Maynard James Keenan has never been one for myth-making — especially when it comes to himself. Appearing on Steve-O's Wild Ride!, the Tool frontman offered a typically blunt take on the idea of being labeled a "rock icon," distancing himself from the classic excess often associated with the title.
"Well, when I think of rock, I think of fucking Lemmy, man," Keenan said, as transcribed by The PRP. "Like up till fucking 11 a.m. having been up two days straight doing fucking shots at the Rainbow. I just, that's just not me."
Rather than embrace the icon tag, Keenan reframed his own role more pragmatically. "I don't know what I am," he admitted. "I guess I'm more like an entrepreneur. Storyteller. You know what? I'll take storyteller."
Keenan also dug into his approach to songwriting across his many projects: "All of the projects are for me lyrically, they are absolutely serious play. All of it is serious play," he explained. "It's all balance. It's all, there's something being accomplished."
That said, Keenan didn't shy away from critiquing his own catalog, revealing that there are early Tool songs he actively avoids revisiting. "There's some old Tool songs that I don't like playing them because I just — I feel like I failed them," he said. "They're popular songs, but I just feel like I was trying to make a joke and it was a dumb joke. I should have moved on."
One track, in particular, drew his sharpest self-criticism: "4°" from Tool's 1993 debut album Undertow.
"I don't feel like the lyrics hold up under scrutiny," Keenan admitted. "'4°' is a stupid song, okay? It's the way I wrote it. Like it's just — I was trying to fucking make a butt sex joke and it was just a fucking… It was dumb."
While he praised the musicianship behind the song — "The song's beautiful. What those guys did, you know, musically is great" — Keenan laughed off his lyrical choices. "The words are just dumb. I don't know what the fuck I was thinking."
The lesson, he said, was simple: learn and move forward. "So, so don't do that again. Like, you know, fix it and make a song like 'Stinkfist'."
Keenan also shared an observation about generational shifts in fandom, particularly when it comes to Tool's place in modern rock culture. According to the singer, younger listeners increasingly gravitate toward Puscifer while viewing Tool as a legacy act.
"All the kids… like ages from 16 to 30: huge Puscifer fans," he said. "And they view Tool as like when your uncle is into Steely Dan, you know?"
The irony isn't lost on him. "I'm in that and I'm like, 'we're not Steely Dan,'" Keenan joked, before acknowledging the cycle of musical aging. "Whatever you're into as that adolescent kid… that's grandpa music."
With Tool now spanning three generations of listeners, Keenan sees the comparison as inevitable. "We've been around long enough that we're spanning like three generations of people listening," he said. "So, I get it. We're officially the Rush of fans that are like, 'I don't want to listen to Rush.'"
