The world was first introduced to Alice in Chains in 1990 with the release of their debut record
Facelift. Contrary to popular belief, Alice in Chains was the first band from Seattle to have a
gold record thanks in large part to the success of their single Man in the Box. To be fair the band
had a year head start on Pearl jam and Nirvana who didn’t release their major label debut’s until
late 1991. And Alice stood apart from the rest of their peers by being the most metal sounding group
from Seattle, so people were pretty surprised in early 1992 when they quietly released their first
EP titled SAP. The EP showed a softer side of the band that carried through some of their subsequent
releases. Today, we’re going to talk about the making of SAP. Stay tuned for the full story.
Facelift was a slow burn for Alice in Chains. Released in August of 1990,
it would take almost a year before the band took off. It wasn’t until
the single Man in the box got heavy play on MTV in the spring of 1991
that the band really became a household name. By the end of the year Alice in Chains booked a week
at London Bridge Studios in Seattle where they would work with Pearl Jam producer Rick Parashar.
Fans could thank the director Cameron Crowe for SAP being recorded. Crowe was working
on the film Singles at the time and asked the band to record a song for the movie soundtrack
and also provided them with money to book time at a local studio. The band would record the song
“Would?” for Singles soundtrack and it would end up on their follow up LP Dirt, which was released
in later part of 1992. a In fact the version of Would you hear on Dirt was from this very session.
What people may not know is that during these sessions the band also recorded Rooster,
but it was shelved for the time being. Apart from recording Would? and Rooster,
Alice in Chains also used the studio time to record a bunch of acoustic material,
which would form SAP. Here's Jerry Cantrell would tell Lars Ulrich podcast discussing the EP.
Where did that come from? Yeah and when you go to the record company after
at that time because so much of it was controlled by the record company
okay we are going to out out predominantly acoustic EP. What were they saying? Yeah
you know putting out that EP that was a real bold movie and it was really consequential
to do that not because it was a huge success because it wasn't..it became one later on,
but what it did was open up the playing field for us it had made it acceptable for us early on in
our career to basically do whatever the we wanted to do instead of have to be just a hard heavy band
all the time. I think the impetus of it was just writing and around with stuff but it was Cameron
who i saw at the Palladium show recently. I hadn't seen Cameron Crowe in a long time, but he gave us
the opportunity to put a song in Singles so we had all this other stuff around some acoustic
stuff and whatever and we recorded it all. They gave us some money to record would? for real,
but what we did is use that same money to record all this other we had and a lot of it was acoustic
stuff. Oh ok. You know we were like. I don't know if we were really thinking about putting it out.
The title of the EP came from a dream that drummer Sean Kinney had. We had a meeting at the office
and Sean came in and he's like i got a great idea man! I had dream last night. I'm not.
I had a dream that we took those acoustic songs and put them out as an EP and we called it SAP.
That's no joke. When it came time to record the EP,
Parashar ran a tight ship not allowing any partying, drug use or drinking in the studio.
According to Assistant Engineer Dave Hillis who worked on the release,
he would tell author David De Sola in the book Alice in Chains the untold story that any drug use
in the studio by singer layne staley happened when he would sneak to the bathroom. In the same book,
Johnathan Plum who also worked as an assistant engineer on SAP recalled the two different types
of personalities Layne Staley and Jerry Cantrell were. He would remember Layne as a very down to
earth friendly guy who chatted with the studio staff about their life, while Jerry was very
laser focused on work and didn’t wasn’t the type of person to stop and casually chat.
SAP also represented an important evolution for the band as it was the first time Jerry
took a bigger role in signing, thanks in large part to Layne encouragement. Jerry
sings co-lead vocals on the tracks Brother and Got Me Wrong. It was this singing style
that the band would become well known for. SAP was also notable because of the high
profile guest appearances as well. Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart sang background vocals
on the song Brother and Am I Inside, while Chris Cornell of Soundgarden and Mark Arm of Mudhoney
would provide additional vocals on the track Right Turn. If you look at the credit for
that song it is credited to Alice Mudgarden which is a combination of all the band names.
When it came to releasing SAP the band didn’t want to do any high profile promotion.
Here's Cantrell talking to Ulrich about the promotion for the record.
It took like 7 or 8 months man you know. We sold like 20,000 records and then when man in the box
hit it was all over like you know hundreds of thousands over night but we had a pretty cool
record company. Don Inner was he was really behind us man and he did a lot of creative so when we had
this EP idea they were cool with it too because we had gone through it and the record was successful
and it was going to be a while before we got to the writing process to do dirt.
And we had this thing. You know what? let's not even advertise this thing. Let's just put it
in the stores just for the fans and for people to stumble across.No ads, no nothing, no press
and they're like we love it. it's great. But it was kind a cool little an easter egg
for people to find and it ended up having 1 or 2 hits on it. It did thanks to Kevin Smith. It
was in Clerks Got Me Wrong kind of ecame a hit a little later. It was kind of a gamble and i'm so
gld we did that because it opened. It said a wider playing field.. it widened the field for us.
And In 1994 Alice in Chains released their follow up EP Jar of Flies,
which featured a limited edition vinyl version that also came with SAP.
SAP would also give Alice in Chains the confidence to literally do whatever they wanted in the
studio from that point onwards. That does it for today's video guys.Thank for watching. Be sure
to hit the like button and subscribe and we'll see you again on rock n' roll true stories. Take care.