“You never know how or if an album will impact or if something is going to last, but ‘Dirt’ stuck around,” says Jerry Cantrell, the guitarist for Alice in Chains, looking back on the Seattle band’s classic 1992 sophomore release. That may be an understatement: the album isn’t just resting on its five-times-platinum laurels, but actually re-entered the top 10 of the Billboard 200 in October at No. 9, the kind of feat that, if it ever happens with catalog reissues, is usually reserved for Beatles remixes. Even in 2022, remarkably, “Dirt” still has not come out with the wash.
The fresh editions of “Dirt” hit the market 20 years after the tragic death of singer Layne Staley, and 30 years to the week of the original 1992 release, which peaked at No. 6 at the time on the Billboard chart, no indicator of just how iconic the album would become and remain. The 30th anniversary reissue’s sales were aided by “Dirt’s” several pressings, like Walmart’s exclusive “apple red” vinyl and an AIC website-exclusive “translucent orange” variant with options of a resin custom sculpture, show posters, band photos and a hardcover book.
On the subject of “Dirt” ramming its way back into Billboard’s top 10, again — this time in the company of Bad Bunny, Beyonce and Harry Styles — drummer Sean Kinney is humbled. “We never set out to have as wide appeal as we did. We never had the conversation around ‘having a radio song,’” he says.
Cantrell is quick to bring uphow Alice in Chains’ debut, “Facelift,” and “Dirt” fit into the context of an era rich with dynamic rock records from fellow Seattle bands such as Soundgarden and Pearl Jam. “We might have all had an effect on each other, connected to a really cool movement, and one of the few times in my lifetime where it felt like the good guys were winning,” says the guitarist. “’Dirt’ was a hell of a record. It stands the test of time, and it’s a powerful piece of work without an ounce of fluff.”
The only thing more harrowing than the sound of “Dirt” – the Seattle band’s rock classic, certified five-times platinum since its 1992 release – was the circumstances surrounding its creation, and its real-time takes on the depression, separation and addiction that plagued AIC’s membership (which was rounded out by bassist Mike Starr) in one way or another. Yet, for all the forlorn emotion and shadow that fills “Dirt’s” music, lyrics and legend, there was joy, humor and optimism to be found, too, in the band’s second album. “Half-light, half-dark,” says Kinney, who forms the nucleus of the current AIC lineup with Cantrell.
“This ‘Dirt’ reissue is for the fans, as it should be,” says Kinney. “We’re not a band who milk it and celebrate every little anniversary. We’ve been through huge obstacles such as half the band having passed away. (Starr died suddenly in 2011.) So, when it got to 30, for ‘Dirt’ and ‘Facelift’ (the band’s 1990 debut), we wanted something that would be special for people who forever supported us, who have been through it all with us. You don’t expect to have a fan base that lasts for 30-plus years, so we never imagined that ‘Dirt’ wound re-chart, now. Hopefully, I’ll get a copy this time, because I never got one for ‘Facelift.’
“We were lucky that when we got a bunch of money to do our first major label deal, we insisted on control, of what we released as singles or how we made albums with no interference from the label —which was rare, then. We didn’t really have A&R. We’d hear input from them, sure, and how dumb we were at times, but more often than not, our mistakes worked. Every time they told us we were veering toward ‘career suicide,’ we had to remind them that we didn’t have a career. We were only on our first albums.”
WIth what they call the “super-supportive” forbearance of two Columbia label execs at the time, Don Ienner and Peter Fletcher, Alice in Chains went into the studio in the spring of 1992. WIth them again was Dave Jerden, who not only co-produced their first EPs “We Die Young” and “Sap,” along with “Facelift,” but was the sound behind one of Cantrell’s favorite albums at the time, Jane’s Addiction’s 1988 “Nothing’s Shocking” epic. “We were big fans of Jane’s and that album,” says Cantrell of having met Jerden and Rick Rubin at the same time to produce AIC records. “Dave knew our songs inside-and-out on our first meeting — songs, titles, every part. Dave connected and cared about our music as much as we did. That was exciting.”
With Cantrell being the band’s primary songwriter since its 1987 start, the long touring process behind “Facelift” honed the guitarist’s writing process through live jams of his “Dirt” classics such as “Dam That River” and “Rooster.” Staley, who had only sporadically contributed songs to AIC’s records until that point, picked up a guitar, began writing more and came to the “Dirt” sessions with solo tracks such as “Hate to Feel”and “Angry Chair,” before co-writing the likes of “Junkhead” and “Sickman” with Cantrell.
“Layne and I always considered each other a songwriting team without ever discussing it much,” says the guitarist. “We worked hand-in-glove. When he became interested in playing guitar, he started writing more, writing songs completely like ‘Angry Chair’ and ‘Hate to Feel.’ They were fucking amazing. Of course, I supported that – a great artist and a good guy driven to make good music. They were a step-up from what he did on ‘Facelift.’ We pushed each other. ‘Dirt’ was an evolution for all of us.”
