“There’s always something”: The song Maynard James Keenan thought he never sang right
As one of the most successful progressive metal groups since the 1990s, Tool are a group that has certainly worked hard to earn their hugely devoted fanbase. Sitting at the forefront of the band’s lineup since their inception in 1990, vocalist Maynard James Keenan has always been one of the main creative driving forces behind the band, and is largely responsible for carving out the band’s identity.
While often considered too complex and abrasive by those who haven’t ever considered themselves fans of the group’s output, this approach is also what has helped earn them such an ardent support. The regularly shifting time signatures and hard-to-decipher rhythmic patterns, paired with the often stomach-churning lyrical themes of the group are ultimately a selling point for the group.
With so few other bands producing music that offers both of these facets in equal measure, Tool were able to generate a significant profile. However, while they’re known for the intricacy in their compositions, that offers very little room for making errors, and the band have to ensure complete precision when executing their ideas on record and in live performances.
Tool were unable to get away with making mistakes, because the way in which they displayed their intelligent musicianship wasn’t through free improvisation and jamming, it was wholly down to being a tight unit. Rather than taking an approach which allowed them to slip up and divert from what is considered ‘correct’, Tool’s ethos was to be completely focused.
In a 2010 interview with Junior, Keenan was asked about how Tool manage to prevent their live performances from becoming stale, and he would admit that the hardest part of performing is “not falling into a rut”. Further elaborating on this, the frontman would state that “you don’t have to beat yourself up, you don’t have to suffer for your art but you definitely have to be a little confused to understand where to move.”
When asked specifically about his approach to performing a song like ‘Stinkfist’, one of the band’s early singles from their 1996 album, Ænima, Keenan said that “there’s always something I can improve in it.” Elaborating on how this sense of perfectionism often gets in his way and how he would potentially like to change things in his live recreation of songs, he continued by saying: “There’s parts of that song that I never quite get right, so I’m always looking for those spots to see how I can do them better. At some point, some of it becomes autopilot. I don’t have to think about those pieces, I feel like I’ve got those down.”
There are always going to be small errors in a band’s performance, and no matter how much one might try to iron out the imperfections in their work, human nature suggests that it’s never going to be fully possible to get them out of your work. While Keenan might strive for this sense of perfection in his performances of ‘Stinkfist’ and other songs, there’s surely only so much that he can do to improve a song that is already a fan favourite. Talk about setting high standards…
