A treat for all those AiC fans out there.
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Although considered the newly resurrected gods of alternative metal and grandfathers of the noble grunge tradition, Alice In Chains are not invincible. Talking to founding member and drummer Sean Kinney, the last time he was in our fair land many years ago, he ended up in hospital, as he reluctantly revealed to me.
“Yeah, the last time I was [in Australia] I had a great time. Unfortunately I had to go to hospital. Jimmy DeGrasso [the drummer] from Suicidal Tendencies had to fill in for me when we went over to New Zealand. I can’t remember exactly what it was; it was a long time ago.
“I’m actually looking forward to getting over there [for Soundwave] and – well, you know – to not end up in hospital.” Nevertheless, it didn’t deter him from staying on, staying in Cairns for two weeks after his eventual recuperation.
Having been on hiatus for so long, Kinney remains cognizant of the weight of the expectation that he and the band must bear; he laments that Alice almost disappeared completely, never to be seen again.
“Well, we sort of shut down when, back in the day, when things were really starting to blow up around us,” he caustically explains.
“We made the wise career choice of never performing after releasing two number one albums back to back. So we stuck with that plan by not doing anything for ten years. Then of course Layne [Staley, singer], had passed away. This was something I didn’t foresee happening and it just naturally had taken its course.
“As long as it feels good and it’s cool and it’s genuine with us and we like it, it just kind of evolved to this point. Things are going along pretty great. It’ll be interesting too. It’s such a different world out there.”
The world he refers to is that of the music industry, which has undergone almost cataclysmic shifts since their time in the late 1990s – the age of the internet crept in and eventually exploded towards the dying years of their decade with the advent of Napster and more recently iTunes and Bit Torrents, a world Kinney keeps a critical eye on.
“It’s a world where people steal music and record companies can’t sell music,” he says, with a mix of excitement and disapproval.
“They sort of screwed up. It’s such a different time and place; there are so many real unknowns now. It’s going to be really cool.”
When Alice in Chains were around the internet was no where near as powerful a medium as it is today and the record companies who ignored its potential, according to Kinney, have paid the price.
“They fucked up, man. They just didn’t pay attention.”
“The great thing is that you can get your music out to a lot of people. But on the flipside, people want it for free. Studio time isn’t free; we put a lot of money and effort into what we do. They expect us to be talking to them twenty-four hours a day on blogs and things. It takes the mystery away, I think.
“We’re not from that ‘era.’ That was never really our ‘thing.’ It’ll be interesting to see how we fit in, if we fit in.”
Talking from the famous Studio 606 in Los Angeles, Kinney and the band settled on Grammy-award winner Nick Rasculinecz (pronounced Rask-yoo-len-icks) as producer, having an impressive CV having been behind the desk for Rush, the Foo Fighters and Velvet Revolver. The genesis of the new Alice record was humble, Kinney says.
“Well, we had a few tunes happening and it got up to the point where we said ‘Hey, let’s make a record.’
“So we started thinking about producers, and Nick’s the kind of guy like us; we don’t use a lot of the stuff that people use nowadays, we’re not doing song inspections and we’re not doing autotunes and shit like that. We’re really old school. We actually play everything you hear. (laughs) Sonically, he does some really great stuff. [He makes] what you hear is what’s really going on, and we really liked that.”
According to Kinney, Nick is one of the more laid back producers in the rock scene, content with having fun and making friends rather than pushing the band to their absolute limits. Would Nick ever wave a gun in their faces a la Phil Spector and The Ramones during their turbulent sessions?
“It wouldn’t surprise me though,” Kinney muses, “If he did something weird…but I’ve seen a lot of weird shit in my time and it’ll take a lot to throw me. So far it’s been really cool.
“A few years ago Rolling Stone said that we’d never do it. Now here we are, making music again and I’m honestly really excited about it. It’s amazing how life plays out like that. If it feels right, and it’s for the right reasons then it happens. But you never know where shit is going to lead you.”
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Originally published in Buzz Magazine, February 2009 © Tom Valcanis / Crushtor Media Services, All Rights Reserved. Posted with permission.
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