runonandonandonanon posted on Tool’s Reddit about Adam Jones, Danny Carey, and Justin Chancellor’s recent Music Clinic event in Columbus:
WHERE THE COLUMBUS THREAD AT??
sober update: haha wow, some of this is really cringey but I’m leaving it. Lots of awesome stuff in the comments (and lots of people who think I’m an asshole and are probably right), so I’m going to go around replying with some more walls of text cause I woke up hungover and REALLY FUCKING EXCITED ABOUT HOW AWESOME THIS WAS, despite some misgivings.
I just want to add a note about my goal in posting this–I’m not really trying to criticize with all this ranting, I’m just trying to sort of process my complex feelings about the event and I decided to do so publicly because I think this is a cool community and I thought those that couldn’t attend a clinic may find some of my rambling interesting. And I’m interested in other people’s thoughts…because I do think this was a really interesting social experiment. How do you take three FUCKING LEGENDS and put them up close in front of a tiny group of fans, some of whom are inevitably going to be massive assholes, and make it a good experience for at least most of the people? I think some parts worked and some parts were awkward but the more I think about it the more interesting the whole experience becomes. It’s really making me think about the nature of celebrity, of art, of how people relate to each other and how I personally relate to others. To be honest I’m really uncomfortable with putting these thoughts out here for anyone to read…but I already started so I’m going to keep going. Kind of my own little experiment.
original post:
Hey I’m just going to get extremely drunk and post this unedited because I’m not going to post it tomorrow and I’m sure as shit not going to edit it right now. This was all stream of consciousness cause I’m fuckin blitzed
I’ll for sure talk about the clinc if there’s any specific questions tomorrow though. I came out of it with some mixed feelings so I just started writing shit down and now I’m schwasted so I’m just going to paste it in here.
I’m probably going to get critical of Adam here so let me preface it by saying he’s still one of my favorite guitarists, and he adds so much more to Tool than guitarin’. I think this experiment was probably mostly his idea. I’m sure it’s helping with the tour bills but I do believe they were trying to do something new and cool for Tool.
I’m a drummer so I was mostly there to see Danny. I felt kind of bad sitting right next to Adam and trying to look around him the whole time–Adam is fucking awesome!!! but Danny is untouchable.
I get the sense that Adam is the soul and the feeling of the band–he brings the color, he paints the picture. Danny and Justin are back there turning it into a song.
Danny was unbelievably good, not that anyone was surprised. I noticed on 10,000 Days that (while the band overall, Danny included, didn’t quite make an album with the cohesive feel of Aenima or Lateralus) he had basically transcended what Tool used to be–he’s just blasting around the kit with unimaginable speed and finesse because he’s mastered the instrument beyond any reasonable comprehension. You have to go to a clinic to have him explain the numbers he was throwing out on with each limb because the shit’s too dynamic for my mortal mind to decipher on its own. And it’s obvious he hasn’t been sitting on his ass since then…we didn’t hear much/any new music, but the new version of Opiate makes it clear that Danny Carey has not been resting on his laurels for 12 years. Opiate is the next level of that next level he hit on 10,000 Days; hearing him play again on a track from the early days just highlighted how much better the man has gotten, and my god has he improved from the merely incredible drumming we heard on the first EP, or even since the last record. The influences of his tabla studies are obvious as grace notes and ___ cascade and coalesce around the concommitant accents
I went in having heard Adam talk in his solo VIPs thinking he was a really chill, down-to-earth guy. I’m not convinced that’s not true but he just rubbed me the wrong way at points.
After they came out and played The Grudge (
It’s just like I was thinking the other day…jamming with people is all about the vibe. And the vibe isn’t what you’re playing, it’s how you’re interacting with each other at a personal level. Music is a social thing. To speak in terms of “status” (thanks Art of Manliness), when you suffer a status defeat from a bad song, you have less drive to play another. When you play a great song and feel that everyone is admiring you, you want to start a new song immediately (even if they aren’t).
Adam’s goal seemed to be for everyone to speak to him “at his level” if that makes sense–he basically wanted us to stop freaking out about how awesome it was to have the business end of Tool pointed at us, chill out and build a connection with him (/them I guess). I really like the thought but it’s hard for three guys to build a personal connection with 200 people, and I ultimately found the experience very unsatisfying at the “personal connection” level. It seemed like this was about trying to manufacture those moments where you happen to catch your favorite musician on the way out of the concert and you say the perfect thing and they laugh with you and you go away thinking “Adam Jones and I just shared a moment,” but that’s just not something you can force.
He had a few of those moments with fans but they were largely negative. Like near the beginning when he addressed the album some guy yelled “so next year” or something and Adam kind of got up in his face, offered him the microphone and just shamed the shit out of him, then said “It’s not a comedy show guys. …no offense. It just made me lose my train of thought.” In writing this makes him sound like kind of a dick, but I don’t think he really set out to be…I think he had a certain expectation of his fans, a kneejerk response to something, felt bad, tried to fix it, and then felt awkward about it. That sounds like what I would do in his position. But the thing is, that poor guy paid $500 to have a night he’ll remember for the rest of his life, and the memory he gets for the rest of his life is Adam Jones not liking him. Maybe he deserved the rebuke, but there’s no way he deserves that level of fuckswithhead. And I think that’s the crux of the issue for me–Adam is up there playing with peoples’ heads and has no fucking idea what he’s doing. And I sympathize with him, I think it’s great that he’s trying this completely impossible thing where legendary people invite some peons to not have things be one-sided and awkward, but it’s awkward as shit. These people worship your band and the things you say off the cuff have the potential for profound impact. Justin and Danny seem like they’re just along for the ride and were both an absolute pleasure. But someone has to lead the conversation, and that’s a dangerous position to be in. Maybe it wasn’t even Adam’s idea, he just ended up having to front it. I’ve tried that role myself in my professional life and can vouch for it being way harder than it looks–the best intentions quickly turn into everyone hating you.
