Tool As Rock ‘N Roll, by Paul Shirley

As my brother and I walk from the parking space we’ve secured a few blocks from the downtown arena, we laugh at the sign that reads, “Event Parking: $20”.  I ask, rhetorically, “What is this, a Motley Crue show?”

We dodge old folks browsing an art festival and find a throng of black-clad fans in a line that stretches 500 feet beyond the arena’s front door.  This time, I don’t say it, I only think it.  Are we seeing Led Zeppelin in 1973?

My brother and I slip in a side door.  Our tickets carry with them special access that we’d be remiss not to utilize; the heat index must be 100 on this steamy Kansas City summer evening.  On the way to our seats, we stride past well-dressed, middle-aged professionals as they sip expensive draft beer and talk about the poor bastards outside sweltering on the asphalt.  I can’t shake the suspicion that we’ve accidentally arrived at an Eagles concert.

An hour later, the arena floor darkens and the music starts.  There’s no mistaking the sound – it’s the band we came to see, all right.  The band I wish I’m seeing every time I go to a rock show.

Tool.

Their set is workmanlike and polished.  The crowd eats up every second of it.  In my seat at the edge of the first concourse, I’m detached from the action, which allows me to observe the crowd more than the band.

There!  A fortyish woman with a near-mullet, singing at the top of her lungs, as her Miller Lite sloshes.  Here!  A twenty-something construction worker-type, playing air guitar to “Third Eye.”  To the left!  A couple sways together during the meditative section of “Aenima.”

As I watch, it dawns on me:  I’m not at the concert I thought I was going to.  I’m not watching an underground alt-metal band with a significant cult following.   I’m watching an arena rock band play an arena rock show.

And not only that.  I might be watching the band that, at that moment, defines large scale rock ‘n roll.

In culture, in art, in sports, in life, we love to flesh out patterns.  Whether in analysis of a stock market’s crash or in the mistakes that led to the drafting of Michael Olowakandi, we seek truth in the form of the historical narrative.  After we’ve “learned” from the past, we congratulate ourselves.  We’re smarter now, we think.  We’ll never invest in a tech boom or trust a wide receiver or drink so much that the next morning ends with a trip to CVS for Plan B.

When we apply this “learning” to music, it often takes the form of comparison.  The Killers are the next U2 are the next Police are the next Fleetwood Mac are the next Jefferson Airplane.  If we can predict who’s going to be the Next Big Thing, we’ll be like Marty McFly in Back To The Future II; we’ll have all the power.  (Assuming that “all the power” means “very limited power which will grant us only the ability to crow among our friends that ‘I knew Interpol was going to be huge!’”)

As a corollary – or, more accurately – as an anti-corollary, we love to lament the passing of the good ol’ days.  “There’ll never be another Creedence Clearwater Revival,” we say.  Or, “Blood On The Tracks will always be the best album ever made.”  We can’t believe that we’ll be surprised again.  We’re too smart for that, we think.

Rock ‘n roll has other ideas.  Since its inception, it has confounded prophets.  Just when people begin to think they have it figured out, it zooms off in another direction, like any good art form.  There is no predicting it, and there is no stopping it.  (I think I sang a song along those lines in a fourth-grade music program.  I believe it was called, “Rock ‘N Roll Is Here To Stay,” and I believe I nailed it.)

Because rock ‘n roll is so difficult to pin down, it’s fun to watch pundits and critics lament its passing.  If you asked either population what band is the current epitome of rock n’ roll, they’d probably hem and haw around an answer, positing that maybe it’s the Kings Of Leon, which they’d probably say because the Kings Of Leon most remind them of what rock was like in the seventies.

Or maybe they’d say Pearl Jam, which wouldn’t be a terrible answer, except that it would have been correct 15 years ago, but probably isn’t today.

Or maybe they’d say that rock ‘n roll is dead, and that it’s an invalid question because the real answer is Lady Gaga, because now she’s what rock ‘n roll is and you’d be tempted to punch that pretentious sonofabitch in the neck but wouldn’t because you’re at a nice bar and you’d probably drop your beer in the process and who wants to waste six dollars on some gaywad who wants to convince you that Lady Gaga is rock ‘n roll.

The point is that people never see rock ‘n roll coming.

Well, ladies and gentleman, I didn’t see it coming, but I’ve seen it arrive.  Rock ‘n roll is Tool.  Tool is rock ‘n roll.

I know, it doesn’t make sense.  Tool isn’t like the rock bands of yesteryear – or yesterdecade.  They’re not like Guns ‘N Roses.  But Guns ‘N Roses wasn’t like Led Zeppelin.  Led Zeppelin wasn’t like the Beatles.

