Alice In Chains’ Jerry Cantrell reveals the guitarists who influenced him

Alice in Chains co-founder and guitarist Jerry Cantrell is one of the most influential guitar players from the past decades and to come up with his own style, he first was inspired by many other musicians. Cantrell mentioned in an interview with Full Metal Jackie names like Lindsey Buckingham, Tony Iommi, Angus and Malcolm Young, Eddie Van Halen, Jimmy Page, Billy Gibbons and more as some of the guitarists who influenced him.

Alice In Chains’ Jerry Cantrell reveals the guitarists who influenced him

“Oh, God. There’s just too many to too many to single out. Tonally — tone’s a really unusual thing, because you can line up 50 guys with the same guitar on the same amp and plug them in, and they’re all gonna sound a little bit different. It’s the relationship between the flesh and the wood and the metal, with the electricity running through it, and soul of the individual flowing through it. So it’s so unique, and it’s like a fingerprint — it really is.”

“It’s unique to them. And I grew up listening to Davey Johnstone and Lindsey Buckingham and the Young brothers and Tony Iommi and Eddie Van Halen and Jimmy Page. Billy Gibbons. I can go down the list. Ted Nugent. Tom Scholz, for that matter. I’ve taken a little piece from anything that inspires me or makes me feel good, or songs that I keep coming back to, or albums that I still love listening to. And so the dream then is the same as it is today.”

He continued:

“I wanna make something that makes somebody else feel — makes me and somebody else feel like that record made me feel when I was a kid, made me want to become a musician and make music myself. So it’s hard to really boil it down to who maybe influenced me the most. There’s standouts that are just like aliens to me. [Jimi] Hendrix was one. Eddie Van Halen is another. I think Randy Rhoads might qualify as an otherworldly being,” Jerry Cantrell said (Transcribed by Blabbermouth).

Besides the six albums released with Alice in Chains, Jerry Cantrell released five solo albums, the most recent one “I Want Blood”, released in 2024. During his career he already collaborated with many other artists like Ozzy Osbourne, Metallica, Damageplan, Duff McKagan, Richie Kotzen, Heart and Metal Church.