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What's up, everybody?
I'm Finn McKenzie.
This is the punk rock NBA.
And today we are here to talk about Tool.
And if you've watched my other videos,
you know that I have made a few jokes
about tool fans like the whole diaper
thing, which I still don't get.
And to be honest, I don't want to get it.
But in all seriousness,
the band really fascinates me
because I can't think of a single other
band in the entire world
of rock and metal
that has done what tool has done.
They have four platinum albums,
they have several Grammys.
They even beat Taylor Swift for the number
one spot on Billboard in 2019,
and they achieved all of that
despite following absolutely
none of the rules about what is supposed
to make a band successful.
For one,
they have a very sparse discography
with only five albums in 30 years
and material
that's almost deliberately difficult
to get into with all these elaborate
progressive songs that are sometimes seven
or 8 minutes long with tons of complex
time signatures and kind of vague lyrics,
as well as a frontman who seems
to kind of hate their fans, for example,
literally calling them insufferable.
First things first come foot down.
Are you going to call him? Me too.
I'm not the lead singer.
I'm the only singer.
We're not the fucking Supremes
and I'm not Diana Ross.
Third, I'm not of or from Tool I'm
into All and Puscifer
and Perfect Circle and your mom.
And so the question that I have
is relatively simple but hard to answer,
which is what is their secret?
Why is Tool literally like 100 times
more popular than any other prog band?
How did they outsell Taylor Swift
without following any of the rules?
And of course, the question that we are
all asking, are their fans really
that bad?
Those are the questions
that I will try to answer in this video.
But first, if you haven't,
please check me out on Twitch.
I'm streaming
twice a week from 4 to 7 p.m.
Pacific on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
and there's a link to that
in the description of this video.
When it comes
to tool and their sort of complex
relationship with their fans,
I think this quote from a die
hard fan sums it up nicely
and kind of hits on a lot of things
that I'm going
to talk about later and 15, 16, 17
and my early twenties,
I was searching for something
and I thought they had the answers.
It was a mysterious band talking
about some profound shit getting older.
I realize
I'm not going to get some enlightenment
and not find all the answers
to problems at a tool show.
But in order to really unpack that
and what it means,
we have to start way back
at the very beginning.
Tool started out back in 1991
when they met after
the members of the band had moved to L.A.
from various parts of the country.
Maynard had gotten out of the Army
and was playing with Danny Carey
in the band Green Jello.
The guitarist Adam Jones,
was working as a special effects
artist in Hollywood
on some really high profile movies.
For example, Predator Two
and Nightmare on Elm Street and in 1992,
they released their debut
EP called Opiate.
My Mother was
he found out,
I guess, like what I'm doing.
And on the back of that EP, they quickly
hit the road, touring with bands
like White Zombie, Corrosion of Conformity
and Rage Against the Machine.
I saw them a couple of times back then.
The one that really sticks out to me
was in 92 or 93 with Rollins Band.
I didn't really know who they were,
but I was totally blown away.
Maynard Just like seemed like
he was possessed on stage,
kind of like the evil Goblin
version of Henry Rollins.
I remember him going on this kind of
weird rant about how he was just an object
the same as the jug of water
that he was holding in his hand.
Anyhow, Opiate was not exactly
a huge commercial success by any means,
but it did get good reviews.
The people who did buy
it liked it, and from putting in the work
every night on the road, they slowly
but surely built up an organic fan base
that was primed for the release
of their second album, Undertow in 1993,
which amazingly
debuted at number two on Billboard
and pushed them to the very front
of the pack of newer metal bands.
Since
the band.
And I think that there were a few factors
for their success.
One of them was just good timing.
This was at the height of grunge.
His popularity when bands
like Alice in Chains and Soundgarden
were showing the world that you could be
heavy and, for lack of a better word,
also be intelligent, sophisticated
and actually have something to say.
This was also when mainstream audiences
were more receptive than ever to music
that was honestly just kind of weird.
For example, bands
like Primus were going
platinum in the nineties were a wild time.
The second factor, I think, was Beavis
and Butthead, which was MTV's most popular
show at the time with the power
to basically make or break bands.
For example, they're responsible
for White Zombie blowing up,
and Beavis and Butthead
gave a lot of love to the video for Sober.
