Opera Singer reacts to Alice In Chains - Man in the Box 

"love, hate, love" Live from The Moore in 1990 is AMAZING.... Shows his immense singing talent...

The live version of Love Hate Love is incredible. The things he does with his voice during that performance seem impossible.

I Like how she really catches all the subtleties, sounds and dynamicss of a Rock Vocal...she would be a great Rock Vocal Teacher

Live At The Moore is a Must. Love Hate Love, Man in The Box, Bleed The Freak shows Layne in his prime and he uses No talk box. He has the most powerful, well controlled and unique voice. RIP Layne

No talk box was used in this song. It was pure vocals and guitar.

You should check out some of their other amazing songs!!! ~ Love, Hate, Love ~ Rain When I Die ~ Got Me Wrong ~ Don’t Follow ~ Sickman ~ Brother ~ I Stay Away I better stop cause I’ll list every song they have!!!

I think that, aside from the actual power of his vocals, he had this light distortion that only hit in the power aspect. He could be clean voiced, but that little bit of "saw blade" in there is what made him really stand out. There are a lot of singers with voices that strong, but nobody will ever sound like Layne.

THIS IS MY GIRL, SHE is it, shes the one! The laugh after he goes for it ! THE ONE

She’s back! This is the type of video Most Ppl like. Quick. We want to see her react to the moments we expect. And also hope for a little bit of teaching in the end. Perfect video Maggie.

Between Jerry Cantrel's guitar and Layne Staley's Voice I am Eternal Chills......🎶♥️✝️

As a metalhead from the 70's, I tend to call AiC as Grunge. They are an awesome group with a huge level of talent.

Check out Alice in chains-love hate love live at the Moore theater.

Also it is not a talk box being used, it's simply Layne singing those intro notes clean while Jerry backs it up note for note with a wah pedal on guitar.

Mad Season’s “River of Deceit” is absolutely beautiful. I think you’d like it. AIC has been my 18 yr old daughter’s favorite band for 3-4 years. AIC has always been my second favorite, after Pearl Jam.

There's a RU-vid short called Feed My Eyes where you can see and hear him do it live flawlessly

I saw Layne in a three piece suit at the start of their set on Lollapolooza in 93 and it was like 95 degrees that day! Needless to say he took the jacket tie vest and shirt off after playing Would the first song to start the show! Very charismatic singer and great stage presence! His voice very unique and an unbelievable range! RIP Layne!

Yeah... we all know that when dogs are bad they get their noses shoved in "spit"... lol. Love this song even with the clean lyrics :)

Please react to their live performance of Love Hate Love!

By their Unplugged performance, Layne was deep in the grip of his addiction. If you watch, you can see he had already lost a lot of his teeth from the heroin.

The other key here is: This is healthy Layne before the Heroin addiction that would slowly drain his life away in 4 years. This is 1990 Layne by 1994 and into 1995 Layne started his descent into darkness. Love you Layne! RIP❤

You can see where Danny Masterson of that 70’s show Steven Hyde got his look from Layne in this video!

If you want to see the power Of Laynes voice watch Love Hate Love - live at the Moore.

Down In A Hole at MTV unplugged is a MUST! An incredible display of the harmonies that the band was so famous for.

If you have not checked out Rooster yet please do another great AiC song, or Nutshell they are both great

Alice In Chains - Love hate love live at the Moore. There are a few must-see’s from layne.

R.I.P. Layne...what a voice! Miss that dude.

Famous uses of a talk box come from songs like "Fire it Up" from Black Label Society and "Livin' on a Prayer" by Bon Jovi. With respect to the power of Staley's voice, it is something else!!! I saw an interview in which a producer or stage manager or someone like that said he saw this song performed (possibly live at the Moore) and his voice appeared to come directly from his chest rather than his mouth. . . . Also, AIC was famous for having Layne and Jerry harmonize.

Not you falling in love with this classically trained grunge man! 🤣💅😜🥰 Layne has my heart, too, it's okay.

I recall in the 1980s some pundits predicting the demise of the lead guitar, with one wag saying that ‘a guitar solo is one note’. The rock guitar not only survived the 80s (as heard here in a 1990 song) but can still be found today. Love your ability to really groove with the music and at the same time analyze it in detail all on the first hearing. 🤘

This is a good one and a very unique style too. You did a great job with this reaction and all the details Maggie!

