Alice in Chains booked ten days at Seattle's London Bridge Studio in September 1993 and turned up without a single song. "Funny thing about those songs... we don't have any," Jerry Cantrell told engineer Toby Wright, and a week later the band walked out with Jar of Flies, seven quiet, mostly acoustic tracks that became the first EP in history to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200.
Nobody planned for anyone to hear it. Layne Staley said the label liked the tapes and "it was more their idea to release it than it was ours." A week meant for winding down after a long year on the road produced a record that sold more than two million copies in America in its first year, and gave the band the only Mainstream Rock No. 1 of the Staley era.
Album Facts: Jar of Flies (1994)
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Artist | Alice in Chains |
| Album | Jar of Flies (EP) |
| Release Date | 25 January 1994 |
| Label | Columbia |
| Producer(s) | Alice in Chains |
| Studio(s) | London Bridge Studio, Seattle (recording); Scream Studios, Los Angeles (mixing) |
| Genre / Subgenre | Acoustic rock, grunge, hard rock |
| Track Count | 7 |
| Total Runtime | 30:49 |
| Billboard 200 Peak | 1 (one week, chart dated 12 February 1994) |
| UK Albums Chart Peak | 4 (as Jar of Flies/Sap) |
| Other Notable Chart Peaks | New Zealand 1, Australia 2 (with Sap), Finland 3, Canada 5, Sweden 6, Norway 7 |
| Certifications | US 4x Platinum (RIAA), Canada 2x Platinum, New Zealand Platinum, UK Silver |
| Estimated Sales | More than two million in the US in its first year |
| Key Singles | No Excuses, I Stay Away, Don't Follow |
Cultural Context: Grunge at Number One in 1994
Nirvana's In Utero had arrived in late 1993, and Jar of Flies was the next major release from one of grunge's flagship bands. The A.V. Club later argued that it widened listeners' expectations just in time for what followed. A few weeks later Soundgarden debuted at No. 1 with Superunknown, and Stone Temple Pilots' Purple, released on 7 June, also debuted at No. 1.
What set Jar of Flies apart was its quietness. Alice in Chains had been marketed as a metal band and had a ready-made Headbangers Ball audience, and they followed Dirt with a string section, harmonica, brushed drums and a jazzy shuffle. When Kanye West announced a seven-song album in 2018, Billboard put Jar of Flies on its list of classic seven-track records, saying it showed "how far a little concision goes."
Alice in Chains' Story Up to 1993
Acoustic detours were already part of the band's habits. After the Clash of the Titans tour in 1991 they went into the studio to demo heavy material, came out with a handful of acoustic songs instead, and released them as the Sap EP on 4 February 1992 after Sean Kinney dreamed the band had put out a record by that name. Dirt followed on 29 September 1992, peaked at No. 6 and threw off five Mainstream Rock top-30 singles.
The line-up changed during the Dirt tour. Mike Starr left after the album's release; Staley called it "a difference in priorities", while Starr later said he had been fired over his drug use. His replacement was Ozzy Osbourne's bassist Mike Inez, the man credited with the bass riff on "No More Tears". "Mike was the first guy we thought about, and I just called him," Kinney told Guitar World. "We didn't try out anybody or call anyone else." Inez played his first show with the band at the Camden Underworld in London in late January 1993.
In April 1993 the new line-up cut "What the Hell Have I" and "A Little Bitter" for the Last Action Hero soundtrack, tracked by an up-and-coming Los Angeles producer called Toby Wright, who had worked on Metallica's ...And Justice for All. Then came the summer on Lollapalooza, headlining alongside Rage Against the Machine, Tool and Primus. Back in Seattle, the story goes, they found they had been evicted for not paying the rent, and the band moved into London Bridge Studio.
Pre-production: Ten Days Booked, No Songs Written
There was no pre-production. As Lollapalooza wound down, Cantrell rang Wright from Australia, where he was doing promotion, and asked for ten days at London Bridge, the room where Alice in Chains had made Facelift, Sap and Dirt. Wright asked for demo tapes. Cantrell said the band would get there before any tape could.
"After playing loud music for a year, we'd come home and the last thing we wanted to do was crank up the amps right away. That stuff was written on buses and whenever we had downtime."
Sean Kinney, Guitar World, 1999
Kinney said they made the record "to see how it was to record with Mike Inez." "We just went into the studio with no songs written, to check out the chemistry." When Wright asked to hear the songs, Cantrell had to admit there were none, and asked if they could just jam. All he had was one guitar part, the jangling chorus that became "No Excuses".
