Man in the Box is a song by Alice in Chains. It was released as a single in January 1991 after being featured on the group’s debut studio album, Facelift (1990). It peaked at No. 18 on Billboard‘s Mainstream Rock chart and was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance in 1992.
The song was included on the compilation albums Nothing Safe: Best of the Box (1999), Music Bank (1999), Greatest Hits (2001), and The Essential Alice in Chains (2006). Man in the Box was the second most-played song of the decade on mainstream rock radio between 2010 and 2019. In the liner notes of 1999’s Music Bank box set collection, guitarist Jerry Cantrell said of the song Man in the Box ;
“That whole beat and grind of that is when we started to find ourselves; it helped Alice become what it was.” The song makes use of a talk box to create the guitar effect. The idea of using a talk box came from producer Dave Jerden.
SIDE A
- Man In The Box (Single Version)
SIDE B
- Sea of Sorrow
- Bleed the Freak
- Sunshine
.
The MTV music video for the track was released in 1991 and was directed by Paul Rachman, who later directed the first version of the “Sea of Sorrow” music video for the band and the 2006 feature documentary American Hardcore.
The music video was nominated for Best Heavy Metal/Hard Rock Video at the 1991 MTV Video Music Awards. The video is available on the home video releases Live Facelift and Music Bank: The Videos. The video shows the band performing in what is supposedly a barn, where throughout the video, a mysterious man wearing a black hooded cloak is shown roaming around the barn.
Then, after the unknown hooded figure is shown, he is shown again looking around inside a stable where many animals live where he suddenly discovers and shines his flashlight on a man (Layne Staley) that he finds sitting in the corner of the barnhouse.
At the end of the video, the hooded man finally pulls his hood down off of his head, only to reveal that his eyelids were sewn together with stitches the whole time. This part of the video depicts on the line of the song, “Feed my eyes, now you’ve sewn them shut“.
The man with his eyes sewn shut was played by a friend of director Paul Rachman, Rezin, who worked in a bar parking lot in Los Angeles called Small’s. Layne Staley tattooed on his back the Jesus character depicted in the video with his eyes sewn shut.
Alice in Chains
Layne Staley: lead vocals
Jerry Cantrell: guitar, talkbox, backing vocals
Mike Starr: bass
Sean Kinney: drums
Layne Staley (August 22, 1967 – April 5, 2002)
Mike Starr (April 4, 1966 – March 8, 2011).
