelift started to rapidly gain traction. Having sold just 40,000 copies in its first few months, it shifted more than 400,000 copies in six weeks on the back of Man In The Box. Before Nirvana, Pearl Jam or Soundgarden, Alice In Chains had become the first of Seattle\u2019s grunge bands to crack the mainstream.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Alice\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Annamaria DiSanto\/WireImage)<\/p>\n

There was still plenty of work to do. Shortly after their Clash Of The Titans stint, Alice began a lengthy US tour opening for hard rock legends Van Halen. It was towards the end of that run that Dave Jerden reconnected with his former charges, only to find them in a very different state of mind.<\/p>\n

\u201cI went to see them just before we went in to do [Alice\u2019s second album] Dirt,\u201d Dave said. \u201cI asked them, \u2018What\u2019s it like to be famous?\u2019 and they all said, \u2018We hate it.\u2019 Especially Layne. He said, \u2018People treat you like an object. They just want a piece of you.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey suddenly seemed to be living the darkness that they were only exploring on their songs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dave Jerden<\/p>\n

The singer was dealing with his own demons. He was deep in a heroin habit that would last until the end of his life. It made the atmosphere in the studio very different to when Dave and the band began work on Dirt.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomething had happened to that family,\u201d Dave recalled. \u201cIt was drugs, that was obvious. Layne started recording a week after getting out of rehab. They suddenly seemed to be living the darkness that they were only exploring on songs like We Die Young from the first record. That\u2019s what they wanted, but you have to be careful what you wish for, I guess.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dirt was an altogether darker record, and the true starting point for Alice In Chains\u2019 \u2013 and especially Layne\u2019s \u2013 descent into hell. There were moments where the darkness lifted \u2013 most notably the band\u2019s stellar MTV Unplugged show \u2013 but the lights went out completely when the singer backed away from public life in 1996.<\/p>\n

Today, Alice In Chains stand as one of the great bands of the 90s. Dirt rightly stands as their masterpiece, but Facelift is no less important. Without it, the 1990s could have been very different.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first time Dave Jerden heard Alice In Chains, he thought they were a mess. It was 1988,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":266870,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,216],"class_list":{"0":"post-266869","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266869\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}