Cool. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah,
I could move my.
Arm that fast.
I'd never leave the house.
And speaking of which,
another factor was their videos,
which were very cool and innovative
and honestly stand up today.
Nobody else was doing that
kind of stop motion animation at the time,
all of which was led by their guitarist
Adam Jones, who, like I mentioned earlier,
had all that experience working on like
legit Hollywood special effects projects.
So he was able to bring that to the band.
And it was actually so good
that they won a Billboard Award
for Best Video by a new artist.
And the fact that the band
wasn't actually in their videos,
I think kind of contributed to this idea
of tool being this kind of mysterious,
brooding band
with kind of a hidden, deeper message.
As Maynard said,
I don't want people to latch
onto my movements or the way I sound
or the way Danny hits his drums.
That's a distraction
from the piece at hand.
When you look at the Mona Lisa,
I don't have any idea
what the artist looks like
or what he's about.
And all of this
was very deliberate on their part.
They had the ability to take these kind of
wild, creative chances
because they chose to sign with a new,
smaller label called Zoo Entertainment
that offered them less money
than some of the other labels
looking at Tool.
But in exchange for that
gave them complete creative control.
And from the very beginning
they created all these layers of meaning
and mythos around their music.
For example, in early interviews
they claimed that they were influenced by
this philosophy called Lachrymose Elegy,
which was based on this obscure book
from the 1940s.
The only problem is that was all bullshit.
The book never even existed,
and this was one of the earliest examples
of tool
trolling the media and their own fans,
something that I think is a really
underappreciated part of what tool is.
They're like kind of simultaneously
profound and deep
and yet also totally juvenile and stupid.
Hi, I'm Britney Spears
from Whitney Houston.
Like how the cover of Tool
is this really striking, visually
polished, sophisticated image of this
kind of demonic rib cage or something?
You don't really know
exactly what it's about,
but you feel like
it has some kind of deep meaning.
And then on the bottom of the CD tray,
well, there's a picture of a cow licking
its own asshole as another example
that take the name of their second album.
One way you could say it is Anima,
meaning Soul or Life Force, something
that Carl Jung talked about a lot.
Or you could say it as anima, meaning
one of those things that used to score
water up your ass and you'll notice that.
But stuff is kind of a recurring theme
at all.
My plants like it all the way.
I want to see it go down.
And which one is the quote unquote real
meaning of the album's name?
I guess only the guys in the band
really know, but I would guess
that probably both of those things
are valid interpretations.
Although interestingly,
it seems like a lot of tool fans
seem to ignore the humorous
and silly parts of their message
and kind of only focus on the parts
that seem like darker and deeper
and more profound.
And so in a lot of ways
I feel like Tool is kind of constantly
fucking with their fans creating
this kind of imagery that at first
glance is really dark and edgy,
but in reality it's just a dumb joke.
And the problem is that the music
that we were listening to
didn't quite have the climax right
where we wanted
the climax
for our own personal masturbation.
So we decided to do
is write the songs that had the climax
in the right positions for us,
depending on what day we were jerking off.
The other thing we have to talk about it
as one of the factors
in their early success
is that these guys were clearly
some of the absolute best
musicians in the scene,
especially Danny Carrey's drumming.
But what I find especially interesting
is that although their songs
obviously can be kind of long
and meandering at times,
they really aren't as self-indulgent
as a lot of other progressive bands are.
And so if you were just sort of the casual
metal fan that heard them on Beavis
and Butthead or whatever,
you could just kind of get into their
groovy riffs, which were not so different
from other bands.
They are like helmet or White Zombie
or Rollins Band.
But if you're a musician
or more of a hardcore fan,
there's like almost an endless amount
of all these little technical details
to their music that you can geek out on
and so on.
The back of all of that undertow went gold
in just a few months, and it was clear
that the band had broken
through to a whole new level of stardom,
all of which led up to the release
of their second album,
Anima, in 1996, which many people consider
to be their defining album.
And it debuted at number one on Billboard,
led by the first single Stink Fist time.
And this song in particular,
I think is a really great example
of what makes tool tool.
