“A big argument”: The classic Alice in Chains song their label didn’t want to release
It’s not always easy to spot the greatest rock tunes unless it’s in hindsight. For every act like The Beatles greeted with rapturous praise from the moment they started, bands like The Velvet Underground wouldn’t get their proper credit until years after they had called it a day. Although Alice in Chains may have made a name for themselves as one of the first significant grunge acts to break the mainstream, one of their first smashes was initially going to be discarded.
Before they had properly formed, their genesis was forming in two separate bands. While guitarist Jerry Cantrell was putting together his first riffs in Diamond Lie, vocalist Layne Staley had started to make waves on the local scene with the hair metal act Alice N’ Chains, creating songs that were still copying off the sounds of traditional hard rock acts like Guns N’ Roses.
By the time Staley’s old outfit fizzled out, he had become interested in working with Cantrell, eventually joining the outfit after they tortured him in their rehearsal space with one mediocre singer after the next. Twisting his old band’s moniker, Staley formed the basis of Alice in Chains and created the perfect vocal marriage with Cantrell, often singing overlapping harmony over their guttural riffs.
Once the group had enough success off their debut EP, We Die Young, they ventured into the studio to record their first proper album, Facelift. While many songs would be indebted to the groggy sounds of Seattle, like ‘Love Hate Love’ and ‘Sea of Sorrow’, Cantrell knew that he had magic on his hands when working on ‘Man in The Box’.
At that point, the band were still figuring out exactly where they fit within the wider rock landscape. While the Seattle scene was beginning to stir, it hadn’t yet exploded into the global phenomenon it would soon become. That left Alice in Chains occupying a strange middle ground, blending elements of metal, hard rock and something darker that hadn’t quite been defined yet.
‘Man in the Box’ captured that identity perfectly, even if it wasn’t immediately obvious to those outside the band. It had the weight of classic metal but carried a mood and atmosphere that felt distinctly different from what dominated the airwaves at the time. In hindsight, it’s easy to see why Cantrell fought so hard for it, even when others couldn’t quite hear its potential.
Set at a medium tempo, the song is practically an alternative answer to Black Sabbath, with Cantrell’s guitar sounding like it’s being dragged through the mud as Staley cries out in agony. Even though Cantrell thought the track was a shoo-in for a hit single, he was blindsided when his label had no faith in it.
When talking to Gibson, Cantrell talked about how much their label didn’t want to release the track to radio, saying, “We knew that was the song to put out. There were those emphasis tracks. I remember having a big argument with the record company, who will completely deny it to this point. [They said], ‘The song’s too slow. You gotta speed it up’. [I said], ‘Dude, trust me. The song’s killer and this is what we’re putting out.”
Introducing the world to Staley’s wail, the track would also be the precursor to grunge’s inevitable takeover. Breaking through in the last few months of 1990, the song was rock fans’ first taste of what Seattle sounded like, which would proceed to get blown out of proportion once Kurt Cobain rose to the occasion with Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’.
Even though Alice in Chains was on stable ground, they were still met with confusion onstage, going on bills with acts that didn’t match their style, like Van Halen and Megadeth. For all of the middle fingers flashed at them and beer cans thrown at their face, though, Alice in Chains had created their signature sound and would spend the next few years showing everyone why they should be respected.