Layne was a great unique voice

I’m subscribing in the hope that you actually do react to “Love, Hate, Love” live at The Moore

Great reaction!!! You rock one of my favorite songs

You have to see them do a song from ( Live at the Moore theater) I believe it's 1990. Layne's voice is exceptional!! Every song is amazing, but I personally LOVE,. " LOVE, HATE, LOVE"!!! When you Hear the power in his voice, it's incredible! Thank you ❤️❤️

To repeat what several others have pointed out. Love Hate Love, live at The Moore is a must listen, to truly experience the raw power & range of Layne.

My favorite grunge band!

You should try "Phantom Limb"; Jerry's guitar in the opener of the song is absolutely insane. There is also a music video to that song as well!

I feel like there are no bad AIC songs. Them Bones and Rooster are definitely my faves

RIP Layne and Mike......Miss U Guys

Nutshell MTV Unplugged performance

shes my girl , alreadyyyyy hahaha her reactions on Man in the Box FUCKKKK YES!!! Amazing

This song means this band and this singer can never be forgotten. Such power

“Feed my eyes” chorus begins in B4 I believe, it took me about a year to hit that cleanly. Layne is a monster vocalist.

her screaming at 10:40 is me EVERY TIME I

Peak Layne, peak AIC. Just so incredible!

Maggie, his sound was stronger here because it was around his prime in his career. In the the other unplugged performance, to much herion had taken hold of him already.

Sweet! This is one of my favorite Alice in chains song Miss Maggie

The way he says won’t you instead of wontchu. 🥰 I guess one of my pet peeves when people run together a t consonant with you.

As others have stated, and others will also..."LOVE, HATE, LOVE" Live at the Moore is a must!

I’ve got to say that what people think is a talk box is actually his voice.

Love your reaction Maggie!!!

Its actually Layne using a talk box and Jerry with his awesome Wah pedal playing in sync

Not sure if it's been mentioned yet, but Peter Frampton Do You Feel Like I Do is a must if you wanna see that talk box work to it's limit....

Yeah, I remember when the video was frozen during the livestream. To me that said just how serious the copyright owners and record labels are. Great review and awesome to pick up on so many of the nuances of Layne’s incredible voice.

the healthy version of the guy from down in a hole. you've got to check out any song from live at the moore to hear layne in his prime

Layne really sings those vowels on "River of Deceit" from the Mad Season album side project.

He was such an outstanding vocalist. Love all the albums with him. Songs like "Sunshine", "Rooster", omg...

Hope you're doing well Maggie! Amazing video

great song and great music! I love em.

Very underrated AIC song that’s worth a listen is Them Bones, it’ll startle you in the beginning but it’s masterfully recorded

Layne was a legend. your reaction was legendary

I only wish I had introduced my dad to Alice in Chains, he had impecable taste and would have loved them.

Bon Jovi also incorporated the talk box into some of their songs. The most famous use is in Living on a Prayer.

