Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan has detailed his harrowing experience with coronavirus.
The musician recently sat down with The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, in an appearance that saw him confirm that he contracted the virus whilst touring Australia and New Zealand in late February.
“I’m in Australia, we went out to dinner and immediately food didn’t taste right, but this is now, this is all hindsight, right – I didn’t know at the time,” Keenan mused. “We didn’t know that these are the things you’re looking for, like immediately…I had to get on an international flight the next morning, fly to New Zealand.”
At this point, no one quite understood the gravity of the virus. He continued, “So we got there, I was, like, four days in the hotel, ’cause we have four days off before the shows.
“So I was just drinking water, hot showers, taking care of myself, hot tea, just trying to get through it and it sucked. But you didn’t know yet how bad this thing could have been. If I’d have known how bad it could have been, I would have been freaking out.”
Maynard James Keenan detailed that even now, eight months after catching coronavirus, he’s still experiencing after effects.
“Whatever cough I got in New Zealand, like every other day, I’ll have a coughing fit for, you know, for 10 minutes, coughing up stuff, so I have lung damage from it still,” he said. “I’m still feeling residual effects of [coronavirus].”
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Elsewhere in the podcast, Keenan shared a few choice words for coronavirus deniers and conspiracy theorists that may assume he is making up his story.
“Maybe I didn’t almost die, but I have friends who almost died. It was ugly. And then you have people going — apparently I’m being paid to say this. Eat a dick, dude.”
Rogan continued to muse that “fatso Trump”, by some divine miracle, managed to recover from the virus in mere days and “never looked better.”
“Still a douchebag!” Keenan added.
Watch Maynard James Keenan discuss his coronavirus experience with Joe Rogan:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cz0ka4DuxPw
Maynard James Keenan’s side-project Pucifer will unleash their fourth full-length album, Existential Reckoning, on Saturday, October 31st.
The band will celebrate the release of the album with a special livestream concert experience, Existential Reckoning: Live at Arcosanti. The live show will see the band head to the desert of Arizona for a subversive live performance.
“People who are not necessarily from Arizona came here and found that creative tick that burrows under your skin here, something that sets you in a motion to respond to this, what I consider to be equal parts inspirational and hostile, environment,” explains Keenan.
Existential Reckoning: Live at Arcosanti debuts live on Saturday, October 31st at 1am GMT and will remain available on demand for 72 hours following its world premiere.
