Who was the female backing singer on Alice in Chains song ‘Brother’?
Alice in Chains’ most essential year came in 1992.
While Nirvana’s Nevermind was in full Billboard conquering bloom and Ten was pushing Pearl Jam to serious chart waves, Alice in Chains were already making a splash in Seattle’s alternative underground from their Facelift debut two years previously. Packed with heavy blues attack and brooding metal thunder, a decision to whet the appetites of their dedicated fanbase with an EP of haunted acoustic folk rock perhaps landed as a surprise.
Such brittle balladry served as a logical extension to the ruminative realm Alice in Chains dwelled in. Dropped in February 1992, seven months before their immortal Dirt, Sap would bottle Facelift’s dark atmosphere but walk down a starker road of pained contemplation, elevating frontman Layne Staley’s powerhouse vocals and sharpening guitarist Jerry Cantrell’s desolate and splintered songcraft.
Sap also saw Cantrell step behind the mic for the first time. Signing the stirring ‘Brother’, Cantrell penned a number for his younger brother David, reflecting on their parents’ divorce and how the fracture affected their sibling relationship. “I think I was really hard on him, especially without my father around,” he confessed on 1999’s Music Bank’s liner notes. “David had nobody, he split to live with my Dad, and we didn’t see much of each other for a good six or seven years. That song was about the time we were apart…it was a way of trying to build a bridge.”
While a sparser arrangement than previously heard from Alice in Chains, one notable guest voice in the background raised ‘Brother’ to its stirringly emotional peak, adding a gravitas yet heard on anything from Facelift.
So, who was singing backup?
Despite lapsing into some of the big hair silliness and MTV theatre that grunge was rallying against by the 1980s’ close, Heart’s hard rock output a decade earlier had helped put Seattle on the musical map during the classic rock era with stompers like ‘Barracuda’ and ‘Crazy on You’. With such a lauded heritage, sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson had survived the glossy pop blight to become something of an elder statesman of the bustling grunge scene.
Becoming good friends and something of an industry veteran with sage advice to offer to Seattle’s new rock generation, Heart lead singer Ann was invited to the city’s London Bridge Studio to lend her distinctive vocal chops to Sap’s fragile opener. She joined a respectable cast of session vocalists, Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell and Mudhoney’s Mark Arm, both singing on the EP’s ‘Right Turn’ cut.
Ten years later, during a solo concert in Seattle’s Key Arena, Cantrell honoured Alice in Chains’ late frontman, who had died a month earlier on April 5th, 2002. “I’d like to do something for a good friend of ours who’s no longer with us”, he told the audience, before inviting the Wilson sisters to join him on vocals and guitar to perform an extra poignant version of ‘Brother’, a song that had unavoidably taken on new meanings in the wake of Staley’s death.
