A Perfect Union of Contrary Things

by Maynard James Keenan

  He sang of the heady intoxication of dreams come true and the inevitable letdown, the urgency to begin again in the face of naysayers who dared dictate his thoughts and words. His words were his own now, his band’s, and he sang.

  The guests looked from one to the other, astonished by Maynard’s sure, even voice, his control, the athletic contortions and menacing crouch that punctuated his guttural, sustained scream. Tool’s music rose in a swell of offbeat tempos, then ebbed in quiet minimalism and mounted again, Danny’s drumsticks a furious blur and Adam’s powerful chords and chiming arpeggios echoing from the high ceiling until the plush Fred and Barney dolls suspended from the exposed beams vibrated.

  The sudden clamor brought partiers down from roof. They listened, transfixed, to Maynard’s lyrics of fear and sacrifice, shadows and empty promises and threats of violence—lyrics they suspected were about more than they seemed, as if their own fears were shouted beneath the canopy of twinkling white lights strung among the rafters.

  It didn’t take long for a report of the event to reach the other side of the continent. The next morning, Tom phoned Jack Olsen, who’d moved not long before to Connecticut. More than two decades later, Jack remembered well the note of wonder in his friend’s voice. “Tom was shaken by the performance,” he would recall. “What I heard was the expression ‘fully formed from the head of Zeus.’” They’d shared hot dogs with Maynard and Adam at many a Libertyville barbecue, battled them in countless midnight bowling tournaments, but they’d seen no sign of the creative fury Tool had displayed the night before. “Adam and Maynard were two people who could not have been, it seemed, further from the world of rock,” Jack would recall. “Adam was the special effects makeup guy and Maynard—Maynard was something we couldn’t quite put our finger on.”

  But on that night in the loft, Maynard and Adam, and Paul and Danny too, had come together in a force that belied their placid demeanors, a force larger and more complex than its individual parts. Tool’s debut performance had been a collective release of sound and emotion, a wave of contagious energy that swept the party guests in words and rhythms, driving and terrifying and familiar and continuing relentlessly into the morning.

  Just before dawn, guests made their way down the narrow staircase to the street, calling over their shoulders approval and congratulations and a request that Tool entertain at a private party at the Central later that month.

  “I’ve never been more surprised in my life,” Tom would recall. “Tool was awesome from day one. It was unbelievable.”

  “There was Maynard, this kind of quiet dude, and all of a sudden, he’s loud and he’s singing these angry songs,” Bill Manspeaker remembered of the loft performance. “This crazy guy with long hair screaming about shooting people in the fuckin’ head.”

  Manspeaker had seen the video of C.A.D.’s 1987 cable television appearance, had noted Maynard’s dramatic gestures, his strutting and head tossing and motions choreographed to mimic those of the idealized rock star. “You can see the musician in him, but he’s playing the musician role,” he would recall. “They’re all trying so hard in that video. Then he joins Green Jellö and we’re telling him, ‘Don’t try hard at all. Just be goofy. Be yourself. Be what you want to be, man.’” Brief as it had been, Maynard’s stint with Manspeaker’s band had freed him to relax into an organic interpretation of sound and words and message.

  “The first loft party was the decision point,” Maynard would explain. “I could be the actor in Green Jellö and play a part. I could keep doing this thing that was completely awesome chaos, or I could follow this opportunity to actually express my own ideas. Green Jellö was fun, but it would always be Bill’s thing, and I would just be a performer in the circus.”

  The Central on Sunset was acrid with the lingering aroma of stale beer and cigarettes. Danny struggled to fit his drum set on the shallow stage that ran along one wall, and the others crowded in beside him. The hundred or so birthday party guests hadn’t come to hear the band. They were there for the free-flowing drafts, to fête the guest of honor, to socialize as best they could above guitar and percussion and lyrics of right and wrong and the wish to sleep forever.

  Tool was still rough around the edges, but its power was undeniable, its sound too surprising, too full and heavy and insistent to ignore. “We just made their ears bleed,” Maynard would recall.

