In 1992, the soundtrack to the movie Singles featured music by Seattle-based grunge acts such as Pearl Jam, Mother Love Bone and Soundgarden as it told interwoven stories set amid the burgeoning Seattle music scene. And one of the most memorable moments in the film came during a performance by Alice in Chains.
The iconic scene, set early in the film, featured the grunge icons performing the song “It Ain’t Like That” in a club. As the band members whipped their hair around during the performance of the hard-rocking song, the movie’s characters Steve (Campbell Scott) and Linda (Kyra Sedgwick) were forced to scream at each other over the deafening music.
“It Ain’t Like That” appeared on Alice in Chains’ debut 1990 studio album Facelift and was not released as a single. Written by Jerry Cantrell, Mike Starr, and Sean Kinney, the track featured a dark, heavy guitar riff and Layne Staley delivering gritty lyrics about alienation and unease.
Cantrell told Guitar World that the riff started as a clapback to his bandmates.
“The riff in ‘It Ain’t Like That,’ that’s based around a bend that was actually a joke,” he shared in the interview. “I remember at rehearsal, I got pissed off about something, and I made some noise. I did that reverse strum on the E chord with a bend on the G. I was d—ing around, and all the guys looked at me, like, “That was cool! Do that again!” And I was like, ‘I was f—ing joking, dude!’”
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The legendary Alice in Chains guitarist told All Music that the accidental riff came during a jam session at the Music Bank warehouse in Seattle.
“We were jamming, and the guys were making a comment about something they didn’t like that I was playing for them,” he recalled. “And I’m like, ‘No, this is cool! What am I, going to play something stupid…like this?’ And I just kind of drew my strings from high string to the low string and did a bend on the G – as a completely sarcastic response to them not liking something I was playing right before. And they’re all like, ‘F—! That’s cool, man! Do that again!’ And I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me?! I was being sarcastic!'”“They started playing along to it, and we made a song out of it,” he added.
In a video interview, Kinney and Cantrell spoke about recording “It Ain’t Like That” for the Singles movie.
“We really played, and they recorded it,” Kinney said. ”So we played the song a bunch of times.”
Cantrell recalled, “I think there was some discussion of us lip-syncing to the [original] track, and we’re like, ’No we’re not going to do that, man.’ So for the people [in the movie] to talk, it’s got to be on tape and we’re like, ‘Okay, well we’ll play the songs and you can record us.’”
Cantrell noted that the band performed the song until they thought it was good enough, then lip-synced to their live performance while the audience danced around.
“So that was kind of odd, just you know first kind of experience around filmmaking,” he added.
Kinney also revealed that the band didn’t perform in a real club and instead were housed in “a fake club, a movie type one…in a pier down on the waterfront.”
Singles writer and director Cameron Crowe praised Alice in Chains’ professionalism during the shoot, telling Rolling Stone the band did very well with the stops and starts of film production.
“They were great; they were very cooperative and fun,” Crowe said. “Somewhere around the time we were finishing the movie, ‘Man in a Box’ was a hit. They were the first band to score a hit out of Seattle in that generation. Layne was wonderful. And we put Jerry Cantrell in Jerry Maguire.”
Thirty-six years after its release, “It Ain’t Like That” remains one of Alice in Chains’ most iconic deep cuts—a soundtrack song that showcased the dark, hypnotic sound that would go on to become a hallmark of the legendary band.
Related: 1994 Rock Classic, Once Ranked Among the ‘Saddest Songs of All Time,’ Is Quietly Climbing the Charts 32 Years Later
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