ADAM JONES

Birth Name: Adam Thomas Jones

 

Birthday: January 15, 1965

 

Quick Facts:

Adam has three dogs, two cats, and two pigs

One is on the back of the undertow CD case.

Is sculpting a piece for the cover of Peach's re-release of 'Giving Birth to a Stone'

 

Equipment:

 

Guitars:

Silver burst 1978 Gibson Les Paul , Seymour Duncan Jazz neck pickup in his guitars along with the SD JB bridge pickup.

 

Amps:

(heads/Combos) A vintage Marshall head, a non-master volume bass amp from 1976, Mesa/Boogie Triple Rectifier, a Diezel VH-4 head amp.

 

Effects:

Delay and EQ Effects Pedals An Epilady, a harmonizer, and an electronic string stimulator (EBow) on the beginning of 'Third Eye,' a Morely Wah pedal, a Boss Metal Zone distortion pedal, a pedal made by either Dunlop or D.O.D., a fake Leslie cabinet processor (it gives a rotating speaker effect) that he uses on "Die Eier von Satan", a Boss effects processor or a Zoom 505, and a Boss Flanger on most songs. Adam puts the Flanger before his distortion in the signal path rather than in the amp's effects loop.

 

Cabinets: ??

 

Adam's journey began in Libertyville, Illinois where, as a child, Adam began skipping Sunday school to read comics books at a nearby store. This rejection of the word of god in favor of the images of the comic microcosm carried over to school where Adam would draw pictures during teacher's lectures and think of music during math class. Adam studied violin as a child, but as Adam grew older he began to move away from the rigidity of a classical music and towards the sonic potentials of guitar playing. While most kids were involved in sports and homework Adam's musical talents and continued interest in comic books and sketching evolved into a desire for integrating and animating his ideas through the medium of film and the manipulation of three dimensional space through sculpture. Despite a film school scholarship offer Adam choose art school where he was able to hone his sculpting and sketching abilities. Still maintaining an interest in films Adam moved to LA and received training in make-up effects. He started a career working for Stan Winston's doing make-up effects and spent a few years working on movies. Maynard and Adam decided to start a band while keeping their day jobs...the rest is history. It has only been through the last nine years, however, that Adam has begun to explore the full potentials of projecting his thoughts and emotions through Tool's songs, videos, and album artwork. Sometimes in this environment, Adam is able to achieve a state of synesthesia where playing guitar invokes visions and images to appear before him and making videos, sketching, or sculpting creates auditory hallucinations of riffs and music. Currently Adam is sculpting a piece for the re-release of the Peach album Giving Birth to a Stone, writing music each day for the next Tool album with Danny and Justin, sketching the images he obtains in these practices, and dealing with the business side of the music industry. One way to perceive the experiences that have led to Adam's state in Tool is as the exploration of contrasting modalities of perception. As the hemispheres of the brain struggle for dominance there is a constant shifting of polarity between the right and left lobes that exists as music vs. number, image vs. word, being vs. doing, and holistic integration vs. linear abstraction.

 

Adam Jones is the creative mind behind the amazing guitar riffs and the intense videos of Tool. Ironically, he seems more comfortable as an artist than as a musician.

Adam is originally from Illinois, and played violin in elementary school. He was accepted into the Suzuki program, and continued to play violin through his freshman year in high school. He then played a stand up bass for three years in an orchestra.

In addition to playing in an orchestra, Adam played bass in a band called Electric Sheep with Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine in high school (Libertyville), and while he never received traditional guitar lessons, they learned from each other. Adam also studied film. Adam received a music scholarship to go to college, but chose to go to art school instead.

Adam went to school at the Hollywood Makeup Academy. He began by learning "straight make-up," because he thought it would help him out. He then began work as a sculptor and special effects designer where he learned the stop-motion camera techniques he would later apply in Tool's videos Sober, Prison Sex, Stinkfist, and Ænema.

After he graduated, he went to work at Rick Lazzarini's "The Character Shop." He was there for quite a while, 1-2 years, and worked on a TV show called "Monsters." He designed and fabricated a Grim Reaper makeup and a Zombie head on a spike (later used in Ghostbusters 2.) he worked on several commercials, and was one of the designers. He worked on a salad dressing commercial (it was never aired), Olympic stain (Albert Einstein makeup's), Duracell (Boxers and Taxi cabs), Nightmare on Elm Street Part 5 (He did the Freddy Krueger in the womb makeup), and Ghostbusters 2. At that time, Adam had a pet chameleon and a Great Dane. After that, he went to Stan Winston's. There he worked on Predator 2, where he sculpted a unique looking skull for the Predator's space ship interior.

Adam worked on several other big films in Hollywood doing makeup and set design, including Jurassic Park and Terminator 2. He also helped Green Jello with their costumes.

Adam is a great drawer, and is brilliant at caricatures. He is a big Devo fan. He used to skateboard and had an empty pool in front of the house he rented.