Music Spotlight: Adam Jones
(Adam Jones Image Source)
Adam Jones. Poor guy. If you Google him you’ll get a barrage of useless statistics about some sports players with the same name. This is a shame. I have only ever heard of these sports players because of the real Adam Jones. Additionally, if you are confused, you could easily fall into a paranoid and abysmal corner of the Internet that brings you to Alex Jones and what would be his humorously off-base conspiracy rants, if they weren’t too often centered around something more substantial, but entirely missing the point. That’s a post for a different day…
The real Adam Jones is the guitar player and art director for the artistically and commercially colossal band Tool.
Now, I’m not here to regurgitate things I read on Wikipedia or Rolling Stone Magazine (do actual magazines still exist?). You should have done that already anyway. Here is your caveat: I’m going to enter the world of subtlety. I like my wine dry, my meat red, and my thoughts deep.
Continuing with more pretentious alienation, because it’s sort of necessary, as it’s not too dissimilar to warning the viewer before recommending the abstract, boundary-setting work 2001: A Space Odyssey. That being said, there is this sort of semi-typical behavior exhibited when Tool is discussed that warrants a bit of skepticism. For some non-fans, any hesitation may indeed be considered a simpleton’s naivety or shallowness, to those who might otherwise “get it.” But this idea does seem to plague the fan base with the terrifying realization that too many fans have succumbed to band worship and arrogance—their charismatic leader Maynard James Keenan (lead singer), who believe that everyone who doesn’t drink the Kool-Aid isn’t riding to Valhalla on a white horse when the deluge comes. Maybe not shockingly, the band has endorsed a careful and healthy use of hallucinogens. (Perhaps inexplicably to be abused by their cult-like following.)
The reason for this nonsense boils down to the power of Tool’s music. It may discomfort the other type of fans—elitist fanatics, but the fact is that Tool can pack a wallop on many types of people, because understanding and feeling the power of a good piece of music is a nature too intrinsic and a joy too dear to overlook easily, and Tool leaves little room for distractions.
Despite an overwhelming adoration of Maynard Keenan, and the assertions that Danny Carey (drummer) is a drum God, Adam Jones weaves his unmistakable and inimitable signature in Tool’s legacy, too often glossed over for those more immediately noticeable talents. Simply put, the man is too busy being a true artist to concern himself with the spotlight. From his guitar work to his artwork, he is equally an irreplaceable aspect that shapes and drives the band’s narrative.
If you don’t know how to pick up on what each instrument is doing, it is pretty easy to hear a Tool song as a singular piece of music—all elements coalescing almost omnisciently into one moving backdrop, with spiraling polyrhythmic time signatures that converge so well it almost sounds like a fractal image from a Victorian church window in Hell might look, literally.
With this motif, Adam Jones employs a careful understanding of rhythm, making detailed use of the percussion elements of guitar playing, typically as an additional dynamic in the beat. He crafts this texture knowingly into parts where the melody is more focused on the vocals or bass line, never halting his ability to compliment the music, and never catering to an itch for the spotlight. Although this humble approach may unfortunately go unnoticed, he certainly does not take a backseat. He knows, quite simply, that if the music doesn’t call for a certain treatment, it doesn’t get it.
Similarly, he knows when not to play. Knowing when not to play is just as important as playing. Imagine a time you saw an orchestra, maybe the last time was in high school. You may have noticed that each instrumentalist had their moment to play and plenty of time being silent, allowing the song to speak, rather than an individual. This is a maturity in songwriting. It adds dynamic, which adds power. Much like tension building and releasing, or an ebb and flow. It’s the tension that creates the release, and sometimes it’s the lack of something that makes the existence of it impacting. Tool doesn’t feed you when you are full. If they are only good at two things, I believe it’s starving you—to later gorge yourself on five star music food.
Although it may sound like a Zen-like patience is necessary to derive pleasure from their music, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Never contrived, they meticulously spin their complex webs of composition, often into pretty familiar formats, with dedicated verses and choruses, aware that the music should be digestible for it to be nurturing. Often his riffs can be as little as two notes (think: “Stinkfist”), but they are only simple because it is perfect the way it is. For “Stinkfist,” I imagine the duality between Maynard singing about “over stimulation” while the backdrop, still incredibly distinctive as only two notes, is perhaps intentional. Either way, that riff needs nothing but those two notes and a bend.
(”Stinkfist” Image Source)
Jones adds his mark as a guitar player more in a realm of creativity, appropriateness, uniqueness, and theatric-like soundscapes. Sometimes comparable to a violinist’s undulation and articulation, his highly detailed attention to guitar goes into what it’s adding to the narrative and how it’s moving and shaping it, rather than blasting out some mechanical guitar techniques that too often only adds merit to one player, rather than a song as a whole. When you hear his playing, it sounds a lot more akin to human language than it does computer generated circle-of-fifths-loving, arpeggiated sweep picking, or some other similarly over-indulgent textbook music theory rhetoric. While there is certainly validity in music studies, what is music that isn’t first and foremost a platform for communication? Still, let’s not forget how he must know quite a bit about time signatures in order to play off of “drum-deity” Danny Carey.
