During his appearance on comedian Bert Kreischer’s podcast, Maynard James Keenan and Kreischer discussed how the Tool frontman got his start in Los Angeles in the early ‘90s, and the bands he was into at the time. Keenan touched on how he was a fan of bands like Nirvana (making note of how he liked them prior to their breakout album “Nevermind” being released) before recalling a few bands he thought were going to be huge that ultimately never had the success he thinks they rightfully deserved.

“There were a bunch that were around at that point. There was a band called Dead, White and Blue; Dumpster; Liquid Jesus,” Keenan said.

He went on to give a bit of an explanation as to why those three bands, and others like them, never really had any large scale success outside of the late ‘80s/early ‘90s LA music scene. “It’s Hollywood, so there’s all the stuff that ends up infecting it. There’s the stuff around town of like, ‘You’re gonna be huge, so you should do this now. Hire that guy and do this,’ and it just kind of imploded because of the external and internal pressures kind of colliding,” Keenan said.

“They didn’t focus on probably what was the most important part, which is don’t listen to any of those voices, just make your music and play your show,” he added.

When asked by Kreischer how difficult it is for young bands to to give in to outside forces, Keenan recalled:

“Early on we had a guy talking to us and he said in this industry you’re going to meet a manager who is going to introduce you to the lawyer who is going to introduce you to the agent who is going to introduce you to the merchandiser who is going to introduce you to blah, blah, blah. Just round in a circle. All these people you’re all going to meet, they know each other and you’re new here and they’re going to compliment the f*ck out of you. So every time they say anything that’s a compliment, you have to replace it with ‘dumb’ and ‘naive.’ ‘’Oh my God, I saw you guys play last night and you were so dumb and naive. I’ve never heard anything so dumb and naive.’ Just replace it with ‘dumb’ and ‘naive’ in your head and picture them with bunny ears.”

“It kind of levels what’s being said,” Keenan added. “At the end of the day, we write the songs, we play the songs and what are we talking about right now? What do you want?”