Junkhead (2022 Remaster)

Jerry Cantrell and Layne Staley wrote this song. It was their way of expressing their thoughts on drug abuse and how you can't understand the mind of a drug user unless you are one yourself. Unfortunately, Layne died of a drug overdose.

At first blush, "Junkhead" seems to glorify drug addiction, but the song's story is more complicated. A good night, the best in a long time A new friend turned me on to an old favorite In "Junkhead," Alice in Chains (AIC) vocalist Layne Staley sings about doing heroin and feeling superior to the sober squares around him. But we are an elite race of our own The stoners, junkies and freaks Are you happy? I am, man Content and fully aware Money, status, nothing to me. 'Cause your life is empty and bare The sentiments are similar to those expressed in Trainspotting, the Irvine Welsh novel published in 1993, shortly after the Dirt album was released. The book was the basis for the 1996 cult-favorite film of the same name. This association is relevant because it highlights a running theme of the '90s zeitgeist, which was the notion that modern life was meaningless, dull, and defined by mass, mindless conformity. The notion that heroin addiction was a romantic alternative to that vapidness was not uncommon at that time. 1990s movies, books, and music frequently portrayed that alternative. "Junkhead" is not truly endorsing drug use, though. Throughout his career, Staley was hyper-conscious about never promoting drugs. The song is being sung from the snarky, black-humored sarcasm that characterized '90s youth.

"Junkhead" is a look inside the early stages of an addicts' mind. It kicks off a linked narrative that's told on the second side of Dirt in the songs "Junkhead," "Dirt," "God Smack," "Hate To Feel," and "Angry Chair." That narrative has Staley falling in love with drugs as an alternative to normal life and then descending into the hell of addiction. "Junkhead" is the errant fool in the earliest stages of his fall. It's not meant to glorify addiction or heroin at all. Staley never recovered from his own, very real addiction. It killed him on April 5, 2002 when he was just 34.