“We had lots ideas from all the jams and crazy things that went on for Lateralus, so we had a few good starting points to go from,” Carey said. Instead of going in with a clear idea of what kind of record they wanted to create, Tool shot from the hip, jamming in their practice space until they liked something they came up with then they repeated the process ad infinitum. Tool guitarist Adam Jones, drummer Danny Carey and bassist Justin Chancellor were obsessive about the music, approaching each song from a multitude of angles before committing to the final versions. While Keenan has a bittersweet relationship with some of the lyrics on 10,000 Days, he has no qualms with the mastery that went into the songwriting. It’s just too personal.” Tool, "Wings for Marie (Pt. If any one of us is off, it falls apart and makes that thing tragic, and that’s not a good song for me to have fall apart. And technically, ‘Wings’ is very difficult to pull off. Those songs were exploited and misconstrued, people were flippant and dismissive. It just took too much out of me – too much emotionally, mentally, physically – all those manifestations. “I think probably the stupidest thing I could have done on 10,000 Days was put myself out there as much as I did with the tracks ‘Wings for Marie (Part 1)’ and ‘10,000 Days (Wings Part 2),’ Keenan said in an interview to promote the album. It featured a thrilling combination of songs that tumbled and ripped like a bag of nails in a whirring particle accelerator, and more atmospheric, psychedelic tracks that opened themselves to more introspective or confessional lyrics in retrospect some turned out to be too confessional for the band’s enigmatic vocalist. Like Lateralus, the album was an offbeat, angular excursion that required careful listening to digest. One thing’s for sure: Tool released 10,000 Days in North America on May 2, 2006, and those who feared the band would stray from the crushing, experimental sounds of Lateralus breathed a smokey THC-laden sigh of relief as soon as they heard it. Tool are the kind of elusive band that likes to play with people’s theories and expectations. Or maybe the album has nothing to do with either. For me, starting to recognize those patterns, it was very important to start constructing songs that chronicled that process, hoping that my gift back would be to share that path and hope that I could help somebody get past that spot.”īoth theories make sense and probably hold relevance. Kurt Cobain didn’t quite make it past his Saturn Return. Hendrix didn’t, Janis Joplin didn’t, John Bonham. “It’s kind of the story of Noah, and the belly of the whale. “That’s the time in your twenty eighth, twenty ninth year when you are presented the opportunity to transform from whatever your hang-ups were before to let the light of knowledge and experience lighten your load, so to speak and let go of old patterns and embrace a new life," he once explained to me.