10 Greatest MTV Unplugged Episodes
4. Alice in Chains
Of all the grunge bands looking to do MTV Unplugged, it was almost a no brainer to book Alice in Chains. For all of the metal adjacent songs in their catalog like Sickman and Man in the Box, AOC's delve into acoustic music on their EPs like Jar of Flies and SAP proved that they at least had the chops to tone things down a bit. Ironically enough, what might be one of the greatest shows of their career ended up being one of the last shows they would ever play.
After repeatedly declining to play Unplugged, Alice ducked into the studio that night with Layne Staley clearly in bad shape. Even after the purging of his soul he made on albums like Dirt, it was becoming more apparent that Staley was losing his battle with heroin. You can pretty much hear that pain echoed in some of the more downtempo passages, almost as if Staley is pulling his notes out of thin air as he tries to squeeze that power out of his voice one last time.
It's not all downtempo and plodding though, with one of the funnier moments coming from Mike Starr's bass, which includes a jab at Metallica who were sitting in the front row. While this would be one of the final public appearances that Layne would make before passing away in 2002, this is probably one of the finest performances ever seen on the MTV stage.