Publication: Rolling Stone
Date: April 7, 1994
Transcribed by David Meade (lesmeade@laf.cioe.com)
TOOL BOSTON Avalon, Feb. 15, 1994 Maynard James Keenan, singer for Los Angeles' Tool, teetered like a crippled vulture and pecked a ticket stub off of the stage. "Twelve dollars and fifty cents," he snorted. "I wouldn't pay that to go to my own mother's funeral." Hell, Keenan wouldn't be invited. With his constant nasal bitching, the tattoos up his spine and a mohawk that flops across his sweaty cranium like tentacles, Keenan's no comfort. Hunched over a mike, spewing vitriol to Tool's paralyzing update of big-guitar rock, he's a greasy creep who has found his calling. He's also a hair trigger that pissed-off Gen Xers love to squeeze. Keenan and Tool's other components - guitarist Adam Jones, drummer Danny Carey and bassist Paul D'Amour - have drilled into the black gold at the heart of late-teen and twentysomething anger. Their songs about the living hell that humans create connect with the seething frustrations of an audience who have seen the cynicism of their parents' generation devour the fruits of opportunity. (But not for Tool. Their venting 1992 EP Opiate netted them a spot on Lollapalooza '93, and they've racked up sales of 750,000 units for their year-old album Undertow.) So when Jones wrenched the strings of his Les Paul into the tortured riff of "Intolerance," Keenan's screaming "You lie, cheat and steal" was a mantra for the crowd, which replied in a riptide of moshing, surfing flesh. With a stop in between each number, it was intensity - not momentum - that kept bodies boiling. Throughout the 11-song set, Jones built Tool's snarl around feedback and his arena-savvy lines, commanding both the dark mood and the lurching beat of Carey's snapping double kick drums and D'Amour's growling bass with undeniable authority. Even as Keenan reveled in his role as the band's mad mouthpiece, it was Jones' passionate guitars that delivered Tool's nastiest bite. --TED DROZDOWSKI