By Chris Rockwell

Since I can remember, I’ve experienced the world through a lens of extreme feelings, colors and sounds. Some people call it passion. Most experts call it manic. (My wife Beck, who works in the field of psychology, says I’m definitely both.) This band and album strikes deep chords with me in a very personal way. When “Alice in Chains” hit the scene I instantly connected with their sound, look and attitude. They were country boys from the Pacific Northwest playing this dark heavy groove oriented rock with lyrics that described feelings that I understood. At times I felt like this album was speaking to me. In fact, it’s all I listened too for months at a time. Then, with a flick of the switch, I went years not being able to confront them because of the memories it brought out of the dungeon of nostalgia, the best of times and my self induced darkness. But the memory I cherish is when my brothers and I were flying high and running wild as we tripped around a thirty foot bon fire one night on Navarro Beach in Mendocino, CA. “Alice in Chains” was there to provide the soundtrack that celebrated our new discoveries and close a chapter of our innocence.

As a musician, I was instantly addicted to Jerry Cantrell’s guitar style. He created these sludgy blues riffs that were dark and super heavy. They were based on feel and the ghosts of Sabbath and some twisted country music influence I can’t put my finger on. And to complete the song he would contrast those riffs with melodies that pulled you to the surface just long enough to see the light and take a breath of fresh air so you could dive back to the bottom of the boggy depot (as he aptly titled his first solo album). Cantrell is in my top three guitarist of all time, next to Dimebag Darryl of Pantera (R.I.P.) and Zakk Wylde (thanks for my birthday tickets, Zakk!). Recently, I was listening to some of my old rough cut guitar recordings and a scratched CD of my former Seattle band. I smiled with acknowledgment realizing just how much I tried emulating Jerry Cantrell’s guitar style and Sean Kinney’s drumming. I have to give credit where credit is due. (Hey Godsmack, take a hint!)

A review by Michael Christopher described this album perfectly, “The centerpiece of the record is undoubtedly the trilogy of Cantrell/Staley compositions, disturbingly showing that they shared the same headspace, the mind of a junkie. “Junkhead” is the quintessential form of music that Alice in Chains perfected and later became known as “sludge rock”. The guitar and bass together sound like they’re being dragged through the La Brea Tar Pits, and Staley slogs his vocals through the murk in tandem. Praising the drug, chastising those who dare to criticize, “Junkhead” is the ultimate pro-heroin song, with its celebratory ending “I do it a lot! / Say, I do it a lot!” Yet by the time the title track kicks in, the come down is obvious, as the symptoms of withdraw have driven the user’s mind to thoughts of suicide. The track is even more swampy than “Down in a Hole”, if only for its complete hopelessness. “God Smack” is the brink of schizophrenic insanity, with Staley taking on no less than three tones to his range. Heroin by this point has become an all-consuming religion to the junkhead.

What makes Dirt so amazing, is that it was so real. This wasn’t heroin dabbling resulting in some flash of artistic genius. This was drugs controlling the situation so powerfully that there was almost nothing else to use as subject matter, because that would’ve been faking it. In retrospect, it’s obvious that nothing was contrived. Bass player Mike Starr was the first casualty, leaving under a cloud of drug-fueled rumors immediately after touring for the record. Alice in Chains themselves never quite got it together after the album, though still putting out viable and just as dark material with another acoustic EP and a self-titled LP, but playing only a handful of dates to support the releases. Perhaps the fragile state of Staley, tragically evident in the 1996 Unplugged concert shows why. The singer would battle through addiction on his own, living Dirt over and over again before he finally succumbed to the vices a few years ago. The record wasn’t celebratory by any means — but you’ll be hard pressed to find a more brutally truthful work laid down — and that’s why it will always be one of the greatest records ever made.”