The new Tool album Fear Inoculum was delayed for many reasons, including the instrumentalists taking way too long writing material, legal issues, and band tension. A Tool member even recently revealed why they rejected touring. While Maynard James Keenan wasn’t to blame for the music writing taking so long, his winemaking did make recording his vocals take a bit longer, as producer Joe Barresi had to fly to Arizona to get Keenan to record vocals for a couple hours at a time while he was harvesting wine. Sadly, Tool’s four members weren’t in a room together as vocals were recorded.
“It was during [wine] harvest,” Keenan told Tone Deaf. “I would spend time on the forklift, do some inoculating, do some wild ferments, whatever we were doing in the cellar while [Barresi and Mat Mitchell] gathered things together.
“Then I would come in and do about an hour of vocals, two hours of vocals, and then they’d take a beat to organize it and comp [the takes] and figure out some of the better takes. Then [we’d] listen back and go, ‘I can beat that, let’s beat that.’ Meanwhile I’m in the cellar working on the wines. That’s just logistically what it had to be. I didn’t have the luxury of time. So I made time.”
A Tool member recently used a disgusting word to take a shot at a bandmate. Ghostinthemachine commented on the Tool Reddit, “Interesting little note on one of Maynard’s quote and something I didn’t know- inoculation is a process in wine making. I’d have to imagine that if nothing else, his wine making influenced at least the name of the song/album?”
waffels responded, “There’s a 4 part series on YouTube where Revolver interviewed Maynard about his wine and stuff. He uses the word a few times during the interview, which took place a year ago. You could tell he likes the word when he would say it.”
25snakespourout also chimed in, “Inoculation can refer to a step in the process of making various kinds of fermented products eg: cheese etc. (seeding with bacteria/yeast).”