On the one hand, the song seems to be
about how a lot of people
in modern society
become kind of like pleasure junkies,
going to further and further extremes
to feel aroused and alive
because they get so desensitized
by everything in modern life,
which in my opinion is a pretty genuinely
deep, insightful idea.
But then on the other hand,
the song might just be about fisting,
or maybe it's about both of those things.
Who knows
well too. You really just never know.
The artwork is also very dark and cryptic
with a long essay about ketamine
and Timothy Leary, the famous
hippie LSD advocate, all of which
sort of seems to build around the idea
that this album is talking about evolution
and how mankind as a species
can continue to evolve and be better.
It's just a process
of becoming a conscious being.
If you if you explore
all the stuff that you write right away.
I kind of avoid some of this as well.
I don't like to think about
that kind of stuff.
That's probably that's
probably where you should concentrate.
And the music reflects that as well.
With this album
being a very clear evolution
from their earlier material, songs
like Eulogy in particular
have those trademark tool arrangements
full of all these intricate details
and unusual time signatures
and that sort of like brooding ambiance.
I'd say.
Yeah.
But then at the same time,
they've balanced that out with songs
that have titles like Hooker
With a Penis and Daya von Satan,
which sounds like this really menacing,
scary, like Marilyn Manson kind of thing.
But actually the lyrics are just a recipe
for cookies in German.
I hope it doesn't sugar.
Into me.
This is the actual genius of tool that I
think a lot of people may not be aware of.
There's a perception that tool fans
are kind of these hopeless nerds
that think the band is much deeper
than they really are, but I actually think
it's the opposite of that.
I think the band is actually far deeper
than people give them credit for in that
they really do have true depth
to their work, that they're simultaneously
these incredible musicians
writing these epic prog songs
that they do take very seriously,
packaged in incredible artwork
with a lot of genuinely thought
provoking lyrics and ideas.
But at the same time,
the band's logo is literally a metal deck
and they have many, many songs
about but stuff.
And some people might think that
that silliness undermines
the more substantial part
of their message.
But I don't agree with that.
I think that that kind of duality
and balancing those two elements
is far more interesting
than a band that just takes themselves
super seriously all the time.
To me, the best art can make
you think and laugh and cry
sometimes all at the same time.
And to me
that is what all is trying to do.
Although I do get the sense
that those light hearted aspects of tool
can be, let's just say,
kind of lost on their most devoted fans.
As Maynard himself
said about the band's use of humor
and whether their fans picked up on that.
It's lost insufferable people.
It's just ridiculous.
Retards I'm sorry, can't help them.
Way too serious, too much lighten up.
Which brings us to the most
well known, or maybe I should say
infamous example of tool lore.
There are 2001 album laterals,
which, as everybody knows at this point is
full of examples of the Fibonacci
sequence, also known as the Golden Spiral.
The Fibonacci sequence
is a series of numbers that starts at one,
and the next number in the sequence
comes from adding the previous two.
For example, one plus one equals
two, one plus two equals three.
Three plus two equals five, five
plus three equals eight and so forth.
And if you go through the album,
you'll find a lot of references to that.
For example, the lyrics to the title track
have one three, five than eight
syllables in each of the lines,
and then it goes backwards
and like unwinds that
and the song alternates between the time
signatures of nine, eight, eight,
eight and seven, eight and nine
eight, seven is the 16th number
in the Fibonacci sequence.
You get the idea.
It's simple logarithmic spiral integer
approximate theory.
Now, of course,
only the most, like hardcore devoted fans
would ever even think of that or dig
deep enough to find out all of that.
But again, I think that is exactly
what makes tool who they are.
The layers.
Did you say, Hey,
it would be a nifty idea,
Do something to a mathematical sequence?
No, no.
That was a complete accident.
And for those
who do want to really go in there
and peel back all the layers of the onion,
that builds an incredibly deep connection
for them with the music.
But unlike a lot of other progressive
music, like, say, King Crimson or Cynic,
where you honestly have to be kind of a
nerd to even listen to those bands at all.
And I say that
as someone who absolutely loves
cynic tools accessible enough
to where they can be appreciated by
just like your average
breaking Benjamin fan, not just the nerds.
