Tool’s Maynard James Keenan doubles down on banning phones from live shows: “You’re not gonna go home and watch it”

Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan has doubled down on the band implementing a phone ban at their shows, saying that seeing people filming is “annoying and distracting”.

• READ MORE: Tool talk touring and the timing of new material: “It definitely comes on our own terms”

The metal band have had a long-standing ban on phones being used during their live shows, only permitting fans to film one of the songs at the very end of their set. While some fans are divided by the decision, frontman continues to stick by it.

Speaking during a recent interview on Clownvis Presley’s Serious Clownversation podcast, the singer explained why he has no intention of changing his stance on the debate any time soon.

“It’s annoying and it’s distracting and the thing you’re getting on your phone sucks,” he said. “It’s not a good representation. You’re not gonna go home and watch it.”

He added that the decision to ban fans from filming the vast majority of the gig comes as an attempt to have them be more present. “We just kind of force the issue of engaging with each other – watching the show – and just being present. Take a break from it. It’s only three hours,” he added.

Referring to how fans can film one song at the live shows, he quipped that the footage would be essentially “a souvenir that sucks that you’re never gonna watch.”

Check out the full interview below.

The Tool singer, who is also frontman for A Perfect Circle and Puscifer, isn’t the only artist speaking out against fans using phones during live shows. Earlier this year, Ghost launched their largest ever ‘Skeletour’ dates and confirmed that they would implement a “phone-free” rule to encourage fans to be more interactive with the performances.

Frontman Tobias Forge would later describe the move as a “fucking life-changer”, and one that made him stop thinking that live shows were becoming “worthless”.

Last year, Bob Dylan announced a very similar scheme for his UK tour, and Jack White did the same for a run of shows in 2018. In 2022, Placebo got involved too and declared their gigs that year to be a “phone-free experience”.

Other artists including Guns N’ Roses, Childish Gambino, Alicia Keys, The Lumineers and more have all tried out the system of banning phones at shows too in a bid to have audiences engage more with their set.

In other Tool news, the band recently appeared at the star-studded ‘Back To The Beginning’ event, which took place in Birmingham on July 5 and marked the final farewell for Black Sabbath.

At the one-off show, which was held just weeks before Ozzy’s death on July 22, Tool covered 1970 Black Sabbath hit ‘Hand Of Doom’, taken from their album ‘Paranoid’.

The band’s drummer, Danny Carey, then participated in a drum circle with Mastodon’s Brann Dailor, Slipknot’s Eloy Casagrande and Gojiras’s Mario Duplantier, before teaming up with Tool bandmate Adam Jones to perform in a Billy Corgan-fronted supergroup alongside Tom Morello, K.K. Downing, and Rudy Sarzo.

Before then, bassist Justin Chancellor spoke with NME in 2024 about the pressure from fans to release new music, and when they hope to share the highly anticipated follow-up to ‘Fear Inoculum’.

“The only pressure comes when we announce that we’re working on something new, because then we have to make our own predictions for when it’ll come out, and obviously you feel like you let people down if you don’t release it in a certain amount of time,” he said.

“It’s a nice feeling that people still want new stuff, but also they’ve got to understand that it’s not the easiest thing to do. It’s not a simple thing, and it’s not always a natural thing that comes at the time you want it to come. Art is a very strange animal and it has its own schedule.”

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