here's the article.. interesting information on ronald p vincent.. almost 
makes me think undertow *could* be about him.. wish we could find that book.


 title: Tear of Thought

 

Last year's Opiate EP put TOOL on the musical map, and now Undertow looks 
set to push them further. But, as Valerie Potter discovers, there is more 
to TOOL than just heavy tunes...

Lachrymology  -  now there's a word to conjure with!  It means `the study 
of crying',  and  is  the name  given to  a  philosophy  which  advocates 
fuelling one's  life by  feeding off pain.  At least,  that's what Tool's 
record company  bio says.  It also says  that the theory  of lachrymology 
was  developed  by  one  Ronald  P  Vincent,  after  his  wife  had  been 
dismembered in a  snow plough accident  in 1948.  He immediately moved to 
Hollywood (as, of course, you would under those circumstances),  where he 
died, a drunken bum, in 1988.

Two years later,  vocalist Maynard James Keenan and guitarist Adam Jones, 
advocates of lachrymology,  recruited drummer  Danny Carey  to their band 
Tool.  They  did  so,   according  to  the  bio,  because  he  was  30  - 
consequently his age,  added to theirs and that of bassist  Paul D'Amour, 
totalled 103,  which coincidentally  matched the number of vials of tears 
found in Roman tombs.

Cornering Danny in an  abandoned crew room  backstage at London's Brixton 
Academy,  I put it to him  that the theory  of lachrymology is  a pile of 
shit,  designed to encourage gullible  journalists to make complete prats 
of themselves in print.

"No,  it's all for real!"  he protests,  laughing.  "It's  something Adam 
kind  of  stumbled  on,  but  I don't  know why they  put it in  there so 
extravagantly.  It doesn't take up  that big a space  in what we do,  but 
it's always the first question we get asked in interviews!"

Be that  as  it may,  but  one  thing  is certain.  Danny wasn't  so much 
recruited to Tool,  as he gravitated towards them.  In 1990,  he was much 
in  demand,  playing  with  Green Jello,  Pygmy Love Circus and... Carole 
King?  Maynard moved next door to  Danny  with some guys from Green Jello 
and started putting a band together with Adam.

"They needed  a  place to rehearse,  so they were doing  it at my house," 
Danny recalls.  "They kept  asking me to play,  but I was involved in all 
these other bands and I didn't have time for another project.   They were 
trying to get  drummers  out of  the paper  and  most of the  time,  they 
wouldn't even show up.  So I said, `Okay, I'll play with you guys!'.  And 
then everything happened so fast,  it was really easy to work things out, 
because we got on really well. 

"It was fun  and  we had no intention of doing  all that record business.  
We all had  other things we  were busy with.  I was  more into  the Jello 
thing at the time, I'd worked with Carole King, and I was really enjoying 
doing the Pygmy Love Circus.  And Adam had his job, doing make-up effects 
for movies.  Then the record  people came in  and started offering us all 
these things and taking us out to dinner - seduced us!"

In April '92, Tool released their first EP,  Opiate, and followed it up a 
year later with  their debut album Undertow,  just released in Australia.  
It was co-produced by Sylvia Massy, an engineer from Larrabee Studios who 
also produced  the EP.  It's unusual  (but great)  to find a woman at the 
controls of the studio desk, but according to Danny, Sylvia's exactly the 
right person for the job.

"She was perfect for us,  because she's pretty transparent and she has an 
understanding of  what we want  to do," he explains.  "We have our vision 
of what we want  to sound like,  and no one else can really take that and 
run with it.  Everybody else  wants to add  their little tweaks to it and 
make it sound like their production, but we weren't into that, so she was 
the perfect person.

"I don't really  like the recording process much.  We all shine more live 
than in the studio and it seems  so much more effective.  But you have to 
make an attempt to capure it,  for the circulation value.  It's  a  tough 
thing.  We're just a young band and I suppose we'll get better and better 
at the recording thing."

One highpoint during  the  recording  was when  Henry Rollins  came in to 
record his guest contribution to a track called Bottom.  The band had met 
him when they opened for the Rollins Band in the States.

"We've hung out with  Henry  a lot and that song  had that part  which is 
almost a spoken word thing,  which just lent itself to him so easily.  We 
had to  record it,"  Danny  says.  "He's  a  great guy,  a  very  focused 
individual.  He gets  his work done,  but he's  also one of  the funniest 
people I know and most people  probably don't see that side of him.  He's 
a good man, that's all I can say."

The finished Undertow is packaged in artwork designed by Adam,  who takes 
care of all  the band's  visuals.  He made  the sculpture featured on the 
front and took the photographs,  which include Maynard  sporting a dental 
brace, Paul skewered with acupuncture pins, an obese woman who looks like 
a fleshy human sofa  and  Adam's very  own pet pig,  Mo,  surrounded by a 
hostile bunch of forks.

"I thought  the pictures  set the mood for the album," Danny says.  "They 
all fit together real nicely,  the music and the images he got to go with 
it."

Certainly they reflect the dark, disturbing,  aggressive nature of Tool's 
music perfectly.  But what is it that fuels Tool's rage?

"The government,  the environment  -  I guess the things  that would make 
anyone  angry,"  he answers.  "It's not so  much a personal  relationship 
type  thing  or  anything  like  that.  When I  hear about  the hardships 
everyday,  all the homeless people I see in  my neighbourhood,  it's just 
insane  -  and it's only getting worse.  Every time we go on tour, when I 
get back, I can see the difference and it keeps going further and further 
down the toilet."

Danny is going to be  absent from the neighbourhood for  the greater part 
of this year though,  now that Undertow has been released.  At the end of 
their European tour,  opening for Rage Against The Machine,  Fishbone and 
Living Colour,  they will join the Lollapalooza tour of the States.  Then 
they'll return to Europe for a month before undertaking a string of dates 
in Canada during the  (northern)  winter.  They are hoping  this might be 
followed,  in early '94,  by a trip to Australia.

Now that they're getting sucked  into the music industry proper,  do Tool 
still consider themselves just a `hobby band'?

"We still  take  it musically  and  for  our own  interest  first," Danny 
answers.  "They record company and the commercialism is not really even a 
consideration for  most of our  songs.  We don't  write for  the company; 
that's kinda been a problem to try and get radio play, 'cos all our songs 
are too long,  it seems,  or else they have  too much vulgar  language in 
them for  American radio.  So they're  always upset  with us and it seems 
like we're  always having  to fight  with  the company  over things  like 
that.  But it's  definitely still  our thing and we  aren't doing  it for 
anyone else.   I think it shows.   That's why our  band is  more powerful 
than  a  lot of other bands, 'cos it's all real sincere.  People can tell 
when it's sincere."