This song's origins start with a lunch the band had with some A&R woman who was a vegan (no animal byproducts of ANY kind), who proceeded to tell them how animals were penned up in small crates and killed for steak, etc. So, Layne wrote Man in the Box from the perspective of a penned up calf. It was loosely based around Layne's idea of media censorship. Sean Kinney (the drummer) said it was about veal. LOL. Layne met Jerry Cantrell ONE TIME, found out he had no family in the area, he had little money left and Layne (drunkenly) offered Jerry a place to live, money, food, clothes, guitars and gear he needed, Layne set Jerry up with a life that could NOT fail unless Jerry let it happen. He set him up with a band when he gave Jerry the number to Sean Kinney's girlfriend and found out that the girlfriend was Mike Starr's sister. He encouraged Jerry to sing more because after all they were Jerry's lyrics, Jerry should sing them. I'm sure Jerry would have made it on his own without Layne, but it would have been the long scenic route to get there. Jerry wrote ROOSTER about his father's experiences in Vietnam and when Jerry saw his dad in the audience at one of their shows, Jerry asked Layne (and the guys) to play Rooster and they did. It was the first time Jerry's dad heard Jerry's music and knew that his son understood him through that song. It brought Jerry and his dad closer together. And Layne had a vital part in that reunion. (Meanwhile Layne's own biological father was an opportunist who showed back up in Layne's life AFTER Layne got famous and had money and did drugs with Layne.) Phil Staley was NOT the father Layne expected when he came back into his life. Layne had tried rehab 13 times, but he could never completely give it up. He tried quitting cold turkey on two of the last attempts at rehab, but that didn't work either. Mad Season is made up of Mike McCready of Pearl Jam, Barrett Martin of Screaming Trees and John Baker Saunders and they all went through rehab. They all got together and dragged Layne out of his condo, got him excited about doing ABOVE album, thinking if he was creative he wouldn't want the drugs, and for the length of time it took to do that, Layne was excited about the project, but it didn't curb his drug habit. Layne wrote the lyrics to the songs he sang on the ABOVE album and he drew the cover art for the album. Layne was an amazing singer. Very few singers sound better live than they do in a studio version. Layne was one of the few. From what I’ve read and researched, heroin is the worst drug to be addicted to. You don’t want to do anything other than be there and nodding out. The fact that he agreed to do the KISS shows and performed them like he did shows the strength he had. From what I read, when you have the level of addiction Layne had, it is incredibly difficult to function at the intensity of performing a stage show in front of an audience as well as he did. He could have stayed home and stayed high, but Jerry wanted to do the shows. Somewhere, somehow Layne found the strength to do those shows despite what his addiction wanted him to do even though he survived an overdose after the last KISS show in Kansas City, Missouri, became a recluse, and the addiction got him in the end. Mike Starr was the last one to see him on April 4, 2002, for all anyone knows and what I took from that was that while Layne was telling Mike that he (Layne) was sick, he still tried to get Mike to give up his own prescription drug habit. After that, no one noticed he had died because he never answered the phone nor opened the door. It took inactivity over the span of two weeks for his ACCOUNTANT to notice something was wrong and called Susan Silver who called Layne's mother to alert her to the situation who then called 911. He died on April 5, 2002, but his body wasn't discovered until April 19, 2002. And to pour salt in the wound, MTV (and the music industry) has more or less blackballed Layne (and yet, they laud over Kurt Cobain every April 5th, because Kurt was the "face of grunge", meanwhile Layne gets a "by the way"). The Grammys went so far as to invite Jerry, Mike and Sean to the Grammy show in 2003 and then refused to put Layne's picture up in the memorial of the musicians who died in 2002. (Or they "forgot" to) which pissed Jerry, Mike and Sean off and they walked out on the show. At the age of 34 (when he died), he looked more like an 80-year-old man. He knew he screwed up, between the drugs and his own depression and then his former fiancee dying, Layne just couldn't find a way to dig himself out of his own mess and at the end with his teeth problems and organs failing on him, he gave up trying. He lost sight of who his true friends were and who was using him. He was never going to give up the drugs. Instead, he tried to attain the same high he felt the first time he did drugs and could never achieve it. Layne's story is more tragic and haunting because you can actually watch and hear him deteriorate over the 12 year span: from the mild use of drugs in 1990 all the way through 1996 when he was deep into a heroin addiction to dropping to 90 pounds by 1998 to 86 pounds when he died in 2002. Layne wrote songs that gave a normal person insight into the mind and journey of an addict. The pain and depression he endured to write the most brutally honest lyrics a musician could write concerning his feelings on his own addiction and the emotional and physical strength he had to perform those songs live when all he wanted to do was curl away and lose himself in the drug haze I can’t imagine what it was like for him. He was hounded by the press about his addiction. He was ridiculed for his addiction. The music industry blackballed him for his addiction. The Grammys forgot about him when he died. As far as MTV and Rolling Stone were concerned he’s just another addicted singer. They don’t want to acknowledge his contributions to music. Layne Staley deserved better than what he received from the people around him who he thought mattered. He wrote about things with maturity and knowledge well beyond his years. He didn’t deserve to be turned into tabloid cannon fodder by the press. Layne was so much more than his drug addiction. He was able to come up with lyrics and harmonies off the top of his head. He stacked his own vocals. He knew enough to know that Jerry Cantrell was playing with the wrong people and gave him contact info for Sean Kinney and Mike Starr. He wrote the lyrics for the songs he sang on Mad Season's Above album and drew the cover art for that album. Layne was a genius in his own right. He still was able to figure things out in a snap off the top of his head. Layne just had his demons. Layne's whole situation from his drug addiction, to how he died, to how he was found only weighing 86 pounds and the drug paraphernalia, etc is tragic and haunts me when I think about it (and I didn't even know the guy personally). "Whatever dramas are going on in my life, I always find that place inside my head where I see myself as the cleanest, tallest, strongest, wisest person that I can be." -- Layne Staley "My bad habits aren't my title. My strengths and my talent are my title." -- Layne Staley "When I tried drugs they were fucking great, and they worked for me for years, and now they're turning against me- and now I'm walking through hell and this sucks. I wrote about drugs, and I didn't think I was being unsafe or careless by writing about them. I didn't want my fans to think heroin was cool. But then I've had fans come up to me and give me the thumbs up, telling me they're high. That's exactly what I didn't want to happen." -- Layne Staley

That was almost 6 years between that video and the unplugged performance...by the Heroin had sunks its talons into Layne. Very sad and tragic.

