A Perfect Union of Contrary Things

by Maynard James Keenan

“Their priorities were way out of line,” he remembered. “The most important thing was to focus on the music. Make sure all the pieces are in place, do things properly and fo...

A wrestler has to bring his best game onto the mat. You can’t worry about whether your opponent is in tip-top condition and you can’t worry about whether the audience is all open-minded and ready to like what you’re doing. It doesn’t matter if it’s a shallow stage, whether there’s two people or 200 in the audience, or if there’s pee coming down on your head. You have to adapt, to morph to the space and command it.

They dominated the space, made it their own, poured their passion and their fear and their need into every nuance, every anguished note. “That’s what we did every night,” Maynard explained.

It was exciting, but I was wary. I’d heard enough Hollywood horror stories, and I was very cautious. I immediately started looking for the escape route in case somebody tried to fuck me up. If I’m gonna run this cross country course, how do I know I can finish without them putting up construction halfway through? I needed to ask the right questions to find out how they might trip me up and interrupt the job I needed to do.

“I got a glimpse of what power was and how quickly it could be abused,” Maynard would remember of the labels’ over-the-top courtship rituals. “So you play with it. If you can pretend they’re wearing bunny ears while you’re eating their expensive food, it’s the most exciting time in your life.”

Ahead lay contract negotiations, discussions of album art and liner notes, foreign rights and royalties, a journey a band might be lucky to embark upon after months and years of performance and practice, but one he and Danny and Adam and Paul were beginning after only seven shows in second-rate clubs.

“There’s a sense that all this just fell into place,” Maynard would explain. “But most of it was just dumb luck and trust. You step over the edge into darkness. The bliss finds you.”

The agreement granted the band creative control and provided for an advance to cover expenses and equipment until royalties began rolling in.

“Tool was the only band I ever signed that had my complete trust and support whenever they needed it,” Maglia would recall.

The deal included one more provision, a clause that wasn’t set forth in the contract but one the band members considered as important as all the others. Maynard and Danny and Adam and Paul were committed to pastimes and passions discovered long before they’d come together as Tool, and they were determined their private lives would remain just that. Whatever demands and responsibilities they’d just signed on for, they pr...

I didn’t want to be an animal on display. I needed to find a brake pedal to slow down elements of this opportunity and figure out how to emotionally process it. What was all this extra attention going to do to me? What would it do to my body—my emotional body, my spiritual body, my mental body, my physical body? I had goals, and being famous wasn’t one of them.

Our songs were telling people to wake up, stop living in hypocrisy, be true to themselves, but that message had to be tempered. There’s an element of humor in all the songs. A friend might say something really funny, and we’d include a verse based on what they’d said. Satire helps push through heartfelt emotions and serious issues. That’s how you punch the big ideas through.

“Andrew Weiss gave me great advice,” Maynard would recall. “He helped me understand that the working man is what makes this shit happen. He told me, ‘We’re just these rock dudes who show up late and leave early, but it’s the crew who really gets things done. Treat them well. Respect the guys who actually do the work.’”

The monotony of the highway was tolerable, he learned, if he took comedian Bill Hicks’s advice and embraced the journey. En route to Omaha and Austin and Providence, Hicks’s cassettes were in frequent rotation in the tape deck, his satirical monologues an echo of Maynard’s impatience with mediocrity and apathy—and belief in redemption.

Behind all the dark humor, Bill was talking about the same things I’d read in Joseph Campbell. If you look at things, really look, if you lift the veil, you start to recognize that light is love, is infinite, is unconditional. Bill was saying that once you understand the nature of nature, you can let go of difficulties and sign on for the ride—knowing that it’s just a ride.

“When you have a band that is so thoroughly evolved, the smartest thing to do is to support it and get out of the way,” Matt Marshall explained in a 2014 interview. “The best marketing a record company can do is be as invisible as you can and let the artwork and imagery and music speak directly to the fans. To do that full package as well as Tool did right from the beginning is rare.”

With the release of Undertow came the official Tool biography, an out-of-the-box departure from the standard just-the-facts-ma’am press kit. The two-page backstory credited the band’s mentors whose work had impacted their own, including first and foremost American lachrymologist Ronald P. Vincent.

