“The way that Layne and I worked together, we had a pretty good partnership. “We work in a really interesting way, especially lyrically and melodically,” he says of their creative kinship. In fact, to Cantrell’s memory, “Rain When I Die” serves as a testimony to his then-evolving partnership as a songwriter with Staley. One song in particular, ‘Rain When I Die,’ I remember we sewed that up in that room.” We hung out there for about two weeks and fleshed out some ideas. It belonged to Mick Fleetwood, which we all thought was pretty cool, ‘cause we’re big Fleetwood Mac fans. I remember we went out to some studio, which was like a converted barn, out in Malibu. “We needed to do a little bit more woodshedding. “We started out down in California and we still had to buff some of the material into shape,” Cantrell tells Billboard. With a cache of concepts, Alice headed down to California to begin shaping Cantrell’s ideas into fully realized songs. When we got done with that tour, I had a lot of good ideas and, collectively as a band, we had some interesting things going on.” There were also jams during rehearsals and in dressing rooms and soundchecks. Back then, it was a little handheld tape recorder or a little Tascam four-track you’d dump your ideas into. And during that time, I was always collecting ideas. “We’d had a really successful tour and campaign for Facelift, which was probably a good 18 months of touring. “Things had really taken off,” adds Cantrell. Some were written right before the record, but some of them were around back then because by the time Facelift came out, we got a record deal for a batch of other songs.”

“Things were being written, and we were touring on Facelift, playing different versions of some of these songs live and working them into what they ended up being. “By the time Facelift had come out, we were already working towards Dirt,” explains Kinney. When one speaks of Dirt now, it’s in light of the incredible 13 songs crafted as the band were coming down from a herculean amount of touring in support of their 1990 debut, Facelift.

It’s not for everybody, but it has a way of finding its people.” “As an artist, that’s what the ultimate goal is-to create something that lasts and gets handed down through generations of listeners. “It’s 30 years (later) and we are still talking about a record that four guys from the Northwest made back in 1992, and that’s pretty cool,” says Cantrell.

Alice in chains dirt album cover fanart