“Alice in Chains have had a long relationship with Ozzy, who gave us one of our first breaks – and gave us a bass player”: Jerry Cantrell on his lifelong love of Black Sabbath and touring with Ozzy Osbourne (before taking his bassist)

Jerry Cantrell [left] plays his blue dress G&L live at Tons of Rock 2025; an archive shot of Tony Iommi playing with Black Sabbath in 1976.

Judging by his cavernous riffs, it’s not hard to see that when it comes to guitar, for Jerry Cantrell, the apple doesn’t fall far from the Sabbath tree. It’s a fact, and Cantrell isn’t hiding it. “Those [Black Sabbath] albums and songs are timeless,” he says. “They spoke to me then; they speak to me today.”

Sabbath first entered Cantrell’s orbit when the burgeoning riff meister was a grammar-school student in Pennsylvania in the late ’70s. From the moment Cantrell took in the opening chords of Iron Man, he was hooked. So it must have been sweet when just over a decade later, in 1991, Cantrell’s band, Alice in Chains, supported Ozzy Osbourne on his first “farewell tour,” the No More Tours Tour.