In honor of the upcoming 30th anniversary of Alice in Chains‘ Dirt, pop culture lifestyle brand Funko is releasing a deluxe Funko! Pop figure set of the band this fall. The brand recently conducted a Pop! Talk interview with Jerry Cantrell and Sean Kinney to commemorate the new collection, where the rockers revealed the moment they felt they “made it” as a band.
Loudwire had the opportunity to submit a few questions through Funko for the interview, so we asked which of their music videos was the most fun to shoot, as well as which of Layne Staley‘s quirky hairstyles they were most fond of. The Funko Pop! figure of Staley in the Dirt set has pink hair, which is where the inspiration for the question came from.
“Videos are kind of not fun to shoot,” Cantrell said laughing, and Kinney agreed, adding that it’s his least favorite thing the band does.
“I think ‘Down in a Hole’ for me, because we all came up with the idea to have the little Super 8 thing so we kinda shot parts of the video,” Cantrell continued. “We didn’t fake our tune and we didn’t rock, we just kind of hung out and went out to the f–king desert to this crazy desert community.”
As for Staley’s hairstyles, the guitarist said he was a fan of the pink hair, as seen on the Funko Pop! figure, but he also really liked the singer’s unkempt hair-do, which he compared to the fictional scarecrow Worzel Gummidge.
“I think he just didn’t brush his hair for a couple of weeks, and then he started to develop dreads. Then he kind of regretted it, but he kind of held onto it,” Cantrell reminisced.
“Then we’d go up and open a beer bottle cap and I’d squeeze it into his hair,” Kinney added. “After a while there’s just a collection of crap you’d just kind of crimp into his wig and keep that going.”
Elsewhere in the interview, they recalled the moment they felt that they truly made a name for themselves as a band occurring during the Clash of the Titans tour, which took place in 1991 and was headlined by Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax.
“We were just kind of slugging it out in clubs and stuff, and we got asked to be part of the Clash of the Titans with Anthrax, Megadeth and Slayer. The first half of that was pretty brutal, but we kind of really enjoyed that part of it because people were throwing shit all the time and booing us and stuff,” Cantrell reflected. “In the middle of that tour, that’s when radio and MTV all kind of clicked and hit — ‘Man in the Box’ kind of hit in the middle of that tour.”
Both Cantrell and Kinney noted that things felt different after that moment in time — people were no longer throwing things at them onstage, and now they started reeling in fans who wanted to have a beer with and take pictures with them.
The musicians were challenged to build their own Funko Pop! figures during the interview, so check out the full video below to see what they came up with. The Dirt Funko Pop! deluxe set is currently out of stock on the company’s website, but you can sign up to be notified when it’s back in stock with this link.
Additionally, you can get tickets to their current tour with Breaking Benjamin and Bush here, and pre-order the limited edition Dirt 30th anniversary box set on the band’s website.
Alice in Chains Reveal the Moment They Felt They ‘Made It’ as a Band
Alice in Chains – ‘Down in a Hole’
78 Rock + Metal Artists Turned Into Funko Pop! Figures
Funko Pops — the small-bodied, big-headed little toys made to resemble pop culture icons — have included numerous rock and metal musicians over the years. Check out some of them below.