Maynard James Keenan
SPIN Presents Lipps Service With Maynard James Keenan
On this week’s episode of SPIN Presents Lipps Service, host Scott Lipps spoke with Maynard James Keenan. In their conversation, Keenan shared some nuggets throughout the years. Keenan told Lipps about the first records he bought and Joni Mitchell’s impact on Tool. He also hinted at new music from both A Perfect Circle and Tool. Since it began in 2018, the acclaimed podcast has featured many of the biggest voices and personalities in music, including exclusive interviews with Red Hot Chili Peppers singer Anthony Kiedis, David Lee Roth, Shepard Fairey, Courtney Love, Dove Cameron, Mick Fleetwood, Nikki Sixx, Perry Farrell and many, many more. On the previous episode of Lipps Service, Lipps spoke with the Melvins. Buzz Osborne and Dale Crover looked back at their career, which started in the ...
Tool’s Maynard James Keenan Shares An Easter Story Short Film
Leave it to Tool, A Perfect Circle and Puscifer frontman Maynard James Keenan to offer an alternative to The Passion of Christ and Peter Rabbit for Easter viewing. “This is An Easter Story. There are many. But this one is ours,” Keenan says. In the seven-minute documentary-style clip — shot, directed, and narrated by Keenan — he speaks on the origin of Easter egg hunts, the vernal equinox, and more. As Keenan feeds and cares for the ducks at his Arizona vineyard home, he explains that searching for eggs on Easter is “not a random, non-sequitur ritual.” In his “no duck left behind” daily count, he discovers Larry is missing, and that she’s hidden in the brush to lay an egg. He also discusses the importance of community, concluding, “we can not always do this thing of life on our own.” An Ea...
Puscifer Share Enigmatic Video for ‘Theorem’
Puscifer, who dropped their first album in five years, Existential Reckoning, on Oct. 30, have released a video for the song “Theorem,” which offers an update on the search for Pusciverse desert dweller Billy D. It was directed by singer Maynard James Keenan, who recently spoke with SPIN about the album, including how “The new world order of the internet has polarized us to the point where we don’t look at what’s in front of us. We don’t really look up.” In the new “Theorem” video, shot in the middle of the desert — Keenan lives in rural Arizona — a briefcase is recovered from the bottom of a crater. It’s taken to some kind of lab to be examined. Kennan said in a statement: “People ask us ‘What is in the Briefcase?’ ‘Puscifer.’ And what is Puscifer?’ ‘What is Puscifer i...
Puscifer: Court Jesters of the Apocalypse
Feel like the COVID-19 era has been lacking a stone-cold jam to put some rhythm in your step as you nervously pace around your dwelling during self-isolation? Rejoice; after a five-year hiatus, Puscifer—the electro-rock side project of Tool singer Maynard James Keenan— is back with a new album, Existential Reckoning, and a lead single “Apocalyptical,” that’s infectious enough to make you want to dance the blight away and ponderous enough to make your mind work up a sweat while doing so. Though Existential Reckoning began to take form prior to the pandemic — Keenan notes that the band began “chipping away” at the new material in late 2018 —”Apocalyptical,” in particular, touches on the elephant in the room both coincidentally and otherwise. The track itself marries a weighty, sharp-an...
Maynard James Keenan Says Coronavirus Truthers Can ‘Eat a Dick’
Earlier this month, Maynard James Keenan revealed that he contracted COVID-19 in February while touring Australia and was still feeling residual effects eight months later. During a recent visit to The Joe Rogan Experience, the Tool/A Perfect Circle/Puscifer frontman went into more detail about his ongoing battle with the disease and relayed a message to anyone who thinks the pandemic is a hoax. After explaining that food began to taste weird in Australia — a symptom that was unknown at the time — Maynard said he instantly fell ill and spent four days in his hotel room in New Zealand. “I was just drinking water, hot showers, taking care of myself, hot tea, just trying to get through it and it sucked,” he recalled. But you didn’t know yet that like what, how bad this thing co...
Maynard James Keenan Had COVID-19
As COVID-19 numbers continue to grow, it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that some pretty well-known public figures likely had contracted the virus. You can add Tool/A Perfect Circle/Puscifer frontman Maynard James Keenan to that unfortunate list. In an interview with AZ Central, Keenan told the paper that he had contracted COVID-19 in February and that the virus was just as bad as you’d expect. “It was ugly,” the singer admitted, “I survived it, but it wasn’t pretty.” Even though time has passed, Keenan said that he continues to deal with the side effects of the virus, including constant coughing. “I still have the cough. Every other day, I have these coughing fits because my lungs are still damaged at the tips. And I just got over the inflammation that was going o...
Mer de Noms at 20: Musicians Celebrate A Perfect Circle’s Debut
At first, Tool fans were kinda bummed. Word of a Maynard James Keenan side project — while appealing on paper — was met with apprehension and dismay, as it threatened to further delay the studio sessions for the follow-up to Ænima, which they’d already been impatiently waiting years for. When the album finally hit record store shelves on May 23, 2000, those fans weren’t skeptical anymore. As they’d learn fast, A Perfect Circle was no Tool clone. The music was largely written before Keenan ever became involved. Guitarist Billy Howerdel, the creative strength behind the avant-rock outfit, was a former guitar technician who’d worked for Nine Inch Nails and Faith No More. He became friends with Keenan in 1992 after meeting on tour; Tool were opening for Fishbone, who Howerdel was working for. ...
