Alice In Chains: Dirt

By: Arianna Grewal

     Alice in Chains’ Dirt was released in 1992, at the height of Grunge music.  The song Would? was actually recorded before the rest of the album was even written.  It appeared in the 1992 movie Singles which revolved around the new era of 90’s Grunge.  Dirt, in comparison to the previous album Facelift, is a lot darker and more emotionally charged.  Dirt hit #6 on the Billboard 200.  Steve Huey of AllMusic called it, “...a primal, sickening howl from the depths of Layne Staley's heroin addiction, and one of the most harrowing concept albums ever recorded."  Although Dirt was released on the same day as another famous Grunge album, Core by Stone Temple Pilots, it pushed through, and went on to be “certified four times platinum status in the US, platinum status in Canada, and gold status in the UK.”

     The album’s theme centers around Layne Staley’s battle with heroin addiction. This makes for meaningful, almost angry, gritty, and morbid lyrics which sent Grunge fans in a state of awe.  Although not all songs on the album contain messages about heroin, Jerry Cantrell’s contribution to the lyrics (on almost half the album), share the same theme. The lyrics showcase the mind of an addict; what grim, helpless thoughts race through their heads, and although they may be aware of their addiction, they feel they do not have the power to stop it (hence the lyrics on Down in a Hole: “Down in a hole, and I don’t know if I can be saved,” and why he is “feeling so small.”  Other tracks exhibit the grittiness of addiction (and grunge) as Staley and Cantrell focus on the not so “sad” part of it all as well as the angry side.  This can be seen on tracks like Junkhead, God Smack and Sickman.

     Another interesting track which Cantrell wrote is Rooster. Rooster was written as an allegory to the life of a soldier in the Vietnam war.  The lyrics contain great imagery and a real sense of the thoughts and terrors of a soldier at war.  One line of the song says, “The bullet screams to me from somewhere,” which is a “poetic” way of describing the terrors of jungle warfare.  Another line I like is, “They spit on me in my homeland,” because it really emphasizes how Vietnam soldiers were treated so poorly after returning home from war.  The song showcases how horrific the conditions were fighting in Vietnam and how terribly the soldier missed his family (“Gloria sent me pictures of my boy”). Cantrell was inspired to write Rooster for his father, who served in the Vietnam war.  His father was nicknamed Rooster during his time serving which encouraged Cantrell to name the song that title.