Creating Jar of Flies at London Bridge Studio
According to the CD booklet, the record was written and recorded at London Bridge between 7 and 14 September 1993. The days ran 14 to 18 hours, and assistant engineer Jon Plum later called the sessions "exhaustive". Cantrell, Inez and Kinney jammed in the big live room while Staley sat upstairs writing lyrics and melodies. "They'd go out on the floor and jam, and I'd just hit record," Wright said.
"They'd get a little form together, go out and jam it, and send it upstairs to Layne who was anxiously awaiting. He'd write lyrics and melody and come down with a little demo on, I think, a four-track recorder."
Toby Wright, The A.V. Club, 2014
Everyone would listen and shout "Hell yeah!", and Staley would head back upstairs. Wright said most of the EP went to Digital Audio Tape, because a reel of two-inch tape only held about 16 minutes. Most tracks were finished in one or two takes, and Staley cut his vocals the same way through a Neumann M-49.
The quiet sound took some work. Cantrell played Ovation guitars, and when the band played live off the floor Wright took the signal from Cantrell's pickups, trying to make it sound like an acoustic guitar rather than an electrified one. A few more details from the sessions:
- Kinney sometimes swapped sticks for brushes to soften the kit.
- The syncopated intro to "No Excuses" began as Kinney messing about with side-stick.
- Wright wasn't keen, so they added bongos and small drums over the hi-hat.
- Staley arranged the vocal harmonies, and Wright said "you couldn't have done all those harmonies without" Cantrell.
Wright mixed the record at Scream Studios in Los Angeles from 17 to 22 September, and it was mastered at Precision Mastering. Fifteen days after the band arrived with nothing, the EP was mixed.
Personnel and Credits
| Role | Player | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Core band | ||
| Vocals | Layne Staley | Lyrics on four of the seven tracks |
| Guitars, vocals | Jerry Cantrell | Lead vocal on Don't Follow |
| Bass, additional vocals | Mike Inez | First extended recording with the band |
| Drums, percussion | Sean Kinney | Brushes on Nutshell |
| Guest and session musicians | ||
| Viola | April Acevez | Strings on I Stay Away |
| Violin | Rebecca Clemons-Smith | Strings on I Stay Away |
| Violin | Matthew Weiss | Strings on I Stay Away |
| Cello | Justine Foy | Strings on I Stay Away |
| Harmonica | David Atkinson | Don't Follow |
| Additional vocals | Randy Biro | Don't Follow |
| Additional vocals | Darrell Peters | Cantrell's guitar tech; Don't Follow |
| Production and engineering | ||
| Producer | Alice in Chains | Self-produced |
| Engineer, mixer | Toby Wright | London Bridge and Scream |
| Assistant (recording) | Jon Plum | London Bridge Studio |
| Assistant (mixing) | Liz Sroka | Scream Studios |
| Mastering | Precision Mastering | |
| Artwork | ||
| Art direction | Mary Maurer | |
| Cover photography | Rocky Schenck | |
| Band photo | Pete Cronin | |
| Electron microscope photos | Alicia K. Thompson | |
Among the backing singers on "Don't Follow" is Darrell Peters, Cantrell's guitar tech, who joins Inez and Randy Biro on the song's second half. In the liner notes to the 1999 box set Music Bank, Cantrell summed up what the record meant for Inez.
"The whole Jar of Flies EP proved to both us and the fans what a talented and valid part of the band Mike was."
Jerry Cantrell, Music Bank liner notes, 1999
It is also the only Alice in Chains release the band produced entirely on their own. Wright came back to produce the 1995 self-titled album.
The Songs on Jar of Flies
| # | Title | Writer(s) | Length | Single? | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rotten Apple | Staley; Cantrell, Inez | 6:58 | No | Opens on Inez's bass |
| 2 | Nutshell | Staley; Cantrell, Inez, Kinney | 4:19 | No | RIAA Platinum in 2022 without ever being a single |
| 3 | I Stay Away | Staley; Cantrell, Inez | 4:14 | Yes | String quartet; Grammy-nominated |
| 4 | No Excuses | Cantrell | 4:15 | Yes | Mainstream Rock No. 1 |
| 5 | Whale & Wasp | Cantrell | 2:37 | No | Instrumental |
| 6 | Don't Follow | Cantrell | 4:22 | Yes | Cantrell sings lead; Staley takes the bridge |
| 7 | Swing on This | Staley; Cantrell, Inez, Kinney | 4:04 | No | Jazzy bass shuffle |
Writers are listed as lyricist; composers. Cantrell wrote both words and music on "No Excuses" and "Don't Follow".
