Earlier this week, A Perfect Circle frontman Maynard James Keenan successfully pranked drummer Josh Freese live on stage. In a video shared by Freese to Instagram of the playful incident, Keenan had buckets of rubber snakes dropped onto Freese while he and two other drummers were performing “Southbound Pachyderm” with Primus.
“It’s not every day Maynard pranks ya but when he does he’ll send out for 50 rubber snakes, have em dropped on you when he gives the sign (look close) and then throw MORE at you when you think it’s all done,” Freese wrote in the caption of the video.
“The fake snake thing is getting out of hand out on this tour. 😭 Luckily this was at the end of Pachyderm with Primus when us 3 drummers are just kind of rocking out a bit,” he added.
Keenan’s prank comes a week after Primus frontman Les Claypool pulled a rubber snake prank of his own on Freese.
On May 27th, Freese shared a video of Claypool attaching a rubber snake on a string to his back with the goal of making Freese think the snake was chasing him. At first Claypool’s prank didn’t seem to affect Freese in any way – until the drummer saw the fake snake move.
“Let me set the stage here. I love these fake snake on golf course pranks,” Freese wrote on Instagram regarding prank that happened in May. “I literally watch them every day and laugh. I also text them to Les Claypool in the middle of the night. So the other day he got a fake snake, asks to pose for a picture and clips it to me.
“When I first see it I laugh and know that it’s a joke. But I thought he just placed it there. I didn’t know he actually clipped it to me so after I’m talking a big game of ‘you can’t kid a kidder’ he actually gets me for two seconds and I love it. My favorite part is at the end when I go ‘this is the best.’ Also love his wife laughing the whole time while filming!”