The twisting tale behind Tool’s ‘Sober’
Heavy metal likes to frame itself as the music of the outliers.
If you want to be cynical, and as a music writer, that’s basically all I’ve got; it’s easy to put together a pretty convincing argument that this is inaccurate at best and and self-serving lie at worst. From the very beginning of the genre, metal has been pilloried by critics but sold records by the ton. Several of the world’s biggest bands, from Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath to Metallica and Guns N’ Roses, to System of a Down and Tool have all been heavy metal bands.
On the surface, this is a pretty major flaw in the image heavy metal clings to as the bastion of outsiderness. How can it be a place where misfits go to feel included when there are probably as many people in the world who would call themselves AC/DC or Iron Maiden fans as Britney Spears or Mariah Carey fans? However, the truth is, there are two counterarguments to this. Firstly, it’s an undeniable fact that there are a whole lot more people in the world who don’t fit in than do.
Secondly, and more relevant to this article, is the fact that sometimes, bands come along and get massive off the back of music that is undeniably bizarre. For proof of this, look no further than Tool. The band that took ten-minute songs where the syllables of each line spelt out the Fibonacci sequence and played them in the world’s arenas and festival headline slots. You really couldn’t make it up, and yet, there are enough awkward, angry teenagers to make this a viable form of rock n’ roll music. Who knew?
Yet, the true selling point of Maynard James Keenan’s bunch of prog-metal madcaps lies not with their mind-melting weirdness or their sheer technical wizardry. It was instead their ability to take concepts that Peter Gabriel in 1975 would call “a little bit much” and tie them to absolutely undeniable pop hooks. Nowhere is this more apparent than with their debut single and one of their most beloved tracks, the 1993 classic ‘Sober’.
What inspired this classic Tool number?
There are Tool songs that use maths and science as metaphors for human relationships. There are Tool songs about Pneuma, the ancient Greek concept of the spirit of the soul. There’s a Tool song called ‘Stinkfist’. ‘Sober’ is unlike all of those songs in the sense that it is genuinely relatable to anyone not named Maynard James Keenan. ‘Sober’, at its core, is about addiction and the way that we kid ourselves that we’re not addicted to our vice of choice.
The specific lie that ‘Sober’ was inspired by will no doubt inspire eye-rolls of recognition to anyone unlucky enough to have spent much time dabbling in their local rock scene. As guitarist Adam Jones said in a March 1994 interview with Guitar School, “The song and video are based on a guy we know who is at his artistic best when he’s loaded. A lot of people give him shit for that. I don’t tell people to do or not do drugs. You can do what you want, but you have to take responsibility for what happens. If you become addicted and a junkie, well, that’s your fault.”
The video is an important mention because, as is the case with all Tool singles, it’s as important a part of the band’s artistic vision as the song is. There was one notable critic of the video, though. Noted 1990s pop star, Kurt Cobain of grunge no-hopers Nirvana; you ever hear of him? He was asked about his opinion on the ‘Sober’ video and found that it was derivative of stop motion animation directors, the Quay brothers. Cobain was so incensed by this that he said, “They should be slapped on the wrist for that”.
Yet Tool would have the last laugh. The video got traction on MTV, becoming the band’s breakout single and a concert staple of theirs to this day. Sometimes, even music as proudly and obviously for outsiders as this can have their day, and it’s important to celebrate it when it does.
