Maynard James Keenan Says He Doesn’t Get This Whole TikTok Thing

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Maynard James Keenan by Markus Felix (via Wikipedia)
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Every single major movement in music history has always been defined by some sort of change in technology. The whole industry switched on a dime when MTV became the biggest thing in the world, and the ‘00s gave us a lot of questions (and a few cheap laughs) when Lars Ulrich went to war against Napster.

And now that things are changing again with the emergence of TikTok, Maynard James Keenan isn’t necessarily keen on fitting Tool into that kind of mold.

During a recent interview with Joe Rogan, Maynard talked about how his approach to music doesn’t really fit in the same wheelhouse as the latest social media site, saying:

“I won’t be relevant with the tick-tockers of the world because it’s just not on their radar. The things they respond to now…I’m not necessarily relevant. But there’s an entire generation of people that’s not my generation. They’ve grown with this thing, so as they’re aging, they’re going to be discovering it.”

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Further on in the interview though, Maynard talks about how he isn’t really begging to be ‘relevant’ anymore anyways, saying:

“You can’t {think about that}, because then you’ll be desperate and get plastic surgery and look an alien trying to insert yourself into some stupid f*cking thing. It turns to desperation really quickly, so just maintain your art.”

Before you get all ‘Old Man Yells At Cloud,’ Maynard seems to be more about the integrity that he has with his art than trying to fit it into a few seconds in a TikTok, being proud of the kind of road that he’s carved for himself in every one of his acts, saying:

“That’s the listening part. I’m listening to what my bandmates are doing and having that conversation with them and building on those relationships. They have different life experiences and the art that comes out of those people is going to be different every time.”

He does have a point. While you might not be able to fit a 7-minute-long extended jam from Tool into TikTok, Maynard seems just as happy carving out a unique place in music history for himself, where every single one of his projects sounds completely different.