Justin Chancellor- bass (1995-Present Day)

Interview With Danny Carey of Tool:

Why the name Tool?
Danny: Our music is supposed to be a Tool in understanding lachrymology.
Lachrymology?
Lachrymology is one of the inspirations for Tool. It is basically the science of crying as a therapy.

Maynard

Maynard was born on April 12^th, 1963 to a Baptist family and grew up with an older sister in Ravenna, Ohio, described by one of its residents as a "lower middle class town with no purpose". When Maynard was about twelve, he was a major KISS maniac. Maynard attended Brown Jr. High and then Ravenna High School through the 10^th grade until he moved to Michigan. There he attended Mason County Central High School in Scottville, Michigan. His senior class voted him as the most artistic in the class. By the time he entered the army, in 1982, he had lived in Ohio, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas.

Maynard was a member of the West Point Academy Prep School class of 1984. He was member of the cross-country and wrestling teams, the glee club, and the ‘Knight Crier’, which was the school newspaper.

Maynard attended West Point Prep School and United States Military Academy Prep School, hence references to the Honor Code "I will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do"; and to the term ‘tool’. Tools are seen as sellouts. They follow the regulations to the letter and will turn even their best friends in for the slightest violations.

Maynard quit the military to study art, which eventually led to a job in LA applying spatial design concepts, called "Feng Shui", to remodeling pet stores. While Maynard was in Michigan, he attended the Kendall College of Art and Design, which is one of the best in that area. His artwork is rumored to be very interesting, symbolic, and bordering on abstract. Maynard was friends with Gillian Anderson, Agent Scully from the TV show "The X-Files", while he was at Kendall.

Before Tool, in the 80’s, Maynard was in a band called the Children of the Anachronistic Dynasty that released an independent cassette called ‘Fingernails’. He was also in another band called the TexAns.

Maynard is guitarist Adam Jones and drummer Danny Carey’s neighbor in LA. His home in LA is where is wife and son Devo reside.

Maynard’s step father died in early 1998. In an interview, he was asked why he didn’t attend the funeral. He answered that when his dad died, when he was nine, he didn’t accept another father. But he later broke down and said that his stepfather molested him as a child, that is where the lyrics to the song "Prison Sex" come from.

Adam

Adam Thomas Jones was born on January 15^th, 1965. Not much is known about his early life except that he was a fan of the band Devo. Maynard named his son after Adam’s obsession with Devo.

Adam is originally from Illinois, and played violin in elementary school. He was accepted into the Suzuki program, and continued to play violin through his freshman year in high school. He then played a stand up bass for three years in an orchestra.

In addition to playing in an orchestra, Adam played bass in a band called Electric Sheep with Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine in high school and while he never received traditional guitar lessons, they learned from each other. Adam also studied film, and received a scholarship to go to film school.

Adam began by learning make-up because he thought it would help him out. He then began work as a sculptor and special effects designer where he learned the stop-motion camera techniques he would later apply in Tool’s videos "Sober", "Prison Sex", and "Stinkfist".

Adam went to school at the Hollywood Makeup Academy. After he graduated, he went to work at The Character Shop. He was there for quite a while, 1-2 years, and worked on a TV show called "Monsters". He designed and fabricated a Grim Reaper makeup and a zombie head on a spike used in the film ‘Ghostbusters 2’. Adam worked on several commercials, and was one of the designers. He worked on an Olympic Stain commercial, a Duracell commercial, and a salad dressing commercial that never aired. He also worked on movies, ‘Nightmare on Elm Street Part 5’ and ‘Ghostbusters 2’. After that, Adam went to Stan Winston’s. There he worked on ‘Predator 2’, where he sculpted a unique looking skull for the ‘Predator 2’ space ship interior.

Adam worked on several other big films in Hollywood doing makeup and set design, including ‘Jurassic Park’ and ‘Terminator 2’. He also helped Green Jello with their costumes, and actively sculpts and paints.

Adam is living next to Maynard in LA. He currently has three dogs, two cats, and two pigs, one is on the back of the Undertow album.

Paul

Paul M. D’Amour, born on June 8^th, 1968 was with the band from the earliest of days, but quit the band in September of 1995. Paul D’Amour is originally from Spokane, Washington, and is actually a guitar player at heart.

Adam Jones brought Paul into Tool. Paul actually came to LA because of the film industry. He hadn't played music for a while and was thinking about giving it up. He was angry all the time, and Tool’s music suited him perfectly because the loud and hard core riffs let him blow some steam.

Paul played guitar in Kings of Oblivion, also known as the Replicants, a cover band that included members of Failure, they do songs by everyone from Missing Persons to T-Rex, and have a disc out on Zoo.

