Publication: RIP
Date: August 1993
Transcribed by "JAMES QUIRK" (QUIR0496@elan.rowan.edu)
GRIME-CORE Tool by Daina Darzin reprinted without permission by Jaymz Quirk Life is hard when you don't want to sell out. The BMG/Zoo Records lot was full, so Tool vocalist Maynard James Keenan had to park his shambles of a car on the street, and now there's a ticket on the windshield, flapping in the breeze. No matter. Mynard just shrugs and adds it to the debris already piled in the ancient Subaru, grumbling something about registering the car in someone else's name in order to dodge this citation and all the other's he received - just another scam inspired by having no cash - and we're off to a particularly grimy section of Hollywood, where Tool, one of L.A.'s brightest sonic hopes, has a practice room. Actually, drummer Darey carey also lives there. It's kind of a demented cross bewteen a garage and a loft. The front room houses Danny's motorcycle, drum equipment and a sign that says, "Don't Talk. Talk Means Trouble." "My tribute to the Cold War," Danny deadpans. The main room boasts a semi-inflated, giant pterodactyl hanging from the ceiling, a phalanx of basketball trophies and a foosball machine. On one wall is a Keith-Haring-gone-wrong mural of this blue, um, person. "It's Gumbo," explains Danny. "The interterrestrial. Sometimes I wake up and come down and look at it and think, 'Yeah, it's going to be one of those Gumbo days.' It sets the mood." Completing the door, Danny points out the sheetrock wall of the bathroom. He did it himself. "It's a dangerous neighborhood, and everyone knows it," he says about his thouroughly unglamorous end of Hollywood Boulevard. "But no one much messes with you. Mostly it's bums, who are harmless, just alkies who go to the liqour store for 39 cent schnapps." "And the Mohawk triple sec, also 39 cents," adds bassist Paul D'Amour. It's a neighborhood tailor-made for Tool, four vehemently individualistic guys who live in terror of being swallowed up by the rock and rock machine. "We don't want it to get overblown," says Maynard. "We just want to keep doind what we're doing - to make songs that feel right and that are somewhat of a catharsis, not to get to a point where there's an expectation for us to deliver one certain thing. If we wanted to put out a polka album next, it should be okay." The hype and insanity of the Seattle scene helped them, they admit. "That was the reason we got signed so quick," says Danny. But though their rough-hewn, ferociously dissonant sound is faintly reminiscent of grungemania, the Tool-ers have mostly contempt for that scene. "A lot of the guys, their attitude in whatever the hell they were doing on the Sunset Strip here, that same kind of bandwagon thing, they packed up and moved to Seattle. It's no longer long hair and spandex; it's flannel and Doc Martens - but it's the same old idiots," explains guitarist Adam Jones, who joins the conversation after finishing an extended phone call. "Adam, we just decided to start without you. You're not that important anyway," quips Paul. "I'm just hanging on their coattails," grins Adam. "It's not even alternative anymore," Danny says, back on the subject of Seattle. "Look at bands like Pearl Jam. That's not alternative. Their songs are just as poppy as anyone else's. They just got lumped in with that crowd. Any hardcore punk band is a lot more alternative to me." "Or Killing Joke," Paul adds. "We never said we were a grunge band. We're just a bunch of guys who listen to Judas Priest and Yes and Tom Waits and Minor Threat. We got together, and we just play what we know." Their method for recording Undertow, their first full-length album for Zoo? "Complete chaos," says Adam. "We just thrash around, and in the end it comes together." "I just come in and do the drumbeats," grins Danny. "I don't know what these guys do." "Actually," quips Paul, "there's not a thing on the record that's not a sample." "If there is a thread that runs through the record, it's L.A.," says Maynard. "It's not something you can pin down, it's just a mood - whatever you feel, whatever you get out of looking at it." Tool got together almost be accident - or through fate, depending on your point of view. "I never planned to come to L.A. I was exiled from my home state," Paul claims. Said state was Washington, but not the ultra-cool Seattle area. We're talking East Washington - Spokane, to be exact. "The setting for America's Most wanted," Paul quips, adding sincerely (yeah, right), "I loved it there. It's beautiful country - the mountains and the ocean and the trailer parks and motorcycle gangs and TV dinners." A film tech at the time, Paul headed south in hopes of landing a gig on this summer's super-extravaganza, Jurassic Park. "My roomate was working with (special-effects wizard) Stam Winston," he recalls. But the flick got delayed, and Paul wound up taking production and art-department work on commericals and videos - "Jacking of the director, whatever it took." In the meantime