The Clash of the Titans: The tour when Alice in Chains got booed every single night
Getting your foot in the door as a rising artist is never the best experience in the world. Compared to artists who can get rapturous applause from the crowd if they so much as sneeze in their general direction, it takes a lot of hard work for people to win a crowd over in the time they have onstage in the early days. Alice in Chains were already at a disadvantage because it was not the biggest band in the world, but their tour with legends of thrash metal was doomed from the start.
For one thing, Alice in Chains were dangerously close to becoming trendchasers before they were known as grunge icons. Since they came out at the same time acts like Guns N’ Roses dominated the charts, there were more than a few photo shoots in their early days trying on their best rootsy rock garb, including the band adopting the same cowboy boots and slightly glamorous angle of Slash and Axl Rose.
Layne Staley may have even started out in a glam band called Sleaze, but the sound they made together was much darker. Fitting somewhere between traditional hard rock and Black Sabbath-style heavy metal, the entire group had a strange melancholy that seemed completely separate from Soundgarden and Pearl Jam. Maybe that’s why bands like Slayer and Megadeth decided to take a chance on them when booking the Clash of the Titans tour.
Although thrash icons Metallica were big enough to start headlining their own shows, the rest of the ‘Big 4’ of thrash started their own joint tour, with Alice in Chains serving as the opening act before Anthrax, Megadeth, and Slayer closing out the show. They may not have ever backed down from a big show, but they weren’t exactly welcomed with open arms.
Since the crowd mostly just wanted to hear thrash, no one wanted to hear these plodding songs with a tempo that was below Kerry King’s intense tremolo picking. When asked about the tour in Metal Evolution, drummer Sean Kinney talked about how they struggled to get through the show, saying, “We are one of those bands that has the luxury of playing with anyone. We just wanted to play, so we did that…and it was a rough crowd. They’d throw shit at us, but we’d just throw it right back”.
While it’s understandable if no musician wanted to play ever again after getting pelted, Anthrax’s Scott Ian gave them massive respect for taking it on the chin, explaining, “Those dudes got pelted with more shit than I’ve ever seen a band get pelted with. People were throwing their beer, buying more beer and throwing it at Alice in Chains, and never once did they back down”.
The thrash crowd may not have wanted to change, but once the grunge explosion happened, more than a few of those hecklers probably walked away fans of Alice in Chains. The moody introspection of a band like Nirvana may not have been for everyone, but hearing a song like ‘Man in the Box’ with a sludgy guitar sound or the demonic riff of ‘We Die Young’ was grunge rock on metal’s terms.
So let this be a lesson to anyone who tries to heckle a support band. They may seem like a rough fit, and they may not be going anywhere in your eyes, but it just takes a few good decisions and some decent songs for a band to go from an opening act to one of the biggest names in music.
