Counting Down the Days: Tool's Danny Carey interviewed

The year is 2002, the place is Tucson, Arizona, and The Skinny is observing Tomahawk's unenviable task of warming up a Tool audience. Clad in cop uniforms, like a menacing bastardisation of The Village People, the house lights go out as frontman Mike Patton volleys a pig's head into the crowd – a lovely gesture – and this, like their music, doesn't go down very well.

Fast forward to 2006 and an apparent musical tide change appears to have altered the expectations of your average Tool fan, with Isis reportedly going down a treat and Mastodon lined up for a clutch of support slots on the LA quartet's forthcoming European dates. As Danny Carey tells us on the phone from the road in Ohio; "We like to mix it up a little, we've been trying to get a band that isn't so identified in the metal crowd, even trying to get people with more regular pop sensibilities to open up some legs of the tour. It's nice to look out and see more females and 'thinking' people rather than just the crazy metal kids. We've been identified with the whole metal thing for so long but I think our music is now good enough to reach a broader audience."

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Ending up in the Metal category by default, following the dissolution of the alternative scene they initially emerged from, Tool have had their work cut out in climbing out of their pigeonhole. Releasing an album once every five years hasn't quite helped matters though, has it?

"There's always that worry. Even when (new album '10,000 Days') came out, we were all a little stressed, thinking 'are people still going to remember us?' It was very fortunate that it was immediately so well received."

You do have a strong fanbase…

"You'd think maybe they would go away or something… the way things change so fast in the music business. Fans have been really loyal, I think we can almost do anything and they're going to be there for us. We can take comfort in that for now, as long as we stick to our standards and don't do something creepy like sell out."

So you have no intentions of recording a two minute pop song any time soon?

"We just never really think about it when we're writing. It would be just fine if all of a sudden we came up with some pop songs, I'd knock out a whole album full of them, it would be kind of fun. I'd enjoy that as much as anything as long as they were the right emotional vehicles to express our art with. They just snowball into these big monstrous long things; I'm not hoping they can get any more concise."

An album of Bananarama covers may not be forthcoming, but Carey acknowledges their lack of commercial viability, not that this seems like a major concern…

"It's pretty tough to get the radio people to play a 16 minute song. It's hard enough for us; our shortest songs are six and a half to seven minutes long. We've been fortunate enough that they've played those on the radio," Carey hesitates for a second, before continuing without a trace of ego in his voice, "but the quality's there, so I suppose they have to."

Beyond the fact that Tool deal in sprawling epics, what else contributes to the lengthy incubation period for each record? By now it's understood that innovative recording techniques are a given, but filling the studio with helium?

"We tried to get more audio transients, especially out of the cymbals. We figured that if the air is thinner then high end frequencies will travel quicker. We try to take advantage of any little thing that might work to aid the recording process and add some clarity or some sort of distinction in the end. We just had the luxury of being able to have a budget where we could experiment rather than get in and try to knock it out as quickly as possible just to save a buck."

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Like your previous albums, on the surface, '10,000 Days' feels extremely conceptual, is that always a premeditated condition before you record?

"When we're writing the songs and putting them together it's not really so preconceived but they're all great vehicles to deal with right now and I think a lot of people feel it's great to have these songs, a bit longer and more involved, almost movie soundtrack-like."

Soundtrack-like indeed, and with a flair for creating the visuals to accompany the music in house, has movie making ever surfaced on the agenda?

"We've had pretty intense discussions about it. I think if any band would be capable of doing a full length feature that's worth sitting through, we could pull it off. Especially with the visual arts training that Adam (Jones – guitarist) has, he worked on movies for many years (see T-2, Jurassic Park, Edward Scissorhands) and that's definitely helped out doing our videos. We're pursuing it; I think there are movie companies who would have the faith in us to do it if we came up with the right script and approach. I'm hoping if not on the next album maybe the one after."

Four albums into their career and the Tool manifesto runs strong; a band that continues to garner global support whilst leaving their own indelible mark on the hegemonic stalemate of popular music. Carey considers the preservation of spiritual ethics as an important factor in keeping their untainted aesthetic alive. "We all have our own individual spirituality; it's such a subjective thing but that keeps us going. I think a spiritual view harnesses the chemistry between the four of us. Whatever we put in will come back and will be rewarded as long as we keep it sacred. If we can keep that going, there's no end in sight."

Heralded as one of the world's finest percussionists - pairing a love of jazz with a natural flair for mathematics - Tool's stuttered, unpredictable time signatures were born early in Carey's childhood years. "I was raised thinking in those terms a lot; I was always good at geometry, it's a subject I never really had to study and ever since I can remember my dad had jazz music, he had Charlie parker or the Big Band and so all this stuff began to play in my head. All these different influences ended up rubbing off on my playing, it just feels natural."

From any given era in music, who would be your ultimate partner for a freak out jam be?

"Miles Davis. He had such a heavy impact and kept reinventing himself all through the years. It was always exciting to see what he would throw down next. I always liked that there was some sort of animal in him yet he could play so well and say so much. I think to be around a guy who is a genius like that would have a profound impact."

It's not exactly a strictly musical diet of Miles, maths and metronomes for Carey though. "There was a tough decision before Tool had made it, before I had any success in the music world," he confesses. "There were some universities asking me to play basketball."

Despite an ability to remain largely off the celebrity radar – an admirable rarity for a member of a multi-million selling outfit – the basketball league Carey presently takes part in has seen him thrust onto the court with the most unlikely of sparring partners. "It's sort of like a PR vehicle for the NBA, hoping to probably pick up new fans by getting them to watch rap guys or movie stars playing. It's a lot of fun and run really professionally; they have good officials who keep statistics and have the shot clock and everything going. It's a little more organised, it's kind of fun to play games where I feel almost like I'm back in school again."

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Have you witnessed many hissy fits on the court?

"Some people have a little temper as you would imagine. Michael Rapaport ('True Romance', 'Hitch') played on my team for a couple of years and everything you'd see him do in his career has more of a comedy kind of vibe almost, but then you see these guys getting all serious over a game - getting in scraps with other actors, picking fights with Ice Cube or Snoop Dogg. I love watching them go at it, it's surreal. It's also cool that they feel so comfortable and into the game that they just forget their personas out on the court, you can see the real guy in there."

As they prepare for play by their own rules and on their own court, Tool's upcoming appearance at the SECC promises a fully fleshed out version of events, as Carey assures; "we've beefed the stage up quite a bit, the video and the lighting should come through a little more clear, a little more precise. When we're afforded that kind of space we can make it as extravagant as we want."

With the focus firmly on the stage show, it seems that the tossing around of animal limbs will be kept to a minimum, but Carey's on guard for anything...

"In Tennessee some kind of redneck guy skinned a rattle snake and left the shedding on the front of the stage for us. We were like, "what the fuck is this, man?"