THE STORY BEHIND
ROOSTER BY ALICE IN CHAINS
While holed up at Chris Cornell’s place in early 1991, Jerry Cantrell began to think about his father’s experiences in Vietnam. It would produce one of the decade’s most emotional hits
WORDS: HENRY YATES
WHEN ALICE IN Chains guitarist Jerry Cantrell found himself temporarily homeless in early 1991, he turned to a fellow grunge legend for help. “I was between places to live at that time,” Jerry reflects, “so I moved in with [Soundgarden singer] Chris Cornell and his wife, Susan Silver, at their house in Seattle. Susan was managing Alice In Chains at the time. I stayed there for a few weeks, up in this little room.”
THE FACTS
RELEASED: 1992
ALBUM:
Dirt
PERSONNEL: Layne Staley (vocals), Jerry Cantrell (guitar) Mike Starr (bass), Sean Kinney (drums)
HIGHEST CHART POSITION: 36 (UK)
Sat up alone, late at night, “looking out at the fucking water”, Jerry had time and space to reflect. Virtually every bandmember to pass through the Alice line-up, the guitarist once observed, was “a service brat from a military family”. But on those long nights, Jerry’s thoughts kept turning to his own estranged father, whose psychological scars following his tours of duty in Vietnam had caused the breakdown of the family while the guitarist was still in single digits.