Alex Coletti was a producer at MTV and was involved with the MTV Unplugged series since its inception in 1989. Alice in Chains performed for an episode of the series in 1996.
When it came time to invite Alice in Chains to do the show, Coletti said, “They have the songs, they have the depth and they have the emotion where you basically strip it down. You really find something there.”
Rehearsals Didn’t Go Well
Even though the show took place in New York, the rehearsals actually began in Seattle but they didn’t go well initially.
Sean Kinney would tell journalist Greg Prato that it became more apparent that unless things seriously changed then the band couldn’t go out and play to their potential. He said, “We can’t even get through a week and a half without drama and scary stuff going on. That’s about right when I mentally started preparing that it’s done. The same thing with MTV Unplugged, they kept asking if we’d do it. Up to the moment, it was a real nail-biter. Barely any rehearsing at all, the guys not showing up, same stuff. We rolled out there and everything worked.”
Coletti corroborated Kinney’s comments saying that there clearly was more going on behind the scenes than he was aware of.
Coletti claimed that one factor that was working in the band’s favor was that at the time, Alice in Chains wasn’t touring. This was a huge advantage because a lot of bands who did MTV Unplugged were used to playing giant stadiums or playing arenas and to go from playing that to scaling down their show and their set to something that’s friendly to a much smaller venue is often difficult and requires a lot of time.
Coletti Checks in On Rehearsals
Coletti recalled flying to Seattle and checking in on rehearsals and meeting the band and talking about the parameters of the show. The band had enlisted the help of a second guitarist,Scott Olson who also worked with Heart.
The band would travel to New York City in early April to prepare for the show which was scheduled to take place on April 10, 1996 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Coletti recalled a last-minute request to add lava lamps to the set from the band. It was a difficult request because the lava lamps needed to be heated and then turned on for quite a while before they’re used. During the show, some of the lava lamps weren’t really moving and in Coletti’s own words, they were very “grungy-looking”, giving the set its proper appearance so it ended up actually working out in their favor.
Substance Withdrawals
There were several issues that the band was dealing with behind the scenes. Randy Bureau, who worked with the band as a guitar and bass tech stated that both him and Layne were going through withdrawals at the time. Bureau had somebody bring some to him at the actual show while Layne already had his own precooked supply, which he tended to carry in an old glass pill bottle covered with a cork top.
According to Bureau, Layne hadn’t done enough to where he was nodding off or drooling but he did some just before he went on. Adding to complications, Layne had dyed his hair pink which forced the lighting director to match the background to his hair color.
One thing the band did that a lot of other bands delayed doing was that they provided MTV with a set list ahead of time making the lighting cues much easier to deal with. Further adding to complications, Jerry Cantrell had food poisoning and they had to place a wastebasket next to him during the show.
Bureau recalled that once the band hit the stage and launched into “Nutshell”, a lot of people from the band’s management team were in tears. Layne would script the lyrics to “Sludge Factory” numerous times because the song is written about his conflict with the record label, Sony. The heads of Sony just happened to be sitting in the front row of the audience so maybe Layne was nervous. Bureau claimed that in between songs there was a lot of clowning around with the audience and even the band picked on Bureau himself, referring to him as an ‘effing Frenchman’.
An Unsung Hero
Coletti would look back and say that drummer Sean Kinney was the unsung hero of the show. According to Coletti, the thing about unplugged shows is that you live or die by the drummer. If the drummer gets it and tempers his playing then everyone can kind of play at a lower volume and play acoustically. When the drummer just plays like a rock show, everyone turns up their monitors and then what’s meant to be this pretty acoustic thing just sounds like really loud electric guitars.
First Cut
About two weeks following the show, the band was sent a first cut to review and Layne wasn’t happy. He got producer, Toby Wright to watch the unplugged set from start to finish. According to Coletti, Layne thought MTV had edited the whole performance in the worst possible light to make Layne look bad, Coletti would take the notes back from Alice in Chains and re-edit the performance and finally get Layne’s approval.
Coletti would recall, he was paying attention but he looked like he was falling asleep at certain points or he’d nod out and then all of a sudden his part would come up and boom he’d be there. They would show him sitting there with his eyes closed for several bars of music and then they wouldn’t show him until it was time to sing and then they cut to Jerry or Mike and it just looked like he was sleeping through the whole thing, Producer Toby Wright would provide MTV with the list of suggested changes until they finally made the corrections and Layne gave his approval.
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