Dallas Music Guide Interview

[alienation]

I've had this page bookmarked for forever and just finally read this. Anyways, this is a very good read. Maynard seems very candid in this interview.

Maynard James Keenan is notoriously a tricky man to get time with, and often when reporters do get time with him, he’s often evasive and sarcastic, usually as a shield against bad journalism. His reluctance to do interviews made it all the more shocking when I received word that Virgin Records was actually offering Keenan to speak about A Perfect Circle’s forthcoming releases, “eMOTIVe” and “aMOTION,” as well as all things political. Fortunately, Keenan has opted to drop his tough façade for this series of interviews, and was refreshingly open and more than willing to speak his mind on the current administration, the reaction he hopes to elicit with his message, and how we can all avoid being deceived.

Dallas Music Guide: Is it weird to be suddenly getting asked so many political questions by people who weren’t asking those questions four years ago?

Maynard James Keenan: Absolutely. It’s nice that now I don’t have to figure out a way to trick the journalist into talking about politics.

DMG: You’ve opened up to the press a lot more this time than you have previously. Is that due to the immediacy of the message, whereas your ideas and messages before weren’t quite as politically-driven?

MJK: Oh, my message has always been very politically-driven. For the most part, it gets edited out and I gave up talking about it. From the inception of this band, we were very active. During the election of George Sr., we were very active and very vocal in the press about our feelings about that administration.

DMG: What do you think Bill Hicks would be saying these days?

MJK: He’d be flipping out for the last four years. He’d be on the war path. He would have given up comedy and started going out and doing talks and lectures at colleges, I’m sure.

DMG: Do you think David Cross has been picking up the slack in that area?

MJK: Absolutely. He’s had some good stuff. I love his new record [“It’s Not Funny”], especially the stuff about electric scissors and “The Simple Life.” [laughs]

DMG: What’s the reaction you’re hoping to inspire with “eMOTIVe?”<br>
MJK: I think that the artists who made these original tunes had a lot to say, they were very passionate people with a lot to say. I think it’s an honor to be able to re-present these songs to people and to hopefully bring people back to the original pieces. They’re very inspiring pieces. At the same time, it’s a little depressing to think that we haven’t come that far from the original inspiration for those tunes in light of what’s happening right now with the administration. I would hope that just our activity and our call to arms, if you will, will inspire people to get off their butts and look at things, and examine the world around them, and become more conscious about what’s going on, and get involved, and to make decisions for themselves, and to absorb as much information as they can, and to make decisions based on a more informed point of view. It’s very difficult to sort through all the bullshit, of course, but that’s what comes with being an intelligent person, you have to figure out what resonates best with you, what feels right. If I have inspired an extra handful of kids to go out and vote – and I don’t care who they vote for, as long as they just get out there and start asking questions – that’s all I need. I’m a happy person.

DMG: Over the years, you’ve managed to develop something of a cult hero status. Does it worry you that you have some sort of sway over these kids?

MJK: Yeah. It would frighten me to think that kids would be swayed by what I have to say and that they would follow my instructions to the letter. That would be a negative thing. That they just get out there and think for themselves, and if I was a catalyst for them to go buy a book, great. I’m okay with that, but I’m not really…yeah, I don’ t like the idea of being Charles Manson.

DMG: You’ve always managed to avoid preaching by simply encouraging the fans to think for themselves. Do you think some other musicians in your place have crossed the line? At what point does the message overtake the music and spirit of open-mindedness that you’re shooting for?

MJK: Of course, you have to be suspect of everybody in times like this, as far as jumping on the bandwagon and self-promotion and whatnot, and furthering their fortune in whatever way they can, especially if you pay attention to what they’ve done in the past. Their actions should speak louder than words, in those cases. But they shouldn’t be entirely dismissed. If what they’ve been inspired to do all of the sudden, it could very well come from a very good place. But once again, you should just pay attention.

DMG: When you look at musicians like Toby Keith and the Dixie Chicks, their names have become synonymous with their messages. There’s obviously more to you than this one idea – is there a conscious line you have to tread in order to avoid becoming inseparable from this one message?