Rotten Apple
The first sound on the EP is Inez's bass, and the nearly seven-minute opener sets the tone straight away: slow, spacious and very sad. Rolling Stone's Paul Evans heard Staley's vocals here and on "Swing on This" "owing as much to Styx and Kansas as Jerry Cantrell's guitars do to Black Sabbath."
Nutshell
Kinney plays brushes under one of Staley's most exposed lyrics. The band first played it live at Memorial Hall in Kansas City on 22 September 1993, the last of the six mixing days in Los Angeles. It opened their MTV Unplugged set on 10 April 1996, which was the last time they played it with Staley, and since 2011 Cantrell has dedicated it on stage to Staley and Starr. Kerrang! ranked it fourth among Alice in Chains songs in 2021.
I Stay Away
Cantrell's Music Bank notes say this was the first song the band wrote with Inez. A bright acoustic verse drops into a sludgy electric pre-chorus before the strings carry the chorus back up. Evans wrote that the strings "lighten" it. It was nominated for Best Hard Rock Performance at the 1995 Grammys, and yet the band never played it live with Staley. On 2 November 2007 the band played it at Seattle's Benaroya Hall with the NorthWest Symphony Orchestra.
No Excuses
Cantrell's one existing chorus became perhaps the most upbeat, radio-friendly tune the band had written. It is built on a jangling A-to-B barre-chord change with the open B and E strings left ringing, over Kinney's improvised side-stick groove.
Whale & Wasp and Swing on This
"Whale & Wasp" is a short Cantrell instrumental, and the much-quoted "darkly gorgeous" in Evans's review was written about this track, not the whole EP. "Swing on This" closes the record on a jazzy Inez bassline, and Entertainment Weekly called the song "a slice of postmodern boogie-woogie".
Don't Follow
Cantrell sings the first part alone over acoustic guitar and David Atkinson's harmonica. Then the rhythm section comes in and Staley takes the bridge. Katherine Turman of the Los Angeles Times disliked most of the record but called this "beautiful and even Beatleesque". Like "I Stay Away", it was never played live with Staley; it was first performed in Tempe, Arizona, on 25 September 2006 with DuVall. In 2020 Lily Cornell Silver, Chris Cornell's daughter, chose it as the intro music for her mental-health interview series Mind Wide Open.
Album Artwork and Packaging
The name came from school. Staley told Hit Parader that Cantrell was given two jars of flies for a third-grade science experiment. One was overfed and the other underfed. The overfed flies flourished for a while before dying out from overpopulation, while most of the underfed ones survived the year. "I guess there's a message in there somewhere," Staley said.
Rocky Schenck shot the cover in his own dining room on 8 September 1993, the second day of the sessions. The band wanted a young boy looking into a jar of flies and asked for "crazy colors", so Schenck put coloured gels over the lights. The picture shows a boy's face half hidden behind a glass jar with a metal screw lid, the band's logo embossed in the glass, flies crawling inside and a hand resting on the table, all lit in red and orange.
"My assistant made multiple trips up the street to gather hundreds of flies with a butterfly net at some horse stables. The flies kept dying, the kid kept complaining, and my assistant kept gathering more flies."
Rocky Schenck, Instagram, 2019
Schenck admitted he had forgotten the boy's name, and added: "I still have the jars." Some copies of the first CD pressing had four plastic flies sealed into the clear spine of the jewel case. The package was nominated for Best Recording Package at the 1995 Grammys but lost to Buddy Jackson's design for Asleep at the Wheel's Tribute to the Music of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys.
Release and Reception
Columbia released Jar of Flies on 25 January 1994. It sold more than 141,000 copies in its first week and entered the Billboard 200 at No. 1 on the chart dated 12 February. It spent one week at the top and 60 weeks on the chart, and no other EP topped the chart until Jay-Z and Linkin Park's Collision Course in 2004. In Britain it was paired with Sap and reached No. 4. The band were as surprised as anyone.
"We couldn't believe that it did so well," Cantrell told Guitar World, later adding: "The success of Jar of Flies showed us that we could do what we liked and that other people would like it too."
Critics were divided. Evans gave it four stars in Rolling Stone and warned that "this is hardly Alice lite." Q also gave it four out of five, and Entertainment Weekly a B-minus. The Los Angeles Times gave it two stars, calling it "more atmosphere than substance", and NME gave it 4/10. Its reputation has only grown since. Rolling Stone placed it at No. 12 in a 2014 list of the best records of 1994, and at No. 42 among its 50 greatest grunge albums in 2019.
