Adam Jones and Justin Chancellor are on the cover of the June Guitar World issue. The issue includes pictures of Adam and Justin personally picked by Adam, as well as an article that includes an interview with Adam. Unfortunately, I do not own a scanner and so I can't post any of the pictures, but here are a few quotes from the interview....
JONES: Of course we do. But they don't see it like that. They think, How can we make as much money as we can as fast as possible? But we try not to let it worry us.
What I'm REALLY worried about is you guys in the press. You keep saying that LATERALUS is the most anticipated album of the year, but I haven't heard that from ANY fans. You're setting it up to be an instant letdown, like the Y2K bug or something. Sure, I think there are a lot of Tool fans that are definitely anticipating this album. But that's a very small market. Most people don't give a shit about our band.
GW: In many ways, though, it's the group's fault. You've put out two extremely well-recieved albums, as well as a great EP. You've set your bar very high, and consequently, people have high expectations of the band.
JONES: Only within our own little community. But the press use it as a headline to sell magazines.
And that's what happened with the EP OPIATE. We thought at the time that we should release the heaviest songs we had because those would make the most impact, but all it really did was force us into this little category. Which was ridiculous. Think about the metal glam bands that were around in '92: They were all glam bands. We didn't sound ANYTHING like that.
JONES: Well, we had some. That was one of the reasons we signed with Zoo. They offered us a larger amount of control in exchange for a smaller amount of money, which seemed like a fine trade for us.
And we did have control, to a point. But there was the issue of us being promoted as a metal band. And they were supposed to check with us before doing anything that would affect the band. Of course, they'd call us when they knew we were out, and then say, "Well, we tried to get a hold of you." That sort of shit happened all the time.
GW: Is that what lead to the legal problems with your record label a couple of years ago?
JONES: Not quite. That's a longer story. Zoo Records agreed to sign us and let us have a lot of control. Plus, they were in L.A., which made dealing with them at least a little easier. Then Zoo became Volcano Entertainment and was sold to this jackass who renamed the label Freeworld Entertainment before changing the name back to Zoo. At the time, he was supposed to pick up our contract option, but he forgot to. And since we weren't too happy with him in the first place, we informed the label that they forgot to pick up our option and, therefore, we were out of our contract. Of course, they freaked out and tried to sue us for every reason they could think of, just to make it all messy. They hoped that they could at least sell the company to someone else and then let them settle with us. Which is exactly what happened.