  Word of the performance reached the bookers at the Gaslight, the cave-dark club behind the Ivar Theatre where Maynard and Tom had not long before seen Dead, White and Blue and Liquid Jesus. Turnout was slight, not surprising at an early-evening performance by a brand-new group. But Tool took the stage like seasoned professionals, holding back nothing and executing the songs with the same forceful confidence they’d displayed at the loft and the Central. A few patrons looked up from their Budweisers, surprised to recognize the vocalist as the hot-dog shooter from English Acid. And the next day, they told their friends about the show.

  Not a day went by that a musician on some L.A. street corner didn’t hastily press a leaflet into Maynard’s hand, a slip of paper he misplaced or tossed just as quickly. The quarter-page notices were covered to their edges with poorly reproduced photographs and amateurish cartoons, crazy quilts of myriad typefaces competing for attention on a maize or purple background.

  But Tool’s flyers were simple and elegant, the message understated. At the center of full-size crimson or snow-white sheets, Maynard placed one inch-wide, ink-black word: Tool. Across the bottom, in sharp, clear lettering, he listed the date, location, and cost of admission.

  People would complain and tell me I was wasting paper. I would show them the other flyers and ask what they were all about. Of course, they didn’t know, because there was too much noise on the page for them to remember any of it. But ours sunk in.

  I was handing out flyers one day and Donita Sparks from L7 and her bass player Jennifer Finch came out of one of the clubs. I believe it was English Acid. They both took a flyer and went, “This is genius!” They were like, “Oh, dude, look at what you just did! This is awesome!” I was really into that band’s fury. They were like the Ramones to me. It was great to be validated by them, of all the people I saw that day.

  Within weeks, Tool had five shows under its belt, shows that drew ever-larger audiences to the L.A. dive bars that still booked unknown acts. A half-dozen devoted punkettes had appointed themselves the band’s first groupies and faithfully followed Tool from the Gaslight to Raji’s to Club Lingerie to Al’s Bar downtown. “It was a surprise, I’m sure to all of us,” Danny would say of the band’s sudden popularity. “We had so many musician friends trying to make it, but we knew we had something really special. I didn’t even care if we made it or not.”

  Maynard and the others knew it wasn’t exactly time to quit their day jobs. Bookings were sporadic, and more often than not last-minute. They might be called to perform on a weeknight after a long day’s work, but they schlepped their gear across town to take the unenviable first or second spot in the evening’s lineup of six bands, a spot that paid nothing. Club owners believed exposure was compensation enough, that a draft on the house was sufficient exchange for 20 minutes on the stage.

  Printing T-shirts and more flyers would cost money, money the band members did not have. But Maynard had been through this before and knew renting time in a studio wouldn’t be necessary. In late August, the band invited Adam’s friend Steve Hansgen to join them at the loft with his Fostex four-track to record the songs they’d completed only two months before. Steve, a bass player with punk band Minor Threat, invited the group to sit in while he put the finishing touches on the tape in his home studio in North Hollywood.

  It was one of those moments when you fall in love with a house. Oh my God. I had no idea there was something like this in L.A. It was a real home. It had a backyard and a front yard with a big tree in it. It looked like a gingerbread house. I felt almost excited enough to
go look for the oven.

  Adam sketched a striking logo to illustrate the glossy black J-card, a combination open-end and double box wrench that suggested strength and authority. His design displayed a certain salty innuendo as well, a hint of humor to balance the intensity of the six tracks on the self-titled cassette.

  Business was business, Maynard insisted. There would be no freebies, even for those claiming to be record company reps. “If they wanted to be a part of what we were doing, they could pony up their six bucks and go listen to the tape,” he would explain. “I didn’t need their record deal. I just needed to be up here doing this.” The goal of most new bands was the record contract, the golden prize at the end of the dive bar tunnel. Maynard had watched too many of them hand out demo tapes like candy tossed from a float in an Independence Day parade, hoping against hope their work would fall into the hands of an eager A&R rep.