And personally,
even though I am not necessarily
the biggest fan of tools music,
I have an incredible amount of respect
for any kind of art that can do
both of those things that can appeal
to that, like broad mass mainstream
audience, and also at the same time appeal
to those really hardcore nerds
simply because it's just so difficult
to do both of those things at once.
For example, like Lord of the Rings
Fallout Star Wars.
I mean,
these are some of the greatest pieces of
IP of all time, and that is the reason why
they are able to do both.
That is the reason why they're able
to move millions
and millions of albums and sell out arenas
and yet still have
the same kind of insanely dedicated fans
that you usually only see
with these relatively small, obscure bands
that maybe draw 200 people a night.
And as an example of that,
look at how their fans think about merch.
This is not just like,
Oh, go to the show and buy a t shirt
to remember that you went.
It's like a religion to them.
On many of the tours the band has, artists
create these limited edition prints
and t shirts
that are only available at one specific
show in any of those limited edition
items immediately become highly coveted
sought after collector pieces,
despite the fact that, to put it bluntly,
while it is really fucking expensive,
like one of the most coveted
pieces of tool merch is the custom painted
drum heads that they'll put out sell
for as much as 1500 dollars
at the show and are instantly worth
many times that on the resale market.
Like look at this one on eBay
going for almost $10,000.
Like their fans are thrilled to pay $500
for a VIP ticket that gets first access
to that limited merch in.
Think about that.
They're paying the band
for the right to pay the band more money.
That's some serious devotion.
As one fan put it.
If you have VIP,
you are going to get something.
If you're general admission, it's a whole
other level of planning and strategy.
It's a game and I want to win that game.
And to me, the ultimate proof of all of
this is their most recent album from 2019.
And for context, the band had gone 13
years between albums for various reasons,
one of which was a lawsuit with the artist
who drew a version of their logo
and had a dispute with the band.
And that lawsuit turned into a lawsuit
with their insurance company,
which dragged out for over seven years,
cost the band
millions of dollars and just sort of
like sucked out all their creative energy.
Another factor is Maynard being busy
making another album with his side
project a perfect circle,
and also working on his wine company.
And the fact that the band
just takes a very, very long time
to write their material because that's
just how seriously they take it.
A lot of work is being done
and a lot of work's been done.
I'll go on record now as saying you're
going to see some new music next year.
And that delay alone between albums
was enough to make a lot of people wonder
if the band had lost relevance.
And to make matters worse,
their music was very famously
not available on streaming platforms
that whole time.
And so a lot of people wondered
if Toole still had it.
So why have you guys not heard anything
on streaming up until this moment?
Like, yeah, no,
I love my brothers.
I'm just
going to take the Fifth on that one.
Okay, So there was
some sort of internal discussion
or no discussion or no discussion.
Yeah, just the typical Tool Time of like,
what it was.
There was a meeting.
Mm hmm.
And yet, despite all of that, when
they came back with Fear Inoculum in 2019,
it debuted at number one on Billboard,
beating out Taylor Swift's lover.
And so to me,
that is really the ultimate validation
of everything that they have done.
A 30 year old progressive metal band
beating out literally
the biggest pop star on the planet
in her prime
broke out.
This time, she said, I've had enough.
It's like
we haven't seen each other in a months.
And you said you needed space.
And so that brings us
to the last question, our tool fans.
Well,
kind of tools at times, to be honest.
They are.
And I think the fans themselves
even realize that,
especially when they do literally insane
things like send the band death threats
for not making a new album fast enough.
And as much as I may have made
fun of tool fans over the years
and I probably will continue to do so,
I actually do get it.
The band are incredible musicians
and there really is a lot of substance
behind their music,
including a lot of genuinely insightful
ideas and humor that unfortunately,
it seems like a lot of the fans
maybe don't necessarily appreciate.
And so what is the honest truth
about Tool?
Well, the truth is that
there is only one tool, and honestly,
there will probably never again
be another band like them.
All right, my friends,
that does it for this video.
As always, let me know what you think
in the comments.
And I would like to thank everyone
who supports me on Patreon,
especially those of you who support
at the true cult level or above.
Patrons
get all my podcasts and videos early.
There are members only channels
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I do giveaways and there is
even a way to have me review your music.
So if any of that sounds cool, hit
the link in the description of this video.
And with that, I'm going to sign off for
now. But obviously next time.
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