page: 
 title: Tool Gets Sued By Manager For $5 Million
author: Carrie Borzillo-Vrenna

 
Nov 25, 2000, 10:50 am PT 


Tool 

Larrikin Management's Ted Gardner, co-founder of Lollapalooza 
and Tool's 
manager of eight years, filed a $5 million-plus lawsuit against 
Tool on 
Wednesday (Nov. 22) in Los Angeles Superior Court. 

The suit is for rescission of the management contract between 
the band 
(Maynard James Keenan, Adam Thomas Jones, Danny Carey, 
and Justin 
Chancellor) and Gardner, fraud, negligent misrepresentation, 
breach of 
contract, and quantum meruit. 

Gardner claims that he was not paid his 20 percent commission 
on, among 
other things, the lucrative multi-million dollar joint venture deal 
the band 
made with Volcano, formerly Zoo, in 1998 that was a result of the 
messy 
Tool/Zoo legal battle (allstar, Dec. 7, 1998). Gardner claims that 
the band 
said they would not pay him his commissions unless he signed 
a new 
"extremely onerous" management contract, which "substantially 
reduced the 
commission rate of, and limited the time for, the continuing 
commissions," 
according to the suit. 

Gardner, who "was in financial dire straits by the end of 1999 as 
a result 
of defendants' actions," signed the new deal this March and the 
band fired 
him shortly thereafter, around May 23. According to the suit, 
"[Tool] would 
conceal from Gardner their intention to fire him and to deprive 
him of his 
continuing commissions. [Tool] would falsely represent that they 
wanted 
Gardner to be their manager. 

"[Tool] would withhold the commissions they owed Gardner," 
continues the 
suit, "thereby putting him in a precarious financial condition, until 
he 
signed a new, substantially less favorable management 
contract, which would 
specifically provide that [Tool] had no obligation to pay continuing 
commissions if they terminated his employment for 'cause.' And, 
once Gardner 
signed the new agreement, [Tool] would immediately fire him, 
without any 
basis, and then assert that it was for 'cause.'" Gardner is asking 
in excess 
of $5 million to be determined at trial. 

Under Gardner's management, Tool has sold more than 
800,000 copies of Opiate, approximately 2 million copies of its 
breakthrough album Undertow, 
and approximately 2.4 million copies of Aenima. The band is 
currently in the 
studio working on a new album for an April 2001 release. 

Meanwhile, to hold Tool fans over, a limited-edition box set 
containing a CD 
with previously unreleased live material, studio tracks, and the 
band's 
covers of Led Zeppelin's "No Quarter" and Peach's "You Lied," 
(Chancellor's 
other band) as well as a DVD or VHS with all four videos will be 
released on 
Dec. 12. 

The track listing for the box set is: 

1. "Third Eye" (live) 
2. "Part of Me" (live) 
3. "Push It" (live) 
4. "Harry Manback II" (unreleased studio track) 
5. "You Lied" (live) 
6. "Merkaba" (live) 
7. "No Quarter" (unreleased studio track) 
8. "L.A Municipal Court (unreleased studio track) 


The DVD or VHS includes the videos for "Sober," "Prison Sex," 
"Stinkfist," and "Aenema."  


Posted to t.d.n: 11/28/00 01:32:21