Jerry Cantrell’s Secret to Creating Something Great — Exclusive Interview

Anytime we’re anticipating new material from Jerry Cantrell — whether it’s a solo album or something with Alice In Chains — it’s an exciting time.

The guitarist’s fourth full-length solo album arrives next Friday, Oct. 18, and it’s quite a departure from its predecessor Brighten (2021). It has the same essence as any of Cantrell’s prior work, but whereas Brighten had a generally more mild tempo and a lot of acoustic-based songs, I Want Blood has teeth.

From opener “Vilified” through closer “It Comes,” this record chews you up and spits you right back out.

“It packs a punch and it hits you in the face. I couldn’t think of a more impactful title than [I Want Blood],” Cantrell told us in an exclusive interview ahead of the album’s release.

The rocker explained that he doesn’t intend for his albums to sound a certain way, but rather, the material itself shows him what kind of album it wants to be. He admitted that he felt his “face was pressed to the ceiling” of his abilities while working on it, because there were a lot of moments he was working outside of his comfort zone.

“As you’re having these setbacks and moments of questioning while you’re making a record, those are all really healthy things because it’s you getting to know yourself within this material,” he assured.

And of course, we asked a bit about what’s going on with Alice In Chains, who were recently confirmed to perform at Sonic Temple next year.

Keep scrolling to read our full conversation with Cantrell. You’ll also get to learn a little about his relationship with Metallica‘s Lars Ulrich in the ’90s and which musicians would be in his dream supergroup.

I Want Blood sounds quite different from Brighten — what inspired the sound and how this one came about?

To me, it doesn’t sound like it’s a real big departure of stuff that I would do. It’s a new piece of work, it’s a new time and songs that never existed before, so that’s the new chapter. Each record should really have its own identity and personality.

I don’t think you can hold up any record I’ve been involved with that you could say sounds like any one of the others. That’s what you’re shooting for — you want to be creating something new and fresh, and I think it really is. It has a lot of energy to it and life, and it’s got its own personality.

Now how it came to be that, I didn’t sit down trying to design or make a decision to make this kind of record… You start seeing what develops as you start putting together riffs and songs. You write one and two… then you start putting them together, it starts to emerge to you what kind of record it wants to be. You just follow it and try to execute it to the best of your ability.

Jerry Cantrell, I Want Blood Album Art

You’ve said that you felt like your “face was pressed to the ceiling” of your abilities when you were working on this one. Can you elaborate on what you mean by that?

It wasn’t just the writing, it was the guitar playing and the singing. The best work comes from when you’re in a place where you’re not quite comfortable. Like, I don’t know if I can pull that off. Maybe I’ll do something a little safer. 

Get rid of that thought and then just go for it. That way you’re guaranteed to probably do some shit you normally wouldn’t do, or push yourself to maybe hit a higher mark than you’re aiming for. I think you want to feel that way. That’s a great way to create — to make sure you’re feeling a little off-center and a little unsafe. And you’ve got a good shot at making something that has the potential to be great.

It’s a really good record. I don’t know yet that it’s great. We’ll see what it grows into, but it’s the best work I could do at that time.

When you listen to it, you can immediately hear that it’s you, but it still sounds new. And immediately, it just packs a punch right from “Vilified.” It’s in-your-face.

I agree. That’s exactly why I called it I Want Blood, just by exactly how you described it. It packs a punch and it hits you in the face. I couldn’t think of a more impactful title than that. And it’s a great song as well, so I was lucky enough to have that in the bag.

Jerry Cantrell, “Vilified”

I noticed something about the sequencing of the songs. We just talked about how “Vilified” is one of the more visceral tracks, but then it closes with “It Comes,” which is a lot more mellow in tempo, with the exception of the solo toward the second half of the song. Was there an intention behind this arrangement, and what is the “it” in “It Comes”?

Spooky! “It” could be anything.

Running order, to me, is really important. What order are you putting your chapters in to tell a story? It doesn’t have to be a “concept” record to tell a story. A good piece of work is a bunch of individual songs that seem like they all fit together. They tell a story, even if they’re not thematically joined to each other.

