Jerry Fulton Cantrell Jr. (born March 18, 1966) of the rock band Alice in Chains. The band rose to international fame in the early 1990s during Seattle's grunge movement and is known for its distinctive vocal style which includes the harmonized vocals between Cantrell and Layne Staley.
Cantrell started as a secondary lead singer on Alice in Chains' 1992 EP Sap. After Staley's death in 2002, Cantrell was the band's lead singer on Black Gives Way to Blue (2009), The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here (2013), and Rainier Fog (2018), with DuVall primarily singing older songs by Staley in live performances.
He also has a solo career and released the albums Boggy Depot in 1998 and Degradation Trip Volumes 1 & 2 in 2002. His third solo album, Brighten, was released in 2021. His most recent release is 2024's I Want Blood. Cantrell has also collaborated and performed with Heart, Ozzy Osbourne, Metallica, Pantera, Circus of Power, Metal Church, Gov't Mule, Damageplan, Pearl Jam, the Cult, Stone Temple Pilots, Danzig, Glenn Hughes, Duff McKagan, and Deftones, among others.
Cantrell was named "Riff Lord" by British hard rock/metal magazine Metal Hammer in 2006.
He also contributed to the soundtracks of The Cable Guy (1996), John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017), Dark Nights: Metal (2018) and Sinners (2025), and he has made cameos in films such as Jerry Maguire (1996), Rock Slyde (2009), and Deadwood: The Movie (2019). Cantrell also acted in the Alice in Chains mockumentaries The Nona Tapes (1995) and AIC 23 (2013).
Biography
Early life
Cantrell was born in Tacoma, Washington, on March 18, 1966, He grew up in Spanaway, and is the oldest of three children. His father is an Army veteran, and his mother was an amateur organist and melodica player who worked as an administrative assistant for the Clover Park School District in Pierce County, Washington. His maternal grandmother was from Norway, and his maternal grandfather was from the Czech Republic.
After Cantrell learned to write, he documented his goal on Dr. Seuss' book, My Book About Me, filling in the sentence "When I grow up I want to be a..." with the words "rock star". Cantrell's first childhood memory is meeting his father for the first time after he had returned from war when he was three years old. and his mother Gloria is also mentioned by name in the song. Father and son also appeared together on the music video for "Rooster", in which Jerry Sr. recalls the war.
Cantrell picked up a guitar for the first time when he was in sixth grade. In his mid-teens he bought his first guitar from a swap meet, a Korean-made Fender Stratocaster.
Cantrell and his mother moved back to Spanaway where he attended junior high. His first job was delivering newspapers.
Cantrell attended high school at Spanaway Lake High School, and, before owning his first guitar, he was a member of the high school choir which attended many state competitions.
His choir teacher and drama teacher were, early on, his two greatest motivators toward a career in music. When Alice in Chains' first album went gold, Cantrell sent both teachers a gold record. He graduated from high school in 1984.
His maternal grandmother, Dorothy Krumpos, died of cancer in October 1986, and his mother Gloria died of pancreatic cancer at age 43 in April 1987, when Cantrell was 21 years old. Friends recalled that Cantrell fell into depression and became a completely different person after losing both his mother and grandmother within a short span of time. which was a gift he received from his father when he was 10 years old. He noted in an interview that he was "raised on country music" as a youth and that he admires the emotion conveyed in the genre. Ace Frehley, Alex Lifeson, Tony Iommi, Angus Young, Jimmy Page, Glenn Tipton, K.K. Downing, David Gilmour, Nancy Wilson, and Eddie Van Halen as major influences, as well as Elton John and bands Fleetwood Mac, and Rush as his early songwriting idols.
Early career
thumb|upright=0.9|left|Cantrell playing with Alice in Chains at The Channel in Boston, Massachusetts in 1992
In 1985, Cantrell was attending college during the Winter Semester, but he decided to quit it and moved to Dallas, Texas, to join a band with a couple of friends. He also worked at the music store Arnold and Morgan Music Company. While working at the store, Cantrell bought what he described as his first "real guitar", a 1984 G&L Rampage.
While living in Dallas, Cantrell met an early incarnation of the band Pantera and started a long friendship with brothers Dimebag Darrell and Vinnie Paul. The band started playing concerts in Tacoma and Seattle with the goal of getting a record deal. They recorded a four-song demo at London Bridge Studio.
When Cantrell was 20 years old, he was working several part-time jobs to pay his rent, one of which involved throwing boxes of frozen fish in a warehouse. Diamond Lie played their last concert in July 1987.
Cantrell met Layne Staley, then Alice N' Chains' lead singer, at a party in Seattle around August 1987. He was homeless after being kicked out of his family's house, Shortly after Cantrell moved in with Staley at the Music Bank, Alice 'N Chains broke up.
Cantrell wanted to form a new band and Staley gave him the phone number of Melinda Starr, the girlfriend of drummer Sean Kinney, so that Cantrell could talk to him. Cantrell called the number and set up a meeting with Kinney. Staley, who was Cantrell's roommate at the time, agreed to join on the condition that Cantrell join his funk project (which ended shortly after), and Staley joined Cantrell's band on a full-time basis. the latter being the name of Cantrell's previous band.
