Tool’s Adam Jones toggles between artistic interpretations and arduous practicalities

Adam Jones of Tool is being questioned about his band’s latest album, Fear Inoculum, and the interview is slowly disintegrating into an amorphous puddle of words.

“You’re asking someone as an outside observer and you’re trying to understand, but sometimes it’s… impossible,” the guitarist says kindly after going back a few times over his words, trying to find an honest answer to a badly phrased query. “Why do birds fly south? Well, because it gets cold, but it’s also a little bit more than that.”

To be fair, Jones isn’t trying to be unclear or evasive with his avian analogies. He’s responding to what are rather standard questions about influences and working methods, and correctly dismissing them as tiresome and clichéd. Not in a mean way, but simply letting the interviewer know he knows how predictable they are, and he’s attempting to offer some kind of insight into art.

After all, he and his bandmates (vocalist Maynard James Keenan, drummer Danny Carey, drummer and bass player Justin Chancellor) have been barraged with many of these questions since the album dropped in 2019. Why was there such a long period between Fear Inoculum and 2006’s 10,000 Days? Was there any truth to the rumours of inter-band conflict? How were the songs written?

“Well, we all have different tastes in music,” Jones says about his band, whose collective experiences have resulted in a post-metal sound that’s influenced countless other outfits but has never been successfully replicated. “It’s not like we’re all listening to Led Zeppelin and thus we sound like Led Zeppelin. It’s very collective. I mean, you know, I can’t stand some of the stuff that a few of my bandmates listen to. Other times I hear something and I think, ‘Oh man, I could actually get into this, it’s cool.’ Then there’s the approach to music, people who learn by ear while others are technically schooled.”