Maynard James Keenan: ‘Second Guessing Yourself’ Played Into Long Wait for Tool Album

2019-09-17

Tool band promo photo – Story by Charles Ken, promo photo by Tim Cadiente

Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan: “The crippling second guessing of yourself sets in, and that psychology and that spiral you get in, it can be extremely daunting”

Tool finally released their new album, “Fear Inoculum,” last week, marking the first album release from Maynard James Keenan and the rock band in roughly 13 years. That said, if you ask Keenan, the record was in good shape years ago.

Keenan and Tool bass player Justin Chancellor were guests on the BBC’s Rock Show with Daniel P Carter over the weekend, and the main topic, of course, was Tool’s new album. As Chancellor explained, the band had some of the ideas for “Fear Inoculum” back in the mid-’90s.

So, what was the hold up? According to Keenan, “I think a lot of it (was) just that age where you want it to be right and we’ve had some success in the past and the fear of this thing coming out and not being accepted — the fear that it’s not as good as it can be — that can be detrimentally crippling.”

He added, “If I had to ‘psychology 101’ (it), I would have to say, ‘Well, yeah, that’s why it would take 13 years to write something, because you’re paranoid that it’s not gonna be the best that it can be and then you second guess every single step that you make,’ when it was probably good enough — I shouldn’t say good enough — it was fantastic eight years ago.”

Keenan concludes, “But then the crippling second guessing of yourself sets in, and that psychology and that spiral you get in, it can be extremely daunting. And you can actually not even feel it happening. All of a sudden you wake up and it’s 13 years later. The hard part is accepting the fact that maybe you’re not as important as you think you are and you should probably just get on with it.” (via PRP)

In other news, Tool will hit the road on a North American tour with openers Killing Joke beginning Oct. 13 in Sacramento, California. For the full list of shows, go here.

Charles Ken
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