SEATTLE — Jerry Cantrell reportedly revealed that 1992 Alice in Chains hit “Them Bones” was actually inspired by the time he saw spooky skeletons playing rib cages like xylophones as he was walking through a cemetery, sources close to Cantrell confirmed.
“Whenever I’d give interviews about this song I’d tell them it was about something deep like pondering the nature of my mortality, but really it was about the time I stumbled upon ‘Jammin’ Jimbone and his Marrow Band of Numbskulls’ playing some good ol’ fashioned bone jazz in the pale moonlight,” said Cantrell. “Of course I was frightened at first, but they invited me to play the jug because I was the only guy around with lips. The original title of the song was ‘Clickety Clack, Them Bones Are Back’ but Layne didn’t think we should kick off the album with a ragtime jam.”
Alice in Chains drummer Sean Kinney recalled that many of the band’s most famous songs were named after similar incidents.
“Jerry gets a reputation for being a tortured soul, but all the songs he wrote for the band were inspired by whimsical encounters. Fun fact: ‘Dam That River’ is about the time Jerry saw some industrious beavers wearing hard hats while clocking in for their shift at their construction site,” said Kinney, leafing through an old photo album. “And ‘Down in a Hole’ was about the time me and Layne buried Jerry in sand at the beach and a hermit crab wearing a beer can pinched his ear. Boy he got so mad that he threw that crab’s can in the ocean, but then he felt bad about it—and that’s where ‘Sea of Sorrow’ came from.”
Despite the legendary jam session, Marrow Band of Numbskulls frontman Jammin’ Jimbone recounted his disappointment the first time he heard “Them Bones.”
“I was jazzed when I found out that kid we jammed with made it big, but then I heard the song on the cemetery groundskeeper’s radio — ‘I feel so alone, gonna end up a big ol’ pile of them bones.’ Really? I don’t come to your concerts and rag on your saggy bag of flesh,” said Jimbone, examining the stained liner notes of a discarded “Dirt” CD. “But what really ground my bones was when I saw their MTV Unplugged show—Kurt brought out the Meat Puppets for Nirvana’s Unplugged, but you can’t break off a little spotlight for your ol’ pal Jimbone?”
At press time, Jimbone later revealed that he and his band had also jammed with a young Rob Zombie in the ‘80s, but quickly noted that “White Zombie” was not their preferred nomenclature.