Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / "Tool: Every Album, Every Song"/Matt Karpe [Episode 131]

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"Tool: Every Album, Every Song"/Matt Karpe [Episode 131] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

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Oh, we're totally booked and roll. I mean, I'll leave you do
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you're reading little Hands, It's time to run and roll roll. We are
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totally booked. Welcome back to Booked on Rock, the podcast for those about
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to read and rock. Make sure you subscribe and follow the podcast on YouTube,
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Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok. Exclusive videos weekly. You can
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get links to all the social media sites at bookdon rock dot com. Matt
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Karper is our guests. He's here to talk about his book Tool, Every
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album, Every Song. This is another one in a great series of books
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by Sonic Bond Publishing called on Track Tool. One of the most unique bands
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in rock and metal history. Their music extremely complex and intelligent, while their
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insistence on privacy makes them an enigma to many. In this book, Matt
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Krper documents all of this Los Angeles band studio releases, from the Raw and
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Unapologies nineteen ninety one demo tape to their twenty and nineteen epic Fear Inoculum.
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He gives the stories behind every song, including the pivotal tracks like sober Anima,
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Schism, Later Alice and Rosetta Stone. It's an in depth look at
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one of the greatest progressive rock bands of all time. Playlist of Tool in
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the show notes page. But first here is Matt Carper. Hi, Matt,
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Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me on, Eric. I
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was telling you before we started recording, I'm a casual fan of Tool,
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so this was a great way to introduce myself to the band as a whole,
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the body of work, and just find out a lot of great information
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about the band, their history, and where they're at right up until today.
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I do remember being introduced to the band through the song Sober and the
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videos on all the time, and during my radio days I played Stinkfest.
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I remember when that was a new single, great song. But outside of
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that, if I heard a Tool song on the radio, I would know
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it's them. But I really never invested the time into the band, so
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I really should have. So I'm glad I did, and I'm gonna at
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the end of this give you an opinion that might not be popular among tour
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fans. Maybe it is, we'll see, but it's I'll be interested in
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getting your thoughts on there. But let's start with when and how this band
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formed and the interesting backgrounds of each member leading up to the formation. Of
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tour. Yes, so each member, they all come from a different part
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of the US. Manard the lead thing I mean he had he was his
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creativity, I guess was kind of stifled in his younger years, but he's
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always he'd always been artistic. He ended up taking on different sort of hobbies
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such as wrestling in school, but his art and sort of design was sort
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of one of his main sort of folk passions, I guess to begin with.
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In fact, to three out of the four guys from tour, they
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all want had an artistic background. Danny Carey sort of grew up with the
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drums and he sort of quickly became a drummer. He was in college bands
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and whatnot, Ordermore and Adam Jones. They was sort of wanting to get
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into film in terms of the design of props and that kind of thing.
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Maynard was art and design, but then sort of moved into because he needed
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the money, really sort of working in shop fronts, creating the presentations of
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pet shops, the designs of the stands for what everything went the products went
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onto. But then at some point they all kind of decided Los Angeles was
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the destination that they wanted to get get to obviously Hollywood, the allure of
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Hollywood in terms of the movies and that kind of thing, and it just
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so happened that I guess all the band members met one another through going out
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and about in Los Angeles, and music was maynard sort of main passion,
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and he'd had some bands back in Boston and other areas where he had lived,
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and it was when sort of he moved to Los Angeles. Of course,
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that was sort of the late eighties, so the hair metal scene was
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kind of still about, it was slowly dying. When Guns Are Roses arrived,
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they sort of moved. While they looked like a hair metal band,
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they was a bit more of a sort of standard sort of hard rock band.
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But they sort of all come together through mutual friendships. And you know,
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the early sort of beginnings of Tool formed through sort of friends like Green
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Jelly. They was playing in the loft, in their sort of famous loft
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where they used to have paries and crazy, crazy things going on. And
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once people heard earlier recordings of Maynards bands from back where he lived before,
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they realized that they had like this really enigmatic frontman who whose voice was just
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something completely different, really abrasive performances and stage presence, and eventually the four
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just came together and the rest that they says history. They started out a
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lot of different sound wise what everybody knows Tool to be today. Now,
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who are those four guys, because there was one lineup change, but only
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one There's one guy that's no longer in the band who was the original lineup
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was Adam Jones on guitar, Porter more on based, Danny Kerry on drums,
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and Maynard as the vocalist. Paul is the only member of the band
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that is sort of left in the end. So that the original four,
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they're the ones that brought Tall up from an alternative metal sound started getting into
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the progressive waters. So that is that, you know, obviously the founding
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members of the band. What about the origins of their bear name? What
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was it originally called? And can you talk about why menard that tool was
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the perfect name. It served as a double antandra. Yeah, So they
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was just they was looking at different names. Tool Shed became one of the
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early sort of options and one that they would potentially running with. But as
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a lot of music would later reveal that there were so many hidden meanings to
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the songs, even though sort of some of the lyrics may have to the
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naked eye appear to mean something one particular thing stink fist, for example,
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a lot of people sort of have a general idea of what that song is
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supposed to mean. Lyrically, the band kind of wanted people to dig deeper
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find sort of perhaps emotions within themselves and Tool, like you said, yeah
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double on Tundra, when if you see the demo tape that now sort of
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fairly iconic image that looks like a certain part of a man, they decided
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just to cut it to Tool because that was like the option of it opened
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so many possibilities within their music, within the meanings, and within the listener
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that was obviously wanting to find their own kind of favorite band. The pictures
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in the book, by the way, so called French supposed to be.
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Yeah, it certainly a phallic sort of reference to it as well. Yeah,
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Yeah, let's talk about that demo. Before the multi platinum nineteen ninety
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three album Undertowel, there was the demo and it's titled seven to eight two
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six that was put up in eighteen ninety one. Why that title in what
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are We Hearing On this album. Yeah, so you will probably know better
7:15
than me in terms of the numbers are supposed to correlate to a touchpad phone,
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which each number is supposed to mean a letter, and somehow this is
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supposed to mean the word satan. By putting in a seven is supposed to
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be the S the two A. Supposedly we don't have that kind of technology
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here or especial certainly when this demo would have come out, I would have
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been too young to to know whether we had anything like that in the UK.
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But yeah, the demo was such a raw sound for tool, just
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putting things into perspective. Obviously, nineteen ninety one and the grunge movement was
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like the big rise in rock music, sort of the mainstream exposure that was
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getting through the like Nirvana and Sound Garden and Pearl Jam. So while a
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lot of eyes would have been on the grunge movement up in Seattle, tolled
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down in Los Angeles were creating their own kind of small hype. They were
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playing at the Green Jelly Loft, which is where a couple of the tracks
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on the demo were performed recording sorry, and that was one a small community
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of fans would have been there to hear it, and then the sort of
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limited number of tapes was distributed to a record companies and friends and family.
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There was enough in that music that, you know, the abrasiveness, the
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manars performances, his performances, the guitars, the drums, the bass.
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No one could really potentially see at the time the direction the band would elevate
8:43
themselves to going forward. But for a first tape, there was obviously something
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there that people could could feel. And it was really that sort the guitar
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power, Danny Carey's spectacular drum patterns. It all seemed to come together quite
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natural, really, considering it was a first, first effort for a band,
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and yeah, the words sort of quickly spread across Los Angeles about them,
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and then they sort of, you know, at the start, they
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had to play sort less glamorous clubs just to sort of get live performances and
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about try and own their craft a little bit and more of a cohesiveness between
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obviously each member went on stage, but it was a solid sort of foundation
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that toured laid for themselves. This begins a trend their continuous to this day,
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and all lyrics printed on the album and you caught Adam Jones explaining why
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that is. Can you talk about that? I think again. It's while
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the lyrics may mean or may have a sort of direct meaning too many,
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Tools just wanted people to listen and form their own opinions of the songs.
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There's a lot of bands out there that use ambiguous lyrics that could mean two,
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three, four or five things. But it was more they wanted the
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listener to draw their own conclusion. They wanted them to listen to the music
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in one aspect, but then listen to the lyrics on a different side,
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and then potentially put everything together and have a much more of a rewarding listen.
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Some of the songs on this demo, by the way, end up
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on that official first release in eighteen eighty three is undertow most notably the track
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Sober. The major labels they start to see the dollar signs when they see
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a band like this, but Maynard, He's earned them pretty quickly. He
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wasn't going to fall for their tactics. In fact, Tool had no intentions
10:30
of gaining fame or fortune. So what label do they eventually sign with and
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why that label in particular? Yes, so they did have the options such
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as Atlantic Records, Epic Interscope. Everybody knows that they are three of the
10:43
biggest record labels out there, and they always have been, but there was
10:46
a lesser known I guess unless you was around the Los Angeles area label known
10:52
as Zoo Entertainment, who had recently signed Green Jelly, who obviously had become
10:56
friends of the band, who allowed them to use their rehearsal space and play
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the show that especially the new Zeve show that a couple of the songs were
11:05
recorded at that made the upcoming EP so Zoo Entertainment was they offered basically the
11:13
most important thing for any band, I guess, which doesn't always happen and
11:16
definitely didn't happen throughout the nineties, is wanting to remain completely in control of
11:22
their music of the artistic direction they're going in. And Lou Aglia, who
11:28
owned Zoo, he was prepared to offer this. He could see the vision
11:31
of what Tool wanted to be and how they wanted to go about things.
11:35
And he also wanted to put more money into the band's live performances because again
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at the time they was only able to play small stages, but they wanted
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to go bigger with their show. They wanted the backdrops and the lights and
11:50
just to create a more immersive feel for the people that are paying their hard
11:54
and money to go and watch these bands. So Zoo seemed not necessary to
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a wider audience, but to Tool, it was the perfect fit because they
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was able to remain doing what they wanted to do without any pressures or you
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know, any songs being taken off records because they didn't feel that they fit
12:13
or whatever. They were just allowed to do what they want effectively, and
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instead of recording a full album, Tool releases an EP. It's called Opiate.
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Can you talk about the title track? This is a sad tour of
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religion and takes from a Karl Marx hypothesis. Yeah, there's a lot of
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that kind of content that Maynard touches on throughout the throughout tours Music as we
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go further. Yeah, Kyle Karl Marx a hopopthesis that religion isn't open for
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the masses. Yeah, religion is the opening of the people and that religion
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acts as a drug for society. Maynard was very He'd always been quite outspoken
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on specific subjects, and now he kind of had a stage to say what
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he wanted. Not necessarily everybody was going to agree with what he was saying
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potentially, but he was kind of in that in that day and age where
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in the nineties where you know, against the Machine would come in out with
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all their sort of their views, and there was a lot more anti political
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statements in music, basically a freedom of speech, I guess, which perhaps
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to day sometimes it's a bit harder to put into into your art, but
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it was still It's still considered one of Tool's most popular songs. I mean,
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it's a it's a long winding track. There's a great line in that
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song where may I says, deaf and blind and dumb and born to follow.
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What you need is someone strong to guide you and heden at the time
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there, I guess he was kind of offering himself as a as a sort
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of an alternative leader. You know, we will do and say what we
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want. We want to bring a freedom to our music, and you know,
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Tool is the band that you want to be listening to. And then
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they do put out their first full studio album, which is ninety three hundred
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twel what didn't mean I'd say about why they chose that word for the title
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Undertowel. So the quote that that I took from there, Yeah, I
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mean he said that he liked the idea of an undertow that feeling that you
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get when you're standing out in the surf. You just feel like you're being
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pulled under an out, whether you like it or not. I would hope
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that the music takes you to that place. It kind of pulls you under
14:16
and throws you around, and you go with it. For a major release,
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a first ever album, I guess sometimes you want a title that's perhaps
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a little bit different to the norm, and it did kind of stick out.
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Let's get to the singles from Undertowel or one in specific. The singles
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are Sober, Prison Sex, and the title track. The opening bast line
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of Sober pulls you right away. It's so hypnotic. What is this song
14:41
about. Yeah, they mentioned that they had a friend who who felt he
14:46
was always at his most artistic when he was under the influence, whether it
14:50
be alcohol or drugs. Obviously being high. I guess if some people can
14:56
heighten your productive nature. And yeah, so that that is sort of loosely
15:01
what the song is based on. And in the quote that I've got here
15:05
from Adam Jones. You have to take responsibility for what happens ultimately, but
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some of the best music has been created by people sort of you know,
15:13
high at the time, or stoned or drunk lead sixties, that whole era
15:18
was you know, Hendrix and exactly. Yeah, so it can be a
15:22
good thing. It might not always be, but yeah, so that's kind
15:26
of loosely Whatsober is based on. But again, I think at the time
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when the song came out, especially the video hitting music channels, it was
15:35
a lot of people's first introduction to tool and straightaway sort of musically it was
15:39
just something completely different. The pace of the song. You know, it
15:43
wasn't fast, frantic, sort of in your face. It was sort of
15:48
slow building, methodically paced, and you know, there was plenty of distortion
15:52
in there, which was going to please sort of perhaps the heavy metal fans.
15:56
But Danny Carey's drumming was, you know, fantastic, the high hat
16:00
grooves, there was a harmonic drench bass chords which Pauled A. Moore sort
16:04
of perhaps earn a name from, and obviously the guitars as well, alongside
16:11
Maynard's sort of fairly hypnostic vocal in that one. As great as the song
16:15
is, I think this is one of those instances where the video helped her
16:17
blow the song up even more so because it kept a lot of play an
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empty view was that Clamatian video and a lot Yeah, and that was kind
16:26
of that was one of the thing the way his Adam Jones kind of got
16:30
into the arts in the first place, that's how he sort of some of
16:33
his work would end up being used in films. But he did take a
16:37
special interest in that kind of claymation design of videos, and a lot of
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yes, quite like you said, a few of the tall videos going forward
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would all include that kind of thing. A lot of bands would also imitate
16:48
that later on as well, that kind of effect. I'd love to have
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kind of witnessed one of those videos being made, because that must have taken
16:56
so long, obviously having to capture each frame as you go along and yeah
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again wild the videos, like a lot of bands, didn't necessarily have the
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same kind of meaning as the song did. That they did make for captivating
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viewing. Yeah, really, they said, there's really no specific meaning to
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it. It's just kind of just what you can make of it, what
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you will but it does match the vibe of that song, It's very dark.
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Undertow sells three million copies and it reached number nineteen on Billboard. After
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two years of relentless touring, they returned in nineteen ninety six with Anima,
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a number two debut on Billboard. Basis Justin Chancellor replaces Paul dea Moore.
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And this album, you say, is Tool entering new territory musically, and
17:37
that is a result of the heavy touring you feel. I think it's just
17:41
a natural progression as well as the band. I mean, they probably had
17:45
a vision at the start of what potentially they wanted to go to in the
17:48
future. But you know, as I said before, you have to own
17:52
your craft. You have to learn what each band member's strengths and weaknesses is.
17:56
And yeah, in this Honorma was the one that sort of put Tool
18:00
on the map, maybe more globally, I guess, because some of the
18:04
videos were starting getting played here in the UK. I remember seeing the Stinkfist
18:10
video, and again, while the video is very sort of out there and
18:14
strange musically, you could see that the style was changing. So stink Fist
18:18
is kind of more of a sort of an old alternative Netles song slightly in
18:22
keeping with Undertow, but I think it perfectly shows the transition that tour was
18:27
on the way to. I mean, I just think that's probably still my
18:30
favorite song. It's just you know that the little middle section there, that
18:33
pensive, sort of eerie interlude before it all fires back in. Kind of
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listen to that song and repeat. But yeah, as obviously the album progresses,
18:42
you're getting longer tracks as well. In there built up of sort of
18:47
various passages. Each each passage changes in style and builds a to great finales.
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It's there's some interesting little sort of interlude in there as well. But
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as a whole on him Or is still my favorite Tool album. Yeah,
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that industrial opening so cool. It just sets them right away. It builds
19:07
up into that that early lead riff, and once that sort of comes in,
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you can kind of feel that they're the next stage of Tool is kind
19:17
of coming in. It's a new era of the band. They're not quite
19:22
as rough and ragged, I guess as what you get on the Opiate and
19:25
Undertow EPs. It's well, of course, perhaps you can thank David Botchell
19:30
for that. He came in as the producer on that record. They used
19:33
Sylvia Massey for the album before and the EP. David Botchell has a lot
19:40
more of a cleaner cut production. But he again he could see what Tour
19:45
wanted to do and they work together to get the ideals sound to keep it
19:49
dark and sort of low and groovy. But there was also I felt certain
19:55
lead with some of the songs, there was a bit more of an accessibility
19:57
to them. The critic you say, overlooked or they focus too much on
20:02
that self explanatory tale of sting. First, the message of the lyrics,
20:06
Yeah, a lot of people seem to think it's to do with the theme
20:10
of anal sex, which again previously on the Undertow album the song four Degrees
20:17
seem to have a si similar sort of sexual innuendo. But again this is
20:22
this is one of sort of Maynard's great qualities as a songwriter, how he
20:26
could construct them to offer such multiple meanings. I mean this one he's sort
20:30
of the brief times because he doesn't often talk about, you know, what
20:34
the songs mean in his mind, but it's not opening someone, you know,
20:40
one's eye to a whole other essential and physical reality. To all touch
20:42
on that a lot. Sometimes it can be a little bit too hard to
20:45
grasp. I'm not going to say that I can envision everything he's trying to
20:49
say or what he kind of wants you to feel. It's not always an
20:52
easy thing with Tool, but with this one, that was his kind of
20:56
idea, and across the whole of the album, the idea of evolution and
21:00
change is the overwhelming theme as we go along. What about the title track
21:07
to Anima that was dedicated to a friend of Tool, the Greek comedian Bill
21:10
Hicks and Hicks Wasn't that your average comedian. Neither the guys and Tool Minard
21:15
especially really connected with his art. He talk about how Minard incorporates Bill's work
21:19
into the lyrics. It's based on a Hicks Carmedy album, right, Yeah,
21:22
So, I mean I was I don't know how popular Bill was in
21:26
terms of, you know, a worldwide audience. It's someone I mean,
21:29
at the time when the album came out, I was ten years old.
21:32
As I grew up through music, he was not somebody that I sort of
21:36
particularly had heard of. So I had to kind of go back as well
21:41
and see, you see what sort of Bill was all about in his work.
21:45
The two became friends. I think Bill, I think it was a
21:48
lot of Palooser Festival a couple of years beforehand that Bill came out on stage
21:53
and introduced Tool to the audience. Bill was like an inspiration to Maynard,
21:59
and she on him. A track is based on Hicks's Arizona Bay Piece,
22:04
which again is kind of part of the overwhelming theme of the whole album where
22:11
Keenan's he ends up having a vicious contempt for Los Angeles, the city where
22:15
he lives. So you know, while it's a lot of people consider it
22:18
the city of angels, the city of dreams, that's where you go to
22:22
to create fame and fortune. He uses sort of Hicks's philosophy of how La
22:26
could happily fall into a big black hole, flush it all away, rid
22:33
the city of all the vermin and the negative aspects of the city, and
22:40
yeah, that's he's He kind of sings that part of the song as in
22:45
a rock jingle over a bouncing drum rhythm, which is kind of you can
22:49
kind of feel it's slightly tongue in cheek, but the message and the meaning
22:53
is a very serious one in many's mind, at least the book don Run
23:00
podcast will return after this. Matt Harper's on the show to talk about his
23:04
book Tool Every album, every song, which you can get through burningshed dot
23:08
com, Amazon too if you want to get it there too. The two
23:12
thousand box set Salival includes live tracks, outtakes and videos. An amazing cover
23:18
of Zeppelin's No Quarters included on this one. I had never heard it before,
23:22
founded on YouTube and it's a great recording. Quite a bit of activity
23:25
within the band record label issues leading up to this. We also get the
23:29
formation of the band a perfect circle where it was Tool as a bandit around
23:33
this time, because you write the book, their fans were wondering if Anima
23:37
would be the last studio album they were going to hear from Tool. Yeah.
23:40
I think their songwriting process has always been well documented. Where Adam by
23:47
now it was Justin and Danny. They would kind of write the musical pieces
23:52
and go through all vigorously editing and rerecording and until they basically felt that the
23:59
music was right, and then they would hand it over to Maynard who would
24:02
be able to listen to it, get a feel of the content, and
24:04
then formalize his own lyrical passages through around the music. At this time,
24:10
Maynard was becoming a little bit impatient, sort of everything was kind of stop
24:15
starting. And yeah, he being the artist he was, as we know
24:21
he would go on to be. He had different ideas for more projects and
24:26
another one of those, like you said, was a perfect circle sort of
24:30
less progressive, but he wanted to go. He wanted something a little bit
24:33
more artistic and darker. A perfect circle was that with the Miredernm's debut album,
24:40
which did do pretty well mainstream wise, sold a lot of records,
24:45
got in the top five of the Billboard two hundred. I remember over here
24:49
in the UK the album was voted the album of the year in two thousand
24:55
and do you want to say two thousand I think it was. I think
25:00
yeah, he's just the fact that he got a bit tired of waiting around
25:03
for the other guys to get the music done. He was. He just
25:07
wanted to remain creative and you know, don't waste no time. If if
25:12
what, we'll lead him to let them crack on with that kind of thing.
25:15
We'll do this and we'll come back to tool when when the time's right.
25:18
Yeah, it led to some friction because that album did so well,
25:23
and you talk about this you lead off the chapter for the two thousand and
25:26
one album Ladder Alice. By the way, I had to do a lot
25:30
of searching for phonetic a lot make sure I pronounced these these words correctly.
25:34
It's all there's stuff on YouTube where reporters just flat out say like, how
25:38
do you pronounce this? And the guys will laugh. Ladder Alice a quote
25:42
from Maynard, who talks about where the band was at at this time,
25:47
said his bandmates were not happy with the side project a perfect circle. Some
25:51
friction there, but that did make for good art. At seventy eight minutes
25:53
fifty one seconds, this is one of the longest single CD releases ever recorded.
25:59
Debut a number one on Billboard when it's released, and that was really
26:03
Send Me fifteenth of two thousand and one. The singles Schism Parabola in the
26:07
title track Skism You Write is perhaps the song which officially crowned toward the new
26:11
kings of progressive rock. Can you talk about this song's complexity, specifically the
26:15
time signatures? Yeah, so the Schism was the first song that I heard
26:19
from Tall So two thousand and one, I was a new metal kid,
26:23
yeah, so I got into heavy music in two thousand, when you know,
26:26
olymp Biscuit was on. The music channel was corn Lincoln Park came up
26:32
and Papa Roach so music video after music video was all these new metal bands,
26:37
you know a lot of them rap rock, rap metal orientated. And
26:41
I remember I was around of friends and we were just in the sort of
26:44
school holidays. We would just spend hour an hour, hour after hour in
26:48
front of the TV watching kerrang. We'd perhaps sometimes ring up and vote for
26:52
a music video to come on, and we didn't care if it was the
26:56
you know, we didn't care if Limp Biscuit had been on three hours ago.
26:57
We wanted to hear it again. And yeah, I specifically remember Schism
27:03
came on the first time I'd heard of this band Tool, and straight away,
27:07
you know, just just a name Tool. I thought that's a bit
27:08
a strange name for a band, And when it leads in with that that
27:12
base riff, I mean, I was like, whoa, this is this
27:15
is not you know, this isn't a rap metal song. This isn't this
27:18
isn't going to be the sort of thing we're used to hearing. And it
27:23
made you sit up and take notice. I guess. I called it a
27:27
legendary and otherworldly base riff, and it just came in so different to what
27:34
he was hearing at the time. I've read that an analysis of the track
27:38
also found that the meter of the song altered at forty seven different times.
27:42
I mean, I'm not going to say on the most understanding in terms of
27:48
the terms of you know, used in song structures and different things. So
27:53
even for tour for this book, I had to really sort of delve into
27:57
the reasoning behind them and what sort of everything that went into the song,
28:03
I guess. And it's quite ironic that, you know, one of the
28:06
lead lyrics is I know the piece is fit. Because this really was a
28:10
song that was concocted meticulously. I can imagine why it took so long to
28:15
to be put together, and yeah, it's just absolutely that time. I
28:22
do remember, it was unlike anything I've ever heard again, and it was
28:26
the reason why I did end up going to the shops and buying latter Rats
28:29
to see what else they was capable of. Yeah, sonically and lyrically too.
28:33
Like the title track, which is another fascinating story, you get into
28:37
the details in you know, in the book about where that title comes from.
28:42
Yes, so again using in typical tool fashion, they didn't want to
28:48
sort of stick to the norm and have some kind of simple album title,
28:53
so combining parts of the different words to form this singular head in it.
28:59
I mean, I say it was. The title isn't imagistic because the collection
29:03
of songs which would form the whole album. So they take part of the
29:07
vastus later alice leg muscle, and combine it with the term of lateral thinking,
29:11
put it into a blender, and somehow they came out with the term
29:15
latter alice lateralus. That's what we should say. But the song itself,
29:21
yeah, I mean I must have rewritten this part of the book four or
29:26
five times because I'm not the greatest mathematician, and I had to read so
29:30
much up on the Fibernaci sequence, which ultimately and mistakenly as just sorry.
29:37
Maynard later revealed that's how the song was put together musically. It turned out
29:44
it's challenges the listener and challenges authors would try to write books about. Absolutely,
29:48
Yeah, I mean, people may listen to this and probably not have
29:52
a clue what I'm talking about. And a few advil as you're trying to
29:56
work your way through it. Yeah. But there is a small video cut
30:00
on YouTube of Joe Rogan's interview with Maynard where they actually talk about how the
30:03
song came together. It turned out that they was writing in a measure of
30:10
nine to eighty seven, which how they came to realize it was part of
30:15
a Fibernacci sequence. Nine eight seven is eventually a number in that sequence.
30:19
The main genesis of the song contains successive time studages of nine, eight,
30:23
eight eight and seven eight nine eight seven, being the sixteenth integer of the
30:29
Fiberaci sequence. It's it's a it's an infinitely expanding form of a spiral.
30:37
In later years, scientists mathematicians have been able to correlate the equation to the
30:41
sequence, where again, somehow they've managed to find this sequence in science art
30:48
structures such as the geezea plateau, the Mona Lisa painting. There's a very
30:52
interesting then you can look out on the line about how supposedly facial structures have
31:00
been made in this sequence, and even in the human DNA. It's it's
31:04
absolutely mind boggling, really basically serious intelligence. Sequence begins as zero, one,
31:12
two, three, five eight. It's basically the two previous numbers being
31:18
added together to form the ever expanding spiral. So two and three is five,
31:22
three and five is eight, and so on. It's just mind boggling,
31:26
really, and I think that's probably where some people that were able to
31:32
kind of pick up on this, this theory, you know, a form
31:36
of a never, never ending and infinitely expanding spiral, where they realized that
31:40
Tour were miles ahead of the game, especially in that New Metal era where
31:45
tool We're getting you mentioned alongside the likes a limp, biscuit and corn.
31:51
But then when you listen to the music, you can see that there is
31:53
there is a golfing class. I guess something. I love the new metal
31:57
bands that I've mentioned, but taller on a whole other another level. Yeah,
32:02
I wonder what maynards i q is idea. I mean, well,
32:07
I mean it wasn't really I guess it's Well, that's the interesting part of
32:12
the song as well, because, like I say, the music was mistakenly
32:15
formed around that structure, but he later actually uses lyrical passages to sort of
32:22
correlate with that as well. Each verse, for example, Keenan's vocals join
32:29
at one minute thirty seven, which I'm sure wasn't coincidental, is considered alternately
32:35
of one point six one eight minutes, which is the exact same decimal number
32:39
of the golden ratio, which again is related to a fibernarchial sequence. Looking
32:45
further each versus the track is fifty five seconds long, low and behold,
32:51
fifty five is a number in the fibernarchial sequence. And it's quite funny actually
32:55
when you hear the interview with Keenan on the Joe Rogan Show, he actually
33:00
calls it a sophomore. It moved too to add his lyrics to that kind
33:04
of sequence as well. It's kind of like he was trying to make it
33:08
too obvious of what they was doing. And he actually felt he felt sort
33:13
of a little bit of a shame in doing that. He rather would have
33:15
wanted people to kind of work it out for fromselves. But all or all
33:20
our own worst critic. But yeah, and the song. The songs did
33:23
the test of time a lot of a lot of tall groups that I'm part
33:28
of, and I hear people talk of the song being one of their favorites,
33:31
not necessarily for those reasons we've discussed, but more for obviously for the
33:36
music, it's it's progressive rock, but it is heavy in places. It's
33:40
not one of my favorite songs of the band. But in terms of the
33:44
actual story behind it, maybe one day I will thoroughly grasp the concept and
33:50
obviously everything that goes into it, but it is hugely interesting reading another long
33:58
week for the next album, A five year gap. Two thousand and six,
34:00
Tool released ten thousand Days, and Minard said there is an inherent sense
34:05
of sadness on this album compared to the previous ones, and the lead single
34:08
is Vicarious apart and John By the two other singles. The title is in
34:13
reference to the character John by the Genie from Peewee's Playhouse TV show. Justin
34:19
Chancellor's bassline, it reminded drummer Denny Carey of John by the Genie's chant and
34:24
what a great story behind the use of the talk box on this song.
34:28
Guitarist Adam Jones got some advice from Joe Walz, who's famously known for using
34:31
the talk box on a song Rocky Mountain Way. Yeah. So I just
34:36
first off, I mean yeah, ten thousand Days was Tool's big return and
34:39
in terms of the song they may have been longer in track times, but
34:44
they did bring an inherent heaviness which a lot of people I think was welcome
34:49
back to tool. It was a brilliant start. Yeah, I mean Vicarius
34:52
is a fantastic opener, absolutely call Satan rhythm section and it really did feel
34:57
like tour was perhaps moving on again. Not necessarily as dense as the stuff
35:04
on latter alice, but yeah, the talk box so yeah, I mean
35:08
it has been. It was like you said, Rocky Mountain Way, it's
35:12
effectively consistent of a speaker that feeds into a plastic tube. If you know
35:15
people might be listening to this. Who do you feel like we do?
35:20
By Peter Franson. It was used on their the famous use by John bon
35:23
Jovi on living on a prayer and basically yeah, how it came to be
35:29
with Adam Jones's meeting was he had a friend who worked for the Eagles booking
35:32
agent, and low and behold, Joe Walsh received the number and he called
35:38
Adam about it and they they had a brief sort of message about it,
35:42
talking about how he wanted to use it and what advice he could give of
35:45
how to sort of get the best results out of it and that's what you
35:49
hear on the song. It's it is a very interesting addition to the song,
35:52
sort of fairly late into the track as well, where it is generally
35:55
a heavy metal song. But yeah, it does sort of adds that extra
36:00
sort of layer to the track which makes it more memorable. Again, built
36:05
on experimentation, methodical rehearsing, bordering on perfectionism, like a lot of tools
36:10
songs. I think it's probably the takeaway moment of the track. I feel
36:15
like there's a little bit of a classic rock influence and Adam Jones's guitar solos
36:20
at times. Listening to the music over the last few weeks, some of
36:23
his solos there's a lot of feel to a lot of taste to it that
36:27
almost feels like clapped in esque at times. Yeah, I mean a lot
36:30
of his lead riffs and that are obviously more heavy and metallic, but the
36:34
solos do seem to add a little bit more of a light to him.
36:37
Again, I said that he's a few people often consider him not necessarily an
36:44
esteemed guitarist, perhaps to the levels of some of the greats and that,
36:47
but what he has, what he does get out of the guitar is spectacular.
36:52
It may be a simple sounding riff, for example, but with the
36:55
effects that they use and the tunings, it makes it sound that more whole
37:00
awesome. And yeah, yeah, it's his solos. I think again,
37:02
a lot of it are just based around jamming in the studio or in a
37:07
rehearsal room or whatever, but they do sort of yeah, they do add
37:10
another aspect of the song as a nice little break in the calm before the
37:15
storm, perhaps before the songs fire back up. Yes, some are sort
37:19
of long winding, some are shorter into the point, but they all have
37:22
their own sort of charm and effects. You lead the chapter on Tools twenty
37:24
nineteen studio album Fear and Maculum by writing quote, A lot can happen in
37:30
twelve months, so imagine just how much can change in thirteen years. By
37:34
the time Tools fifth album saw the light of day, the world was a
37:37
very different place to what it was upon the release of ten thousand Days back
37:40
in two thousand and six, and no one knew at that time things were
37:44
only going to get stranger as twenty twenty was welcomed in one thing remained a
37:49
constant. However, people still love Tool, and they were begging to hear
37:52
some new music. The title track, you say is unlike previous album openers
37:55
in a preview of what could be coming in the future from Tool, Yeah,
38:00
I mean thirteen and a half years. I mean again, when I
38:02
was growing up, I remember the chaos surrounding guns of Rosy's release of Chinese
38:07
Democracy because that had taken so long to come out. And yeah, what
38:12
you get with Fear Inoculum, I mean it's nearly it's just under eighteen minutes
38:15
of music. It surpasses Latteralysis running time. Every track is sort of over
38:22
in double figures of running length. But the song itself, I mean that
38:24
is my favorite song off the album. It's just it's slow building, it's
38:30
jangley. It's different sort of percussion in there. Yeah, the atmosphere and
38:35
the bills in those early sort of measures the Middle Eastern percussion. Danny Kerry,
38:39
I think this album especially shows his percussive skills are some of the best.
38:45
I mean, if you look at some of the drum com videos on
38:46
YouTube of tracks from this album, I mean, I don't think I've seen
38:51
a bigger drum kit in my life. I mean, the toms and the
38:54
high hats, and the symbols and the snares, everything he has around him.
39:00
I mean, how you can continually play with precision is just mind blowing
39:06
to h to me that I look the chorus on this one when it does
39:09
come in, I mean, you only get two choruses on there. But
39:13
it's funny how the song kind of hints at what's to come a year later.
39:17
Obviously weird now, three years after the pandemic, it doesn't seem three
39:22
years ago when we was all under lockdowns and the uncertainty surrounding it. Every
39:28
gigs were getting canceled, sports events were being played behind closed doors. The
39:32
Fear and Oculum song itself sort of it hints, not necessarily obviously they didn't
39:39
know it was gonna it was going to come, but similar to the themes
39:44
of fear and immunization contagion, I exhale you. It's a brilliant line.
39:49
I mean, well, there's brilliant line after brilliant line here, Like my
39:52
own, my toast is growing through delusion from mania. It sounds like a
39:57
band that after thirteen years they was going crazy not having new music, so
40:01
they decided they finally got together. They put all this together in well,
40:06
this is meticulous, to the to the to the dot. I mean,
40:08
it's just it's crazy listening if you if you're a Toll fan listening, you
40:14
know, finally embracing new music. It's actually as well the because it was
40:17
released as a single, it just got inside the Hot the Hot one hundred
40:22
on the Billboard chats there, and it's also the longest ever song to do
40:27
so, which is I thought was quite an interesting little small anecdote there David
40:31
Bowie's Black Star only by twenty four seconds. But yeah, I mean that
40:36
well, just going straight into Numa, I just want to touch on Numa
40:38
because that's the one I wanted to ask you about. Two. Yeah,
40:40
Numas is interesting. What does that? Where does that word numa come from?
40:45
It comes from the Greek meaning supposedly that that which is breathed or blown
40:51
again, it's it's a breathtaking song taken on various layers of meaning for theologians
40:57
and philosophers when it became a word for and soul, which is represented in
41:02
the lyrics represent the concepts of breathing in spiritual freedom. We're born of one
41:07
breath, one word in two or three word bursts at a time in the
41:13
main chorus here, and this is the one particularly where I think Danny Carey's
41:17
percussion skills and temperament is fully exhibited. Again, if you go back and
41:22
look at a drum cam video on YouTube, this is the one that it
41:27
still gives me. Causes the hairs on the back of my necktar to come
41:30
up when watching every different part of his kit that he utilized throughout the song.
41:37
I mean, it's over ten minutes long, like most of the songs
41:39
on there, but Numa was I think a lot of people took away that
41:44
song as the standout moment on the album. There is a little bit later
41:46
in the album where you perhaps think, Okay, it's getting a little overlong
41:51
in places, you know, they perhaps went a bit too or they overcompensated
41:55
a bit too much. Whether it because they felt it was thirteen years and
42:00
they wanted to give the listener as much material as possible. But those first
42:04
two tracks especially are two of the finest. I mean, I've got the
42:08
vinyl box set they released a couple of years ago, and you could only
42:13
fit two songs on one side of a vinyl record. That's the disc that
42:16
I listened to more than ever, because they are the two best songs on
42:22
the whole album. It's interesting to say that because I felt like, and
42:24
this is something that I was talking about before we started recording, and I'm
42:29
curious as to what Tool fans will think, But this I think is my
42:31
favorite Tool album. I love the atmospheric feel to it. It's almost like
42:36
it's almost like a movie soundtrack type of feel. At times in the songs
42:39
are long, but I felt like I didn't want them to end. I
42:43
loved it. Now, I'm curious as to what your favorite Tool album is
42:46
and what is the general consensus among fans, Like is what is considered the
42:52
best Tool album? I think latter Alys seems to be the general consensus me
42:58
personally is on them. But then I especially during the writing of this book,
43:02
I did come to appreciate ten Thousand Days a lot more as well,
43:06
and I would say that's probably that's probably up there, just below on him
43:10
for me. Now, I think in terms of the hardcore fan base of
43:15
Tool, Fear Innoculum was graciously received. Yes, there is great content on
43:21
there, some excellent songs that are sort of worthy as being among the best
43:24
that Tool have ever done. But I think the facts of its near eighty
43:29
minute running time. I think I think that was a bit of a gripe
43:31
to some I have seen a lot of people say that it did become over
43:37
long, a little bit over saturated. There was a couple of the Chocolate
43:42
Chip Trip sort of long winded interlude. There's a couple of songs on there
43:46
that kind of could have easily been cut and condensed down a little bit more.
43:52
I appreciate the album. I think it is a very good album,
43:55
but I think for the fans that have been there from the beginning, I
44:00
think it was those thankful that it came out. Whether we will get another
44:06
Tool album in the future, who knows. I think we probably will,
44:08
but no, I think the allure of the late nineties and early two thousands
44:14
material where I guess you could say that it was a little bit more creative.
44:20
This seemed to be just for the sake of it. I think making
44:23
the songs extra long, and there was passages there that could have been cut
44:27
by a few bars. I think if it depends on guess, perhaps people
44:32
getting into Tool now they I think you sometimes do have more of an impact
44:38
the first album you listen to from a band that's the one that probably is
44:42
going to stick with you more than some of the others, the later material
44:45
that you're going to get into. But no, I can't fault at all
44:47
for any of their music. Really, I think I mentioned you either during
44:52
the recording or just before that Undertower is probably the less visited album of mine
44:57
in terms of their wholeest discography. But everyone has their favorite, and everyone
45:02
that I've seen in various groups and that each album has been mentioned for one
45:07
reason or another. I was going to wrap up with where do you think
45:09
Tool will go from here? Will there be new music? Will it be
45:13
another long week for new music? What do you think? Well, I
45:16
don't think it will be as long as thirteen and a half years to wait
45:20
for this one. Well, I don't want to be in an old hedge
45:22
home when they come out with the next album exactly. Yeah, I know,
45:27
may not. He does a lot of work with Pussifer, which was
45:30
obviously a later project more of a trip hop electronic kind of band that he
45:36
formed, and he does a lot of there seems there's a lot more albums
45:40
out there of Pussifa released in a shortest period of time than there has been
45:46
a tool, whether they do single tracks, an EP even, but then
45:51
again, you know, knowing tool, even an EP, it'd probably been
45:53
an hour long. Who knows. I think they probably will stick with the
45:58
progressive rock formula going for we won't get the short, sharp bursts of the
46:02
Undertow days and the lights of stink Fists, but yeah, no, I'm
46:06
sure they will keep going heat. Obviously, Maynard is the most is the
46:09
busiest of all the members, and each band member have had various side projects
46:15
and whatnot and guest spots on other songs. But I think they realize that
46:21
Tall is their bread and butter. I think they're playing a few festivals over
46:23
in America this year, so whether that will sort of get them back into
46:28
the mood to return to the studio and far away for all we know,
46:31
they probably even they've probably even been writing us in the last couple of years,
46:37
especially during the COVID when perhaps they had less on their plates to be
46:40
able to do so. Yeah, I think we will get new music.
46:44
I'll make a bold statement. I reckon by twenty twenty four we'll probably have
46:47
something new, whether it's been just one or two songs or an album.
46:52
Who knows, but yeah, I'm confident we'll get something. I'd like to
46:55
hear that. Yeah. Two, all every album, every song. It's
46:58
out now to Brunning, Shared and Amazon wherever books are sold as well,
47:01
macup or any websites that you want to let people know about your on social
47:06
media as well, mainly on Instagram, Matt underscore, Carper, that's where
47:12
I kind of just hang about. And yet, as you mentioned earlier than
47:15
the book, as well as my other books are available through Amazon worldwide.
47:21
I think in America especially as well Walmart and Barnes and Noble, you can
47:25
pick them up. Not sure whether they're physically in stores, but definitely online.
47:30
And yet they're all available there. Matt, thanks so much, thanks
47:35
for having me on the show. That's it. It's in the books.