To that same legion, frontman Maynard James Keenan is equally admired as something like a spiritual leader and well-respected institution.<\/p>\n
His powerful vocals, surreal presence and cerebral lyrics are an indispensable element of a group who’ve always been stranger and more subversive than most of their peers.<\/p>\n
Tool is a multi-platinum selling, festival-topping juggernaut whose music defies the conventions of commercial success: dark, labyrinthian songs roiling with primal, hypnotic grooves, devilishly tricky time signatures and challenging subject matter.<\/p>\n
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Maynard James Keenan (left) with Tool band mates Justin Chancellor, Danny Carey and Adam Jones. (Supplied: Travis Shinn)<\/p>\n
The Los Angeles quartet’s painstaking collaborative process means they’ve produced just five full-length albums across 32 years, their complexity growing in tandem with increasingly longer waits between releases.<\/p>\n
Thirteen years separated their last album, Fear Inoculum,<\/a> and 2006 predecessor 10,000 Days. The album also dethroned Taylor Swift from the top spot on the US Billboard 200 Chart.<\/p>\n It demonstrates how, despite (or perhaps because of) their media-adverse attitude and difficult-to-categorise music, Tool breed cult-like adoration.<\/p>\n An Oral History of Tool Tuesday<\/a><\/p>\n How one of triple j’s greatest traditions happened, according to the people who lived it.Tool Fear Inoculum Review<\/p>\n Here in Australia, that same fanatical dedication has spawned Tool Tuesday: a decades-long tradition by triple j listeners.<\/p>\n Asked if he is aware of the hallowed tradition, Keenan deadpans: “Is that like the band Tool? Or is it like, tool, as in idiot?”<\/p>\n Humour and heaviness<\/p>\n He’s one of heavy music’s most critically acclaimed and enigmatic vocalists, but Keenan is also one of its funniest.<\/p>\n He’s an under-appreciated humourist who counts late stand-up legend Bill Hicks as an idol and made cameos in TV sketch series such as Mr. Show, Comedy Bang! Bang! and Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!<\/p>\n Connecting to his video call with Double J’s Dylan Lewis<\/a>, Keenan jests about being an AI-generated body double.<\/p>\n “I’m the clone they send out to dodge the bullets.”<\/p>\n These kinds of quips are standard tone-setting procedure in most interviews with Keenan, who also fronts rock supergroup A Perfect Circle and Puscifer, a solo project where he exercises his theatrical tendencies and twisted funny bone.<\/p>\n Loading Instagram content<\/p>\n He’s been painted by music publications as a difficult subject who loves toying with interviewers. In reality, Keenan just prefers to get to the point rather than pontificate.<\/p>\n For example: What’s the hardest song vocally to sing live?<\/p>\n “The ones I can’t sing anymore.”<\/p>\n Why is Merkin Vineyards named after the term for a pubic wig?<\/p>\n “Because I think I’m funny.”<\/p>\n A grape vintage<\/p>\n When Keenan isn’t on tour or in the studio, he’s found roasting beans with his wife, Jen, at the Queen B Vinyl Caf\u00e9, or running his winery Merkin Vineyards and the adjoining Caduceus Cellars.<\/p>\n In fact, all his musical commitments are scheduled to avoid clashing with the winery’s crucial windows of harvesting and processing.<\/p>\n Originally dismissed as a celebrity hobby, Keenan’s grape-growing operation in arid North Arizona has grown from industry underdog into an award-winning operation \u2014 as chronicled in 2010 documentary Blood Into Wine<\/a>.<\/p>\n A fan’s collection of wine made by Maynard James Keenan’s Caduceus Cellars. (Supplied: Grant Lutwyche)<\/p>\n Now 20 years in the business, Keenan is a serious connoisseur who clearly knows his Merlot from a Cab Sav, let alone a bottle of Rockford Basket Press.<\/p>\n “I have a vertical of magnums in my cellar now, from mid-90s to late-90s,” he notes of the legendary Barossa drop.<\/p>\n And yes, he’s also in the habit of playing music to his grapes.<\/p>\n Judith Nebbiolo, a signature drop named after his late mother, whose ashes are spread across the vineyard, is treated to “Blonde Redhead and Fever Ray [when] it comes in off the hillside,” he says.<\/p>\n “Does it help? I have no idea. It helps me focus and get shit done,” he clarifies.<\/p>\n While his friends with cellars will pump “thrash[y], super heavy, fast shit”, he can’t do that.