10 Best Songs Where Hard Rock Bands Went Acoustic

For a band that's known for so much unplugged material, there was actually a time where Alice in Chains were being crucified for daring to turn the distortion off. As much as some fans may swear by songs like Brother or No Excuses these days, the first time playing those songs live were greeted with boos, with fans looking to just hear the traditional metal sounds of We Die Young. Both styles came from a place of pain though, and Don't Follow may as well be a down and dirty country song closing out Jar of Flies.

Since this was around the time when Layne Staley was slowly starting to wither away, most of the lyrics here are defined by his vices, with Jerry Cantrell talking about a guy reaching the point of no return and never fully coming home. Most of the track is carried by just Jerry's solo performance, but everything really comes alive when the harmonica comes in and we hear Layne for the first time, sounding absolutely tortured and screaming some of these lines as if he's trying to cleanse part of his soul through the music.

When you hear him sing a line like 'take me home,' you're almost not sure if he's talking about finally getting clean, or just letting death take him so he won't feel numb anymore. For all of the emotion contained in this one song, you almost need something like Swing on This to follow it to just to give the audience some levity before the whole thing ends. Because if this were the song that closed out the golden age of Layne Staley's career, it would be enough for most hardened metalheads to burst into tears.