When the 57-year-old Tacoma, Washington-born musician Jerry Cantrell founded the Seattle grunge rock band Alice in Chains, he couldn’t have known how the next several decades would unfold for him and his band.
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But in the years between 1987 and today, the group has gone on to garner 11 Grammy nominations and countless hit songs. Not to mention the group’s iconic performance in the MTV Unplugged series. With all this success and influence, however, one might wonder what Cantrell had to say about the world outside of his music. Below are the best Jerry Cantrell Quotes.
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1. “Part of the healing process is sharing with other people who care.”
2. “Our music’s kind of about taking something ugly and making it beautiful.”
3. “You feel different every day of your life. You just have to create your own space to survive, personally and professionally.”
4. “I’ve never been a big soloist; I just put in what needs to be there. I’m more of a rhythm player who plays lead—or tries to play lead.”
5. “To me not one thing is better than anything else, I’m completely proud of everything I’ve written and recorded.”
6. “One thing that you hope for when you want to be a musician is that you have that recognizable sound.”
7. “In ’98, I locked myself in my house, went out of my mind and wrote 25 songs. I rarely bathed during that period of writing, I sent out for food, I didn’t really venture out of my house in three or four months. It was a hell of an experience.”
8. “Times change and you have to adapt.”
9. “Success has a lot to do with luck, but it also involves a lot of real hard work. The thing about success is you really can’t gauge things by album sales.”
10. “I’m doing the best I can with what I got and that’s all anybody in my band is doing.”
11. “I’m going to keep thinking about topping myself every time. I can say very confidently that Alice In Chains have done that on every record. It surprises me. I don’t go in there expecting that, but I do go in there hoping for it.”
12. “Like everybody, I’m making up my life as I go along.”
13. “When power ballads come back, we’ll get big hair again.”
14. “That’s always been a dream for me, to be able to collaborate and make music with the people that inspired you to make music.”
15. “I’m just thankful to have a tour and work—something I can focus on.”
16. “Rehearsals and this band are two words that don’t really go together, kinda like Military Intelligence.”
17. “Bands don’t last. Bands don’t last forever—it’s a rarity when they do.”
18. “Every record, you’ve got more experiences to draw on as a writer and a musician.”
19. “Playing for someone else’s crowd is always difficult for any band.”
20. “I can sing fine and I can play guitar fine, but put ’em together and it becomes a thoughtful effort.”
Photo by J.Sciulli/WireImage for Bragman Nyman Cafarelli