Tool’s ideology was at last explained, to the relief of journalists and music critics struggling to understand the band. Its approach, the document explained, was a musical testament to Vincent’s principles: the imperative to fearlessly face both joy and sorro...

“That was Maynard’s first hit song,” Manspeaker explained. “Of 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 ‘not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin.’”

I felt like the best way to remember Bill was to keep using my talents.

It was time to turn the tables and ask a few questions himself, to create the sort of interview he’d like to read. Bikini Magazine was willing to accept a submission, and Rickson Gracie agreed to an interview as Maynard’s first subject. If he wanted a deeper understanding of Gracie and his beliefs, perhaps readers would, too, and he guided his instructor through a candid exploration of jiu-jitsu philosophy, the mathematical principles his father had applied to the discipline, and the balance of body, mind, and spirit that guaranteed joy on the hiking trail and victory in the ring.

The piece would need a bit of editing before it would be published the next September, but in the meantime, Maynard received a second assignment. Editors at the San Diego publication Hypno: The World Journal of Popular Culture were impressed enough with the Gracie draft that they suggested he try his hand at a similar piece for their magazine. His choice of an interviewee, he realized, was a long shot, but he was prepared. Maynard had imagined the things he would ask her for a long time, their conversation should he ever have the chance to speak with her. “I told them if I was going to interview anybody,” he would explain, “I’d like to talk with Joni Mitchell.” His open-ended questions allowed Mitchell to speak at length of her unconventional chord progressions, her melodic structures and alternative tunings. Their dialogue branched in unexpected turnings and illuminating tangents from the synesthesia of color and sound to the mathematical basis of a Mozart composition to the way minor chords resonate with the rhythm of the soul. “I think she was comfortable speaking to me because I was an artist,” he explained. “I didn’t come in with an agenda. She was able to just talk stream-of-consciousness about music and process rather than having to jam sound bites into a predetermined format.” Published in Hypno’s October 1995 issue, the three-page spread was illustrated with photos of Maynard and Mitchell, their hands clasped, their smiles wide as if caught by the photographer mid...

You get so worked up into thinking it’s not going to work out that you can’t imagine that it will. I had to get away.

“As Tom would remark, a Rage song is easy,” Jack Olsen said in a 2014 interview. “A Tool song is not simple by any stretch of the imagination.”

Complex as it was, the music, as always, came first. Only after Danny and Adam and Justin had worked out melodies and motifs did Maynard put pen to paper. He drew upon all he’d studied: Jung’s shadow-self archetype, Melchizedek’s genetic theories, Joseph Campbell’s battle of opposites and the redemption their union would bring, the angle of a jiu-jitsu stance. He counterbalanced lyrics of healing with acid rock dissonance, juxtaposed images of destruction with poetic Eastern rhythms.

Appearing with Tori was more important than my reservations about benefits in general. If my being there helped the cause, great. But it would also let people see what I was capable of. I was perceived as a metal dude, but that really isn’t who I am. I needed to let out some of the more complex nuances that get lost in the sonic bulldozer that is Tool.

Back when I watched the early REM videos, I liked not having a clue what Michael Stipe looked like behind his hair. And you only heard of Swans. There were very few videos of them. Kiss would be onstage with all their makeup and you’d wonder who they were, what they looked like. There was power behind the characters. And when they took their makeup off, they were able to go on their merry way. In art school, Deb Rockman had taught us that less is more. You don’t have to have every structural line in place to get the general gist of a painting or a charcoal drawing. And I didn’t need to be recognizable to tell a story. I felt like less was not only more, less was safer.

By Ozzfest ’98, Maynard had adopted more effective camouflage than sequins and painted eyebrows and ball gowns. “For a multitude of reasons, I receded to the back of the stage,” he would explain. “As the eye contact became awkward, I stepped back. It was partly a technical decision; the sound was spilling into my mic from the cabinets behind me. But it also helped get away from the ‘frontman’ label. I absolutely hate the phrase ‘lead singer.’ I’m not a frontman. I’m just part of the story.”