Adam had come to L.A. from Libertyville, Illinois (also the ex-home of Tome Morello, Tool's bud from Rage Against the Machine, and Maureen Herman of Babes in Toyland). "When I first moved here," Adam says, "I lived down on Normandie (a street hit hard by the L.A. riots), and you'd hear gunfire every night. I was trying to get into school, get a job, thinking, 'L.A. sucks.' My motorcycle was hit twice while it was parked. All this bad stuff was happening." Tool was formed when Adam, an accomplished artist who was also working for the film biz, hooked up with his work buddy, Paul, and Maynard, whose downstairs neighbor at the time was Danny, a veteran of bands such as Green Jelly and Pygmy Love Circus. "I don't think we had an original vision," says Danny. "Now, we have an idea." "Never to work a 9-to-5 job again," Paul pipes in [at least this time he didn't fucking "quip", man that's getting on my nerves....]. During their incredibly brief stint as an unsigned band, Tool played underground clubs such as Raji's and the Sunset Strip scene terrifies and disgusts them to this day: it seems a promotion dude from their label wants to take them to the metal hangout the Rainbow, and they're wracking their brains, trying to figure out how to get out of it. I got food poisoning there once, I tell them. Paul smiles. "That's it!" he says. "I'll tell them I got food poisoning there." Seattle hysteria being what it is, Tool only played a couple of gigs before the major-label offers came rolling in. The band made a deal with Zoo, one of the first companies that asked, thus avoiding the stress and flagrant displays of human greed of a bidding war. We were such a young band when we did our record deal," says Danny. "We just put the songs we had together (on their well-received 1992 EP, Opiate) and did a little tour." "The songs were ready to be recorded, so we did it," explains Maynard. "We weren't ready for a full album. We wanted to let people know we were out there, because we knew we had a lot more songs in the works." "Plus, you're never sure what a major label is going to do with an album," says Paul. "Whether they're going to exploit every possible aspect and throw you out there and try to make you this big, hyped thing. So you kind of cripple them by giving them an EP they can't work with. That way you take it nice and slow and make a natural progression, rather than letting them do what they do best, which is interfere. Our label's cool, but there's a couple of poeple who aren't very creative, and they try to stereotype us because they don't get us." "like trying to put us on a Guns N' Roses tour," says Danny. "They just don't get where we're coming from." "We're not really metal," Maynard insists. "We play hard, but putting us in front of Def Leppard... It's a different audience. They don't want to see us. And there are a lot of people who'd want to see us who wouldn't go to that show because we're with Def Leppard." Their #1 choice in opening gigs is the Rollins Band, with whom they toured in support of Opiate. (The hard man himself provides guest vocals on "Bottom" off Undertow.) "We learned a lot from being around those guys," says Danny. "They're such seasoned players. We saw how to deal with crew people, how to get where you're going and do what you have to do, how to fit things into your schedule. The worst part was the little punk rockers who'd complain that we didn't play fast enough, but that didn't happen very often. Maynard would just tell them to listen slower." The one big tour that appeals to Tool is Lollapalooza, and, at press time, they were cheduled to headline the new, expanded show on the second stage. A fine gig, I mention, to buzz up on smart drinks and contribute to the political cause of your choice. "And take acid and lose your wallet and scalp backstage passes," laughes Adam. "I got 60 bucks for one of mine," says Maynard, and he's serious. "We were broke," adds Danny. None of them had day jobs for quite some time. "This is a full-time job," Danny continues. "A lot of people think that because you're in a band you just play music and sleep late and do a lot of drugs, and it's not like that. We had a lot of control over how our record was done." It's that control that's the important part, because the money certainly isn't. "I'd like to get my car fized," says Adam when asked of his future desires. "I got six bucks to my name," announces Maynard. "I got ten," says paul, "and Danny spent his last money on that milk over there." "So I can eat Rice Krispies," says Danny. And now they're off. Adam's going to supervise the claymation for their first video, working with the same guy who did the "Three Little Pigs" clip for their labelmates Green Jelly. Lights are turned off, and Tool, down-to-earth-dudes who know what they want, get into their crappy cars and go onto the next thing. ... Well, I'm working an eight hour shift here today so I figured I'd do something to pass the time. Hope everyone enjoys. Baaabaaa get shorn. Cynic