Someone who seemed to feel the same

I have long been a huge fan of Maynard James Keenan, Tool, A Perfect Circle, etc. Not just the sound of the music, but the quality of the music. Each line and each drum beat is careully planned out. It alls means something greater. And that something greater is intelligence. The music is just smart. The man is just smart. A genius. I hate when people go calling MJK, a God. He is not a God, just a man with a lot to say and luckily the intelligence and the talent to say things in a way that gets people thinking. He's a modern day philosopher, psychologist, scientist if you will. He doesnt want a following, doesnt want to be a leader of a "cult". He just wants to play his music and have an audience that appreciates it for what it really is....an experience. A learning experience.

He is definately well on his way to becoming a legend.

So in my boredom today I turned to Wikipedia as usual. And I looked up Tool. And I was shocked to see the amount of material on the band. (I still havent finished the article, lol). I got sidetracked on my quest to learn more about them and came across this interview. I cant find any reference information on it. But it must have been in the past several years. Just after Thirteenth Step came out. Read on down to the very end of the interview, where MJK discusses his political stance. He says just what I was trying to say last week about history being cyclical! So if you dont believe me, believe MJK...








Kurt Loder: Was it really you who created the "Free Frances Bean" T-shirt?


Maynard James Keenan: Oh, yeah, back in '96, '97. Everybody at that time was trying to get us to do all these benefit shows — you know, like "Free Tibet." And I was like, "I'm gonna have my own platform: Free Frances Bean." Because just watching the tornado that is her mother, my first thought was, "Oh my God, how is Frances Bean gonna survive this insanity?" Because artists can be extremely eccentric and insane, and unfortunately, the people they hurt the most are the people that are closest to them. The shirt was kind of a flippant joke, and then it just spiraled out of control — everyone wanted them, and I was giving them away. Courtney hates me. She called me a media whore once. Isn't that great? I have the distinction of being called a media whore by Courtney Love.

Loder: The album title, Thirteenth Step, seems to be a reference to the Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step rehab program.

Keenan: I don't think the album is specifically for people who are going through recovery, although that metaphor is absolutely present. Many of the songs are sung from the perspectives of recovery: from the perspective of a person who is in denial about a loved one, and from the drug perspective itself — the perspective of a person who is starting to realize that there is an issue, and of a person who is ready to deal with it.

This was a very difficult task for me, because I don't know what [drug addiction] is like. I drew on the experiences of friends who have gone through recovery, and friends who will never go through recovery. Layne Staley, for example, who was an old friend.

Loder: You must have seen that coming with him, right?

Keenan: Yeah, absolutely. But there was nothing you could do, and it's very difficult to understand. Being a friend to someone like Layne, it really kind of does your head in. I don't understand it, but I do want to help other people who are on that borderline, who might hear [a song] and go, "You know what, I think I want to try to live."

Loder: Have you ever had a drug problem yourself?

Keenan: I've experimented, absolutely. I've definitely treaded that fine line. But I've never gotten so down into it that I couldn't dig my way back out, luckily. There's that voice in there somewhere — which some people don't have — that says, "Hang on, come back."

Loder: You seem a lot less angry now than you were back in the early Tool days. Do you worry about the fans who say they miss that old, angry Maynard?

Keenan: No. You can go out and buy the records. There's Opiate [a 1992 EP], there's Undertow. The whole idea is to get it out: Write the song about it, spout off about it and get over it. I suppose I could repeat myself over and over again, but what's the point of that? The idea is, if I can't heal from my art, then how can you heal? So I've worked some things out and moved on.

Loder: Are you a difficult guy to work with?

Keenan: I think the biggest problem working with me would be that I'm an only child, and so I have an internal dialogue that goes on that I just assume you can hear. Because as an only child, you have your own little world. Then you go into a situation where you're working with other people, and unless you actually vocalize what you're thinking, the other people will go through hell trying to figure out what's going on.

I'm a lot easier to work with now than I have been in the past, for sure.

Loder: How do the Tool guys feel about A Perfect Circle?

Keenan: I think initially they were offended and, ah, jealous. But I think now they realize the benefit of it. It allows us to do what we set out to do, which is to take the time that the music needs to take before you present it. For me to have done Lateralus and then come out with another Tool album within a year wouldn't have been a good step forward. We've always subscribed to the idea that you have to process life experiences and go through your natural progression as an artist to let the [music] come out, rather than forcing it out. We're just the kind of band where it takes a long time for us to process.

Meanwhile [with A Perfect Circle], I'm processing other things while Tool's going on. I have another outlet.

Loder: But Tool fans inevitably do want another Tool album, and some of them must resent your devoting all this time to A Perfect Circle.

