• March 18, 1966
• Jerry Cantrell is the guitarist and a founding member of Alice In Chains, one of the most significant bands of the grunge era. When their lead singer, Layne Staley, died from a heroin overdose on April 5, 2002, the band dissolved, but Cantrell put it back together in 2005 with a new lead singer, William DuVall. The DuVall-era Alice In Chains outlasted the original group.
• Cantrell got his solo career started in 1998 with the album Boggy Depot. By this time, Alice In Chains were inactive - they hadn't recorded or played a concert since 1996, mostly because Layne Staley had pretty much checked out.
• Cantrell wrote most of the '90s Alice In Chains songs, sometimes with Layne Staley. He does almost all the songwriting on his solo material and in the re-formed Alice In Chains.
• He's known for playing in a lot of odd, shifting time signatures - the Alice In Chains song "Them Bones" is a good example. "It just comes naturally to me," he told Guitar World. "Off-time stuff is just more exciting – it takes people by surprise when you shift gears like that before they even know what the hell hit 'em."
• One of the most personal Alice In Chains songs for Cantrell is "Rooster," which is about his dad, Jerry Sr., who picked up the nickname Rooster when he fought in the Vietnam War.
• In the summer of 2002, a few months after Layne Staley died, Jerry Cantrell toured with Nickelback as their opening act.
• Cantrell is patient and malleable when it comes to songwriting. "The way I've always approached things is not to get too rigid," he told American Songwriter. "Once the idea is there and it's enough to make you perk up, you let it evolve and tell you what it needs."

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