ALICE IN CHAINS Bassist: 'We Never Ever Thought We Would Come Back Together In Any Capacity'

Dominic Salerno of The Arizona Republic recently conducted an interview with ALICE IN CHAINS bassist Mike Inez. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

The Arizona Republic: I loved the short film you guys made about how the reunion came about. You talk seriously about what the band was going through, all the while being made up to look like the members of KISS.

Inez: I gotta tell you. At first I was the one going, "No I don't want to do that." And as soon as you put on Gene Simmons' makeup, you turn into the God of Thunder. I had the best time with that.

The Arizona Republic: The thing that was cool about it, besides it being funny and touching at the same time, was that it pointed out that it wasn't going to be a real cheesy reunion, like a reality-show-based audition for a new singer.

Inez: Yeah we definitely didn't want to go that route. This came from a good place. Our wonderful drummer, Sean Kinney, after the tsunami happened, which if you think about it will turn out to be the worst natural disaster of our time, he wanted to put together a benefit concert in Seattle. And me and Jerry [Cantrell, guitar] were on the first flight from Los Angeles. We went back to Seattle with Maynard (James Keenan) from TOOL and a bunch of other singers to do our songs. (The concert) was bigger than the band. And that turned into a couple of club shows. More offers came in, so we figured, "Let's kick it around the world one more time." I think we did 23 or 24 countries. We thought we'd start small and I think the sixth gig was 40,000 people in Portugal who all came for TOOL.

The Arizona Republic: You pretty much knew right away that William DuVall was your guy, right?

Inez: We selected William because he just made it his own kind of thing. He didn't try to be a Layne Staley clone. He's been playing with Jerry for 10 years so it was a natural thing. We never set out to replace Layne Staley. He's irreplaceable. He was our family member and one of our best friends. So it was really refreshing when Will came in and made it his own. He wasn't trying to fill shoes, he was trying to make his own shoes.

The Arizona Republic: Was there always an idea that you would at some point get ALICE IN CHAINS back together?

Inez: Oh, we never ever thought we would come back together in any capacity. If you would've asked us two years ago if we were ever gonna do another record, the answer would've probably been no, even after the world tour. But gradually, over time, the four of us started coming up with riffs. We even financed the record ourselves before we went to a record label because if we didn't feel this album sounded good or felt right we could just pull the plug on it and not be contractually obligated to put something out.

The Arizona Republic: You didn't want to be contractually obligated to suck, basically.

Inez: Yeah, we didn't want to do that or tarnish our legacy at all. So we took real small steps, one after another. After the tsunami benefit, we did some club shows. After that, we wrote songs. After that we asked ourselves, Do we want to record it? Do we want spend the money to fix it and master it? Do we want to release it? And thank God the answer was yes because that's when we started to talk to record labels. We partnered up with Virgin EMI, and ever since then it's been like being shot out of a cannon.

Read the entire interview from The Arizona Republic.