Paul left Tool because of a shift in his musical taste away from heavy, powerful riffs, and he wanted to do something more experimental. He is currently in a band called Lusk. Paul still has a good relationship with his friends in Tool. Paul’s name was not mentioned in Tool’s most recent album, even though he wrote 3 of the songs.

Danny

Daniel Edwin Carey grew up in a very typical, middle-class American house in Paola, Kansas. His father was a manager for a large insurance company and his mother was a school teacher. Danny has one older brother and one younger brother. Danny’s earliest musical memory was when his father took him into the music library at the University of Kansas and played The Planets by Gustov Holst. Danny started taking lessons when he was ten or eleven, just on the snare drum in school band, and then again when he got his first kit at thirteen. Danny received a scholarship in High School to go to the Conservatory of Music in Kansas City.

Danny studied music for over three years at the University of Missouri. He had a couple of offers to play basketball at small colleges, but knew he wasn't good enough to play major college basketball or to go pro. Danny spent years working on his rudiments and doing drum corps. He always loved Billy Cobham and Buddy Rich because no matter how fast they played, you could hear every note. When he was in college he got a lot of classical training, doing recitals for three and a half years. He could have earned a degree if he stuck it out a while longer, but just wanted to play the drum set a little more, so he bailed on school when an opportunity came to go on the road with a band.

In 1986, Danny moved to Los Angeles , and spent four years there before anything really happened. However, at that time he was heavily into electronic drums. He was playing an electronic kit with real cymbals, and played the clubs. Then he got more into real drums, and attributes that to finally finding a quality set that sounded good. Danny also worked as a session player for Green Jello, Pygmy Love Circus, and Carole King. Danny's day job in LA was working in a tape duplication house. Then he met Adam Jones through Tom Morello of Rage. Danny is also living beside Maynard. He never auditioned for them (Keenan and Jones). He felt sorry for them, because they would invite people over to play, and they wouldn't show up, so he would fill in.

Danny never auditioned. After a while, Maynard and Adam just got used to having him around and asked Danny if he wanted to be their drummer. Danny agreed.

Danny still loves playing jazz when he gets the chance. He is also working on a side project called ZAUM, which deals more in an electronic medium. Danny has also been involved in other side projects, including a TV sitcom called "Sibs". The sitcom gave him the opportunity to play stuff from James Brown and Sly and Family Stone material. Danny is with Tool and another band called Zaum.

Justin

Justin Gunnar Walte Chancellor was born on November 19^th, 1971. Justin first met Tool in New York, and kept in touch with band members for a couple of years until Justin's band in England, Peach, did a tour with Tool in Europe in 1994. When original bassist Paul D’Amour left to play guitar in Lusk, Tool gave Justin a call. At first Justin turned them down. Peach had broken up about six months before, and he was forming a new band with the guitarist. Justin felt very loyal to his friend who he’d played with since he was 14. But then decided he couldn't deny himself the opportunity. Justin flew to the US, auditioned, and got the job. He beat out some stiff competition, which included Filter’s Frank Cavanagh, KYUSS’s Scott Reeder, Zaum’s Marko Fox, who did the voice on "Die Eier von Satan", and Pygmy Love Circus’s E. Shepherd Stevenson.

Justin adds a different sound to Tool because he is a heavy bass player and added a lower end to the overall sound of the band.

Tool just finished a tour over the summer of 1998. They are in LA with their families settling down, their next tour: unknown.

All members of Tool, except for Justin, were addicted to drugs for a period of time. They all decided to quit when Maynard was almost killed because of either a drug overdose or bad heroine either poorly manufactured or laced with anther drug. Maynard’s near death experience is told in the Tool song "H.". In the hospital, he had a vision of a devil on one shoulder, an angel on the other. Maynard says that about 3 seconds before he came out of the coma, he resisted both.

Adam uses Silverburst 1978 Gibson Les Paul Customs, 3 Different Stacks (A vintage Marshall head: a non-master volume bass amp from 1976, a Mesa/Boogie Triple Rectifier, a Diezel 4h amp, Seymour Duncan Jeff Beck bridge position humbuckers, Delay and EQ effects pedals, supposedly an Epilady and a harmonizer on the beginning of "Third Eye", and a whole lot more.

When Paul was in Tool, he used Ernie Ball MusicMan and Rickenbacker 4000 series basses, as well as Mesa/Boogie cabinets.