The change in his voice is from years of drug addiction and tooth loss. The MTV unplugged set was his best and the beginning of the end.

I know others have said this too- but Beyond the Wheel by Soundgarden. Got to hear it live when NIN and Soundgarden toured together and it was the only one that gave me chills. Man lyrics had real meaning back then.

Alice In Chains - Unplugged - Nutshell. Nuff said.

"love, hate, love" Live from The Moore in 1990

Great pick!!

one of my faves of theirs

I expected that last chorus to get a 'Shooketh!'

you should do this song and Love, Hate, Love live at the Moore 1990, it's crazy bc he sounds better live, the studio stifled him, I never got to see him but other musicians said sitting on side stage, his voice was so powerful it would rattle their insides ❤

That sound is a guitar effect called a talkbox :)

He was already too deep in his addiction in the Down in a hole performance.

There’s no talk box involved in the 1990 live performance at the Moore Theater. Just guitar distortion and Staley’s nasal tone.

Listen to the album version of down in a hole. It was recorded when he still sounded really strong. This is why I hate that reaction channels just get pounded with the unplugged videos. missing out on what he was capable of. This whole album is just mind blowing.

Peter Frampton in DO YOU FEEL LIKE I DO? uses that air tube device quite well...non nasel

A song about censorship, that's itself censored. The lyric on the album version isn't "pit", or, "spit". Layne was an incredible talent, who was taken way too soon. Another victim of addiction.

Essa música não tem erro... um clássico que vai atravessar gerações 🤘

You should do one on Alice in Chains "Love Hate Love", that is a performance!

Alice in Chains is my favorite band

Sickman.

Grunge music sang from their soul

This song is from their debut album Facelift. Layne was much healthier then. Sadly, by the time they recorded the Unplugged album that you heard Down in a Hole from, Layne was very deep into his drug addiction, and was about 80% dead. About 2 months after the Unplugged album was recorded, they played their last live show while on tour with Kiss, one night after a show, Layne overdosed and was taken to the hospital. After that, they never played live publicly again. Layne basically became a hermit in 96 up until his overdose death in mid 2002. Years later the band reformed with vocalist William Duvall, which is who we hear singing in the band today, he and Jerry.

Its been a week or two since watching this reaction video, and I can now say with confidence that this is probably my favorite reaction video ever. If not THE favorite, then definitely in the top three. Don't quite know why it I'm being complete honest, hmm…🤔 (am I?🤨)

They get that intro sound from a Talk Box. It takes the sound coming from your guitar amp redirects to a tube. That tube comes up to your mic . So the guitar sound is now in the tube directly next to the mic. With your mouth you don't make a sound. You just mimic the guitar sound by opening and closing your mouth. I have one. Check out Peter Frampton, Do you feel like we do. You'll love it.

🤘🤘🤘 rock on Miss Maggie

Here’s an interesting concept for a video: check out Rain when I Die by them and immediately listen to City and Colour’s cover of Rain When I Die. The contrast will floor you.

You reacted to this twice? Yes, I just looked and it's the same video also haha

Think about it man, Layne Staley, Kurt Cobain, Chris Cornell, and Eddie Vedder all came out of the Seattle area around those same years. What the hell was in the water up there back then?

Bleed the Freak live at the Moore is crazy good

Mad Season - "River of Deceit" 🤌🎶

Great choice but the live version is superior in my opinion 🌟🌟🌟

You Have to check out Love Hate Love!!!🔥🤟

There song Don't Follow is really Amazing!! Listen to that one!!

I would also recommend Them Bones as a song from AiC for a reaction.

I see alot of peeps asking for Love hate love to be your next reaction and it is a great tune but you should do "Get born again" 1st. you would be only the 2nd reaction of that song and its a killer. It was was one of the last songs recorded by Layne and wasnt available until the first AIC greatest hits. Its a hidden gem that needs to be rereleased.

Love hate love.. This power go to sud América.. Gretting from Chile South America

Mad Season ❤