ALICE IN CHAINS Guitarist Discusses 1990 CLASH OF THE TITANS Tour, Touring With OZZY

ALICE IN CHAINS guitarist Jerry Cantrell recently spoke to the San Antonio Express-News about ALICE's early run through San Antonio which saw the then-unknown band opening the 1990 Clash of the Titans tour featuring thrash masters SLAYER, ANTHRAX and MEGADETH.

"That was trial by fire," Cantrell said. "It was not easy, but it was fun. The guys in the bands were really supportive. We spent a lot of nights playing with foreign objects flying at our heads and sometimes it got pretty brutal, but we wouldn't stop. We'd get right in people's faces, we'd jump the barricade, we'd throw (stuff) right back at them. We gained a lot of respect because we didn't (wimp) out."

Another pass through San Antonio found ALICE opening for OZZY OSBOURNE in October 1992, when the Prince of Darkness was forgiven for his Alamo incident. Singer Layne Staley performed in a wheelchair after following an ATV wipeout in Oklahoma.

"That's a fact," Cantrell laughed. "We were only supposed to do one leg of the tour and Ozzy kept extending us saying (in a dead-on Ozzy impersonation),'You've got to do another tour, man.'." It was, like, 'Let me look at my watch Oz, I don't think we're doing anything else.'

"(Layne) was whizzing around on one of those little four-runner things backstage and I remember (Ozzy) coming out of his dressing room and saying 'Tell him to get off that thing, man, he's gonna (freakin') kill himself!' Sure as (heck),he turned a corner and got boxed in by a couple of semis that were unloading. He thought there was a way through, but there wasn't so he hit the brakes and tried to bail off, and it rolled over his foot and snapped a couple of bones. He had a couple of pins put in his foot and continued the rest of the tour. We didn't miss a show."