Keenan: They keep going, "Are you working on another Tool album?" I'm like a mother on a table. I'm, like, giving birth to a baby, and you're asking me if I'm going to have another baby. Not right now, probably. Don't really feel like having sex right now, I'm having a f---ing baby. I'm out here busting my ass; we're working hard on this. This is our new child; we're nurturing it, developing it and showing it to the world.

Loder: How do you relate to your fans?

Keenan: I just hope that our fans are people who are inspired by music, and just use our music as a background or inspiration for whatever it is they do. I would hope they would be our fellow artists, rather than trying to emulate or idolize clowns like us.

Loder: Tool fans are pretty intense. Some of them already appear to think of you as a legendary character.

Keenan: That's kind of weird. How'd that happen? I don't even know how to process that statement. I can't be a legend yet. I'm not dead.

Loder: Why do you never include a lyric sheet with your albums? Why do fans have to go online to get them?

Keenan: Because I think reading is a thinking process, and I would prefer that people feel the album first, and just let it sink in. Because you might get something out of the music that you might not get from thinking about it, and watching the words go by. I usually put the lyrics online a month or so after the release of the album, but it's better to feel them first.

Loder: You're a writer — have you ever thought about writing a book?

Keenan: No, not really. I was going to write a book once, and I did that thing where you open up your Microsoft Word and ...

Loder: And you just sit there staring at a blank screen.

Keenan: Yeah, totally. So I started searching for Internet porn instead.

Loder: You're kind of a remote guy as a performer, wearing those wigs and dresses onstage ...

Keenan: That started when I had a son. That's the main reason for the makeup, the wigs, the bras, whatever you've seen in the past with Tool. I just like the incognito aspect, because now I can wander around even where I live and not really be hassled too much. I just think it's really unfair for my child to have to be victimized by my career — you know, here you are signing autographs in the 7-11. It seems ridiculous to me. And I try not to be in my videos.

Loder: You don't like to look at yourself?

Keenan: No.

Loder: What kind of music did you grow up liking?

Keenan: Joni Mitchell. I think everything Joni Mitchell did for music was big. I was really influenced by her.

Loder: Did it pain you to hear "Big Yellow Taxi" sampled by Janet Jackson on "Got 'Til It's Gone"?

Keenan: It was agonizing. But ... Joni Mitchell, PJ Harvey, Björk. Growing up, I was really into Aerosmith and AC/DC.

Loder: Do you like classical music?

Keenan: A little bit. I wouldn't be able to spout off my favorite piece, but I definitely appreciate what goes into it. When Bach and Beethoven and all of those guys were doing their thing, it was an absolute pinnacle of our consciousness, and ever since then we've been re-exploring different avenues of it. The same argument could be made about the Beatles: Ever since the Beatles, there's been a regurgitation, trying to figure out how to reinvent that wheel.

Loder: What do you make of the current state of the music business, and the illegal downloading the record companies say is siphoning off their profits?

Keenan: There is still a future with music, because people want music. But I don't know if the record labels will be involved. The panic you're seeing now is basically coming from the labels trying to figure out how they're gonna monopolize and manipulate and suck the blood out of artists anymore.

Loder: Are you opposed to file-sharing?

Keenan: Not necessarily. But I wish people would realize what an artist normally makes on the sale of an album. Nowadays, you have to sell, like, half a million or a million records just to break even. And how many bands sell a million records? Not that many.

Loder: Then there are the acts that get signed to, like, $60 million record deals ...

Keenan: Well, I've never gotten that deal. I'm not Mariah Carey.

Loder: Did you ever see her movie, "Glitter"?

Keenan: No.

Loder: It's fabulous, you've really gotta see it. It's right up there with "Battlefield Earth."

Keenan: "Battlefield Earth" is the pinnacle. It's a pure film, pure art. You can put it on, and within seconds of having put it on, you forget you're watching a movie and you walk off and make toast or something. Nothing memorable happens. It's just ... two hours are all of a sudden just gone. Which is not like a movie like "The Postman," which has a whole different effect. That one stretches time. You're like, Oh, man, I'm getting older as I'm watching this. I've missed three birthdays.

Loder: Are you a political person?

Keenan: I see a lot of patterns in our behavior as a nation that parallel a lot of other historical processes. The fall of Rome, the fall of Germany — the fall of the ruling country, the people who think they can do whatever they want without anybody else's consent. I've seen this story before.

I think people in general have neglected to learn about history. But then it hasn't really been a focus of our government to make us an educated people. Just in general, any government throughout history hasn't really wanted its people to be educated, because then they couldn't control them as easily. If the education of our kids comes from radio, television, newspapers — if that's where they get most of their knowledge from, and not from the schools, then the powers that be are definitely in charge, because they own all those outlets.
Loder: OK, on that note, do you have anything to say to your fans?

Keenan: Turn off your television. Go do something.