Maynard Keenan Interview Excerpts

A couple interesting answers from an interview with Maynard Keenan that highlight some of the industry issues that we talked about in class on Monday. Where is the motivation to produce music, and how do you keep people buying? The interview is from Suicide Girls, which is unfortunate, but it's a good one. It's puzzling to hear him talking about making music for a living and branding for fun in the same breath.

Keenan: I think it’s just the age that we’re in. With the internet the way it is, music is now a soundtrack to some other activity. You can make a living selling songs but you make a better living playing them. If you’re not going to play them you got to figure out what else to sell and I guess that comes down to t-shirts and key chains.

Keenan: If the entire world turned into something where there is no money involved. If there was no money involved it would be easy to do this but as soon as the money comes into play, everybody gets weird. It has an affect on everybody. It doesn't matter who they are but as soon as there's money involved people get fucking goofy. When you don't have money to lose you don't have to worry about somebody taking the money. All that bullshit aside I'm trying to prove that I can just make music and make my living doing that and selling shirts for fun.

SG: That was back when the Tool albums were more stripped down, would you ever go back to a more stripped down Tool?
Keenan: No, because we have your attention. If you want someone’s attention you have to scream from the back of the room to be heard. Once you have everybody’s attention you have to whisper to keep it.