Deftone tool

Dare I say stubborn. Wonderful people. But stubborn. Up to that point, they seemed to have been able to navigate through their differences in ideas and approaches. Great first efforts. The evidence is all there. I felt like they just needed a bit of new perspective. So I showed up with Tibetan Singing Bowls, some percussion instruments, champagne, and asked them permission to do some experiments.

I had them each switch instruments, play on the bowls, take one loop and try some improvisation. Things of that nature. The look on their faces was priceless.

I might as well have been wearing hippy beads and bunny ears. I could just feel Stephen thinking, "What kind of acid trip crap is this? I stuck around long enough for them to start itching to not have me around. They were able to keep up the courtesy to a point, but eventually it was time for me to let them be. The result of my interruption was for them to unconsciously remember or feel what connected them in the first place.

By the time I saw them again, they had opened their own creative floodgates. I had no idea whether my approach would work or not and no idea if that idea would ever work again, but in this instance it did. Great album. One of their best, in my opinion. I honestly had nothing to do with it other than a mental break and temporary change of perspective. I don't recall whether I showed up with completed lyrics or not. Like I said, it's been awhile. But this visit I was able to assume the role that I've become accustomed to.

Most pieces in place, [now] navigate the puzzle in front of you. Love that track. Tool are probably the biggest cult act on the planet. Since forming in the early 90s they have garnered an obsessively hardcore fanbase that worship their every utterance. Some of those fans have gone on to form their own bands, inspired by and borrowing heavily from the dense, mystic, polyrhythmic blueprint Tool created. So wide-ranging is their influence that even Justin Bieber is a fan.

Deftones were there at the ground level, before realising how creatively stifling that could be, and starting to explore the space between metallic riffs and vast progressive soundscapes on their magnum opus White Pony.

More a case of mutual admiration rather than outright influence. Mudvayne: nu-metal chancers with silly make-up, right? Actually, there was far more to the Illinois outfit than that. Their debut album, L.