Danny:

Drumset:

Sonor Designer Series
8x14 bronze snare
14x14 floor tom
18x16 floor tom
18x24 bass drum
18x22 bass drum
8x8 tom
10x10 tom
14" RotoTom

Electronics:

Simmons SDX pads
Hardware: Sonor

Heads:

Evan's heads - power center-snare, Hydraulic-toms, hydraulic & RQ3 on bass

Pedals:

Axis

Cymbals:

14" Paiste Dry Crisp hi-hats
22" Novo China
12" S.F. Flanger Bell
13" Sound Formula Mega Cup Chime
8" Paiste splash
18" Sound Formula Thin crash
18" Paiste Full crash
22" Paiste Dry Heavy ride
20 & 22" Paiste Thin China
20" Paiste Power crash
6" + 8" Signature Splash
14" Signature Sound Edge Hi Hat
18" Signature Mellow Crash, Power Crash
20" Signature Full Crash, Thin China
5" Bell Chime on top of an 8" 3000 Bell

Sticks:

Trueline

Justin uses an Ernie Ball MusicMan but prefers Wal basses (after being loaned one from Failure’s Greg Edwards for recording Ænima), cabinets by Mesa Boogie, pre-amp by Demeter, and effects by Boss & Digitech (Whammy Pedal).

Discography:

OPIATE

UNDERTOW

ÆNIMA

1. Opiate album is not a reference to drugs (another word for opium is opiate).
2. The song "Hush" is thought to be about blackmail, but it is actually about media censorship.

 

3. There is talking before the song "Cold and Ugly". The theory goes: Tool was making a live recording, and some guy with dreadlocks kept blowing an air horn, forcing the band to start over. New info suggests that it may have been Maynard kidding around with Rage Against the Machine vocalist and friend Zack de la Rocha.

4. The hidden track starts on track 6, minute 6, and second 6 and wails something about Satan. The numbers are 666. Coincidence?

1. On the cover of Undertow is a weird figure, it is a sculpture of a ribcage that Adam did. If you hold it up to the light, it encircles a man. There is also another cover, one of a bar code. This one is shown when someone buys their album at Wall-Mart or K-Mart because they thought the ribcage was offensive.

2. Adam said in an interview that the artwork inside of the album meant something. It is showing that "my fear is naked". That is a line from the song "Bottom".

3. If you pop off the black tray inside of the jewel case, there is a picture of a cow visible.

4. It is said that the song "Discustipated" starts on track 10. It really starts on track 30, 39, or 69, depending on the version of the album.

5. It is thought that the song "Sober" is about the band’s repeated drug use. It is actually about an artist that the band knew that was really bad at art, but did really good art when on drugs. He eventually "fried" himself into a mental hospital.

6. Also during "Sober" there is an attempt of humor. Very faintly the words "Turn that sh*t down" can be heard during the chorus.

1. The cover of Ænima is a work of art done by Adam, all of the 18 different covers! Also on the inside booklet there is a purple man, all of the lyrics are written on him. The purple man is a sculpture of Adam.

2. The album is dedicated to Bill Hicks, the band’s favorite comedian and Maynard’s very close friend. Bill died in 1993. Bill Hicks in mentioned in the liner notes, not 1, not 2, but 6 times!

4. Paul is not listed in the liner notes even though he wrote "Stinkfist", "Eulogy", and "Pushit".

5. Maynard sent the Ænima lyrics to toolshed.down.net because he said that the lyrics would be put on the internet, and he wanted them to correct. Also, on the animated map of the United States in the jewel case, the Oklahoma and Texas border is messed up. Oklahoma’s panhandle is longer than it should be.

6. In "Stinkfist", Maynard can be heard whispering "Chupa minha pica pichu chupa minha pica pinto", what it means, no one knows. It is thought to be the words that Bill Hicks and Maynard heard at one time at the same time while on drugs. This theory can not be proven.

7. Maynard is whispering saying "Join in my, Join in my child and, Listen ... , Digging through , My old numb shadow" during the into to "Forty-Six and 2".

8. "Message to Harry Manback" is an actual answering machine message. In an interview, Maynard said, "Message to Harry Manback is a recording of the words of an uninvited Italian guest who came to my house one day. A so-called friend of a friend of a friend of Harry's .... Before we finally managed to figure out that nobody really knew him, he had already emptied the fridge and run up a huge phone bill. He got kicked out of the house."

9. In the song "HWAP" the words "OGT back in ’92 on the first EP" means this: OG means Original Gangster. The T means Tool. The words together mean an original Tool fan. The ’92 part is when Opiate was released, it wasn’t an album, it was an EP. The basic meaning of the whole song is about how Tool hates sellouts.

10. The song "Die Eire von Satan" is all in German! It means the eggs of Satan and is a German recipe for a cookie using no eggs.

11. The meaning of the song "Ænema" is summed up in the last line of the song "Flood" in Undertow. Why the album title, Ænima, is spelled differently from the song "Ænema", the song that represents the album (i.e.: Opiate has a song called "Opiate" and Undertow has a song called "Undertow"), is a mystery.

12. In the beginning of "Third Eye", Bill Hicks is telling a joke.

Some other TooL stuff:

-Tool

-Tool