Original Bassist  ‘I Probably Would Have Left TOOL 10 Times by Now But…..

Original Tool bassist Paul D’Amour reflected on the “frustrating” nature of the band’s lengthy creative process, explaining how his own approach to creativity differed from that of his former bandmates.

Waiting for Tool albums to come out notoriously comes with the risk of turning grey in the meantime, and the alternative metal behemoths stayed true to their reputation for the largest part of their career (even though there’ve been promises as of late that it wouldn’t take them another 13 years to follow up on 2019’s “Fear Inoculum”).

However, the band’s original bassist Paul D’Amour suggests in a new interview with Guitar World that it wasn’t always like that — at least not at the very beginning. “It sort of took off; we went from zero to 100 in a matter of months”, the bassist recalls of first getting together with Maynard James Keenan, Adam Jones, and Danny Carey. He added:

“I think at the beginning of the band, we were all happy to be there. I’d written a bunch of stuff beforehand, and then those guys had some riffs. It was already kind of there in a weird way; we just had to sort of nurture it.”

“We spent a year and wrote five songs. That, to me, was so frustrating”

The success of Tool’s debut LP “Undertow” came as a surprise, D’Amour admits, but the band did its best to “nurture” the magic it had. However, the “sophomore slump” that ensued as Tool went to work on “Ænima” really took a toll on him, the bassist adds:

“We nursed that for several years and multiple tours, playing those same songs, and all that success came. And honestly, I feel like all of a sudden there was this sophomore slump. People started overthinking all the parts, and I never was that way as a musician. I was always somebody that writes out of instinct.”

“When we got to writing ‘Ænima’, we spent a year and basically wrote five songs. That, to me, was so frustrating. And I think Adam was really in this moment where he was trying to find his voice as a guitar player.”

“He was just so unsure about everything, and playing the same parts over and over and over. And I was just like, ‘Oh, my God, I can’t!’ I really couldn’t deal with it, you know?”

“I think they’re all frustrated in that”

D’Amour added how his former bandmates must still feel the same, given the trend perseveres. Another thing that didn’t jam with his approach to writing music was that Tool had a strict rule on who can suggest parts for which instrument:

“And I think they’re all frustrated in that. I don’t know how those guys stick it out. So I just felt frustrated, and as you know, in that band it was always like, ‘Okay, the bass player can only write the bass parts. A guitar player can only write the guitar parts.’ No one can comment on anything regarding the song except your part.”

“But not to me – I don’t think that’s how creative things happen. If you’re in a band, you’ve got to listen, hear each other, and expand on ideas. It just felt really stifling for me as a person; I just started doing other shit because I was bored.”

He added:

“I did that ‘Replicants’ cover album, and it was the funnest thing I ever did. It was the first time I got to experiment with keyboards, different pedals, play guitar, do vocals – whatever. I realized that’s what I need to be doing as an artist.”