Would Nutshell Man In The Box Alice In Chains

Would? Album: Dirt (1992)
Nutshell Album: Jar Of Flies (1994)
Man In The Box Album: Facelift (1990)
by Alice In Chains

Would? is about going through rehab and its aftermath. The last part of the lyrics wonders if the future is any more promising.

Guitarist Jerry Cantrell wrote Would? for the late lead singer of Mother Love Bone, Andrew Wood, a very influential figure in the Seattle music scene. Wood died of a heroin overdose in 1990. Two of his band mates in Mother Love Bone, Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament, went on to form Pearl Jam.

In the liner notes for the 1999 Music Bank Alice in Chains box set, Cantrell wrote that the song is about Wood but also about those who would judge Wood's drug issues. "But I always hate people who judge the decisions others make," Cantrell writes. "So it was directed towards people who pass judgements."

Sadness and drug addiction played a big part in the band's music for the rest of their career. Their songs often reflected the life of lead singer Layne Staley, who died of a drug overdose in 2002.

Jerry Cantrell sang the intro on Would?. Lead singer Layne Staley had to convince him to do it.

"Would?" first appeared on the soundtrack to the 1992 movie Singles, where Alice In Chains appeared as a bar band.

Like most Alice in Chains songs, "Would?" wasn't released as a commercial single (meaning you couldn't buy it) in the US because they wanted fans to buy the album. It was sent to radio stations and MTV as the first promotional single from their second album, Dirt.

Would? was included on Alice In Chains' 1996 a live album from their acoustic performance on MTV Unplugged. The album sold over a million copies.

"Nutshell" is Alice in Chains (AIC) vocalist Layne Staley "in a nutshell," meaning a tight summation of his internal world. He wrote the lyrics to the song. The rest of the band (guitarist/vocalist Jerry Cantrell, bassist Mike Inez, and drummer Sean Kinney) wrote the music.

After completing the Jar Of Flies album, Staley entered rehab for his well-documented heroin addiction. He was deep into that fight while recording this song, and we can hear it in the opening lyrics.

Jar of Flies was AIC's third studio EP and their second acoustic one. It was the first EP to debut at #1 on the Billboard 200, and was the penultimate studio recording with Staley and AIC, as the band started to fracture and Staley's heroin addiction began to destroy his life.

Alice in Chains opened their April 10, 1996 MTV Unplugged show with Nutshell. It was an emotional performance because it was the first time they'd played together in over two years, and because Staley was suffering the effects of his long battle with heroin addiction. Staley delivered one of the most heartbreaking vocal performances of his career. It set off a mini-resurrection for the band as they went on to play The Late Show with David Letterman and four shows with Kiss, but ultimately led to Staley being found nearly dead from a heroin overdose after his final performance with AIC on July 3, 1996 in Kansas City, Missouri.

The Unplugged performance is included on the 1999 compilation album Music Bank and on the 2006 greatest hits album The Essential Alice in Chains.

"Nutshell" was never released as a single but holds special significance among Alice in Chains fans and band members. Bassist Mike Inez said it's the song that makes him think of Staley more than any other. When the band performs it, they dedicate it to Staley and bassist Mike Starr, who also fell to heroin addiction.
Readers voted "Nutshell" #9 on a 2013 Rolling Stone poll for "10 Saddest Songs of All Time."

Mark Lanegan of Screaming Trees joined Danish musician Maggie Björklund in recording a version of "Nutshell" for a Museum of Pop Culture Founders Aware fundraiser. It was released on December 8, 2020, with a video featuring footage of Alice In Chains - mostly Staley. Lanegan came from the same '90s Washington-state grunge scene as Alice in Chains and was close friends with Staley, with whom he helped form supergroup Mad Season.

"Man In The Box" deals with censorship, with animal cruelty used as a metaphor. The "man in the box" is like a veal calf trapped in confinement.

Man In The Box was inspired by lead singer Layne Staley's impressions of both censorship and meat consumption, but saying the song is "about" either of those things would be stretching the facts. Staley didn't like it when musicians got political because he didn't feel they (including himself) should be preaching about things they weren't qualified to elaborate on. The final lyrics for "Man In The Box" are rather opaque, but Staley did explain the meaning.

Man In The Box started out being about censorship alone, but then Staley and AIC went to dinner with some Columbia Records executives. Some of the executives were vegetarians, and the conversation turned to the way calves were raised in tiny boxes to be slaughtered for veal.

As explained in Alice In Chains: The Untold Story by David De Sola, Staley incorporated thoughts inspired by that conversation into the song he was working on. In its final version, "Man In The Box" is written from the perspective of a calf in a box waiting to be slaughtered. The censorship aspect of the song is basically indecipherable and would probably be lost entirely if not for the fact that Staley mentioned it in some interviews.

The video got a lot of airplay on MTV and helped break the band. It was the first grunge video that got significant airplay, coming almost a year before Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit."

This was the first single from Alice in Chains' debut album, Facelift. Released in August 1990 a year ahead of Pearl Jam's debut, the album didn't get much attention outside of the Pacific Northwest until 1991, when MTV picked up the "Man In The Box" video and radio stations started playing the song, nudging it to #18 on the Mainstream Rock chart dated July 6, 1991, the same date the album peaked at #42. As grunge caught on, Facelift earned more fans, but it was a slow build: the album wasn't certified Platinum (one million copies in the US) until August 10, 1993.
AiC guitarist Jerry Cantrell did most of the band's songwriting at the time; he and lead singer Layne Staley co-wrote "Man In The Box."

Cantrell also contributed some vocals on Man In The Box. After lead singer Layne Staley sings the powerful chorus lines like "Jesus Christ," Cantrell comes in with the next line, like, "Deny Your Maker."