Alice in Chains cofounder Jerry Cantrell is something of a mystery. Not a dark, occult force like Jimmy Page, or an unnerving comic one like the nunchuck-wielding Buckethead, who performed with a KFC tub on his head and a white slasher mask, or the late MF Doom, the metal-masked supervillain of hip-hop, who would never allow anyone to photograph him without his mask, and who once sent a doppelgänger to perform for him. For one, Cantrell doesn’t wear masks, except maybe on the inside.

His inscrutability is a little more insidious than that: He is more a willful withholder, internal and self-contained. He is one of those artists whose private life realty is private, and he intends to keep it that way. Often with just a look. When he’s “on duty,” he’s every inch the rock star, usually wearing his trademark heavy silver chains—for merch, he used to sell a black T-shirt with a replica of his chains embellished across the front—and with his curtain of blond hair that makes him look like an illegitimate Allman Brother.