{"id":55993,"date":"2025-08-10T00:02:22","date_gmt":"2025-08-10T00:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/55993\/"},"modified":"2025-08-10T00:02:22","modified_gmt":"2025-08-10T00:02:22","slug":"how-a-90s-comedy-song-gave-maynard-james-keenan-his-first-hit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/55993\/","title":{"rendered":"How a 90s comedy song gave Maynard James Keenan his first hit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maynard James Keenan is one of the most recognisable rock stars on the planet. Even in a ridiculous wig or outlandish costume, no one is going to confuse the Tool<\/a>\/A Perfect Circle\/Puscifer singer with anyone else.<\/p>\n

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It wasn\u2019t always that way. Back at the start early 1990s, Maynard was just another unknown LA musician trying to kickstart his career.<\/p>\n

He\u2019d arrived in the city from Michigan in 1988, following a brief stint in the military and a period at art college earlier in the decade.<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

It was in Los Angeles that Maynard, guitarist Adam Jones, drummer Danny Carey and bassist Paul D\u2019Amour formed Tool in 1990.<\/p>\n

Tool weren\u2019t Maynard\u2019s first band \u2013 he\u2019d previously played bass and sang in local Michigan groups texANS and fronted Children Of The Anachronistic Dynasty<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In fact, Tool weren\u2019t even his only band at the time. Around the same time they were getting off the ground, Maynard was pulling double duty as a member of comedy-punk pranksters Green Jell\u00f6.<\/p>\n

Green Jell\u00f6 were the brainchild of Bill Manspeaker, who founded the band in 1981 when he was in high school. They released their debut mini album Let It Be in 1984 (sample song title: I Got Poo-Poo On My Shoe). It was followed five years later by Triple Live M\u00f6ther G\u00f6\u00f6se At Budokan, recorded live in Manspeaker\u2019s garage and producer by future Tool associate Sylvia Massey.<\/p>\n

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Manspeaker proudly proclaimed Green Jell\u00f6 to be \u201cthe world\u2019s worst band\u201d. Their gigs were a cross between punk rock<\/a> shows, performance art and anarchic circus performances. Costumes, puppets and out of tune instruments all featured.<\/p>\n

The band\u2019s line-up was equally chaotic, with countless musicians coming and going, sometimes just for a few weeks or a couple of gigs. One of these was future Tool drummer Danny Carey. Another was Maynard James Keenan, who lived with Manspeaker at the so-called Jello Loft, an apartment-come-HQ on Hollywood Boulevard.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaynard was my roommate forever,\u201d Manspeaker told The Aquarian<\/a> website in 2010. \u201cHe was this guy that was my grumpy roommate that sold lizards for a living. He had a licence to buy pets. Me and him would go to downtown LA and we\u2019d buy lizards in bulk. We\u2019d buy 100 lizards every other day. And we\u2019d go to the pet stores and he\u2019d sell lizards. And that was his job.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Maynard<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Lindsay Brice\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Danny Carey was already playing drums with Green Jell\u00f6. Manspeaker suggested his flatmate Maynard join them. \u201cWe were like, \u2018Dude, we need another singer, why don\u2019t you sing?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGreen Jell\u00f6 looked like a perfect fit,\u201d Maynard said in his biography, A Perfect Union Of Contrary Things. \u201cBill had an open-door policy, meaning I could come and go as I pleased. I was like, \u2018OK, if I want to get involved in any of this, this might be the way.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Manspeaker claimed that Tool actually formed in his apartment. \u201cWe used to have these parties at our loft,\u201d he told The Aquarian. \u201cThey just made up the band to play the parties, and they got signed right out of my living room.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both Green Jell\u00f6 and Tool both scored a deal with newly founded label Zoo Records in 1991. The latter\u2019s debut EP, Opiate, was released in March 1992.<\/p>\n

Manspeaker managed to prise $60,000 dollars out of the label for his band. Rather than use it to record a traditional album, he instead funnelled the money into making a long-form video album, Cereal Killer.<\/p>\n

Released on VHS in October 1992, Cereal Killer featured 11 tracks, each with a different home-made promo. Tool\u2019s Danny Carey played drums on the album, credited as Danny Longlegs, while Adam Jones \u2013 a trained animator \u2013 worked on some of the videos.<\/p>\n

One of those songs was a twisted version of the nursery rhyme Three Little Pigs, accompanied by a DIY Claymation video. The song itself featured lyrics that skewered wannabe LA rock stars, including a hick pig from the sticks (who lives in a house made of straw) and the nepo-baby architect offspring of a rich rock star named Pig Nugent (living in an expensive concrete house in the Hollywood Hills, naturally).<\/p>\n

While Bill Manspeaker delivered the main vocals, he roped in three friends to provide the voices of the pigs: Primus\u2019 Les Claypool, comedian Pauly Shore, and Manspeaker\u2019s roommate-turned-sometime bandmate Maynard James Keenan, who had already performed the song live with Green Jell\u00f6. The three of them delivered the line \u201cNot by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin\u201d in comic falsettos.<\/p>\n

Of the three, Shore was the biggest name thanks to his stint as an MTV VJ, while Claypool\u2019s band Primus had scored a radio hit the previous year with their single Jerry Was A Race Car Driver. By contrast, Maynard was a relative unknown \u2013 Tool\u2019s Opiate EP had barely caused a ripple.<\/p>\n

Green Jelly – Three Little Pigs (Official Video) – YouTube
\n\"Green<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

That certainly wasn\u2019t the case with Three Little Pigs. After Cereal Killer was released as an audio album in March 1993, a Seattle radio station picked up on the song and began playing it. Other stations followed, and Three Little Pigs eventually gatecrashed the US Top 20 and reached Number 5 in the UK. Somehow, this novelty punk-rap nursery rhyme had given Maynard James Keenan his first hit, beating Tool\u2019s Sober to the punch.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was Maynard\u2019s first hit song,\u201d said Manspeaker, who was forced to change his band\u2019s name from Green Jell\u00f6 to Green Jell\u00ff after US dessert company Jell-O threatened him with legal action. \u201cOf all of his incredible songs and all the gold and platinum records, that was his first. The guy that everyone is so serious about, it all started with \u2018not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Tool\u2019s career began to take off, Maynard spent less time in Green Jelly\u2019s orbit. His regular band would go on to bigger and much less anarchic things, though the sense of humour that saw him squealing like a pig remained \u2013 something that was even more evident in his other group, Puscifer.<\/p>\n

\u201cPuscifer is his Green Jelly,\u201d Manspeaker told The Aquarian in 2010. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of funny. I\u2019m sort of actually honoured.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Maynard James Keenan is one of the most recognisable rock stars on the planet. Even in a ridiculous…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55994,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-55993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}