The unexpected influence of Elton John on Jerry Cantrell
Most of the 1990s grunge scene was rebelling against the old guard of rock and roll. Whereas the sounds of hair metal were still fresh in everyone’s mind, acts like Nirvana wanted to stamp out the sounds of corporate rock and pave the way for something more authentic to get onto the charts. While Alice in Chains certainly brought their twisted sound to the table, Jerry Cantrell had a strong connection with Elton John.
When he was growing up, Cantrell remembered having an eclectic musical upbringing, including doing musicals when he was a kid like Bye Bye Birdie. Once he decided that he was going to be a guitarist in a band, his parents were less than thrilled, being fans of old country music like Willie Nelson rather than Judas Priest.
Although Cantrell was into some of the heaviest music imaginable, he listened to the music of Elton John during his formative years. When discussing his first musical love with Gibson, Cantrell called John a “big thread in my musical fabric. That’s where I put together how magical music is [and] how magic a song is that elicits an emotion. I was going, ‘this guy is in a country across the ocean that I’ll probably never meet and have nothing in common with, but he’s making me feel what’s going on there’”.
In a seperate interview with Amoeba, Cantrell pointed to the album that did it, discussing John’s record Madman Across the Water: “There’s something magical about that record. I love every song on that record: ‘Levon’, ‘Madman Across the Water’. Probably the main guy who wanted me to be a musician”.
After listening to Elton John, Cantrell went in a different direction with grunge. As Cantrell got immersed into the Seattle music scene, he gravitated towards heavier bands like Black Sabbath and Pantera, which informed his songwriting when cutting the early Alice demos. As he began to write with Layne Staley, John’s approach to melody kept creeping in slightly.
More than the menacing riffs, the cornerstone of Alice’s sound was always the harmonies between Staley and Cantrell, reminiscent of the leading tones that John would put into albums like Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. Cantrell explored that melodic side deeper during Alice in Chains’ acoustic phase, playing songs like ‘No Excuses’ that were more downtempo than their worship of Sabbath.
Though Cantrell always admired John from a distance, it was a dream come true when he got to work with him on one of his records. When recording Alice’s reunion album Black Gives Way to Blue, Cantrell was starstruck when he heard that John would provide a piano part for the studio track. He told Entertainment Weekly, “We sent him a demo, and he said it was beautiful and he’d love to play on it. In the studio, he was really relaxed and gracious. We were just trying to be cool: ‘Oh, yeah, no big deal.’ But we were excited. [Drummer] Sean Kinney and I had to walk out a couple of times to smoke cigarettes, like, ‘Holy s—, this is killer.’ It’s one of those highlights you can’t expect in life, and you’re lucky to get them once in a while. And that is one”.
Cantrell even returned the favour during his solo career, covering the closing song on Madman Across the Water, ‘Goodbye’, as the final track on his album Brighten. Alice in Chains may have come a long way from the sounds of the ‘70s, but no artist forgets where they come from, and Cantrell is proud to wear his Elton John influence on his sleeve.