Cantrell attended a Guns N' Roses concert at the Seattle Center in 1988, and took an Alice in Chains demo tape to give to the band. He met Axl Rose after the show and gave him the tape. As he was walking away, Cantrell saw Rose throwing the demo away. Years later, Guns N' Roses chose Alice in Chains to be the opening act of their 2016 reunion tour.
Alice in Chains' final demo, The Treehouse Tapes, was completed in 1988 and found its way to the music managers Kelly Curtis and Susan Silver, who also managed the Seattle bands Mother Love Bone and Soundgarden, respectively. Curtis and Silver passed the demo on to Columbia Records. After three months of negotiations, Alice in Chains signed to Columbia Records on September 11, 1989.
Cantrell started to sing lead vocals on the 1992 acoustic EP Sap, and his role continued to grow in the following albums, making Alice in Chains a two-vocal band. Cantrell stated that it was Staley who encouraged him to sing. Cantrell identifies the band as primarily heavy metal. He told Guitar World in 1996, "We're a lot of different things ... I don't quite know what the mixture is, but there's definitely metal, blues, rock and roll, maybe a touch of punk. The metal part will never leave, and I never want it to".
Alice in Chains was one of the most successful bands of the 1990s, selling over 20 million records worldwide, and over 14 million records in the US alone. Their debut album, Facelift, was released in 1990 and has been certified double-platinum by the RIAA, selling over two million copies. Cantrell dedicated the album to his late mother Gloria and to his close friend Andrew Wood, lead singer of the band Mother Love Bone who died in 1990. Speaking with Spin magazine in January 1991, Cantrell confirmed that the song "Sunshine" from Facelift was written about his mother's death. "When I was a little kid, I'd always tell her, "I'll be famous and buy you a house and you'll never have to work again. I'll take care of you like you took care of me.' When she passed away, it was a really shitty time for me. I didn't know how to deal with it then, and I still don't. But it gave me the impetus to do what I'm doing."
In February 1992, the band released the acoustic EP Sap. The EP has been certified gold, and it features guest vocals by Ann Wilson from the band Heart, who joined Cantrell for the chorus of "Brother", and Staley for the chorus of "Am I Inside". The EP also features Mark Arm of Mudhoney and Chris Cornell of Soundgarden, who appeared together on the song "Right Turn", credited as "Alice Mudgarden" in the liner notes. The opening track, "Brother", featured Cantrell on lead vocals. The song was about Cantrell's relationship with his younger brother, David.
Their second full-length album, Dirt, was released in September 1992 to critical acclaim and was certified quadruple platinum. The album's lead single, "Would?", was written by Cantrell as a tribute to his late friend Andrew Wood. The song was also featured on the soundtrack to Cameron Crowe's 1992 film Singles. The album's fourth single, "Rooster", was a tribute to Cantrell's father. becoming the first ever EP and first Alice in Chains release to top the charts. The album's fifth track was an instrumental song, "Whale & Wasp", described by Cantrell as "a conversation between whales and wasps".
Alice in Chains broke up for six months following the cancellation of their opening act at the Metallica tour in July 1994, The band's self-titled third studio album was released in November 1995, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, The singles "Grind", "Over Now", and "Heaven Beside You" feature Cantrell on lead vocals. The band did not tour in support of their self-titled album.
On April 10, 1996, Alice in Chains played their first concert in two and a half years for MTV Unplugged, a program featuring all-acoustic set lists. The show featured some of the band's highest charting singles, including "Rooster", "Down in a Hole", "Heaven Beside You", "No Excuses" and "Would?", and introduced a new song, "Killer Is Me", with Cantrell on lead vocals.
Alice in Chains performed four shows supporting Kiss on their Alive/Worldwide Tour in 1996, including the final live appearance of Layne Staley on July 3, 1996, in Kansas City, Missouri. Shortly after the show, Staley was found unresponsive after he overdosed on heroin and was hospitalized. the songs were released on the 1999 box set Music Bank. Still in 1999, the band released a 15-track compilation titled Nothing Safe: Best of the Box. to perform a benefit concert for the victims of the tsunami disaster that struck South Asia in 2004. On February 18, 2005, Cantrell, Mike Inez and Sean Kinney reunited to perform for the first time in 10 years as Alice in Chains at the K-Rock Tsunami Continued Care Relief Concert in Seattle. The band featured Damageplan singer Pat Lachman, as well as other special guests including Maynard James Keenan of Tool, Wes Scantlin from Puddle of Mudd and Ann Wilson of Heart. A few months after that concert, the band called their former manager Susan Silver and Cantrell's manager Bill Siddons and said they wanted to tour as Alice in Chains again.
On March 10, 2006, Cantrell, Inez and Kinney performed at VH1's Decades Rock Live! concert, honoring fellow Seattle musicians Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart. They played "Would?" with singer Phil Anselmo of Pantera and Down and bass player Duff McKagan of Guns N' Roses and Velvet Revolver, then they played "Rooster" with Ann Wilson and Comes with the Fall singer William DuVall.
