In a recent chat with Total Guitar, Jerry Cantrell revealed the heavy metal band he wanted Alice In Chains to be like.
“I’m a huge fan of Iron Maiden. I wanted Alice to be a guitar duo band precisely because of bands like that,” the guitarist said when interviewer Amit Sharma mentioned that the intro of ‘Off The Rails’ from Cantrell’s new solo album ‘I Want Blood’ sounds like Maiden’s ‘Wasted Years.’
He went on, “And we kind of are, now, since William DuVall joined. Earlier on, Layne would pick up a guitar and play a little bit, but we were mostly just a three-piece with a singer. Now we actually have two guys playing a lot of guitar, so I got my wish!”
“But when we initially talked about starting a band, I wanted another guitar player and that was purely because of Dave Murray and Adrian Smith. Or the guys from Priest or Aerosmith. I love the Young brothers [Angus and Malcolm, of AC/DC fame]. There’s something special about bands with two guitar players working as a unit,” Cantrell added.
“Music was something that was always in our house from a very early age,” Jerry talked about his early influences in an interview with Gibson’s ‘Icon’ series. “By that time, I was heavily into rock, like AC/DC and KISS and all the English metal. And I grew up on bands that wrote good riffs.”
The musician continued, “I just wanted to play guitar, write songs, and I’m proud to have sprung from the community and so many of my friends. Thirty-three years later they are still going, and the heart of the band is intact. And the reasons and the meaning behind why we all do it, where we all come from, and what that means, that’s not lost on any of us.”
Cantrell will be touring North America to promote his latest solo album, ‘I Want Blood.’ His next show is on January 31 in Ontario, Canada.