MJK: I don’t know. I’ve pretty much…I usually just try to speak from the heart and respond to the stimulus around me. I think, on some level, you have to be a little cautious about the analogies that you draw. For example, a friend of mine just e-mailed me this website, and a little Quicktime movie based with a conspiracy theory based on the Pentagon, and he said, “Oh, you should put this on the website.” I said, “No, not really…” [laughs] We’re trying to get a message out here, and for us to jump on the whole ‘The government knows about the aliens’ bandwagon, it doesn’t really help us. So in that way, you’ve got to mix your gut instinct with science and kind of go with that rather than just taking conspiracy theories as face value and presenting them as fact. In that way, you have to be careful what you say, because your message could be polluted by someone else’s wild ideas. But for the most part, I think it’s very simple. I don’t feel and I don’t think that this administration has done a good job with their four years. I don’t think that things are in a good state, I think that they’ve divided the country, and I think that it’s time to let somebody else try. It’s very simple.

DMG: So let’s say we get a new administration in here. How long do you think it would take to clean things up?

MJK: Well, first we have to figure out how the Chinese are going to invade and take over…[laughs] That was a joke.

DMG: I’m learning Mandarin.

MJK: [laughs] You should. I’m kidding. I don’t know. I think there are some inherent flaws in this system if some of the more influential powers and the financial powers are left unchecked, and I think that’s occurred over the last several years, starting with Reagan in office - actually more so when his vice-president took over the head of the CIA. I think that it’s just out of balance, and that needs to be put back in check. How long that would take, I don’t know. Those businessmen are very adamant about maintaining someone in that office that will look out for their best interests. So it’s just out of balance. At some point, hopefully those people will wake up, or their children will wake up, and they will realize that it’s not in the best interest of the whole country for companies like Halliburton to be running the country.

[alienation]

DMG: Is the war the most important issue in the election or is it a massive combination of everything?

MJK: It’s a multitude of things. It’s personal freedoms, Patriot Act issues, censorship, and probably the majority of it is, yes, our role in Iraq. People are really, really, really having a brain-fart, since Vietnam didn’t happen that long ago. I think we’re very close to that situation. It could go that way. Is our role in Iraq the same as our role in Vietnam right now? No. Could it go that way if left unchecked and left up to morons? Yeah. That’s the whole point. Focus on this so it doesn’t turn into another Vietnam.

DMG: Is there a reason mainstream America doesn’t seem to see it that way?

MJK: Well, there’s a great film out called “Outfoxed” – of course, it’s a very biased film – but it’s worth a look, because I think most people get their information from watching TV. And if stations like Fox News present twisted facts, like they do, and I’ve witnessed it firsthand, they’re not going to have enough information in their laps to make an informed decision about the world around them. If they don’t have the facts, how can they make an informed choice or have an opinion one way or the other?

DMG: So where is the best place to get these facts?

MJK: Everywhere. Mostly on, say, the Internet and alternative newspapers. Just look at all the sources. Watch Fox News, read all the major newspapers, but also read all the independent papers, read international papers. Go to international news sites and international news networks rather than just sticking to the ones that are run by the people who would have you accept their agenda, and then decide for yourself. Look at that Pentagon website and say for yourself, “That’s bullshit.” But certainly there’s a question, so let’s ask some questions. It’s worth asking the questions, I think. You have to be a conscious being that’s asking these questions, you have to be a conscious being that’s seeking out truth. If you really want to find out the truth, it’s out there, and you just have to have the balls to go out there and look and find out.

DMG: Where does the reliability in those independent papers come from?

MJK: If you start looking at international press, you’ll start to see different points of view coming out, and that starts to paint a picture. When you read ten articles on the same subject, but two articles were written in Canada, one article was written in Australia, one article was written in Britain, a couple are translated from German and French and Italian, and the other couple of articles are, say one from Texas and one from California, you read that same article about that same subject, and you’ll see what each territory has in terms of an agenda, and you can sort through those agendas and say, “Oh, clearly these guys think this way, and clearly these guys think that way,” and somewhere in the middle is the truth.