So once you got that box checked, it’s, what order do you put them in? It’s a complete work. And so you want to have a good opener that comes right out of the gate and grabs you, and you want to have a big epic close — a finale.

Ninety-five percent of the time I go into making a record knowing where it’s going to start and where it’s going to end. And then you fill in the rest and you figure it out as you go.

But on this particular record, I had the track listing already in place when we went in. I remember taking with Joe Barresi, my partner in making this record. He’s like, ‘What order are you thinking about?’ I wrote it out and we got to the end of the record and the only thing that was different was two songs that were flipped in the middle. So it was pretty close to how I envisioned it.

That’s kind of a cool indicator of your concept and your view of how it works as a blueprint as compared to how it actually works in reality. It was cool to see that it was close to how I intended it when I walked in.

Can you name a particular moment you felt the most vulnerable while you were working on this album where you felt like you were really pushing yourself outside of your comfort level?

There are so many moments where you are. Two-thirds of the time, making music and making an album is about running full-speed, headlong into a wall of your own inabilities. Like, That fucking sucks. Let’s try something else. That sucks too. I try to sing something, I don’t got it today. My voice is cracking, let’s try it again tomorrow. Just keep at it.

It’s a repetition, it’s like building a house. It takes time. You have to lay a foundation, put your supports up, then you start putting the walls in and the roof on. Then you start decorating it and it’s a lot of happenstance. There are a lot of moments that are very humbling.

Fortunately, you have time to go through that and develop it. As you’re having these setbacks and moments of questioning while you’re making a record, those are all really healthy things because it’s you getting to know yourself within this material.

The next part of it, there’s still one phase to go, which is taking those songs and being able to perform them and pull them off live and seeing if a couple of those really elevate to work themselves into cornerstone songs in your set of your whole career.

I already think I have a couple of those in the first two singles, “Vilified” and “Afterglow,” and we were able to play both of those live on the summer tour. They’re both very challenging vocally and being able to sing them and play them and own both parts — it’s not easy. But it’s a real sense of accomplishment when you’ve spent the time and you do the reps and you perform it well and consistently, and have people react to it.

“Afterglow” is one of those songs that, when the chorus comes on, it just raises the hair on your back and brings tears to your eyes. It has such an emotional feel to it. I saw somebody comment on the music video that anytime they listen to one of your songs, it feels like they’re “meeting an old friend.”

That’s a nice thing to say. I’m lucky to still be doing this. I try to stay in gratitude and life has a way of putting you back into gratitude if you get away from it too much. But those are always nice things.

First off, I’m always trying to create something that I feel good about, that I’m excited about as a fan and also a writer and performer. I’m trying to check the boxes for myself first. Do I and the people that I’m making the record with, do I see people light up when we’re playing this stuff?

As long as I feel that excitement, there’s probably a pretty good chance that anybody who maybe cared about my previous work, they might feel the same thing. So if it’s making you feel emotional and excited and fills you with energy, there’s probably a pretty good chance it’s going to happen for some other people as well.

Jerry Cantrell, “Afterglow”

When you start coming up with ideas for songs, do you ever stop and wonder if they’re better for a solo album or for Alice In Chains?

I think maybe in the early days, around the time of Boggy Depot and Degradation Trip, that might have been more in my thought process. We’ve all done records outside of the band, and it’s really not an uncommon thing to do for artists. I just played on Duff [McKagan]‘s record last year. It’s pretty common to do projects, records and songs outside of the band that you’re known for, so to speak.

The real difference is just that I didn’t make it with Alice. I think any song that I write could be an Alice In Chains song, but I’m just part of a collective. The other three guys have to dig it too, for that to be the case. And then if we all play on it and record it, then it becomes an Alice tune. If I do that with somebody else, then obviously it’s mine.

Do you think that doing a solo album apart from your band is kind of a key to longevity for bands since you get to express yourself differently? 

I don’t know that it’s a key, it just feels right to do. If you look at my history, I’ve been [in Alice] since 1987 and we’re still active and still going for it. In that 37 years, I’ve taken six to do records and projects outside of the band.

