A Perfect Circle guitarist Billy Howerdel discussed Maynard James Keenan, who also fronts Tool who are also working on a new record, being like a ‘director’ when it came to APC’s new album Eat the Elephant in a new Denver Westword interview.
“In writing music for [a movie I recently did], you’re certainly writing in service to the movie. You are the last storyteller of this two-year process. There’s this script that the writer [has left] his ego fully intact on it. And then the director gets to reinterpret that and distills it down to what should be shot. And then the editor comes along and [decides] what works and what goes on the cutting-room floor. Then the last part of the puzzle is the composer. You’re there not to rearrange the film, but just to be in service to all that hard work that happened for so long and then create the mood. I think that’s a hard puzzle to figure out.
I kind of tried to take that approach with this record in a way, even though I’m the script writer, Maynard’s the director, and then I’m coming back in…but it kind of helped me put that in perspective and see it as a form that I could work within. It was good and it wasn’t good. It was everything. It was hard. There are certain things I want to do musically, but I have to get those out front and then let him respond to it.”