Between 2006 and 2007, Cantrell played in a number of concerts with Alice in Chains featuring guest lead singers such as Ann Wilson, Mark Lanegan, James Hetfield, Phil Anselmo, Sebastian Bach, and William DuVall.
Cantrell explained the band's reunion saying, "We want to celebrate what we did and the memory of our friend. We have played with some [singers] who can actually bring it and add their own thing to it without being a Layne clone. We're not interested in stepping on [Staley's] rich legacy. It's a tough thing to go through. Do you take the Led Zeppelin approach and never play again, because the guy was that important? That's the approach we've taken for a lot of years. Or, do you give it a shot, try something? We're willing to take a chance on it. It's completely a reunion because the three of us who're left are back together. But it's not about separating and forgetting — it's about remembering and moving on."
thumb|left|upright=1.2|William DuVall and Cantrell performing with Alice in Chains in 2006
Cantrell met singer William DuVall in Los Angeles in 2000, through a mutual acquaintance who introduced him to
the first album of DuVall's band, Comes with the Fall. Cantrell started hanging out with the band and occasionally joining them onstage. Comes with the Fall was both the opening act on Cantrell's tour for his second solo album, Degradation Trip, and also the singer's backing band, with DuVall singing Staley's parts at the concerts in 2001 and 2002.
By April 2007, Alice in Chains had been writing and demoing songs for a new album with DuVall, but the band did not show further signs of progress until October 2008, when they announced that they had begun recording with producer Nick Raskulinecz in the studio. The band didn't have a record label at the time and the album was funded by Cantrell and drummer Sean Kinney. The writing and recording process was completed on March 18, 2009 – Cantrell's 43rd birthday and also the same day that DuVall's son was born.
About the pressure being put on DuVall for replacing Staley as lead singer, Cantrell said, "To put all that weight on Will's shoulders is unfair. We're just figuring out how we work as a team. Although the band has changed, we've lost Layne, we've added Will, and there was no master plan. Playing again in 2005 felt right, so we did the next thing and toured. We did it step by step. It's more than just making music, and it always has been. We've been friends a long time. We've been more of a family than most, and it had to be okay from here", Cantrell said pointing to his heart.
On September 29, 2009, Alice in Chains released their first record since the death of Layne Staley, Black Gives Way to Blue, and toured in support of the album. The album includes songs which Cantrell described as "the heaviest he's ever written", and has Cantrell singing lead vocals on most of the songs and William DuVall as co-lead singer. The title track is a tribute to Layne Staley written and sung by Cantrell, accompanied by Elton John playing piano. He told Guitar World, "I got deathly ill. I had these mystery migraines, intense physical pain, and I'd even gotten a spinal tap to test for certain things. They never could find anything wrong with me. I felt I was puking up all this undigested grief in losing Layne." Once Cantrell started writing the song and the rest of the album, his mystery illness disappeared. The album was certified Gold by the RIAA in May 2010,
selling over 500,000 copies in the U.S.
The band released their fifth studio album, The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here, on May 28, 2013, and Cantrell continued his role of main singer in the album. The album debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 (the band's highest chart position since 1995's Alice in Chains, which debuted at No. 1), selling 61,000 copies in its first week of release.
In June 2017, Alice in Chains returned to Seattle's Studio X to record their sixth studio album. Studio X was the same studio where the band recorded their self-titled album, Alice in Chains (1995), Recording was completed in January 2018. On June 27, 2018, the band announced the title and unveiled the cover art of the new album, Rainier Fog, released on August 24, 2018, through BMG, Alice in Chains' first release on the label. Cantrell took the album's title from the Mount Rainier in Seattle, and the title track is a tribute to the Seattle music scene.
As part of the promotion of Rainier Fog, the baseball team Seattle Mariners hosted an "Alice in Chains Night" at the Safeco Field in Seattle on August 20, 2018, and Cantrell threw out the ceremonial first pitch and delivered a strike before the Mariners vs. Houston Astros game.
As of 2018, Alice in Chains has had 18 Top 10 songs on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, 5 No. 1 hits,
Solo career: Boggy Depot, Degradation Trip, Brighten and I Want Blood (1996–present)
Cantrell's career outside Alice in Chains has consisted of four solo albums, as well as many appearances with other musicians and on film soundtracks. His first solo material was the song "Leave Me Alone", released exclusively on The Cable Guy soundtrack in 1996, featuring Alice in Chains drummer Sean Kinney on drums and Cantrell on lead vocals, guitar and bass. It had a music video, which was included as a bonus feature on the 15th anniversary edition Blu-Ray of The Cable Guy in 2011, and the song reached No. 14 on Billboards Mainstream Rock Tracks. In the same year, Cantrell covered Willie Nelson's "I've Seen All This World I Care to See" for the album Twisted Willie: A Tribute to Willie Nelson. As the activity of Alice in Chains slowed and the band's future came into question, Cantrell reluctantly began work on his first full-length solo record. While video footage from Cantrell's official website claimed that he wanted to work solo for some time, his comments in Guitar World stated otherwise: