Unleashed by Joel McIver

Author:Joel McIver [Mciver, Joel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-85712-040-3
Publisher: Music Sales Corp.
Published: 2009-06-28T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

2002

Several years after the rock-consuming public had accepted, along with Fred Durst, that Tool was a unique musical phenomenon that might well go on to change the world, the record industry woke up and smelled the coffee. Tool was awarded the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance for ‘Schism’ in January 2002, the most obviously compelling — but not, perhaps, the best — song from the gobsmacking Lateralus, which had still not given up its complex secrets for most people even nine months after its release. The band won their category against serious competition from four much better-known bands — Black Sabbath, Slayer, Slipknot and System Of A Down.

Fans awaited Tool’s response. Would they turn up to the Grammy ceremony and pick up the award, or would they ignore it roundly, like the lords of doom their albums seemed to indicate they were? In the event, the band arrived and clowned around, with Justin Chancellor using his acceptance speech to state, “I want to thank my dad for doing my mom” (his conversion to Californiaspeak was, it seemed, well underway) and Danny Carey namechecking Satan.

Perhaps it was time for the band to reveal their human sides, after three frankly terrifying albums, a clutch of videos that brought grown men to their knees and enough New-Age philosophy to stun a cow. As Adam Jones laughed, “We’re geeks. Danny and I watch Star Trek. Maynard loves watching cartoons and doing stupid stuff, and watching the same movie over [and] we love Caddyshack… we’re a bunch of friends who are all geeks. That’s why it’s not about what we look like, and how we ‘rock out’ or whatever the fuck… A guy in an interview the other day was complaining what a shoegazer I was onstage, and [he missed] the point. Because you can barely see me onstage to begin with. We have all these projections, we have lights, we have a really atmospheric, emotional, trippy, dreamy presentation with our music which completely stimulates each other, and they totally missed out on it. Because I wasn’t rocking out, swishing my hair.”

The band’s keen sense of humour came out more and more these days, now that they had gained sufficient power to be able to refuse most press requests and people actually understood what they were trying to achieve.

The fans didn’t escape the razor-sharp Tool wit. “I saw Ted Nugent play a little while ago. It was him and Tired Skynyrd,” sniggered Keenan. “We were in Nashville, we got the night off. Danny was having the best time, because it was like 20,000 rednecks with stars and bars, all drunk as shit… real small teeth and eyes real close together… There would be two dudes duking it out and Danny’s getting in there with the people that were watching, taking pictures. I’m waiting for the film to come back, all these rednecks all going, ‘Hit ‘im! He’s drunker’n you!’… it was out of control. I mean, we saw that show and we thought, ‘I hope this isn’t the same element that’s gonna come to our show’.

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