TOOL Guitarist Says Lawsuit Was 'Really Distracting'

TOOL guitarist Adam Jones revealed earlier this week in an interview with Yahoo! Music that the band had finally settled a complicated lawsuit that has dragged on for eight years and set back the band's recording and touring plans. Jones told The Pulse Of Radio just how badly the legal issues affected the group and its members. "You know, when you try to be ethical, and you try to sleep good at night, and you try to do the right thing, and people are not doing the right thing, and using that against you, it really affects your creativity, it affects your sleep and it affects your relationships with people and it affects everything you do," he said. "We would have had an album out a long time ago, we would have been taking a lot more tours, and that lawsuit, it was really distracting."

As previously reported, a friend of the band sued them eight years ago, claiming that he had created artwork for the group and wanted credit and compensation for it.

Then an insurance company TOOL had hired to protect itself against such lawsuits sued the band itself over technicalities in the case. TOOL countersued the insurer, with the case finally being resolved in their favor. Jones told Yahoo! Music that the whole affair "got really ugly and shameful."

In the midst of all this, Jones also revealed that an undisclosed member of the band faced a "really scary do-or-die, serious illness."

The band is now working at a faster pace on music for its first new studio set since 2006, with one song finished musically and 10 others in various stages of completion.

Jones said about the new music, "Some of it's really heavy, some of it's complex and some is more atmospheric, but it's definitely TOOL."