“The Earplugs Have Been Ordered”
“We’re having a good time,” reinforces Cantrell, “and we’d like to share that with the people that supported us and love the music as much as we do. We want to include everybody that wants to be a part of this experience with us. Like Sean said, it may very well just be this time, but we’re going to go out and do it.”
“The earplugs have been ordered,” he laughs.
Reuniting allows Alice In Chains the opportunity to capitalize on their endurance in a way that, because of drugs and other issues, they never could during the ’90s. “Things went the way they did,” Cantrell admits, “and unfortunately probably at the point where we could have taken it way over the top. But that’s the reality. It’s a reality that we live with, so what do you do with that? You be a bitter old man, pissed off because you didn’t get there or didn’t take it as far as you could take it, or you go, ‘You know, we fuckin’ did pretty well.’
“And we were lucky enough to have the experience of doing it with a guy like Layne, making music that lasts, that still has that fucking vibe that, you crank that on and people go, ‘That kicks ass.’ You play it, you strap the guitar on, and it fucking rocks.”
“We still look great too, by the way,” Inez interjects.
“Life serves up curveballs to everybody, and that was one of our major ones in our lives, and it’s a hard one to move past, but that’s what we’re doing right now.”
“The music’s not going away,” Kinney affirms. “It’s pretty cool because in this day and age everything’s so disposable and, ‘This is the coolest, Brittany’s the hottest thing ever!’ and then two weeks later, it’s like, ‘She’s a loser.’ It’s such a fast, disposable world, I’m really impressed how long this has stuck in.”
“Tell Your Promoter”
Now that Alice In Chains are an established band again, where do they go from here? With little more revealed than the aforementioned Euro festivals and the anticipation high for what’s to come at the Heart Decades Rock Live appearance and afterwards, the guys are open to the possibilities before them.
“It’s all in the works,” Kinney clarifies. “We’ve got some little quick work things we want to do in the US, then we’re gonna go to Europe. We’ll probably go to Asia, South America, and we’ll definitely come here if we’re going to do this thing and people want us to show up. Tell your promoter, we’ll show up and play.”
“Last Nov. my shoulder gave out and I had to have shoulder surgery to repair some fucked up stuff in there, so I’ve pretty much been recouping for the last three months and we’re going to start rehearsing,” Cantrell explicates. “We kind of lost some time on what we planned on doing, so we’re scrambling to make it right and recover the lost time.
“Whatever happens, it’s cool and whichever way it goes down, it’s going to be good. We’re not going to get on stage unless the shit sounds good and as long as we keep the vibe going that we’ve always had about why we do this, I don’t foresee any problems. There’s going to be opinions one way or the other, or maybe in between, but there’s an open invitation to be a part of this special thing that may only happen once.”
Alice In Chains and Heart will be appearing at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, NJ, as part of the taping for VH1 Classics’ Decades Rock Live tribute on March 10. Ann Wilson’s first solo album, along with a collection of Heart’s love songs, will be released later this year. Look for Heart to tour in support. For updated info, check out aliceinchains.com, heart-music.com and vh1.com.
