It Was A Mix Of The Harder, Heavier, Uglier Stuff With The Pretty, Beautiful Sound

Alice in Chains‘ seminal album, Filth, is as a lot a product of its time as it’s a defining work of the grunge period. The band’s artistic course of was formed not simply by inner struggles but in addition by the exterior chaos of the Rodney King riots that swept by way of Los Angeles in 1992. In a revealing episode of Gibson TV’s Icons, guitarist Jerry Cantrell recounts the harrowing expertise that turned intertwined with the album’s genesis.

Recording periods for Filth started throughout a very unstable second in LA’s historical past. “We got here to LA to document Filth, and we moved into Jordan‘s studio,” Cantrell explains (as transcribed by Sonic Perspectives). “That was proper concerning the time that the cops had been on trial for the beating of Rodney King.” The band adopted the trial carefully, anticipating the decision’s potential fallout. “If these guys bought off, it was going to be apocalyptic, you understand?” Cantrell displays. “That is what we had been all speaking about and fascinated with.”

When the decision was introduced and the officers had been acquitted, Los Angeles erupted virtually immediately. “Positive as [hell], man, when that verdict got here down and people cops bought off, inside minutes the city began erupting. We began seeing fires, and we began seeing folks get pulled out of automobiles—like on TV.” This wasn’t a distant spectacle for the band; it was unfolding in real-time, proper outdoors their door. “This was the primary load-in day, or like, the primary or second day proper on the very starting of the recording course of. And we had been like, man, we bought to get the [hell] out of right here.”

The band’s escape from LA was fraught with hazard. “Principally, getting from North Hollywood to Venice, to the Oak Woods to get our garments, some cash, and a few stuff, and attempting to get out of city was a battle,” Cantrell recounts. Streets had been ablaze, and the air was thick with stress. “I keep in mind the streets being full of individuals operating round, buildings on fireplace. We stopped for fuel, and folks had been simply coming in and taking stuff. Folks had been going into shops, taking stuff, glass being damaged, fights beginning.”

Finally, the band determined to flee to the relative calm of Joshua Tree. “I keep in mind us making that acutely aware name, and we had been hanging out with Tom Araya (Slayer‘s frontman), and we had been like, what can we do? I believe any person got here up with the concept: Let’s exit to Joshua Tree within the desert till issues calm down. We picked a spot to fulfill, and I believe we rented a few Volvos or no matter,” Cantrell recollects.

The change in surroundings supplied an odd however wanted reprieve. Amidst the stark desert panorama, the band continued to put in writing and refine the music that may develop into Filth. “However that is how that document began. After which we went out to Joshua Tree and dropped acid. I believe Tom had a couple of dry peyote tabs he introduced out there. We frolicked for like 4 or 5 days. However that was the start of Filth.”

The chaos they escaped was mirrored within the depth of the music they created. Cantrell describes Filth as a document that displays each the heavy and the attractive. “The fabric that we had been writing at the moment was fairly gnarly, you understand? That is a tough document. It is actually fairly too, and it is a good mixture of each. And I believe that is sort of the equation of the band, it was a mixture of the tougher, heavier, uglier stuff with the beautiful, stunning sound.”