He’d looked old hurts squarely in the eye, examined destructive patterns, recognized self-doubt as a delusion born of taking to heart the opinions of others.

I wasn’t a stranger to that sort of thing. But over the years, when I did partake, I respected as much as I could that altered state. You have to honor it. You’re there for a reason. It’s not about getting fucked up. You’re signing off on this thing as a spiritual journey. You’re not going to do peyote and all of a sudden come up with a new theory of relativity. Well, maybe you will, but if you do, I think it’s in you already. The reason you do this is to take a lateral step to the right or the left to look at things from a different perspective. You do it to become aware of something you should already know but might have missed because you were looking at it from the wrong angle.

“If your opponent is driving all his weight on you, you move to the side and let it go into the ground or into the wall,” he said. “Instead of trying to push back, I learned to step outside the situation.”

I knew I had more to offer than the timing of Tool would allow—more songs, more music, more art. I come from a background of people who couldn’t do any of those things. They couldn’t be in one band let alone three. They couldn’t add up the monthly bills or even dress themselves. If you have the means, the knowledge to create something and you don’t, shame on you. If you’re able to be good at your job, to raise a child, to plant a garden, whatever, it’s your responsibility to do it—not only for yourself but for the world.

The argument that many people had about Tool’s music is that they couldn’t hear the vocals. I had to scream to be heard, and that’s not necessarily a pleasant sound. It works for the rage, but it doesn’t work for the art if you have to scream your head off to be heard over the amps. In a way, besides being its own band, I always thought of A Perfect Circle as a way to serve Tool. I thought if my voice was more audible and people learned how to recognize it, they’d have more respect for Tool if they could hear that fourth instrument.

I work best when you give me a puzzle and a set of parameters. Billy had been kicking around this music for a long time, and I think it motivated him for me to go, “OK, we have exactly five minutes to do this.” Eventually, I was going to have to get back to Tool and I wouldn’t have time to work on anything else. So if we were going to do this, we needed to do it now. And because we just absolutely had no time, we were able to create something pure without overthinking it.

Nancy Berry managed to wrangle David Fincher to direct the “Judith” video, which is a gorgeous piece and really did a lot for us. I’m sure dealing with someone like me wasn’t anything out of the ordinary for him, but of course, we butted heads a little bit. We had to negotiate a compromise between him wanting to see my face and me wanting to be Cousin Itt behind a wig. We managed to find a happy medium, and in the course of filming, he expressed interest in having me possibly read for his next film. Legend has it that I was booked for it and turned it down. But no, I had to get to work and go on the road. Dwight Yoakam ended up getting that role. There’s no possible way I would have pulled off what he did in The Panic Room, so that was probably the best decision Fincher ever made, to not pursue having me read for the part.

“I’d heard Paz’s sister Ana practicing her cello, and I was absolutely enamored,” Devo would recall in a 2015 interview. “A few years later, Dad gave me my cello. He’s always been encouraging and excited about my playing.”

As always, Maynard’s lyrics urged critical thinking and transcendence of stasis. Lateralus was, he admitted, “a soundtrack for healing,” a blueprint for enlightenment that might come from tapping into the energies that lay in mathematical symmetry—and the position of the planet Saturn. Every 28 years or so, astrologers claimed, Saturn returned to the place in the sky it had been at the moment of one’s birth, marking the beginning of a new life stage—adulthood, maturity, old age—each an opportunity to reassess one’s purpose. “You either let go of past delusions and ascend to the next level, or you sink like a stone,” Maynard would explain. “If you can’t make it past your Saturn return, you remain stagnant.”

It happens to almost everybody who suddenly becomes famous. We’re not wired to handle that much attention, but it just seems like the path you’re on, so you go down it. You want intimacy, but you’re in motion. You’re not ready to settle down, so you just follow the sexual thing. Most people fall into chemical addiction, which is harder to get out of. I was lucky enough to fall into a kind of ego addiction. She likes me! She likes the name of the band! She likes what I sing about! And the more you dabble in that, the less chance there is of a relationship. She has no idea who I am. I knew the difference between attention and real connection, but I forgot it for a minute. I didn’t even think about what I was doing. I was just having fun.

