Tool’s Maynard James Keenan Talks Having COVID-19 and Our “Nazi President”
In a recent appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience, singer Maynard James Keenan (Tool, A Perfect Cirlce, Puscifer) opened up about his battle with COVID-19.
Keenan revealed that he’s had the virus earlier this month, at which time he said he’s still experiencing symptoms months later.
Pressed for additional details by Rogan, Keenan had this to say (transcript via The PRP):
“I didn’t have a bad [case], yes and no. So it was one of those, you know I’m in Australia. We went out to dinner… and immediately food didn’t taste right, but this is now, this is all hindsight, right I didn’t know at the time. We didn’t know that these are the things you’re looking for, like immediately.
“So nobody knew what to tell you. I immediately was sick, then I had to get on an international flight the next morning, fly to New Zealand on… I’m a super spreader [jokingly replying to Rogan], I brought it [to New Zealand], it was in me. And I put it in you.
“So we got there, I was like four days in the hotel. Cuz we have four days off before the shows. So I was just drinking water, hot showers, taking care of myself, hot tea, just trying to get through it and it sucked. But you didn’t know yet that like what, how bad this thing could have been. if I’d have known how bad it could have been I would have been freaking out.”
“[I] isolated pretty well like I you know I was, I grabbed the masks before I even got on the plane, because I just instinctually like just having, you know friends that are that are, you know, going to Taiwan and going to Japan like you just see the mask, like, Okay, I’m probably just gonna wear the mask anywhere on the plane.”
Keenan went on to say that a doctor in New Zealand told him he didn’t have the coronavirus, but that singing while he was ill “was not fun.” He then flew to Hawaii to train in Muay Thai:
“I’m starting to do the Muay Thai I’m like, ‘dude, this hurts’ like, I’ve never, my hands have never hurt this bad. I thought maybe I sprained them because right after I recovered in New Zealand. I went and trained in New Zealand, thinking, I’m just gonna fucking gut it out, you know, I’m gonna walk it off, rub some dirt on it and I felt okay then.
“But when I finally got to Maui, I’m like, this is not right. This hurts I can’t fucking do this. I thought well maybe I sprained my wrist, so months go by that they’re not healing, I’m going through harvest [at his winery] at this point and like nothing’s [changing] they’re not healing.
“But I finally went to a doctor, an arthritis doctor, and he was like ‘okay so walk me through when you first saw…’ And I started walking him through everything he goes, ‘you had COVID.’ And what what are some of the side effects that you find are the are that inflammation.
“So whatever I guess so it’s some kind of a rheumatoid response. That alone would be well maybe, I’m just 56 and I have arthritis, but my blood work was completely clean everywhere else no other issues anywhere else in my body but just the wrists, explaining that, but I still have the cough.
“So whatever cough I had whatever cough I got in New Zealand, like every other day, I’ll have a coughing fit for, you know, for 10 minutes, coughing up stuff, so I have lung damage from from it still.”
Keenan then revealed that he’s currently taking the chemotherapy agent/immune system suppressant Methotrexate:
“The Methotrexate goes for about, it’s like a you know I did, I’ve done it for now 10 weeks. I have another five weeks supposedly I’m gonna do, but I’m going to continue the CBD after that.”
Addressing COVID-19 conspiracy theorists, Keenan added:
“I’m still feeling residual effects of that. I feel like there’s a bunch of people that that—maybe I didn’t almost die—I have friends who almost died. Yeah, it was close. So then you have people going… apparently I’m being paid to say this [that he contracted COVID-19]. Eat a dick dude.”
Eventually, the discussion turned to the upcoming U.S. election, of which Keenan said:
“You start to default back to the position of, okay well this I’m gonna step back and just see in my lifetime, what What haven’t we seen? Okay well in my lifetime, we haven’t seen a female black president. So if you’re voting for Biden, in a way, you have to be a little honest about it, you’re actually voting for Kamala Harris because it’s very possible she’s going to be the next president.
“But is she an awful person? Is she a bad person? Is she a good person? I don’t know. I just know that it’s a step forward. It’s something that hasn’t happened before me, and I get to be alive when we’ve, when we have a female president.”
Rogan, enlightened soul that he is, then asked Keenan, “We’ve never had a Nazi president early, would that be a step forward?” Keenan then laughed that “we already have that,” at which point Rogan argued that Trump couldn’t be a Nazi because his son-in-law, Brahms from The Boy Jared Kushner, is Jewish.
You can check out the entire interview below. Puscifer’s new album, Existential Reckoning, comes out Friday, October 30. will be released next Friday, October 30th.
