While speaking with Guitar Player in a recent interview, Halestorm singer Lzzy Hale listed the ten albums that changed her life. One of those records was Tool’s 2001 LP “Lateralus.”
“My little bro Arejay [Hale] was getting really good on the drums,” she said. “He had learned Tool’s song ‘Schism’ from the radio, so I thought that I should get him the whole album for his birthday. We just devoured it. I ended up getting really into it myself. Listening to their music was just like watching a horror film.”
She continued: “I had a sh*tty waitress job, and I got us tickets to see Tool at Hershey Park. I was so stoked. Then Arejay did something to piss off our parents, so they wouldn’t allow him to go. I thought, Okay, this could be an opportunity to ask somebody out on a date, which I did.”
While Hale was a big fan of Tool, though, it seems her date was not.
“I asked this guy Nate, and he said yes. I was like, ‘Sweet!’ We didn’t have great seats, but it didn’t matter — the show was amazing,” Hale recalled. ”I was singing every word. Halfway through, I looked at my date and saw that he had fallen asleep — total deal-breaker for me. So in a weird way, Tool’s ‘Lateralus’ was a life-changer. My brother still teases me about it: ‘I wouldn’t have fallen asleep.’”
Last year both Hale and Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan were shortlisted by Loudwire in a competition for best frontperson.
Addressing being pitted up against Keenan, Hale wrote on Instagram: “Ya’ll can fight over us if ya want! It’s On Keenan! Glad to be on such a short list! Thank you Loudwire… The crazy thing is that Tool was the first concert I bought tix to. I was 17. I’m honored to now call him a peer.”
