Maynard James Keenan as a self-described ladies man during his younger days in Tool, and a fan on Reddit has uploaded a backstage pass from many years ago. The pass shows women engaging in many ‘intimate’ acts. The band have been in the news lately, as the new Tool album release date is August 30th.
A fan named crazy4schwinn posted, “My ‘girlfriend’ was invited backstage at a Tool show in Cleveland. This is what she gave me after she finally came out. She never told me how she got it. But the pass says it all.”
Rickard403 posted, “I was backstage once. At that show 3 different back stage passes were given out, (COBO hall detroit. Aug 26th 2002 iirc). One had a background of girls kissing. It was only given to women, surprise. Mine had alex grey artwork, i should still have it somewhere. The other i dont remember. It may have been for family or close friends. Each resulted in access to different areas.”
Maynard James Keenan’s 2016 biography A Perfect Union of Contrary Things described his trysts with women, via Ultimate-Guitar.
The book states:
Maynard had never trashed a hotel room, never stalked from the stage in a petulant snit and refused to finish a show. But the lessons of the peyote ceremony and yet another reading of Joseph Campbell hadn’t been enough to stem his becoming a celebrity cliché.
The lights and applause were seductive, and Maynard’s success guaranteed that at every tour stop would be willing women, clichés themselves seeking a one-night dalliance with a Grammy-winning rock star.
Maynard said in the book, “It happens to almost everybody who suddenly becomes famous. We’re not wired to handle that much attention, but it just seems like the path you’re on, so you go down it. You want intimacy, but you’re in motion. You’re not ready to settle down, so you just follow the sexual thing.
Most people fall into chemical addiction, which is harder to get out of. I was lucky enough to fall into a kind of ego addiction. ‘She likes me! She likes the name of the band! She likes what I sing about!’ And the more you dabble in that, the less chance there is of a relationship. She has no idea who I am. I knew the difference between attention and real connection, but I forgot it for a minute. I didn’t even think about what I was doing. I was just having fun.”
He later said, “My biggest concern was to get laid. My priority was to be validated, to be desired. This was my ticket to undo all of the dismissive behavior from family and teachers and the army of people that had ignored my potential.
It was my chance to have somebody who I didn’t even know and who didn’t even know me give me everything in a moment, without question. Just surrender. I’d never had that. That power was new.”
The book also states:
He might prearrange a tryst with the woman in Berlin he’d met the last time he’d passed through, never doubting her interest. And he cavalierly skipped after-show drinks with old friends to prolong a rendezvous with an attractive stranger selected from the Seattle audience the night before.
The assignations were consensual, no-strings-attached, seemingly perfect. But the validation was short-lived. ‘You’re left wanting to be wanted for you, and you’re not going to get that with these people,’ he would explain years later. ‘They’re looking for something else, that larger-than-life thing. But you lose track of that and fall victim to your own behavior.’ And in Düsseldorf and Providence, he knew, some exciting someone would be waiting.