<\/p>\n “I love some of that music, but I can’t play it while I’m on a forklift paying attention to the grapes. It’s very distracting. I’m more B-52s or Devo or Gillian Welch.”<\/p>\n When Tool play South Australia, he’s hoping to reconnect with old friends.<\/p>\n “It’s been a long time but I used to come to Adelaide to work with winemakers during harvest.<\/p>\n “I haven’t been in forever \u2026 but I generally hang out with the people from Ochota Barrels,” he adds.<\/p>\n However, Keenan is very much business first.<\/p>\n “I have to make sure I’m prepared for what’s expected of me. I can’t go tearing it up at wineries.”<\/p>\n What’s expected of Keenan is playing enigmatic emcee between guitarist Adam Jones’s drop-tuned riffs, Justin Chancellor’s muscular bass and the octopus-limbed drum punishment of Danny Carey.<\/p>\n Tool’s audio-visual quality has long made them a must-see live act among rock fans.\u00a0 (Supplied: Good Things)<\/p>\n Since their 1990 debut, Tool’s live show has developed into a full-scale production<\/a> of immersive sound and psychedelic visuals. It’s a spectacle that keeps fans coming back multiple times, even when there’s no new material to promote.<\/p>\n Like their music, their performances are simultaneously enigmatic, brutal and intellectual. A visceral experience that’s all about \u2014 as Keenan poetically summarised in their signature hit Schism \u2014 “finding beauty in the dissonance”.<\/p>\n Loading Instagram content<\/p>\n A world-class multi-tasker<\/p>\n Famed for demanding performances spanning the melodic<\/a> to the larynx-shredding<\/a>, doubters have wondered if the 61-year-old has much Tool left in his voice.<\/p>\n “Plenty,” he counters, because he’s taking care of it.<\/p>\n “The big misconception,” he begins, “is there’s some magic potion or tricky thing to do.<\/p>\n “There isn’t, it’s sleep and water and shut the f**k up.<\/p>\n “That’s how you maintain your throat. And you know, vocal exercises: warm up before you’re going to sing. Understand your limitations and don’t push past them. Push the envelope but don’t roast yourself out.”<\/p>\n Keenan developed that straight-shooting discipline from a young age. He was a keen wrestler in high school and enrolled as a US Army cadet in his 20s.<\/p>\n His strong physical regime extended to practising Brazilian jujitsu in the late 90s.<\/p>\n He once exhibited his black belts skills on a stage invader<\/a>, and later co-founded his own studio, Verde Valley BJJ, where Mike Tyson began training for his fight with Jake Paul<\/a>.<\/p>\n Loading Instagram content<\/p>\n The polymath credits his productivity and sense of discipline to his father, Mike, who died earlier this year<\/a>.<\/p>\n “My dad, he was my [high school] teacher, my wrestling coach. And his level of discipline rubbed off on me,” he says.<\/p>\n “He was a person who could organise his day. Read papers at night over a cup of sassafras tea, quick work-out in the morning \u2026 Then we get to school and it’s wrestling practice. In the summers it’s working in the garden.<\/p>\n “You just organise your time and do what needs to be done. Don’t take no for an answer even from yourself when it comes to getting the things done.”<\/p>\n That same efficiency has clearly been passed down to Keenan’s own son, Devo, who would occasionally join his father on stage playing cello.<\/p>\n “He did, he’s now a lawyer. I made a lawyer,” the rock star comically underscoring the irony of parenting a litigator who is now “studying for his barre”.<\/p>\n Maynard James Keenan preparing for a performance, being painted by artist Alex Grey, who is responsible for much of Tool’s artwork and live visuals.\u00a0 (Facebook: Alex Grey<\/a>)<\/p>\n Currently eyeing future albums for Puscifer, A Perfect Circle and \u2014 at some point \u2014 fresh Tool music, the winemaker and martial artist continues to juggle those commitments with his responsibilities as a business owner, husband, and father of two.<\/p>\n “It’s all about focusing on the thing in front of you at the time. And don’t be thinking about the other things while you’re doing that one.”<\/p>\n Tool play the Good Things Festival \u2014 and theatre shows in Adelaide and Perth \u2014 this December.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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