TOOL Guitarist Is Explorer Of All Mediums

Erin Broadley of the L.A. Weekly recently conducted an interview with TOOL guitarist Adam Jones, who was tapped by Alternative Press to take part in an exclusive group art exhibit celebrating the iconic music magazine's 25th anniversary. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

L.A. Weekly: Tell me about your piece in the AP show.

Adam Jones: I just have one piece in the show. They asked for a couple and I wanted to give them a painting and a sculpture, but I didn't have time to get the painting done with everything going on right now. They have a sculpture that I did; it's a bronze piece about 14 or 15 inches high. It's a figure I did for our bass player who was in this band called PEACH in the early '90s... that's actually how we met him. They released this album in the States and asked me to do the cover. They said I could do whatever I want so that's what I did. I was really happy with the sculpture so I had it bronzed and I'm selling editions of it.

L.A. Weekly: I heard you have a comic book in the works, too.

Adam Jones: Oh, yeah! I'm really excited about it. I befriended Steve Niles who wrote 30 Days of Night... he does comics, he's written a couple novels, he's written screenplays and teleplays for television. He's got a lot of experience and we just instantly became friends. We realized we were very much cut from the same piece of cloth -- same age, same interests like old horror movies, comics and muscle cars. Finally he just asked if I'd like to do some comics, and I've drawn all my life so I said, "I've always wanted to do that." And he was like, "No, no. I'm talking about producing and writing." I was like, "Oh, yeah. I'd love to do that." We have about 10 would-be projects going on between him and I, but the one that took off was the idea of doing a merge with 30 Days of Night and X-Files. It came up and we jumped on it. It's through WildStorm, which is a division of our sister company DC Comics and IDW. One owns 30 Days of Night and one owns X-Files. It took a little time but they got it together and we got licensed and the permission to use all the characters. We've got Scully and Mulder in it and they're battling piranha-teethed vampires up in Alaska. It's so much fun and I'm learning so much from Steve. It's six issues. The first issue comes out at the end of this month.

L.A. Weekly: You've done so many different things in your artistic career: film, sculpture, music, painting, special effects... this comic book series must be a new thrill.

Adam Jones: Absolutely. I've always been involved in the visual arts and music. When I was doing special effects working on movies, that was my dream. And I'd always just play music on the side. [Laughs] Then the band took off and now, in terms of visual art, it's opened so many doors for me. I feel really fortunate.

L.A. Weekly: How often do you showcase your artwork in galleries?

Adam Jones: I've done some little things around L.A., like a drawing for a benefit, or some photography in a little gallery. This [AP show] is the first real art event. Alex Grey once showed some of my work which was really great. I can't say enough good things about Alex and how much advice, direction and influence he's given me. But I've never been in a show with contemporary, heavy-hitting artists like these. When AP asked I didn't even blink because those guys have always been so supportive of [TOOL]. We're one of those bands like the MELVINS... kind of between the cracks. Like, we're too metal for indie but we're not metal enough for metal. We're too melodic for rock and we're too prog for whatever [laughs]. AP was always like, "We love you guys. We get it," so I was really happy to do this. When I met [AP publisher] Norman Wonderly, the first thing I did was go up to him and say, "Thank you for all the support over the years." And he said, "I'm putting on a show and I've always liked the art you've done over the years. Would you like to contribute something?" Yeah! It's pretty cool.

Read the entire interview from L.A. Weekly.