Maynard James Keenan discussed fans having to wait a long for for a new Tool album in a new Rick Beato interview.
“Again, it’s also logistics of timing. Like the guys in Tool, they just take longer to process information and get it together and then present me something that I can start building on. I’ve made the mistake in the past of trying to build on something that wasn’t ready yet, and then all the work I put into building on ‘the thing’, they changed the foundation. I’m trying to decorate the house and then you move where the doors are and move the windows or add a floor. I got to start over as an interior decorator. So I have to wait for them to do it. So there’s time [for other musical projects]. I have time to do all these other things in between because I can and I should.”
He added, “One could argue a little bit of discipline and a little prodding, a little cattle prod or a taser would help move those guys along a little faster, but that’s their process. You just kind of respect it. Um, you know it’s frustrating. I’m sure they’re frustrated with me because they hand it to me and I’m like it’s done, like you didn’t take any time with it? Yes, I took 50 years right for this reaction to these things.
I’ve been preparing for decades to hear these things and be able to react honestly and I riff on them… on all the projects, I riff on the thing. I go back- I try to beat the riff. I try to beat the riff again. I actually record words to some stuff and try to beat it and I usually come back to the first or second stream of consciousness take because that’s that’s the jazz part of it. Your first reaction probably was the correct reaction because it’s partly conscious but mostly unconscious reaction to the rhythms, having not reacted at all by listening to it for a week or two, driving around in the car.”
