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"So this is one of my dearest friends. This is Maynard from Tool, and uh, and uh, I call him up when I'm feeling terrible and he sings me lullabies. So I asked him to come and sing tonight."
-- Tori; RAINN Benefit Concert, Live from NY 1997
"Michael!" some fans screamed as the shaved head of Tori Amos' guest vocalist appeared onstage (RAINN Benefit Concert, Live from NY 1997). A good guess considering that it was well-known that Amos and R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe had recorded a (greatly anticipated yet ultimately unreleased) duet in 1995. When her guest sat down and Amos announced, "This is one of my dearest friends. This is Maynard from Tool." the audience reeled with confusion, shock, anticipation, and joy. Amos' friendships and partnerships with other musicians (Stipe, Reznor, and Vedder) had been widely publicized yet very few knew that Tori and Maynard were even aware of each other (or even who Maynard or Tool were). The duet went on to juxtapose Maynard's onstage intensity with Amos's twee approach to tough subject matter--the omission of the contribution of women in holy texts. The two had met six months prior in June 1996 at one of Amos' shows in Los Angeles thanks to the 24-month long efforts of a couple of their friends (Shane Brouse and Rantz Hoseley) who knew of their mutual (professional) admiration. Performing Muhammad My Friend was Maynard's choice and the two of them took about an hour before the show to work out the arrangement. Although the two have not worked together since, they regularly name-check each other in interviews and fans wondering what Maynard singing lullabyes would sound like were treated to A Perfect Circle in 2000.
-- edited from full article
"I think he really is this beautiful guy. And he has a deep spiritual currency. Where he believes that you can't separate yourself from what you create. He and I are very close friends and I feel that he's under no illusions that if you put it out there you cannot separate yourself from it, when the heat gets great. When people disagree or if you stir it up. You can't just collect the publishing check and not collect the controversy that you create with it."
-- Tori; Spin.com Interview, May 18, 2001
"That's the hugest thing missing from this Lollapalooza: feminine energy, and it's disappointing. But it's not for lack of trying. I had my wish list: Meshell Ndegeocello, Ani DiFranco, Tori Amos, PJ Harvey, Luscious Jackson."
-- Maynard; L.A. Times, Aug 3, 1997
T: Well, Maynard, I just saw him the other night cuz he's doing the Ozzie thing and so he...we ran into each other in Minneapolis a couple nights ago and he came to the show and he was wearing this "Free Frances Bean" shirt. We're giving everything out to everybody, I mean he, uh, I just adore him. We're just really good buddies, and we sang together. He was gracious enough to do the whole RAINN thing, that was about a year and a half ago, for the RAINN benefit.
I: You know, he was actually in town the same night you were.
T: You know, we were trying to find a way, you know...get a chopper, because he goes on at like, 8, and I go on at like 9:15, and we were like trying to find a way for him to get...he was at Pine Knob, right?
I: Yeah, he's gonna be there for Ozzfest.
T: To get there from there, to do the whole [?] at live aid (garbled)..
I: Thats great, just hop on stage or something.
T: Yeah, but we, we, we've been talking about it. He wants to do a talk show together if we're cool enough. But I said, 'yeah, but what about all those neo-nazis,' but, you can't put all those cute girls on pikes, cuz, like, I think I'm gonna like, cut their heads off. So, you know, they're gonna be like, missing a leg.
-- Tori; On The Edge Radio Interview, Jul 21, 1998
"There are a lot of metaphysical, spiritual, and emotional changes going on right now, and we're [Tool] just trying to reflect that. We're not that different from Tori Amos in that sense."
-- Maynard; Rolling Stone, 1996
"The music industry does strange things to people. People trot out their cuts and bruises like sales points in a marketing campaign. Tori's managed to embrace her whole life experience without compromising and using it cynically."
-- Maynard; US Magazine, Jul 1998
Tool's Maynard James Keenan is "like a brother." "It's always been that way," Amos says, glowing. "Whether it's a past life or something, we could have just been two ants struggling to get from one place to another -- there is that familiarity you can't explain. You just feel comfortable."
-- Tori; Blender Magazine, Nov 2002
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