DMG: You’ve said recently that people seem to have been tricked into thinking that their vote doesn’t count. How do you think that’s happened?

MJK: I’m not sure how they went about doing that, but it’s a baffling phenomenon. Take Florida, for example. I think I’ve played six or seven shows in the last year in Florida, on an average of four thousand to five thousand kids. Any one of those shows that I’ve played there, if all the kids from that show voted, we would have a different president right now. Just one show. [laughs]

DMG: Perhaps some of that comes from the nature of the electoral system. Any dissenting voter in a state that’s pretty much pre-determined as going one way or another feels like it’s a waste.

MJK: You still have to do it. You tell two of your friends, they tell two friends, and pretty soon you’re buying shampoo. I’m just kidding. If you just do that, if you could just get your friends to talk to their two friends, and say, “Hey, let’s just give it a shot,” you never know. It’s infectious, and you’ll see results.

DMG: Do you think the Electoral College is the right way to do this?

MJK: I have no idea. I haven’t done enough studying on why, initially, they rationalized doing the Electoral College. I think that a way to adjust the Electoral College so that it makes more sense would be to, in some way, split it up where it’s based on percentage of votes, like for example, in Colorado – I don’t know how it works, I’m just theorizing, I’m an armchair politician on this subject – if Kerry receives sixty percent of the votes in Colorado, then he receives sixty percent of their electoral votes – that makes sense to me. I don’t know. There must be something I’m missing. It doesn’t make any sense that all of a sudden, you get fifty-five or fifty-one percent of the votes, and then you suddenly get one hundred percent of these votes - that doesn’t make any sense to me.

[alienation]

DMG: A great amount of attention is being directed towards getting young people out to the polls, and the best example of that is MTV’s “Rock the Vote” campaign. Do you think that’s the best way to reach kids? Do you think it has results?

MJK: Oh, absolutely. If you look at some of the statistics on what Rock the Vote did in the 1996…either ’96 or ’92, they absolutely had an impact. What happened was that everyone kind of fell asleep at the wheel when Gore was running for office. I’m not sure how that happened, we just got so comfortable with Clinton eight years in office – we had a nice big chunk of money in the bank, everything seemed to be flowing well, there was a few issues internationally we had to get involved with or not get involved with, and all of the sudden – boom – G.W.’s in office, the money’s gone, and we’re at war. What the fuck happened? I think Rock the Vote absolutely had an impact, and I’m not so sure what happened in 2000. If you really look at the stats, they’ve gotten a lot of kids out to vote this time.

DMG: You have a link to Michael Moore’s page on your site. Do you think everyone should read that with a hearty dose of caution?

MJK: Oh, yeah, definitely with a hearty dose of caution. At the same time, once again, if you watch the film “Outfoxed,” I think Michael Moore gets a hall pass, as far as him presenting his agenda, with his opinions attached as facts. If you spend some time watching Fox News, then switch to any other network, the discrepancies and the slants on there and their statement of, “I’ve heard it said…” That’s a journalistic…what’s that? That’s not based on fact, that’s not based on statistics. That’s somebody higher-up at Fox trying to spread rumors and disguise them as facts. When it comes to Michael Moore, I think the other side of the story is okay to hear, even if he’s pushing the other way. Not to have a play on words here, but fair and balanced – which Fox claims to be – Michael Moore is far more fair and balanced than Fox, even if he’s taken some artistic liberties.

DMG: I find it hard to take anything he says at face value after the inaccuracies in “Bowling for Columbine.”<br>
MJK: Yeah, he definitely fucked himself with that movie, taking some of those artistic liberties. However, if his bullshit inspired some kid to go out and vote and actually vote and look at those things and discover for himself and say, “Oh, Michael Moore is possibly full of shit, but so is this administration and so is Fox News,” then great. Go check out Michael Moore.

DMG: Most people seem to be pretty aware of the bias on Fox News. If everyone knows, does it still hurt?