Adam made a point of saying that they all get a 1/4 of all proceeds of everything and that’s why Tool hasn’t broken up (he did say “other than interpersonal harmony” or something to that efffect first, to his credit). He went on to say that Maynard gets a cut of this clinic (I think this was in the response to the unfortunate question about “why Maynard wasn’t there”) even though it “wasn’t very much of a cut” because they had “3 buses” and some other shit. I don’t think of Adam as the type of guy to lie about this kind of thing (not that I follow much outside of the actual music), so I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt and saying he’s in denial about this being a cost balancing strategy. Maybe he’s the guy it falls to to (wouldn’t that expression be more helpful without two to’s?) handle the band’s budgeting/deal with the guy who handles their finances. Anyway it feels like there is a lot of tension (or maybe it’s just me feeling it) about the band essentially being a business which is out to make money according to its particular strengths & branding just like any other business.
Adam wants people to connect on his feeling level, but doesn’t appreciate the strength of feeling those of us at the analytical (is that the INTJ opposite of Feeling?) end of the spectrum can get about the technical aspects of the music. Overall I was very disapointed with the “clinic” aspect of all this. I think better questions could have helped there and I really think it’s what they were going for, but you can’t show up as a Legendary Band to Talk About Music and expect to be free of your non-musical fans. You need a separate show for the musicians in the audience who are truly there to talk about the music at a technical level. (Not saying that’s possible or cost-effective, but that’s what you would have to do.)
Tool looks like /oo/_ which looks like a hand devil hornin’
SOME IDEAS FOR NEXT TIME:
Don’t tell people to calm down. Start out with something really quiet, then talk for a minute (or even talk for a minute before and after), THEN break out the Grudge. I know it’s not as popular as 46&2 or whatever but that ending is straight intense–Danny’s part on that ending is a holy shit moment for me every single time. (At the end after the cheering I yelled “AND THAT’S HOW I REACT EVERY TIME I HEAR THIS ON CD!!” in the ear of the guy next to me, who pretended not to hear me.) You can’t bring that shit out at the beginning then tell people “I know you’re really excited but we’re trying to go low-energy here.”
I get that you’re trying to be genuine but you can’t control a crowd’s energy by reasoning with it. You have to manage it. Adam said a few times “we don’t know what we’re doing, we just have a framework” then proceeded to basically do exactly what I’ve read about all the previous clinics. I think what Adam was going for here was something that requires careful management of the audience and that’s just not what he wants to do–he wants to tell the audience how he feels and just have that resonate. Look I think this is a simple personality type difference–I bet a bunch of people were drawn in by that attitude–but for me it just wasn’t what I was there for.
Please don’t go on a world tour. I mean do cause everyone wants to see you, but try to make it financially possible to take it easy on yourselves. That vibe is what it’s all about, and one of the best ways to kill it is to push yourself too hard. Another way is to think too much about money.
I really wanted to ask or hear more musician-focused content.
talked about how they were trying to make an
His drumming on the new recording of Opiate reminds me of the way
QUESTIONS I WANTED TO ASK:
Danny talked about his challenge being “getting the theory out of the way” to play more emotionally. Ten minutes later they’re talking about Rosetta Stoned where Danny plays five against six on his bass vs hands, then “tries” to keep 4 with his left foot. Where do emotion and theory meet?
In that vein, can you break down how you came to write things like the 3:4 beat in Eulogy or the 3:whatever the fuck in Lateralis? Was this a beat that was looking for a song, did it come up naturally from the riff, did you write it out on paper first?
Drumming is all about who you’re playing with. It’s a fundamentally reactive art. You have a deserved reputation for being one of the best active drummers in the world because of your command of polyrhythms and odd time (plus your from-the-hip double bass technique that goes “BAdabadabaDAbadabadaBA” instead of “BADADADADADADADADADABA”, but that’s beside the point). How much of that is owed to Adam and Justin bringing you tricky riffs, and how much is the path you choose? In other words, did you set out to play the mind-bending stuff, or is that just what the band calls for? (Your work with Volto! for example, from what I can tell on youtube, is awesome but a little more straight-ahead.)
Speaking of that double bass technique, don’t your legs get tired?!?
For the whole band: how much of that first jam session turns into the song? How do you go from improv to the record, where every note seems to be thought out in detail?
Toastmasters speech Disclaimer: Tool
This “no OK button” shit is a bad precedent. They think Windows 10 is soooo reliable…it is until it ain’t, just like the OS of 2028. Handle errors appropriately: give feedback when things work properly. (Handle errors appropriately: give feedback when things work properly.
I don’t see myself as “fan.” I’ve never really wanted to meet a celebrity, but I wanted to meet Danny because I’ve studied his work and through it feel that I have a connection to him. But that connection is one-sided; he doesn’t know me or care about me (nor should he). I thought about what I would say to him and that’s what I came up with–“dude I’ve never wanted to meet a celebrity, but you’re the exception because you’re that awesome” or something like that. Then we got to the meet & greet. The band left, Justin said “me and Danny will be back to mingle in a bit,” and I was left in a dark room with 200 other people, the bar was closed, the smoking area was closed, there was a staff member at the font door shouting “you can have your phone back if you leave” (I’m exaggerating a little but that was the gist), and I asked myself if it was worth standing there for two hours to tell Danny I thought he was cool. As I walked out the girl standing at the exit with her back holding the door open said “haveagreatnighttheresnoreentry”. It was 10:15. Well played, Express Live. Well played.
