Maynard James Keenan talks Perfect Circle and winemaking

Former Tool singer Maynard may be ageing but he can still front a rock band, and create a nice tipple to boot.

A Perfect Circle, featuring Maynard James Keenan, centre

When the band emerged in 2000, American rock outfit A Perfect Circle was shrouded in intrigue, thanks in large part to a crafty marketing decision. Its debut music video was directed by David Fincher, then known for dark films such as Fight Club and Se7en. His treatment for the song ­Judith — a dynamic earworm that featured soaring slide guitar melodies and pointedly anti-religion lyrics — offered only fleeting glimpses of the band’s five musicians performing in an empty warehouse.

In Maynard James Keenan, the group ­possessed an uncommonly powerful singer who also fronted hard rock outfit Tool. With his new project, Keenan took to wearing long, braided wigs in promotional images and on stage, ­perhaps in part to differentiate his persona from the one he inhabited in Tool, where he tended to prefer a bald scalp and an occasional fondness for body paint.

Judith was a deeply personal song for the singer, as it was named after his mother, who suffered a cerebral aneurysm in 1976 that left her paralysed and restricted to a wheelchair for the rest of her life. Through it all, her faith in a higher power never wavered, which her son found confounding.

“F..k your God / Your Lord and your Christ,” Keenan sang. “He did this, took all you had and left you this way / Still you pray, you never stray, you never taste of the fruit / Never thought to question why.” Its chief vocal hook contained just six words dripping with irony: “He did it all for you.”

It was an explosive introduction to the world and its message resonated. A Perfect Circle’s first album, Mer de Noms, achieved the highest debut position for a rock band on the US Billboard charts, where it sold 188,000 copies in its first week to reach No 4. The group released a second album of original music in 2003, then went on hiatus following an album of anti-war cover songs that was released on the same day as the US presidential election in 2004, when George W. Bush won a second term.

Almost 1½ decades later, the band’s fourth collection, Eat the Elephant, arrives when much has changed — not least the fact that shifts in global music consumption habits mean few ­artists today would manage to sell 188,000 CDs in the course of an entire career, let alone in a single week.

As well, the black-and-white music video for its first single, The Doomed, is composed solely of shots of the five band members staring directly at the camera, displaying little emotion. When the contrast between the two music videos released 18 years apart — one featuring few faces; the other showing nothing but — is raised with the singer, his response is bemused.

“Oh, you’re probably reading into it,” Keenan replies. “But I don’t want to rob you of that experience. If that’s how you feel, that that’s the approach, I’d love to take credit for something like that.” With a laugh, he says, “I’m cool with it.”

When Reviewconnects with Keenan late last month, he’s in Los Angeles, tidying up a few loose ends before the band begins a US tour through this month and next. In conversation, the singer prefers a deadpan delivery that’s ­almost entirely without affect and that curiously belies the remarkable range he exhibits when holding a microphone.

Billy Howerdel, co-founder of A Perfect Circle at Coachella Festival this year. Picture: Getty Images

Eat the Elephant is a strong set of a dozen songs that bustle with energy and innovation. It marks his fourth full-length collaboration with Billy Howerdel, a former guitar technician for Tool whose songwriting and musical ideas led to Keenan offering to provide vocals nearly 20 years ago.

Although Howerdel originally had a female voice in mind for what became A Perfect Circle, he certainly wasn’t going to pass up an offer to work with a man whose distinctive lyrics and vocals had elevated Tool to one of the world’s top hard rock acts.

Rounding out the present iteration of the quintet is Smashing Pumpkins guitarist and co-founder James Iha, as well as drummer Jeff Friedl and bassist Matt McJunkins.

Of collaborating with Howerdel, Keenan says, “He has a freshness. He’s not afraid to throw out ideas, and he’s not afraid to hear me criticise them, or praise them, or adjust them, or move with them. So it’s a great working ­relationship because there’s not a lot of ego; there’s just a lot of work, there’s a lot of to and fro, and listening to each other.”

Much of the music that featured on Mer de Noms had already been arranged by Howerdel before the singer came on board. That holds true today: Keenan’s preferred process is to write lyrics in response to existing music, which his co-founder tends to obsess over before ­sharing it.

“Poor guy,” Keenan says with a laugh. “He puts all this work into all those layers of stuff, and I start muting things. But at the end of the day, he did it right to begin with; he just was ­second-guessing and adding things. But it’s better you have a guy who cares than a guy who doesn’t, right?”

Setting is important to the singer’s songwriting style, as well.

“I’ve been known to take long drives, or just sit in the car, or just sit with the headphones on in the cellar,” he says. “I put music on while I’m working on the [wine] barrels. Usually those ­unconscious moments help, where it’s just on, and you’re not thinking about it.”

There are no layered meanings at play here: outside of his musical pursuits, Keenan has been a dedicated winemaker for more than a decade. As shown in the excellent 2010 documentary, Blood into Wine, the singer was moved to establish a vineyard in the high desert of Arizona after visiting the area with Tim Alexander, the drummer for alternative rock band Primus, who also ­performed on The Hollow, the opening track on Mer de Noms.

Keen performing with Tool in Melbourne in 2013.

Not many famous musicians invest their money into winemaking; fewer still devote their hands-on time and attention to this work, as it requires significant patience and a willingness to embrace uncertainty. Keenan has reorganised his life around Caduceus Cellars and ­Merkin Vineyards — so named for the Greek symbol for commerce and a pubic wig, respectively — to the point where he schedules his ­musical commitments to ensure he’s always in Arizona for the annual grape harvest.

“I think there’s quite a bit of grounding that comes with both,” he says of his dual interests. “I think there’s a little bit of humility, more so in winemaking, because Mother Nature doesn’t really give a f..k about your plans, so you’re defin­itely having to adjust and readjust. I think there’s more similarities for me than there are differences, just because of my approach to ­taking what’s there in front of you and working with it, massaging it, highlighting what’s there, rather than trying to force your will.”

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In June 2015, Keenan published a photo on Facebook of himself standing beside a hospital bed while leaning on a cane. “Years of foot stomping left me with no cushion in my right hip. Full replacement yesterday. Walking today. 12 weeks, back on the mat to work towards that Brown Belt,” he wrote, referring to his Brazilian jiu-jitsu practice. In addition to undergoing surgery to improve his structural integrity, Keenan has become more aware of his vocal limits. Of the band’s catalogue of songs, there are “some that I think are beautiful, in that I can’t do them any more”, he says. “They were written for a person with a 27-year-old throat, not a person with a 53-year-old throat. I think it’s important for an artist to evolve and grow, especially ­because your body changes, not just your ­perspective.” With age comes the realisation that his chosen musical instrument is perishable and requires care and respect. “I think had I ­respected it a few years earlier, there might be some flexibility in it that I used to have,” he says.

As for the striking song and video that ­announced A Perfect Circle’s arrival in 2000? The band hasn’t performed Judith in concert for almost seven years. Is that because Keenan is uninterested in singing it or because he is un­able to hit those notes any more? “My mum asked me not to,” he replies. “Mum knows best.”

It’s a cryptic comment, given that the woman who inspired the song died in 2003, after 27 years of being confined to a wheelchair; that length of time would later inspire the title of Tool’s last album, 10,000 Days.

But Keenan is the sort of artist who prefers to let his work speak for itself, or at least shrug at the thought of correcting any mistaken ­assumptions. Right or wrong, he wouldn’t want to rob listeners of their own interpretation.

Eat the Elephant is out on BMG.