Maynard James Kennan: Nirvana's Success Was "Just Timing"

Tool singer Maynard James Keenan is out promoting his new biography, A Perfect Union of Contrary Things, and in a recent interview, he had some interesting things to say about Nirvana.

While talking about how success makes musicians believe that their decisions brought about their good fortune, the rocker said that Nirvana's success was actually because of timing, explaining, "It just happened to be a perfect time for Nirvana to emerge cause people were tired of hair bands. I don't know. It might have had nothing to do with Nirvana. It was just timing."

Keenan goes on to add, "I'm not taking anything away from any of the musicians that were on those waves that were about to crest. All due respect to those musicians, but I feel that the problem then is that generally those musicians feel like they actually created the wave, when they were just on it and were prepared as it crested."

Maynard does admit that he had no control over the wave that Tool rode, saying that while in hindsight it looks calculated, at the time he was just going with the flow. 

Read more in A Perfect Union of Contrary Things, which is out now.

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