As long as Tool has been a thing, it’s not like Maynard James Keenan has been known as the most approachable frontman in rock and roll or anything.
Even when the diehards catch them live, half of the time Maynard spends on stage these days normally is in silhouette or at the very back of the stage, performing behind the drumkit and trolling the audience whenever he can.
Things were a lot wilder around the time of Aenema though, and you were putting your life into your own hands whenever you trespassed on Maynard’s territory back in the 90’s.
While stage crashing certainly isn’t anything new in heavy metal, one sorry fan got his ass handed to him (quite literally) by Maynard right in the middle of the set.
With Maynard already decked out in his Peter Gabriel-esque stage makeup, Maynard sees a fan coming to him from the crowd and going in for a hug.
Right when you think he’s going to just drag him back off the stage though, Maynard goes full Judo on the dude, throwing him to the ground on the stage and laying on top of him while keeping in perfect time with the rest of the song.
It’s not like Maynard wasn’t experienced in these kind of things either, being trained in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and having a brown belt by the time he was ready to take on this dude in the crowd.
It would make sense for Maynard to just keep the fan down enough to learn his lesson, but that’s apparently not how he operates.
For the length of the entire song (which if you’re a fan of Tool, you know can be a while), Maynard keeps this dude in a pretty intense hold on the ground, even having some fun with it by rolling around with the guy on the floor before finally letting him go at the end of the song.
Every rock band might have their traditional meet and greets that they like to do with their fans, but this is probably as much up close and personal that any fan would want to get to Maynard.
His voice is hypnotic and his stage presence is phenomenal, but you better make sure you stay on his good side as well. You’ll have to watch for yourself below to fully grasp the insanity of what went down here.