Friends Don’t Let Friends Get Friends Haircuts

A recent Twitter interaction reminded me of a story I love from the mid-90s era of MTV Unplugged. So let’s travel back to April of 1996.

Long before your Thursday nights were dominated by the FromThe108 podcast, NBC had the top three shows on planet earth all within their Must-See TV Thursday Night lineup: 7pm Friends, 7:30pm The Single Guy, 8pm Seinfeld, 8:30pm Caroline in the City, 9PM ER. In the music world, Alanis Morisette dropped Jagged Little Pill on April 13th, Metallica were about to release Load in early June, and Alice In Chains were recording their MTV Unplugged in Brooklyn.

The Alice In Chains performance is what we’re gonna focus on here. They had not performed live since January 1994 and Layne Staley’s health/addiction made touring ever again questionable. On top of that, I’ve always considered them on the heavier side of the Seattle bands of the ’90s. They did have some acoustic work on Sap and Jar of Flies, but they were known for Dirt and Facelift. Jerry Cantrell is an absolute shredder when he wants to be, not to mention they were also pretty ’80s metal when they formed, just check out King of the Kats. They also toured with a ton of metal bands as they came up including the Clash of the Titans US leg with Anthrax, Slayer, and Megadeth.

This is simply to say that taking all that and turning it to an acoustic performance after their long hiatus would seem to be a fool’s errand. But Alice In Chains decided to take it on and it is excellent! The dark, brooding lyrical content fit so beautifully into an acoustic set. Cantrell’s guitar work and harmonies with Layne are amazing. If you’ve never listened to it, do yourself a favor and check it out.

Something notable in the recording is Mike Inez’s bass playing. In these acoustic settings, it is very difficult to drive a song with the drums. The drums have to take a backseat to not overwhelm the mix. This leaves a lot to be desired from the bass player and Inez, of course, delivers. I’ve always been a big fan of his, but it’s so impressive to see him play acoustic in this set. And if you watch it, you will of course notice that something is written on his bass.

As a 15 year old grungy punk starting to grow my hair out at the beginning of summer vacation, seeing Friends Don’t Let Friends Get Friends Haircuts when this aired in May of ’96 was got dam awesome. Even though at the time, I had no idea why he’d written it. Obviously Friends was a huge show and obviously their hair was different than Mike’s and mine. So that was enough for me. But the actual story is that the members of Metallica were at the recording and their new look was ripe for Inez to take a shot at. I’ll let Jerry tell it from his interview in Metal Hammer:

“That was about the time Metallica cut their hair. They were going for a new look, and maybe some hair was starting to go, so they made the wise decision to not hold onto it too long. Ha ha! They are close friends of ours, there was no disrespect, and I think Mike was just taking the piss. They laughed about it.”

I’ll let you decide if Mike was correct:

In 2002, Mike Inez was one of the rumored bass players to replace Jason Newsted. Wonder if he brought that bass to the audition…

-Chorizy-E