Oh, they all seem the same now, related somehow, in a Biblical Kohat-begat-Amram-begat-Moses sort of way.  It’s deceptively simple to trace the genealogy, after the fact:  [Affects scholarly, preferably British, tone.]  “Why, it’s easy to see that Slash was a disciple of Jimmy Page.  You can tell in the way he holds his guitar.”

But the rock ‘n roll family tree is easily mapped only because we can look back with the aid of perspective.  At the time, when Axl Rose was prancing around onstage and the old folks were saying, snootily, “This isn’t the rock ‘n roll I grew up on,” no one knew that Guns ‘N Roses was rock ‘n roll.  They could only recognize that fact afterward.

Now, take a breath and consider my hypothesis:

In the summer of 2010, Tool – with its phantasmagorical imagery, odd time signatures, and anti-authority message – defines large-scale rock ‘n roll.

Done breathing?  Good.  Now, back to anaerobic reading…

It seems absurd, doesn’t it?  Who listens to Tool, after all?

But let the record show the following:

A sold-out, 18,000-person capacity arena, with $59 tickets reportedly fetching $300 two days before the show.

An enthusiastic fan base, willing, when Tool’s most recent album, 10,000 Days, was released, to snap up 564,000 copies of it.  In its first week on sale.

An atmosphere reminiscent of every portrayal of the prototypical rock show ever made, with a Midwestern crowd of disparate ages achieving varied states of rapture while the music washed over it.

The perfect balance of relevance and mystery, built thanks more to word-of-mouth recommendation than to heavy radio play – a balance that has left the band on the precipice of mainstream success, while allowing it to maintain an air of cool.

And, and, and… here’s the kicker… A band playing that music as if bored by what it was doing.

Because what is arrival on the scene if not some post-modern awareness of that arrival?  By the time Led Zeppelin was playing Madison Square Garden, John Bonham was likely more worried about his paycheck than about the crowd’s satisfaction with his drumming.  Axl Rose was already past caring about his fans (and maybe never did) when Guns ‘N Roses was co-headlining a tour with Metallica.

The same could have been said for Tool on the summer night when my brother and I watched them.  Oh, drummer Danny Carey was into it, playing as he was in front of his hometown crowd.  (Carey is from Paola, Kansas).  But, because the rest of the band is just that good – they’re all supremely talented musicians and they’ve been playing together for twenty years – they don’t necessarily have to do anything “special.”  They just have to show up.

Tool has been progressing toward “just showing up” for years.  In fact, it seems like such has been their one and only goal.  Each time I’ve seen the band live, I’ve marveled at the fact that the crowd didn’t realize that lead singer Maynard James Keenan was often, at best, amused by, and, at worst, derisive of, the crowd’s enthusiasm.

But isn’t this disdain, when this disdain is applied to huge crowds (because there are plenty of rock bands that are disdainful of their audiences of 50) yet another telling mark of an important rock band?

From an outsider’s perspective, this entire piece of writing could very well be viewed as hogwash.  There are dedicated music fans, even, who barely know who Tool is.  And there are others who know who they are, but who would dismiss my theory as the rants of a lunatic.  “Tool songs are too long,” they’d say.  Or they’d add, “But they’re all in their forties.”

When it comes to choosing whether to believe or to discard my hypothesis, that outsider can take comfort in the following:  Tool is my favorite band.

“Oh, so why does that help?  If they’re your favorite, you want them to be important.”

Au contraire.

I don’t want Tool to be the most important band in rock ‘n roll, because what comes right after “most important band in rock ‘n roll” is often “irrelevance.”  It is inevitable that, once everyone is on the bandwagon, the line for the bathroom will get long and the seats will get dirty and the people that have been on since the transfer station will decide to get off at the next stop.

That is, it pains me to say that Tool is suddenly, inexplicably and overwhelmingly, the important arena rock band of our time.  I’d rather be writing about how they deserve more respect, or about how the song “Rosetta Stoned” is vastly underappreciated, or about how goddamn cool Adam Jones is.

That is:  you can trust my judgment on this because I wish it weren’t true.

But Tool’s passing, from cultish phenomenon, into arena rock band, into probable irrelevance, into a place in rock genealogy, will happen whether I like it or not.

Soon, another band will take their place atop the rock ‘n roll heap.  Neither you, nor I, nor the best rock historian in the world has any idea who it will be.

In the meantime, there’s rock ‘n roll to be heard.  So, if Tool comes to your town, brave the lines, the heat, and the potentially bored musicians.  Even though I think Tool may already have peaked – even though I’m very much afraid that Tool has begun its market crash – I recently spent two hours with around 18,000 people who would disagree.

And if I’ve learned anything else about history, it is this: I am not always right.  I rather hope that’s the case again.

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