MJK: Absolutely, because the other news networks are starting to follow suit with what they’re doing. Even though you turn over to CNN, they’ve kind of followed the lead. For example, with the 2000 election, Fox News was the network that said, “Oh, G.W. won.” Everybody else had already said that Gore won, and they changed their stories. They followed Fox News. The person who had presented that information had no business presenting that information. There’s no possible way, with the way their votes are tallied and the way things are calculated and the complexity of the information that comes in, there’s no way that person could have made that call fairly. It does sway your opinion.

It’s kind of like this. Let’s say you’re taking a survey, and the survey says, “When you get married, are you going to do it in a Catholic church or a Baptist church?” I can’t even begin to answer the question, honestly. “Have you ever been caught masturbating in your favorite hiding place?” Uhh…[laughs] It’s the question your uncle asks you in front of the family to embarrass you. You can’t even begin to answer those questions. That’s how the news is presented on those stations. Yes, you know that they’re presenting you with some twisted stuff, but you don’t know how deep the statement was. Who says I’m getting married? Who says that if I was getting married, it would be in a church at all? And who said that I was a Christian? Maybe I’m Buddhist. So when they present you with facts about the war or on weapons of mass destruction, they are starting from such a skewed place to begin with, that even though you might be arguing if the guy was wearing a red suit or a blue suit is irrelevant, they’ve already twisted the facts so much. I don’t know, I’m waffling.

DMG: Were you required to deal with Yoko at all to get the rights to cover “Imagine?”<br>
MJK: No, when you cover a song, as long as you’re remaining somewhat true to the original and you’re not changing any of the lyrics to make it so that you take away what the message was, you don’t have to get permission from the artist to pay homage to that song, because when that song sells, the original artist gets paid. The Lennon Estate will get paid for our usage of that song.

DMG: Any idea if the Lennon Estate has heard it?

MJK: I have no idea.

DMG: The “aMOTION” CD has a track that is a reworking of the song “Vacant,” which was part of the long-rumored, now-defunct Tapeworm project. [Tapeworm was a collaboration between Maynard, Trent Reznor, Danny Lohner, and Atticus Ross]

MJK: That was something that was in the works for many years, and we could never quite pull it together or do it. There’s all kinds of ridiculous business stuff that tied Trent’s hands and my hands together, so we just kind of went, “You know what, let’s let time go on, and maybe we’ll revisit it someday.” I wouldn’t hold your breath. But a song like “Passive” is one of the things that did come out of that project, and it will finally show up on this album.

DMG: The “aMOTION” CD features numerous remixes, and there have been dozens of remixes of previously released material over the years as well. What is it about A Perfect Circle’s sound that lends itself to so much reworking and remixing that a band like Tool doesn’t have?

MJK: The people that are involved in A Perfect Circle, one of the things that Danny Lohner does is remixes, so he’s kind of like the in-house re-mixer, and that’s why a lot of that stuff comes out. He’s been involved since the beginning. We go in and bounce some ideas off him and he gets to hear it from the ground up, so he’s relatively close to it, so his sound has definitely infiltrated what we do.

DMG: Last question – Why did “Run, Ronnie, Run” fail?

MJK: Because Bob and David were not allowed to make the film. I never got to see the original edits, but I remember running into Bob and then running into David at some point and feeling their frustration as they were in the middle of filming it, and I think they could kind of see the writing on the wall where somehow, they were cock-blocked and cut out of the middle, and the studio sanitized the shit out of it. It’s a shame, because knowing those guys and knowing their talents – that’s what always happens with this kind of stuff. Somebody who was involved in some part of the process thinks that they know best. When it comes down to the artist with that vision, they know what’s best for those projects. Sometimes it takes a little bit of editing to help their vision be presented in a way that people can understand. When it’s comes to jokes, leave it up to the jokesters.

[Nyarlathotep]

I remember reading this a while ago; he did seem to enjoy answering these questions more than usual. Thanks for posting another awesome interview!

[Halo]

Yes, that was a great interview. One of my favorites.

Thank you for taking so much time to transcribe and post that.