  “Their priorities were way out of line,” he remembered. “The most important thing was to focus on the music. Make sure all the pieces are in place, do things properly and for the right reasons, and don’t get sidetracked.”

  The A&R reps who prowled the clubs were indeed searching for the next Nirvana, the next REM, the next band that would bring to their label fortune and acclaim. But identifying the next big thing before it quite existed was a challenge, given that they weren’t exactly sure what sound or message or even genre they were looking for. Of one thing they were certain: The band that would justify their investment would be the one that excited the public.

  By early September, there was no doubt about it: The public’s enthusiasm was centered on Tool. When Maynard and Danny and Adam and Paul appeared on the bill, the little clubs were packed.

  Tool was the band that delivered exactly what they’d come for: furious aggression tempered by subtle humor, ambiguous lyrics that demanded attention, solid musicianship, and the shock of unexpected tempo. And a wiry, manic frontman with a piercing scream and an unrelenting stare he fixed on the middle of the captivated crowd.

  The clubs Tool played that summer weren’t the glittering, sold-out arenas rock star dreams are made of. They were cramped and dark, and their kinked mic cables were mended with fraying gaffer tape. A patina of grime covered the mismatched chairs and unsteady tables, and in some, like the Gaslight, water seeped onto the stage from the men’s room upstairs. Taking a slot on their schedule was a rite of passage as aspiring bands ascended in the L.A. music hierarchy. “If you went on at 6 o’clock, you’re a fuckin’ loser,” Bill Manspeaker would explain. “If you went on at 11, that means you’re kickin’ ass and soon you’re gonna be playing on the Strip. Bands that weren’t good enough yet played at places like the Coconut Teaszer, the clubs just at the edge of cool.”

  A wrestler has to bring his best game onto the mat. You can’t worry about whether your opponent is in tip-top condition and you can’t worry about whether the audience is all open-minded and ready to like what you’re doing. It doesn’t matter if it’s a shallow stage, whether there’s two people or 200 in the audience, or if there’s pee coming down on your head. You have to adapt, to morph to the space and command it.

  Lou Maglia rarely ventured into the clubs. He left it to his reps to endure the stale cigarette smell and beer-sticky floors in their search for promising new talent. But in early September, he’d decided to join them at Gazzarri’s, a fixture on L.A.’s waning hair metal circuit. That evening, the club would host Dumpster, the hottest band on Zoo Entertainment’s radar, and Maglia welcomed the chance to see for himself what the underground favorite might bring to his label.

  Kevin Coogan and his A&R colleagues Anna Loynes and Matt Marshall looked forward to the performance as well, but admittedly with an ulterior motive. Dumpster’s show would end in plenty of time for them to reach the nearby Coconut Teaszer and Tool’s 10 o’clock performance there. Kevin had told his coworkers all about the loft party, and when he’d played Tool’s demo tape for Anna and Matt, they’d agreed that the band was destined for success. And they were determined that the label to represent them would be theirs.

  But they played their plan by ear. “As good as Tool was, I was a bit nervous to have the president see them after seeing Dumpster,” Matt would recall. “We figured if they killed it, it might not be the best night for him to see Tool.”

  The night, in fact, was not one of Dumpster’s best. The band was unfamiliar with the club, and the early showtime drew a sparse audience. To make matters worse, only a few seconds into the opening number, drummer Kellii Scott came down hard on his pedal, plunging the beater squarely into his kick drum head. The group soldiered on as best it could until vocalist Robert English leaned into his mic and announced that their set was over. “After one song, they left the stage,” Matt would recall. “It was absolutely crazy!”

  Their evening needn’t end, Maglia’s team assured him. A new band was playing just down the street, a band featuring Danny Carey of Green Jellö. “I wasn’t excited,” Maglia admitted in a 2014 interview. “But the night was young, and it was over as far as Dumpster went, so I said, ‘Yeah, let’s go down there and see what’s going on.’” And they made their way through the yellow L.A. twilight to the Coconut Teaszer, the club at the eastern end of Sunset, the point where the cool began.

