VISIONS: Maynard, when the final version of your new album was played for the journalists yesterday, Danny and Justin stayed in the room to listen to it for the second time. You left. Why?
Maynard James Keenan: I can’t do that. I worked to close to it to being able to just sit down and examine people how they were listening to the album. Or being examined by them while I listen. They need to find out for themselves what matters to them.
VISIONS: The album sounds very resolute.
Keenan: These are hard times. In the past I always believed that one could save this collapsing world through share, enlightenment, a higher consciousness. But that somehow isn’t enough anymore. The album is, if you want to call it like that, more direct.
VISIONS: Is the variable singing your greatest personal achievement?
Keenan: I try to experiment as much as possible without harming the music. The many places on this record deserve different perspectives. Some of the vocal renovation I already tested on emotive, and even at the beginning of “The Grudge” on the last Tool record.
VISIONS: Despite your long career breaks, which are considered suicidal, the public interest in Tool seems even to increase. Whereas the tension before a new Tool release surely is also a result of your band philosophy: that of demonstrative seclusion and the resulting mystification. There’s almost nothing known about you (all). Is that your decision because of the image or for artistic reasons?
Keenan: In the first place these are decisions we feel comfortable with. Many people don’t want and can’t do it that way. Many musicians are happy when they see themselves on television. We don’t. The emotions which we set to music don’t fit into that. We need a certain space. If Paris Hilton needs to be a cheap and shabby public ****** for her personal evolvement, then I respect that. But sadly we can’t be like that. We need to protect ourselves, to keep our energy pristine.
VISIONS: Cherished be your respect for other people, but: Aren’t it the artists themselves – at least those of them who play the media game – who make it more difficult for those who function alternatively or even refuse themselves? Isn’t the pivot of a culture what artists let themselves be done with?
Keenan: I have to agree. That business with all its mechanisms which everyone complies to as a matter of course just to have success, is bad for people who place their art over success. Because the others render them dispensable for the record labels. Sure: We too use record labels, but we are not a party of all of it. It is further of interest that Tool are not at all dependent on the generally dropping record sales. Even if we wouldn’t sell a single copy, it wouldn’t be existentially dangerous to us. We make our money from touring. Our audience comes, even if we were gone for years or never be broadcast on radio.
VISIONS: But if you already are not reliant on it: Why can’t even your label have a copy of your album before release, so there can be reported in full? Don’t you give a No swearing!? Or do you fear a drop in sales after all?
Keenan: It’s artistic reasons. It’s a matter of appreciation for an album. The artwork, the music, the concept. It starts being a problem to us if we can not tour anymore – personal reasons for example. I hope that we, when the music industry collapses, be in a safe place. Let’s not fool ourselves: As important Tool seems to be to some people., nobody will remember us.
VISIONS: After all you managed to launch at #2 of the Us billboard charts with unconventional, cumbersome music and your last record Lateralus.
Keenan: That’s not our goal. Tool is a matter of four humans who meet again after three or four years to try to meld and express all their experience, all their emotions their way. Four personalities, who went in four different directions meet again to see where their lives cross. We unite our strengths in this… tool. We search for moments and capture them. And if we are honest to each other and try hard, then we have a nice snapshot of how we ticked on that day. That’s all we can do – music and some conversation. Hopefully we help others with that. It would be nice if we could straighten the focus a little bit. But that is beyond our power.
VISIONS: Would you say that you also coquette with the Tool-myths which was born out of your awe for media? Why isn’t there a single high resolution photograph of you without disguise?
Keenan: I do that in order to protect my private life. Do you have kids? You would understand. And if this where a perfect all-inclusive marketing plan (leans back) we would sell much more records. Then Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson would have to camp in front of our studio. We are not relevant.
VISIONS: Another side effect is that your psychedelic visual style and your image do fire your fans’ imagination. There are people who say you have to listen to Lateralus beginning with the centred song Parabola towards the outside, others see occult…
Keenan: That’s No swearing!. That is all No swearing!. Every human does search for moments in which all makes sense. And those who search in music, will find. People have developed countless theories about Tool songs and what they mean. Theories about the playing order on our albums or the lyrics which can be reduced to a numeric pattern. Occultism equals fear. Much like religions, radical people use the occult to manipulate others. Most people who are practising those strange disciplines want truth. Because they’re tired of the lies which are told to them.
VISIONS: Where do YOU find truth?
Keenan: In a room with this band. With these people. Within the music. When those moments come in which everything fits. When sound and words fit, space opens and the path to a pristine place is clear, from which one – at least metaphorically – can see future and past simultaneously. A higher truth. (thinks) It is these moments which all artists want to reach: hard to explain, hard to achieve and they don’t last long.
VISIONS: Yet they’re worth it.
Keenan: Definitely.
VISIONS: If this is your goal and you even have to protect your work from the public, wouldn’t it be just consistent to say: We don’t release our music anymore at all? We discharge ourselves of any commercial necessities?
Keenan: (lifts finger) I as an American, no matter how hard I would wish - in my ideal version of myself – to be like that: I can’t. There is just too much of that culture in me. I want to show and sell. Show how I feel, what I do or how I find my own peace. (shrugs) I believe however that Tool have come relatively close to this point. I think that we, without compromises and restrictions set said snapshots to music. And I believe that this commercial superstructure over art, be it music business or whatever, will implode very soon and we will be at a point again where the greatest will be shared at smallest level.
VISIONS: Who speaks like that is considered a culture-pessimist.
Keenan: I’m not pessimistic just because I see the end of music business like we know it! I see it as an opportunity for change. How did we make it this far? Through change! And now we feel fear? I say: Everything will collapse and reinvent itself from this misery, as always.
VISIONS: And what does that mean to you?
Keenan: I will try to be in a beautiful place on that day, from where I can watch.
VISIONS: The chorus from the first song on your album fits well: “ I like to stand aside and watch things die from a distance” is the only line which I can remember from the first listen.
Keenan: That’s right. It fits. But it actually is in sarcastic context. Wait a second…
The door opens, and the promotion lady gives a sign to cut off. 25 minutes, 44 seconds. Maynard does not notice. He raises from the armchair, nuzzles in his pocket, takes out a brown wallet, searches for something. “Maybe I still have it” the promotion lady comes closer. “Here it is!” he shows a small note on which is written: SCHADENFREUDE. “See?” He folds the note, puts it back to his wallet and sits down. That’s what the first song is about. Now he noticed her. “There’s much to do. Come to the concerts, I will be one of the four guys on stage.” He shortly laughs and leaves the room.
I can't say for sure if i've heard any of their songs...so feel free to suggest some of their better ones.
That kinda rings true actually..as some of my more chav-like friends keep telling me this band are great. I think i'll wait until something from them really catches my attention..
) and some don't like it, stand up Mr penski 
