Alice In Chains

“Ain’t found a way to kill me yet
Eyes burn with stinging sweat
Seems every path leads me to nowhere
Wife and kids, household pet
Army green was no safe bet
The bullets scream to me from somewhere
Yeah they come to snuff the rooster” – Rooster

Alice In Chains was another Seattle band which early on Kurt Cobain co-founded and I wrote a few songs for them.  Including “Man in a Box” which I explained in an earlier post.

The idea for the song Rooster came from learning about the history of another Alabama native, Record Producer Sam Phillips famous for discovering Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and Howlin’ Wolf .  In the 1960’s Howlin’ Wolf released a song by the name of The Red Rooster (sometimes called Little Red Rooster).

Inspiration for the beginning of the song Rooster and the music video came from Def Leppard’s “Die Hard the Hunter” from their 1983 album Pyromania.

Other influences on Alice in Chain were in music videos.  For “Man in a Box” there is a monk for the ones in Def Leppard’s Rock of Ages video, Joe Elliott told me was inspired by Jimmy Page’s dream sequence in Led Zeppelin’s film “The Song Remains The Same”.  When I was 15 my Halloween costume was inspired by the Rock of Ages monks and Kurt Cobain made a drawing of it for a Nirvana concert poster.

Kurt Cobain was also known to have a collection of toy monkeys and there is one in the music video for “Grind”.