  A small but enthusiastic group of Tool followers stood in a semicircle before the stage, the half-dozen young women who’d trailed them from club to club all summer long. Adam and Paul began their guitar intro and Maynard grasped his mic, crouched, and glared menacingly about the room. The stage burst in rush of raw energy, in Maynard’s dark lyrics, his strut across the stage, his scream suspended in the smoky dark.

  “All I could think was that Maynard was a musical Charles Manson,” Maglia remembered. “He was frightening. He didn’t have a shirt on and he had a big scorpion tattoo from his neck to his ass. When he sang, he tucked in his stomach like he was gonna throw himself up from inside himself.”

  The band had been forewarned of Maglia’s possible presence, but they performed that night no differently than they did in rehearsal or a show on a too-small, urine-soaked stage. They dominated the space, made it their own, poured their passion and their fear and their need into every nuance, every anguished note. “That’s what we did every night,” Maynard explained.

  It was Maglia’s job to imagine. The Coconut Teaszer was just the Coconut Teaszer, the Hollywood night a night like any other, but he visualized the band in larger venues, bright venues with state-of-the-art sound systems and colored spots following Maynard’s contortions across the stage, and his vision was already in the present tense. “My first thought was, Yeah, he’s great in a club. He’s very impressive when you’re standing five feet away from him, but what about in a stadium?” he would recall. “Can he scare the shit out of people like he’s scaring the shit out of me here?”

  After the show, Maglia turned to make his way to his home in Beverly Hills, but not before leaving Anna with instructions—classic Hollywood instructions. “Tell them to come to my office tomorrow,” he said.

  Maglia smiled across his wide desk. Zoo Entertainment, he assured Maynard and Danny and Adam and Paul, would offer what other labels would not. Should they decide to sign with him—and he sincerely hoped they’d decide to sign with him—they’d enjoy creative control over their work, and because his was a small independent label, they could always speak directly with him, free of the corporate chain of command. To be sure, he warned, they’d soon be targeted by other labels now that Zoo was interested.

  He alerted them of the tantalizing tactics the reps would employ to divert attention from the risks: the dazzling future they’d offer, the Nova Scotia lobsters, the $400 bottles of wine. And after the band had heard it all, he promised, he’d be there waiting when they were ready to talk again.

  Indeed, once word of Zoo’s interest in Tool hit the street, ponytailed reps from Sony and Mercury, from Atlantic, Intersco
pe, and Epic descended upon the group and pressed embossed business cards into their hands. They arranged lunch meetings at Sushi Nozawa, dinners at Marino Ristorante and the Palm, where they discussed funding and promotion and painted a future of spotlit arenas filled to capacity and slots on the Billboard 200 chart.

  It was exciting, but I was wary. I’d heard enough Hollywood horror stories, and I was very cautious. I immediately started looking for the escape route in case somebody tried to fuck me up. If I’m gonna run this cross country course, how do I know I can finish without them putting up construction halfway through? I needed to ask the right questions to find out how they might trip me up and interrupt the job I needed to do.

  Certainly, filet mignon was seductive fare after months of ramen noodles and takeout from the Thai restaurant across the street. But the spellbinding haze cast by the A&R reps was no match for Maynard’s long practice in remaining clearheaded in the face of empty rhetoric. He’d learned a long time ago the importance of thinking for himself, and as the sommelier brought another bottle of ’89 Montrachet Laguiche to the table, he sat back on the upholstered banquette and offered his goblet. “I got a glimpse of what power was and how quickly it could be abused,” Maynard would remember of the labels’ over-the-top courtship rituals. “So you play with it. If you can pretend they’re wearing bunny ears while you’re eating their expensive food, it’s the most exciting time in your life.”

  Ahead lay contract negotiations, discussions of album art and liner notes, foreign rights and royalties, a journey a band might be lucky to embark upon after months and years of performance and practice, but one he and Danny and Adam and Paul were beginning after only seven shows in second-rate clubs.