In July, a strange, unnecessary squabble took place between Justin Bieber and Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan.
The feud started after Bieber shared a photo of himself listening to Tool’s 10,000 Days track ‘The Pot’ in an Instagram story.
Biebs posted the lyrics “Who are you to wave your finger?/ You must have been outta your head/ Eye hole deep in muddy waters/ You practically raised the dead.” He then followed up the story with another post, encouraging fans who might not be familiar with the track to look it up.
When Maynard James Keenan caught wind that Bieber was partial to a bit of prog, he simply tweeted “#bummer.”
— Maynard J Keenan (@mjkeenan) July 12, 2019
This interaction sparked a passionate response from Bieber’s wife, model Hailey Baldwin, who flamed Keenan on Twitter, writing, “You must be unhappy with yourself that you want to make people feel small who express their admiration for you.”
In a recent interview with Zane Lowe on Apple Music’s Beats 1, Keenan was asked about the incident. The frontman has seemingly changed his tune on Bieber and has targetted his distaste towards his team.
“He’s probably a good kid. It’s the crap that surrounds him,” Keenan shared. “He was never armed with the tools to handle it. And the people surrounding him are monsters. He’s living in an ocean of … Am I allowed to swear on this show? Okay, never mind. I was going to say … but I’m not sure I’m allowed to.
“God bless him, he’s a product of those things that we’ve spoken about numerous times on every project I’ve ever done.”
Keenan continued, “When I make a statement like ‘#bummer,’ it has nothing to do with him.
“It has to do with, I know that the ocean of shit that’s going to follow because he couldn’t just be a quiet Tool fan, he had to say it out loud, and now I know the flood’s coming from the people that don’t get it, and the people that think they do, and they’re going to argue with each other. And it’s going to be stupid. And it doesn’t matter. And this poor kid’s caught right in the crosshairs, as he was, as he is.”
You can listen to Keenan’s interview with Zane Lowe here.
Tool released their highly-anticipated fifth album, Fear Inocolum, on August 30th.
