Alice in Chains: the finest MTV Unplugged performance ever recorded
There’s an entire generation of rock fans whose lives were shaped by watching MTV Unplugged. The concept of bands stripping things down might have sounded more than a little bit pretentious in the early 1990s, but listening back to everyone from Paul McCartney and Eric Clapton record in an intimate setting was a great way to show the other side of what rock stars tend to sound like. While grunge rockers managed to toe the line between soft and aggressive like nobody’s business on the program, Alice in Chains is by far the best in that field, including Nirvana.
Considering what they sounded like on their first album, though, the grunge metal icons sounded like they may as well be allergic to any kind of music that didn’t have a heavy riff in it. ‘We Die Young’ introduced them to the world as a dirty flavour of metal compared to the Guns N’ Roses’ of the world, and if ‘Love Hate Love’ was any indication, they weren’t exactly afraid of being more than a little dark.
There was some light in the pitch-black guitar tone, and it came in the form of SAP and Jar of Flies. Regardless of their penchant for heavy riffs, these tunes were heartwrenching upon their first release, showing off not only their soft rock chops on ‘No Excuses’ but also their complex knowledge of harmony on ‘Got Me Wrong’.
By the time they accepted the offer to play on Unplugged, though, they were in shambles. Layne Staley had only barely contributed to their self-titled record, and once they came off the road, there was no reason to believe that there would be any new material any time soon. Not because of bad blood but because Staley would surely be dead.
Since they hadn’t properly rehearsed in years, this was destined to be a trainwreck, but as soon as they got on that tiny soundstage and went right into ‘Nutshell’, the energy was incredibly captivating. Beyond just the songs, though, every track seemed to have new meaning now that they were coming out of a drug-addled Staley.
Compared to the laid-back, possessed look in the video for ‘Them Bones’, for instance, Staley approached the mic like a man with no skin, making no sudden moves and trying his best to hold on despite his issues. And since most of the group’s lyrics dealt with Staley’s abuse and reliance on drugs, hearing him talking about the pain that it has caused him over the years feels like being let in on a musical therapy session half the time.
Just because it’s uncomfortable doesn’t make it any less beautiful to listen to after the fact. It’s rarely a positive experience, but looking at it purely for the music, there wasn’t an ounce of shine lost in Staley’s harmonies with Jerry Cantrell, which seem to glide across every single track.
Although there are tinges of humour on the playback, like seeing bassist Mike Inez take a potshot at Metallica based on what he wrote on his bass, hearing them in this setting is still one of the greatest examples of an artist showing us a different part of themselves. This was them hanging on by a thread, and yet they still found time to come through for the fans and put together what, for all they knew, was their final true performance together.
While many grunge fans have pored over every second of Nirvana’s appearance on MTV Unplugged to decipher possible clues surrounding Kurt Cobain’s death, Alice in Chains’s episode is far more raw than anyone was willing to go. Cobain had been dealing with his own pain just as much as Staley was, but whereas the Nirvana frontman’s lyrics could mean nearly anything, Staley was willing to put his pain right there in his music for the world to see.