- RIAA triple platinum in 1995, four times platinum on 5 August 2022.
- Double platinum in Canada, platinum in New Zealand, silver in the UK.
- Two Grammy nominations at the 1995 ceremony, no wins.
- No. 52 on the Billboard 200 year-end chart for 1994.
Singles and Music Videos
| Single | US release | Mainstream Rock peak | Other peaks | Coupling | Video director |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No Excuses | January 1994 | 1 | US Modern Rock 3, Hot 100 Airplay 48, Canada 17 | Brother (from Sap) | Matt Mahurin |
| I Stay Away | Radio, 3 May 1994 | 10 | Don't Follow (UK release) | Nick Donkin | |
| Don't Follow | Radio, October 1994 | 25 |
"No Excuses" entered the Mainstream Rock chart on 12 February 1994, the same week the EP hit No. 1, and stayed for 26 weeks. It was the band's first No. 1 on that chart, and their only one until "Check My Brain" in 2009. Matt Mahurin, who had made the "Angry Chair" clip, directed the video, which features only Staley and Cantrell from the band, with actor Max Perlich.
Nick Donkin made the "I Stay Away" video in stop-motion. Puppet versions of the band take a bus to a circus, where a sinister boy lets loose his jar of flies and everything descends into chaos, until the big top burns down. The puppets are now on display at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.
Touring and Live
Jar of Flies never got a tour. After its release Staley went into rehab, and Alice in Chains were booked for a summer 1994 run with Metallica, Suicidal Tendencies, Danzig and Fight, plus Woodstock '94. During rehearsals Staley started using heroin again, and the band pulled out of every date the day before the tour began. Candlebox took their place, and management put the withdrawal down to "health problems within the band."
The songs mostly came to life on stage later. "Nutshell" and "No Excuses" were part of the April 1996 MTV Unplugged show, Cantrell played "No Excuses" on his 1998 Boggy Depot solo tour, and "Don't Follow" and "I Stay Away" were first played live with DuVall after the band reformed.
Reissues and the 30th Anniversary
There was also a limited Enhanced CD with both videos, and a 2,500-copy double EP pairing Jar of Flies with Sap. On 25 January 2024, its 30th anniversary, Columbia and Legacy announced a multi-format reissue:
- Standard black vinyl, plus tri-colour vinyl and cassette from the band's store.
- A deluxe box with a logo-embossed jar, touch-activated red LED and fake flies.
- A 60-page hardcover book, poster and 3D lenticular cover, in a shadowbox.
The clear variant was made with Romanus Records: 150 discs with real dead flies pressed inside. They sold out, and Romanus' Chris Banta admitted it was "actually pretty difficult to get a hold of real dead flies."
Legacy of Jar of Flies
What happened next shows how lucky that week was. The self-titled album the band made with Wright at Bad Animals in 1995 took four months, and although it also debuted at No. 1 in November 1995, it was their last studio album with Staley, who died in 2002. Writing in 2014, Consequence said that week produced "seven songs and thirty minutes unlike anything else that emerged from that influential Seattle scene."
The songs have travelled. "Nutshell" has been covered by Adema, Staind, Shinedown, Seether and Ryan Adams, and in 2022 the RIAA certified it platinum, with "No Excuses" going gold the same day. "I Stay Away" made a 2016 Guitar World and Guitar Player list of the greatest 12-string songs. Billboard credited the EP with setting the tone for the Unplugged set two years later.
Things You Might Not Know
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| The last laugh | "Swing on This" ends with the microphones catching Inez looking into the control room and saying "Toby's still laughing." |
| Wright's soundtrack mixes | Columbia had Andy Wallace mix the Last Action Hero songs Wright had tracked; Cantrell later offered Wright the chance to remix them for Music Bank. |
| Top 50 on the Hot 100 Airplay chart | "No Excuses" reached No. 48 on Billboard's Hot 100 Airplay chart, the only Alice in Chains song to make that chart's top 50. |
| Under the microscope | The booklet credits Alicia K. Thompson for electron microscope photography, alongside Schenck's cover and Pete Cronin's band photo. |
| Rebuilding the boy's face | Schenck's archive had no shots of the other half of the boy's face, so the 2024 box set designers had to build it digitally. |
| Whale & Wasp, the toy | The 30th anniversary merchandise included a "Whale & Wasp" plush toy, alongside a poker set and a skate deck. |
Listen to the Riffology Podcast
A band with no songs turned a week of jamming into one of grunge's quietest and saddest records, and broke a chart record while they were at it. For more stories like this, the Riffology podcast is available on all major podcast platforms.
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