Who is Alice in Chains’ ‘Would?’ about?
Each of grunge‘s ‘big four’, to which mainstream America was first exposed once the Seattle dam had burst all over the charts, held intriguing influences and characters that set them apart. Nirvana moulded punk with college rock melodies, Pearl Jam went for stadium gold and wore their love of classic rock on their sleeve, and Soundgarden channelled the heady psychedelia of yesteryear for a more lysergic-flecked attack.
Alice in Chains had been around longer than it appeared. Formed from the ashes of local band Sleze, frontman Layne Staley was as hair metal as it came—glammed up as hard as the MTV cartoon characters grunge sought to destroy only a few years later.
Impressed with the singer, Jerry Cantrell met Staley at a party shortly after and sowed the seeds for the pull toward darker, more introspective terrain. Combining a love of blues and country as well as metal on the doomier end, 1990’s debut Facelift showed flashes of the dramatic brilliance they’d capture two years later.
It was 1992’s Dirt that thrust them to their creative and commercial peak, delivering one of grunge’s finest albums and leaving an indelible mark on American alternative rock. Thunderous riffs and lyrical plummets into despair, violence, and war fronted by Staley’s commanding vocals for a moment distracted global attention away from the frenzy surrounding Nevermind, dropped a year earlier.
Led by one of their defining singles, ‘Would?’ explores the legacy of a celebrated yet troubled Seattle music icon who never got to enjoy the cultural explosion he helped bring about.
So, who is Alice in Chains’ ‘Would?’ about?
“I was thinking a lot about Andrew Wood at the time,” Cantrell revealed in 1999’s Music Box liner notes. “We always had a great time when we did hang out…There was never really a serious moment or conversation, it was all fun. Andy was a hilarious guy, full of life, and it was really sad to lose him. But I always hate people who judge the decisions others make. So it was also directed towards people who pass judgments.”
Playing in local bands since a teenager, Wood, along with Melvins and The U-Men, is credited with establishing what would come to be known as grunge. Soaking up the better end of glam with his animated androgynous rock presence, Wood cut a colourful and joyous character at odds with grunge’s later perception of perennial miserabilism that would cloud the movement by its end. Forming Mother Love Bone with Green River’s Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard, Wood found the ultimate expression for his love of stirring anthemic hard rock and exotic decadence.
Struggling with a decade-long drug problem, Wood overdosed on heroin days before the release of their Apple debut and was taken off life support two days after. The first of a handful of casualties to hard drugs in the Seattle scene, Wood’s passing hung over the city’s music community for many years. It also inspired the Temple of the Dog side-project sparked by Chris Cornell, seeing Ament and Gossard’s successor Pearl Jam routinely play Mother Love Bone’s ‘Crown of Thorns’ in tribute to the enigmatic and charismatic Seattle legend.
