A fountain of ever bubbling wisdom and hot takes, Maynard James Keenan has sat down with The Atlantic to discuss A Perfect Circle’s most recent album Eat The Elephant, opening up about the current state of rock music.
Despite Maynard’s involvement with some of modern music’s most influential and forward-thinking rock acts, he seems to believe that modern culture has fallen out of love with the danger and shock value rock music originally held. In the interview, Keenan said that rock used to “make parents nervous”, however, the ageing nature of rock’s pioneers has shed some of its excitement.
“[Hard rock used to have] danger – ‘It makes my parents nervous.’ But when you watch Ozzy Osbourne stumbling around in his kitchen picking up dog poop on ‘The Osbournes,’ well that scary part is gone, isn’t it?”
The Tool frontman went on to add that he believes that universally, we’ve “outgrown” the culture of rock because other things are now just as “dangerous”. “Rock, we’ve almost outgrown it as a culture. There are other things that are dangerous.”
When speaking about the new A Perfect Circle album, he noted that there are moments of “cliche” on the album that are obviously worked in.
“There’s bass, guitar, drums, and a guy singing and then sometimes screaming. I guess that’s a cliche for me. If you responded to those moments of mine in previous incarnations over the years, I suppose you’re going to have that sense memory.”
Keenan has also spoken openly about the new Tool album recently, saying that he blames “timing issues” on its lengthy recording process.
“If I see a window where, ‘OK, it doesn’t look like things are going to get done any time soon’ – because I need certain pieces to do my job – if I see there’s a window, that might expand based on me going, ‘I’m gonna go do something then.’ That’s why you had a lot of Puscifer for many years.”
