ALICE IN CHAINS Drummer: 'The Music Has Taken On A Life Of Its Own'

Ireland's RTÉ.ie recently conducted an interview with ALICE IN CHAINS members William DuVall (vocals) and Sean Kinney (drums). A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

RTÉ.ie: A lot of bands get back together and it sounds very after the after the fact. With you, it sounds like unfinished business.

Kinney: We never had a problem making music. We had a problem managing our lives. We had a problem [due to] living really hard. Music was so easy for us. And what's so great for us is that it's the same kind of vibe nowadays. We're all in the same headspace and do this for the same reasons and that's still intact.

We just lived really hard and did some things personally that started to get into the way of doing the one thing that we really loved, so we just stopped showing up. It's been 14 years, that's 5,076 days, since we put out a record. A lot of time has passed and I'm excited and it's great to have something to be excited about [and] that you care so much about.

RTÉ.ie: It must be very draining, though, in interviews for people to focus on the past.

Kinney: Yeah, that's part of it though, y'know? That's part of the game. I don't come in here with some idea that that's not... And the easy way to remedy that is to be in a band that makes albums about 'chicks and cars and partying'. But that's just not how we operate. Everything is pretty much real life kind of topics.

The thing that gets old is that so much [focus] gets put on the drugs. And I can understand that, but that's not a unique story, that's a very common story. All of our songs are not about drugs — maybe about 15% of our music was about that. It's easy to put a label on something and that's what people do.

Hopefully the label they put on this album is about moving on. This is a more universal theme to me. This is about loss that we have all experienced in our lives or will experience and getting out of that place and moving forward into a better way. That's all you can ask for, that's all you can do.

RTÉ.ie: There will always be fans who love the old records that you're not going to reach.

DuVall: And that's OK. This is an invitation and you don't have to take it. But it's an invitation that's coming from a really, really truthful and very, very profound place. I think the people that take it and the people that show up to the party are going to really be rewarded. And they have been rewarded, and they're digging it.

Kinney: Seeing Will just give his all every night and going at it and turning people around who have a closed mind [as to] why we're doing this is amazing. I understand [fans have] a little bit of fear and that people connected to the records we've done so strongly and I honor that completely. But it's a little rude for people who listen to those records and bond with them to try to pass judgment on us and say we don't have the right to do something.

The truth is that all of these things that they care about so much didn't happen to them: it actually happened to us. It was actually our real life. My friend's dead and I live with that every day. We've all lost people and everybody will in life. And just because you loved our record so much doesn't mean you can't move on. If we can find a way to move on and they can't then I just kind of feel sorry for people at that point. This happened to us and we can move on with our heads up and are doing it in the most honorable and genuine fashion. And you can't because you just listened to a record? That's a little sad.

RTÉ.ie: One thing I've always been struck by during the years you were away is the amount of goodwill rock fans have towards ALICE IN CHAINS.

Kinney: That's been one of the amazing things. The music lived on. We didn't serve it. We weren't out there trying to sell it, work it or anything. The music on its own merit and what we had done when we started this thing took on a life of its own and you can't make that happen. A record company can't make that happen. They can put their whole machine behind a song that you may not like that gets it on the radio and they play it all day long. But will that song still be played 10 or 20 years down the road on its own?

I think it's the greatest reward that the music has taken on a life of its own and been passed onto another generation. So now when we do these shows a lot of these people weren't even born when our first record came out and it means something to them.

RTÉ.ie: That's very special.

Kinney: There was no reason why we had to do this. It was for real, genuine belief and caring. For me part of the reason [in making the album] is showing that horrible stuff happens everybody in their life and that you need to get up and you need to move on. And how do you do that respectfully and truthfully?

And another thing is to take what Jerry [Cantrell, guitarist], Layne [Staley, late singer], Mike Starr [former bassist] and I created when we were teenagers and bring that thing that has taken on a life of its own — and we're not all here to be part of it — to these people. That's important to me. They connected with it and the whole thing gets to move forward. It's not like we shut the door on that part of our life. That's forever a huge part of our life. That door always remains open.

DuVall: And new friendships come into play and new bonding takes place. That comes out of the same honest place that all their previous music came out of. It's no different. Cantrell and I go back 10 years. We were friends first and that friendship evolved finally to a point where it's led to us sitting here talking about a new ALICE IN CHAINS record — because of that three years of touring that we did starting in '06. That's where Mike Inez [bassist], Sean, myself and Cantrell all fused together as a unit and became a hell of band in our own right. That journey is what you're hearing as well on this album. It's as much about the present and the future as it is about honoring the past. And it is about people's memories as regards to music: it becomes the soundtrack to people's lives. That's stuff you can't plan that becomes an incredible reward.

Read the entire interview at RTÉ.ie.