TOOL’s MAYNARD JAMES KEENAN: What’s The Hardest Thing These Days For An Egomaniac Like Me

TOOL vocalist Maynard James Keenan talked about the struggle of trying to stay relevant as an older artist, saying on It’s Electric : “It gets easier to get lazy. So the only way to really do that [stay relevant] is to always try to figure out some way to take yourself outside of your comfort zone. If you can get out of your comfort zone, you can then tap into things that are in a way fresh.

“I suppose you could kind of chalk it up to staying relevant, and at our age now, you see a lot of artists coming out of the woodwork trying to clearly desperately try to remain relevant.

“That stinks, that’s just stenchy. Just be relevant with what you’re doing, and be okay with not being part of the future. If you can get your head around that, that you’re not going to a part of the next generation’s focus, for egomaniacs like us, that’s f**king hard.”

During the rest of the chat, Maynard was asked on why he joined the army in his youth, to which he replied: “[I went to the army because of] art school. Army college fund. My family, my dad and my stepmom, they were teachers. The income was pretty limited, I had to somehow find a way to go to college, and the idea of loans was a bore to me. So I went to the army to pay for it.”