Our guest is Jerry Cantrell, the founder, lead guitarist, co-lead vocalist, and primary songwriter of Alice in Chains. The nine-time Grammy nominee has written more than 20 Top 10 hits on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart, has sold more than 30 million albums worldwide, and was named one of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time” by Guitar World magazine. His latest solo release is the critically-acclaimed Brighten.
SUMMARY:
Our guest is Jerry Cantrell, the founder, lead guitarist, co-lead vocalist, and primary songwriter of Alice in Chains. The nine-time Grammy nominee has written more than 20 Top 10 hits on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart, has sold more than 30 million albums worldwide, and was named one of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time” by Guitar World magazine. His latest solo release is the critically-acclaimed Brighten.
PART ONE:
Paul and Scott chat about their high school years, the Seattle explosion, Chuck Klosterman's new book, and why certain bands from the much-hyped grunge movement evolved and survived when others burned out.
PART TWO:
Our in-depth interview with Jerry Cantrell
ABOUT JERRY CANTRELL:
Nine-time Grammy nominee Jerry Cantrell is best known as the founder, lead guitarist, co-lead vocalist, and primary songwriter of the hard rock band Alice in Chains. Signing with Columbia Records in 1989, the Seattle-based band got lumped into the grunge explosion of the early 1990s when Cantrell-penned classics such as “Man in the Box,” ”Would?,” “Rooster,” and “Down in a Hole,” took over MTV and Billboard’s Mainstream Rock chart. But Alice in Chains was always about more than Seattle hysteria. By the middle of the decade they’d released three multiplatinum selling studio albums—Facelift, Dirt, and the self-titled Alice in Chains—as well as three EPs, including Jar of Flies, which went triple platinum and became the first EP in history to top the Billboard 200. A string of Top 10 singles, including “No Excuses,” “I Stay Away,” “Grind,” “Heaven Beside You,” and “Again” established the band as rock radio mainstays.
Plagued by struggles with addiction, Alice in Chains took a hiatus from live performances before regrouping in the spring of 1996 for an appearance on MTV Unplugged. The subsequent album hit the Top 5 on the Billboard 200 and was certified Platinum. That same year the band found themselves on another extended hiatus, leading to the release of Cantrell’s debut solo album, Boggy Depot, in 1998.
The death of Alice in Chains singer Layne Staley in 2002 could have meant the end of the band, but they eventually regrouped and released the Gold-selling Black Gives Way to Blue in 2009, and the follow-up album, The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here. Both releases hit the Top 5. Alice in Chains has continued to release new music as recently as 2018’s Rainier Fog album, and the band has now sold more than 30 million records worldwide.
In addition to his first solo release, Cantrell put out the album Degradation Trip Volumes 1 & 2 in 2002. His most recent release, the critically-acclaimed Brighten, is his first solo record in almost two decades. Named among Guitar World magazine’s “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time,” Jerry is also a formidable songwriter. More than 20 of his compositions, both with Alice in Chains and as a solo artist, have hit the Top 10 on the Billboard rock chart.