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(Credits: Far Out / IMDB / Pixabay / Remo Vilkko)
Tool and A Perfect Circle frontman Maynard James Keenan is one of the great trickster Gods of heavy metal. A man who was able to take the heaviest, most wrong-footing sounds in heavy music and make one of the biggest metal bands in the world out of them. He’s spent his whole career seemingly keeping his ear close to the ground to find out exactly what his enormous fanbase wants from him, just to turn around and do whatever he wants to do anyway.
This is, after all, a man who has spent years hearing fans of his bay for a new Tool album, just to get hugely into winemaking and invest in several vineyards in Arizona. Of course, all those fans did get what they wanted in the end. Tool have been consistently active for nearly four decades now, and anyone into his work is probably also a fan of A Perfect Circle and Puscifier as well. However, Keenan does things on his terms and precisely no-one elses.
This puts him in a proud tradition of musicians whose esotericism is only matched by their capriciousness. The kind of people not afraid to embrace the least commercial things they’re passionate about and get away with it scot-free. The likes of Captain Beefheart before him, Björk alongside him and 100 Gecs after him. Of all of these characters, there’s someone one would assume Keenan prays to a little altar before going to bed at night.
Another man who took the heaviest guitar music of its day, made it weirder than anyone could have imagined, while also making a career out of it. Who dared anyone to question his artistic vision while also doing everything he could to get someone to question his artistic vision? The person I’m talking about is of course, Frank Zappa. A kindred spirit of Keenan’s, surely?
What does Maynard James Keenan think of Frank Zappa?
Well, the truth is, Maynard James Keenan isn’t a fan. A shocker, right? One would have assumed that his brand of intricate, intensely progressive hard rock with flourishes of classical and jazz was a touchstone of Keenan’s musical upbringing. After all, that previous description of Zappa’s sound is a pretty sound description of Keenan’s work in Tool. However, Keenan is nothing if not a man to confound expectations.
Especially when the reason for his dislike of Frank Zappa could quite easily be him trolling, Keenan explained this in an interview with Tinnitist conducted in 2017. When the interviewer asks Keenan who he wanted to be growing up, Keenan mentions names like Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan and even Marvin Gaye. When the interviewer says he would have taken Keenan for a Zappa fan, Keenan shoots him down.
He says, “Nah. That’s heady stuff. It doesn’t hit you on an emotional level. It doesn’t soothe me. Don’t get me wrong; I really enjoy the theatrics and comedy sewn into Frank Zappa’s music. It’s just the music that doesn’t move me.” Take a moment to appreciate that. Maynard James Keenan, a man who took a song written in 6.5/8 like ‘Schism’ onto the Billboard Hot 100, doesn’t like a person’s music because it’s “heady stuff”.
That said, perhaps that’s the ideal way of paying tribute to the iconoclasts of the past. After all, the very last thing they want to do is anything expected of them.
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