Tool bassist Justin Chancellor almost missed his golden opportunity to join Tool, all because of fear.
Just this week, Tool celebrated their brand new album Fear Inoculum hitting No. 1 on the Billboard Top 200 with 270,000 copies sold, knocking over Taylor Swift.
To celebrate the album’s success, bassist Justin Chancellor spoke with Ernie Ball on his new podcast, Striking a Chord.
Looks like Chancellor almost made the biggest mistake of his life in 1995, refusing an invitation to audition for Tool, who were parting ways with original bassist Paul D’Amour.
“They were like, ‘We’d like you to come out and audition to be in the band.’ It was a little too much, really, to absorb and take in. I think right on that first call, I basically immediately just said, ‘Oh, I can’t do that. I can’t do that.’ Out of total fear. Just intimidation,” Chancellor recalls.
According to Chancellor, it was actually his brother who talked some sense into him, convincing the bassist that he at least needed to give it a shot, despite Tool and Chancellor living in separate countries at the time.
“I had the difficult thing of basically calling them back, and saying, ‘Would it be all right if I changed my mind?’ … “Anyway, they were really cool and they said yes,” the bassist relays.
“I got kicked out of my band, because as soon as I told them I was going for this audition, there were fireworks. Everyone got really upset… I was assuming that the future was looking pretty open because I didn’t have a band anymore. There’s no way I’m going to get the Tool gig. So I’m sitting there writing music frantically, for my new project… Actually, I wrote the riff of ‘Forty Six & 2’ in that period.”
You can listen to the full interview down below
