Mike Patton and Dave Lombardo - those guys are a good, heavy influence.
Danny Carey
Chaos is the undercurrent of everything that happens in life.
It kind of renews my faith in humankind that there's long attention spans left out there that can listen to a 12-minute song.
We're dealing with the chaos of life, and we're rubbing it down. The deeper you rub, the more patterns you can see until you realize that it's really an organized chaos. There isn't really ever any chance to understand it all, but we're here to keep rubbing.
Tony Williams, Billy Cobham and Lenny White; some of those guys were big influences on me.
The lead singer is such a prominent thing, where drums are more of a supporting instrument.
We toured for close to three years after 'Undertow' came out, so by the time we started to work on 'AEnima,' we had matured as functional musicians, and that changes your sound completely. Once you have that kind of freedom, an idea will come into your head and you can do it justice.
Most of the parts are really gone over and over and over again with Tool. It's a very composed situation. We spend weeks if not months working on all those songs. There's not much room for improvisation.
Making 13-minute tracks is pretty alternative, I think!
We rarely write in the studio. Everything's already completely arranged before we go in. That way, we can really focus on getting the recording right.
I think there is a collective unconsciousness, or some sort of consciousness, that you can tap into if you're open and brave enough to let everything go and be part of that.
Pink Floyd and Yes and some of the old art-rock bands, you didn't know what they looked like. You were always looking for pictures, and that added to the mystique. It's much more interesting when you're forced to imagine or guess at these things because usually it's better than reality.
The drums can get pretty boring as a solo instrument.
Every record I've ever done with Tool has been on tape.
Before 'AEnima,' we were just following our gut. There was a lot of anger in the air and we never tried to control that. But just as we mature as humans, with 'AEnima' we tried to be fueled more by spiritual ideas or more of a conscious mode of aiming things in the right place or trying to take more responsibility for our art.
It takes us long for a reason, but the end result is: we all completely believe in, not just every verse, every chorus, every bar is scrutinized, and that's the result of what you'll hear on this record.
Anybody who digs your art, you what to share it with.
The sincerity of delivery is what always strikes me when I hear a good band. It's artist-expression driven, as opposed to being record-producer driven. There's a huge difference. One's motivation is impure, while the other is the highest form of expression, so that's what you aim for.
No one can be their best every night.
Yeah, I grew up playing lots of jazz music in school.
You can equate our music to childbirth. It's brutal and harsh, but there's still a beautiful thing occurring.
The thing is, the way we write is all jams and bits and pieces that get pieced together and sometimes things are written with intentions of being a song, and then all of a sudden the main riff of this song, six months later turns into a verse or a chorus of another song.
Stylistically, we're trying to push things in different ways, but it always comes out sounding like Tool no matter what we're trying to do.
We're not in the business of putting up barriers; that's the job of politicians. They're the idiots who want to build walls between people.
We try to write things that can be interpreted on lots of different levels. There's not a right way or a wrong way... people can adventure a little.
We have pretty much all the facets of our business under our control now. Relying on someone else to do the right thing, you're just setting yourself up to get screwed. We control our own destiny and it's a really good feeling.
It drove me mad not being able to know more about Pink Floyd when I was a little kid. But that's the great thing - there was this mystery behind it, and we couldn't find out enough. It made your mind work, it made you seek after it or try to interpret it. It made you envision or imagine what they were doing.
There are no leftover Tool songs because of the process it takes to compose our songs - the way we hash it out in a room with all three or four of us, that there's tons of riffs and jams and things. But there's no put-together songs that are sitting in the eaves.
Our crowds seem to keep growing whether we put out a record or not, so I feel very lucky to have that support.
Our fans are loyal as can be, that's for sure.
It's pretty weird to me that our music is as popular as it is.
We're not really in the business to sell ourselves. We want to sell what we work on.
All my best drumming, I'm sure, has never been recorded.
We've always considered our music to be a healing process. It's our 'tool' to work things out with each other and try to communicate with each other and learn things. And it's good for everyone - us and our audience - to get together.
I've been taking tabla lessons and they've helped expand my rhythmic horizons.
We've never really been susceptible to pressure from anyone from the outside. We've been really good at negating any outside influences. We're really hard on ourselves. The filter that we put upon things qualifying to end up on a Tool record is pretty extreme, so we figure we've got that part of it under control.
We got full artistic integrity and autonomy over what we were doing, and that was the main important thing that kept our band alive.
It seems like on every record we have this big, epic thing like 'Rosetta,' 'Wings For Marie' or 'Lateralus.'
Those late '60s early '70s bands would take it really far out and get super-weird.