You can see where my loyalty lies and I don’t get the opportunity to do it that much. So when I do, I do it like I do everything else. I jump in with both feet and I go. If I’m in, I’m in and if I’m out, I’m all the way out. It’s the way I’ve always been. It’s the way we’ve always gone about it in the band and I carry a lot of that ethos with me wherever I am.

I listened to another interview that you did where you were talking about the insane assortment of riffs that you have in your head. Do you ever wonder if a riff sounds like something you’ve done before and try to build on it,or just scratch it?

That might happen on occasion, where I think something sounds like something. If that’s the case, it gets discarded very quickly. Normally, it’s not really much of a concern because I don’t spend a whole lot of time referencing the past. I’m kind of an in-the-moment dude and I think that’s the best place to stay.

You don’t want to be spending too much time looking back or looking too far forward either. Just kind of enjoy the place you’re at, being now. That’s always going to be a unique and fresh take because you haven’t existed in this particular time, in the now. You haven’t made music in the now, and it’s usually a couple of years between records and stuff so I don’t really worry about repeating myself too much.

I’m not a musician, so I’ve always been really amazed that guitarists are able to constantly come up with new and innovative riffs that sound different from one another.

Yeah, it’s interesting to me too because there are only so many notes and we all use them. And there’s only so many chords. The thing that makes them individual and unique is just your personal take on it and your musical fingerprint. Whatever that is, that makes you, you. People can listen to you and go, “That’s them. That’s Led Zeppelin, that’s Black Sabbath.”

If you’re able to achieve that, I think that’s the goal of any recording artist, to be able to have that sort of identifiable identity instantly. If you’ve been able to achieve that, that frees me up to be able to go, “I’m not really worried about that. That’s already baked in. So where do I want to go?”

READ MORE: Jerry Cantrell Picks His Six Favorite Guitar Soloists

It’s always a surprise to me and I like to keep it that way. I don’t like to overthink it too much, just get into the process and see what happens. I didn’t intend for Brighten to be that record it was, but it kind of let me know that’s the record it wanted to be. And I Want Blood is the same thing.

You just take them one at a time and they should be unique. Like brothers and sisters — they’re related, and you should see the familial connection and all that kind of stuff. But they’re all really unique personalities and people. They’re different, and they should be.

You brought up Duff McKagan before — I read in an interview he did over the summer that whenever he writes a song, you’re the first person that he shows it to. Do you have someone that you run all your material by first, or do you just do your thing and show it to everyone after?

Sean Kinney is that way for me, Tyler Bates is another one. Duff and I share a lot of stuff in early raw form. “What do you think about this?” “Ah, that’s pretty cool but I don’t know about that one thing.” “Yeah, you’re right it’s not really that good.” You give each other clean bounces. It’s cool to have a relationship with him and with a handful of other people that you trust.

I used to do that with Lars [Ulrich] a lot. We haven’t hung as much over the last couple of years as we did in the ’90s. But I used to get to hear all the fucking early fucking Metallica demos and he got to hear all the fucking early Alice In Chains demos for all the records. We would pass music back and forth, take each other’s temperature on how they felt about it.

Alice In Chains have been on the road a couple of times since Rainier Fog came out and you’re confirmed for Sonic Temple next year. What else is going on with Alice In Chains?

We got all sorts of stuff that we’re planning. This year is going to be mostly about supporting the record that I just put out because I plan on campaigning and supporting that and getting out and playing the material for people. But there’s also going to be some Alice dates too.

For the last couple of album cycles, I’ve been going between doing gigs on my own and playing with the band. So we’ve got some exciting stuff and when we decide we want to make an announcement about it, we’ll let you know.

If you could build the perfect supergroup, not to play in but just to be a fan of with your favorite singer, bassist, guitarist and drummer, who would be in it?

Elton John on keys, John Bonham on drums, Tony Iommi on guitar, Bon Scott as the vocalist and Joe Perry as the second guitarist.

‘I Want Blood’ will be available Friday, Oct. 18. Pre-order your copy on Cantrell’s official website.