page: 15K
 title: Heilzame wrok - Healing grudge
author: Menno Pot

"Healing Grudge" - By Menno Pot
'Tool is an outsider in the world of metal'

Singer Maynard James Keenan's personal background is a 
returning theme in Tool's work. Both the solemn aspect of 
the Baptist church as the orderinf tone of the military 
academy are retrieved. Tool performs during de first dutch 
edition of Ozzfest. Keenan: 'For us no meeting of  the like-
minded'. 

There are metal-singers which dress in frightful looking 
clothes, talk loud en a lot, and stuff their story with fucks. Not 
Maynard James Keenan. Keenan (1964) never says fuck. He 
talks seemingly emotionless, in short effective sentences. 
But there's all the more doom in the air.
As soon as the small pale little man gives you a hand (no 
name, no eye contact), you know you've got to take care. His 
mouth is a straight, narrow line, which he rather keeps closed 
as much as possible. He speaks softly, whispering almost, 
but every word is a hit. His big brown eyes search the walls 
timidly [?] but never meet your eyes. If that happens, for a 
moment only, it scares you, as if you look directly in to the 
sinister world of tool for a moment.

It is not a comfortable world. We know it from the band's 
videoclips, full of crawling insects, maimed limbs and humans 
screaming from anger, pain and despair. The imagery is 
repeating as if the record is stuck in a groove. Is this what's 
going on in Maynard James Keenan's head?

He was born in Ravenna, Ohio, as offspring from a family of 
pious and strict Southern Baptists. 'When you're twelve you 
discover how scary and hypocrite the church is, but you can 
run not until you're eighteen.', is what Keenan has to say 
about that. 'Especially the six years in between define your 
life. If they don't destroy it.'

He does not wonders why so many writers, of novels ánd 
songs, have a strict religious background. The brown eyes 
flash in the tight face. 'Catholic boys usually have more than 
enough to write off their backs.'

Keenan had lived in almost every remote corner in the US 
and had a lot of 'inspiration' during his stay at the military 
academy of West Point when he set up Tool with guitar player 
Adam Jones and Drummer Danny Carey, a band which 
developed via one long mini-album (Opiate, 1994 [sic]) and 
the full albums Undertow (1993) Aenima (1996) and 
Lateralus (2001) to maybe the only band in hardrock/metal 
that truely matters.

The two most frustrating chapters in Keenan's life became 
the main ingredients of his lyrics: the unctuously and solemn 
wording and grammar of the Baptist church combined with the 
strict, commanding tone of the military. Adam Jones provides 
him using cutting, rythmically complex guitar riffs with the 
marching time. The breathtaking 'The grudge' is Tool in a 
nutshell. About 'the grudge' and what to do with it. 

Wear the grudge like a crown,
	desperate to control,
Unable to forgive, and we're sinking deeper
Defining, confining, controlling
	- and we're sinking deeper

Tool is an outsider in the world of metal with its complex 
structures of songs en lyrics which are used as study material 
at the university of Guelph in Ontario by professor in 
philosofy Cristopher DiCarlo. Last year a dream of the band 
fulfilled: a tour with Robert Fripp and King Crimson. The band 
members listened to their records a long time ago. And to 
those of Pere Ubu and former Pink Floyd. 'Ozzfest is not a 
meeting of the like-minded for us', Keenan says, 'we don't 
have anything in common with the most metalbands, old and 
new'.
He cannot give the answer to the question what is wrong with 
youngest generation of nu-metalbands. Is it a lack of 
genuineness? 'I think not', Keenan says in a dry tone. 'These 
boys probably really are retarded. There is a shortage of 
creativity. No one tries to do what has never been done 
before.'

Filmclips are an integral part of putting Tool's opinion to the 
public. Guitar player Adam Jones used to work in Hollywood, 
taking care of the special effects for films as Jurassic Park 
and Terminator 2. He's the man behind Tool's terrifying clips 
and on-stage imagery in which feature animated, 
mechanically moving characters strikingly often. The real 
people in Tool videos are usually deperate and wild looking. 
The imagery is an excuse for Keenan to stay on the 
background during their gig. The light of the screens reduces 
him to a shadow anyway. The other band members 
sometimes paint their faces.

The individual is not important within Tool. The group is 
known as media-shy and gives interviews sparsely. Tool 
appears on television not in the least. In some parts of the 
US the band can count on extreme distrust. Keenan, 
coolly: 'It is insinuated I am a necrophile more than once.'

Maynard James Keenan may carry a deep grudge to the 
Southern-Baptist priests and officers of the military, he wants 
to use his frustrations in a positive way. 'Music is a way to 
create something beautiful from something ugly', he 
says. 'That's what is bothering me to most metalbands from 
now. They do the opposite.'

That night, at the end of the concert in the Oosterpoort in 
Groningen, Keenan adresses the audience, something he 
does not normally do. He thanks them and gives the advice 
to 'think about what you felt here tonight' and create 
something 'positive' with it. His words kind of contrast with the 
images that can be seen behind him at that moment: a 
crying man, trying to climb out of a deep black well. 
Everytime he nearly succeeds he slides back. The scene 
loops until you feel uncomfortable. Than his hands slip and 
he tumbles into the deep.

From The Grudge:
Saturn comes back around
Lifts you up like a child
Or drags you down like a stone
To consume you 'till you let it go.
Posted to t.d.n: 05/31/02 09:22:06