The 1990-91 tour’s song-making process and the many versions of “Dirt” tracks that morphed in many directions came through live jamming, which Cantrell says is “something you can’t do any longer because everyone records and films you on cell phones… then, you could play songs, develop and test the water without having them leaked across the globe. The mystique is gone.” Cantrell specifically recalls coming up with “Rooster” while staying with Chris Cornell and Susan Silver (manager of Alice in Chains and Soundgarden) at the couple’s shared digs in West Seattle. “They were going to bed, I was working on music on my four-track all night, and when Susan got up at the crack of dawn, I played it, and she was touched by it.”
Famously, “Rooster” has become an anthem for broken families connected to loved ones who fought in the Vietnam War, like Cantrell’s father, a U.S. Army veteran whom the guitarist became estranged from for a time.“My mother had passed a few years earlier and ‘Rooster’ became a personal bridge, an artistic way to make an effort for reconciliation,” says Cantrell. “I’m happy that it’s become a standard for servicemen.”
As songwriters, practiced and new, when either Cantrell or Staley presented their new songs to the rest of the band, it was a chill experience, something natural and organic. “We were really about what feels good,” says the guitarist. “It was about jamming and tinkering. With ‘Rooster’ or ‘Angry Chair,’ we just left it as it was from the start. We all just did our best to put ourselves in the mix and elevate those songs to become all of ours while remaining personal testaments from the writers. Others, like ‘Rain When I Die,’ came together at this converted barn studio that Mick Fleetwood owned. I had a pretty strong vocal idea and lyrics for that one. So did Layne. We brought our ideas for it in one day, and there was some head-butting at first, both of us with cool ideas — at odds — until we started playing what each of us had. All of a sudden, I realized that everywhere Layne wrote, I had a space, and vice-versa. Put that together, and even though he was writing something completely different, it all made sense…. It was a classic Reese’s Cup moment where the chocolate made the peanut butter taste better. Then it went through the collective sieve of all four of us, and got the bad-ass seal of approval for the record.”
Kinney states that “Layne had always been writing, but seeing how things worked, getting more life experience, going around the world beyond our home in Seattle, he came into his own on ‘Dirt.’ And those songs, Layne’s and Jerry’s, were 100% representative of who we were then, how we were growing, where we were failing, sucking it all in.”
Considering the brutal beauty and detritus of Staley’s lyrics in 1992, and hearing the singer’s algebra of need played out passionately and direly on “Dirt,” the drummer recalls the wordsmith’s honesty, “to the extreme. And being the frontman meant that Layne took most of the brunt of it all,” says Kinney, noting how many of the songs on “Dirt” have been misbranded as sheer misery, and how Staley (“truly a hilarious guy”) has been labeled as nothing but depressing.
When asked if people get “Dirt” wrong, Cantrell states, “I couldn’t tell you. The album was about our personal experiences. We acted as lenses to the world around us and shit going on, and rolling into a human viewpoint, personal and unique, yet open enough so others can connect to it and be personal to them. ‘Dirt’ dealt with a wide range of emotions and subject matter, beautiful and dark and everything in between — a full banquet.” Of his Alice partner, Staley, Cantrell recalls the singer being “funny” with “sarcasm being a highly prized commodity in our camp. And Layne was very human… look, we were all trying to create something unique, and that can rub on a person, sometimes. But that is necessary, part of the process.”
“’Dirt’ was never a drug concept album,” asserts the drummer. “And Layne wasn’t a dick. He wasn’t tormented but instead, witty, funny and generous. And he and Ann Wilson were the two loudest, projecting singers I’ve worked with in my life… Layne was great at everything except for being a rock star. Doom and gloom may be a stigma (affecting perceptions of) ‘Dirt,’ but in reality, part of that album talks about how cool it all is, then five songs later is telling you how drugs suck. Most of our music is about persevering and overcoming…. But all of us had similar situations to Layne. That’s why re-releasing these records, now, having to go through them, it’s bittersweet. There are great memories, too, but it’s very bittersweet to celebrate these anniversaries. I don’t get to talk to Starr and Layne about how fucking weird it all is years later to have ‘Dirt’ re-chart.”
Cantrell admits that while he is not usually a sentimental man keen to look to the past, having “Dirt” jump into the 2022 album charts is all part of a complicated tale. “There’s ups and down, and with the history of this band, I can truly say that I am grateful to have had the experience of being here with my fucking friends and that we made music that was important us that was connected to a bigger community, a whole smorgasbord of art,” says Cantrell.
“Though we’re not a band to look backwards, the past is as important as continuing on with what we’re doing now,” says Kinney. “That’s Jerry’s and my will and legacy — just as it is with Mike Inez and William DuVall (respectively, AIC’s current bassist and vocalist, since their predecessors’ passing). We’re here to bring forth Layne and Mike Starr’s talents. We have a lot of the same people around us that we have since the start. We keep things tight. If not, we’d be pumping out albums with a few clinkers in there and we’d be talking about why Alice in Chains’ techno album wasn’t well-received. There’s a reason we’ve only kicked out six albums in 34 years. We’re guarding the legacy of ‘Dirt’ and everything else we’ve recorded — the diaries of our lives that I was too lazy to write down.”
