"I personally don't like to use as many effects because when you play live, something always goes wrong"
About this Quote
Adam Jones is admitting a truth every arena-rock perfectionist eventually learns: the more you chase studio magic onstage, the more you hand your set over to a fragile chain of blinking boxes. It’s not anti-technology posturing; it’s risk management dressed up as taste. “I personally” softens the statement into a preference, but the real message is blunt: reliability is a creative choice.
The line carries the mindset of a musician whose reputation is built on control, atmosphere, and precision. Effects promise transcendence, yet they also introduce a second performance happening under your feet - pedals, racks, MIDI cues, routing, power, firmware. When “something always goes wrong,” he’s not being pessimistic so much as acknowledging the physics of touring: humidity, bad power, rushed changeovers, stagehands, venues that treat soundchecks like optional. The live show becomes a high-wire act where the drama can accidentally shift from the music to the troubleshooting.
Subtextually, it’s also a quiet defense of authenticity, not in the naive “pure tone” sense, but in the pragmatic sense of keeping the audience’s attention where it belongs. Fewer effects doesn’t mean less ambition; it can mean building parts that hit even when the safety net disappears. For a band like Tool, where tension and dynamics matter as much as riffs, the most radical move might be minimizing the points of failure so the performance feels inevitable, not contingent on a pedalboard behaving.
The line carries the mindset of a musician whose reputation is built on control, atmosphere, and precision. Effects promise transcendence, yet they also introduce a second performance happening under your feet - pedals, racks, MIDI cues, routing, power, firmware. When “something always goes wrong,” he’s not being pessimistic so much as acknowledging the physics of touring: humidity, bad power, rushed changeovers, stagehands, venues that treat soundchecks like optional. The live show becomes a high-wire act where the drama can accidentally shift from the music to the troubleshooting.
Subtextually, it’s also a quiet defense of authenticity, not in the naive “pure tone” sense, but in the pragmatic sense of keeping the audience’s attention where it belongs. Fewer effects doesn’t mean less ambition; it can mean building parts that hit even when the safety net disappears. For a band like Tool, where tension and dynamics matter as much as riffs, the most radical move might be minimizing the points of failure so the performance feels inevitable, not contingent on a pedalboard behaving.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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