I thought about this incapacitated older man she’d met. They’d moved in together to help each other and because they were lonesome. Then the church took her off their roster for living in sin. This was a couple who couldn’t even make love. I thought about the groupies who wanted to get close to me but never bothered to find out who I was. I thought about people who can move and walk and see, who have every advantage, but who just bury their talents. I thought about people who aren’t conscious of the most fucking important things around them. I’d left L.A. to get away from this disconnected horseshit.

At some point, if you’re lucky, you realize you’re not the story. You’re part of the story. The story is much bigger than you.

Tool and Perfect Circle were creative outlets, and I wasn’t about to abandon them, but I felt unbalanced. No, I didn’t move to Arizona to start a vineyard, but when I got there, I wanted to express my ideas in a three-dimensional form—which becomes a four-dimensional form if you do it right.

People come in and taste wine that’s fermenting. They make an ugly face and say it’s awful. Of course it is. It’s not done. Same as if I play a rough track. You can tell they want to say it’s terrible. Then I play the song when it’s completed or pour the finished wine, and they think it’s great. It’s the same with anything you do. Getting to the finished product is about patience, understanding—and a faith in the process.

“Maynard always asks, ‘How do we make this more interesting?’” Todd would explain. “‘How do we make it more fun and better than what it is?’”

A long time ago, people understood that the only thing that kept them alive was coordinating in groups and being more creative than the creatures that were threatening them. They were never going to be stronger or faster than those creatures, so they had to be smarter. We’re losing touch with that, because everything we need is readily available. You can’t walk ten feet in any direction without running into food, shelter, or clothing. I feel like art has taken a backseat. The whole creative process seems kind of odd because we don’t think it’s relevant to keeping us alive. But we need to use every fiber of our imagination, every spark of our creative energy, to stay ahead of what’s happening to our planet, to our relationships, to our ability to think for ourselves.

Life is too short not to create something with every breath we draw.

“I was losing touch with the comedy part,” Maynard would explain. “That’s why Puscifer had to come back in a big way. “If you want to follow me as an artist, you have to laugh. You have to stop taking yourself so seriously.”

Back in the day, a band would have to sell at least half a million records before they saw a profit. But now, music can be as sustainable as wine making. We can have far fewer sales and still pay the rent because there’s no middle man, no bunch of executives in the way, nobody sticking their fingers in the pie.

Religion helps explain important information so it’s easy to understand and doesn’t have to be explained every time. People living in the desert thousands of years ago couldn’t eat pork because it was full of worms and they’d die if they ate it. In order to keep people from eating it, it became a religious proscription, and then avoiding it just became a part of the daily routine. They didn’t think about the survival mechanism attached to the ritual. “Why don’t we eat pork again?” “Don’t worry about it. Just don’t eat pork.” The Japanese tea ceremony started because if there’s a tsunami, boiling the water purifies it so it’s safe to drink. It became part of their religion to boil the water. We just casually make these things part of our daily routine so that when a tsunami hits, at least our family might survive, almost accidentally, because our ritual taught us how to boil water and drink that instead of the contaminated water. Honoring that ritual is heaven. The knowledge of good and evil is salvation.

Weary traveler, calloused and sore Time and gravity followed you here Rest, my sister, and tell me All about the ocean Spoils and troubles, the burden you’ve bore Pay them no mind, they matter no more Leave them behind and show me All about the ocean Look in your eyes I’ve never seen the ocean Not like this one

Nature, nurture, heaven and home Sum of all, and by them, driven To conquer every mountain shown But I’ve never crossed the river Braved the forests, braved the stone Braved the icy winds and fire Braved and beat them on my own Yet I’m helpless by the river Angel, angel, what have I done? I’ve faced the quakes, the wind, the fire I’ve conquered country, crown, and throne Why can’t I cross this river? Pay no mind to the battles you’ve won It’ll take a lot more than rage and muscle Open your heart and hands, my son Or you’ll never make it over the river It’ll take a lot more than words and guns A whole lot more than riches and muscle The hands of the many must join as one And together we’ll cross the river