Tool’s Maynard James Keenan Says Rockville Performance in Drag Wasn’t Political

Over the weekend, Welcome To Rockville featured some killer performances from some of today’s bigger acts, but it was the eye-opening performance by Tool and their frontman Maynard James Keenan that stole headlines earlier this week. And that’s mostly because he performed in drag in Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis recently signed a bill into law that outlawed such a thing.

Naturally, people put two and two together and thought it was a calculated statement against the legislation. However, in a recent interview with The Messenger, he says that wasn’t the case at all.

“I’m not a political fella — had nothing to do with Florida. I’ve been cross-dressing since long before these clickbait-junkie dupes were out of diapers. It’s pretty crazy the technology and the prosthetics nowadays, how they’ve come along, and I just was considering bringing the look back.

“It’s amazing to me how every single thing you say or do is twisted and conformed into some fundamentalist far-right or far-left agenda.”

Given the fact that Welcome To Rockville was an all-ages festival, Keenan was technically in violation of the Florida law that prevents minors for attending drag shows. Despite that law, Keenan pushed that assertion aside, saying there was actually no one enforcing the law there, instead calling it a political tactic.

“They just do that and they throw it out there to shore up their base for an election year.”

Despite saying he’s not a political person, he did comment on the asininity behind the law, deferring to his more libertarian views that as long as no one’s harming each other, people should largely be free to do what he wants.

“I think limiting people’s access to anything is absurd. Good parenting allows you to teach your kids how to be reasonable and reason and puzzle things out and decide for themselves what the fuck they wanna see or not wanna see.”