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Tool isn’t the easiest band to figure out.
The California band’s heavy, experimental rock is as intricate and oblique as it is intense. The lyrics are notoriously cryptic, shrouded in an enigmatic aura that seeps into the band’s stage and video presentations. Even the foursome’s massive commercial success can be a head-scratcher: Progressive metal bands like Tool, the conventional wisdom goes, aren’t supposed to top the pop charts.
But Tool’s endurance—16 years and counting—is pretty simple to explain, says guitarist Adam Jones.
“There’s a lot of give and take, a lot of compromise, a lot of teamwork. We split everything four ways, and we vote on everything.” he says. “We have that understanding, and I think that’s why we’ve outlasted our peers. Nearly every other band from 1990 that I knew has broken up and isn’t around anymore.”
Tool isn’t just still around; it’s at the top of its game. The band’s spring release, “10,000 Days,” earned strong reviews and debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s album chart, just like 2001’s “Lateralus” before it. Thanks to a rabidly devoted fan base that has turned Tool analysis into a lifestyle, the group is one of the few contemporary rock outfits with the muscle to book a big-arena tour, which it launched Aug. 5 in San Diego.
At a packed Fox Theatre show in May at Detroit’s Fox Theatre, Jones and bandmates Maynard James Keenan (vocals), Danny Carey (drums) and Justin Chancellor (bass) delivered a customarily taut, high-wattage attack on its epic songs, which included a hefty dose of material from the new record.
It was the kind of intensity that Tool followers expect in their Tool concerts—loud but intimate—and that Jones says has been ramped up for this latest arena outing, a series of “all-out shows, starting out minimal, then building and building and building.”
“Maybe we don’t jump all over the stage, but we definitely rip our guts out every time we play,” says the guitarist. “It’s more about the show. We as individuals come second, and it’s been that way from the beginning. We always wanted to push the music and have the band in the shadows. It’s a very visual show, a lot of left-brain/right-brain stimulation.”
Playing in Tool is an exercise in precision: Crafty time signatures and lurching tempo shifts are paired against exotic chords and nuanced dynamics. It’s as much about keeping up, says Jones, as it is about “having the discipline to know when not to play, knowing that the silences are just as important and emotional.”
Still, for all the complexity of the music, Jones says, he’s able to release himself onstage.
“It’s about feeling it,” he says. “It’s so hard to explain. I can sit there and do the math, and count, because there’s a lot of counter-rhythm and polyrhythm going on. But after a while, I have so much experience, I don’t have to sit there and go, `OK, this part is in 5, and Dan’s playing in 4.’
” It’s like I’m lost in the moment and enjoying it. I don’t know what to compare it to—it’s like when you’re watching a movie and getting completely lost in it, not thinking about the cameraman or the lighting or the special effects.”
Jones and company are known for packing big stuff into small doses: “10,000 Days” is only its fourth album in 16 years. Jones says the patient work pace is a result of the band’s creative method—and has probably helped protect Tool from record-biz burnout.
“It’s like the bands who put out a record every year, afraid to lose their fan base, and there’s always a song on the new record that kind of sounds like a song on the last record. They become like a bad cover band of themselves,” he says.
“We’ve always rolled with the punches, since our first record: `Well, time has passed, maybe it’s time to start writing. ... OK, now maybe it’s time to start recording. ... Maybe we should now start thinking about album art. ... Now maybe do a video. ...”
As four guys, Jones says, “the thing that’s kept us sane and not turned us into idiot-ego rock stars is that as people we don’t take ourselves seriously one bit. We’re four geeks—we have all the jokes and inside words and ideas you have with your friends when you go out to a bar. It’s a lot more real, less glam.”
But Tool is intensely serious about its music. And while Jones is at a loss to explain his band’s commercial triumphs, he’s pretty sure he understands listeners’ passion.
“When we’re writing, we don’t worry about radio, we don’t worry about fans. We just worry about walking out and being able to say, `Wow, it’s great. We did a good job, and I love it.’ Being able to listen to it in my car and say I’m a fan of my own music,” says Jones.
“People are going to see that. They’re going to be able to consciously or subconsciously understand that there’s been a lot of hard work put into it.”
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© 2006, Detroit Free Press. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
