Alice In Chains singer/guitarist Jerry Cantrell discussed being disrespected at a car dealership early on during his career in a new Motor Trend interview.
“I remember having cash in the bank to write a check, not put it on a plan, but actually to buy it, and that’s what I wanted to do. That was a sense of pride that I had earned the money to do that and that I could. So that was special, and it’s funny because the first car lot that I walked on, the guy wouldn’t even let me get in the car because of how I looked,” he says.
Cantrell laughs, recalling how they dressed back then—combat boots, long johns under cut-off jeans, leather jackets, and long hair.
“I’m like, ‘Dude, are you serious? I’ve got cash to buy a car, a brand-new car. I don’t have to have somebody to cosign it. I need to buy a car,'” Cantrell recalls.
He was determined to buy that car at that moment. “So I looked across the street—it was an auto row area—and I’m like, ‘You just lost a sale, dude. I’m going to walk across that street, I’m going to buy a car. I’m going to come back over here and I’m going to show it to you.’ And I did. I walked across the street, bought a f–kin’ Ford Explorer, and when I got the paperwork done, I came back by the window and probably flipped him off and then drove off,” he says with a chuckle.