He describes his sonic world through an arsenal of hand crafted tones, being one of all too few guitar players who make very deliberate use of the tone and volume controls on the instrument, as well as all the lovely quirks of the instrument, such as harmonics, feedback, string scraping, and plucking strings above the nut, or placement of the pick plucking the strings—where closer to the neck makes it warm, and closer to the bridge makes it thinner and more distant sounding (think: intro to Salival’s “Pushit”). His voicing isn’t limited to just the guitar’s capabilities either. He makes frequent use of a myriad of highly emotive effects such as wah, delay, reverb, volume, numerous distortion and clean sounds, among others, which impressively makes his footwork nearly a dance at times. He also employs the use of a talkbox that he had a hand in designing, even further shaping strange guitar tones with his mouth. All of this and more is deliberately woven into the music, adding much of what makes Tool sound like Tool.
And his feedback. Adam Jones is a master of guitar feedback. It may sound strange to non-musicians, but simply, feedback is that high pitched squealing that happens when a guitar’s signal is picked up and infinitely duplicated on a loop between a speaker and a pickup. It is possible to shape the tone and notes in a few different ways, but is always an irritatingly fickle thing to control or duplicate, having most players leave it out of experimentation entirely. As well as with his other techniques, his feedback is always deliberate and tasteful, cramming every last inch remaining in the song with soaring and wild feedback that he is able to duplicate time and time again that brings the song even more unique and powerful worth.
This is a good way to describe the intensity of the band as a whole. A precisely contained and disciplined chaos that seems like it could spin out of control at any moment if it weren’t for the cohesion and masterful talents of each member. Justin Chancellor (bass) playing so rhythmically that one mistake could lead to a full band disaster; Danny Carey playing such complex rhythms that all the required limb independence could fall apart with one broken stick; Maynard’s high notes held with such power and precision it sometimes sounds like an embarrassing voice crack is consciously thwarted. Perhaps it’s this kind of looming danger attacked with such ferocity and musicianship that leaves us on the edge of our seats, as they are one of the last bands willing to lift and trans-mutate heavy lead into gold.
It is impossible to talk about any member of the band without talking about the band as a whole due to their superb cohesion, but suffice to say, Adam Jones deserves more recognition as an essential member of the band. In a four piece that is so talented and easily recognizable, no one is taking a back seat, and every member is working off one another. Guitar and vocals can be viewed as one instrument harmonizing. At least some of the credit for Maynard’s incredible power, and well really, cool note choice, is directly attributable to Adam Jones’s sonic sculptures. Without those exact simple power chords in the apex of “Pushit,” Maynard’s impact wouldn’t be the same. Adam Jones creates the fluid that other members swim in. That’s the purpose of guitar, it has an incredibly important role in drawing up the landscape the song is propelling through.
Take the album Aenima for example. When listening to that album, it’s hard not to frequently imagine something akin to an electromagnetic storm surging through a Nazi concentration camp. A scene that always comes to mind, perhaps appropriately due to Adam Jones having had worked on the movie in the art department for Terminator 2, is when the machines are sent back in time into a heavily industrial city, naked, in a spurring of electricity. All members of the band offer a part in this sound experiment, but Adam Jones’s remarkable ability to sway between grimy, sludgy, earthy riff-age (think: “Jimmy”) and sounds reminiscent of ten thousand volts coursing through your body (think: “Stinkfist”), and a roomy and spiritual sounding hollowness (think: “H.”), leaves me captivated to this day, twenty years later. When music can describe a setting to that kind of level, it’s a thing of genius no matter the technicality or strangeness. For that much time to pass and nothing comes off unintentionally goofy or dated, while being so imaginative and moving through themes of humor and comparatively very serious subject matter, it is a true rarity.
This is just the tip of the iceberg for Adam Jones. There’s a lot more to say about his playing and songwriting, but he possesses another boundless and unique talent of art. He has worked in art departments on many movies, including Jurassic Park, Batman Returns, Terminator 2, and many others. He is a videographer, photographer, a painter, a sculptor…you name it. He is the major art director for many of the albums, the inventor/director/and artist for their acclaimed music videos, and plays a huge role in the acclaimed visuals for live shows. Rife with hidden meanings, deep spiritualism, occultism, sacred geometry, and other themes, he continues his journey sculpting the image and furthering the endless depth and wealth of thought treasures for Tool. And because they never underestimate the audience’s intelligence, there is a lot left to figure out on your own, as Tool’s very name encourages discovery and contemplation, an instrument for self-growth and awareness, and is purposefully left up to personal interpretation.
(Adam Jones on T2 Image Source)
(Adam Jones on Schism Video Image Source)
Tool has never been a phase one goes through, but rather grows with you—certain things coming into the light and making sense as you grow. Novels could be written on Tool, but with that, I leave you on your way to discover a fuller spectrum of messages, tantalizing art and music, and various other hidden gems that comprise the narrative that makes Tool so vividly unique, with wells of intrigue and inspiration to keep your mind hungry, then fed healthily for years, With which Adam Jones left his indelible mark.
