After a drawn out lawsuit concerning a dispute over an album cover art, Tool has finally won. The major lawsuit dates back to 2007 when an insurance company sued the band over technicalities.
“It’s costing millions and millions and millions of dollars to defend us,” stated guitarist Adam Jones in an interview with Rolling Stone. “And the fans are all going, ‘We want a new Tool album. What the fuck?’ And you don’t want to pull people into your problems, because they don’t understand.”
The last Tool album, 10,000 Days, came out 8 years ago. Tool band members say the biggest distraction has been this multi-level lawsuit. It has limited their time and ultimately stifled their creativity due to the weight it has put on all the band members.
As stated before, the lawsuit is multi-level so here’s a breakdown of what happened. In 2007 one of Jone’s friends sued the band after claiming they did not give him credit for artwork he created for the group. Following this incident, the band hired an insurance company to defend them against lawsuits. There situation got really complicated when their insurance company turned around and sued the band for technicalities. In retaliation, the band filed a counter-suit to again defend themselves.
“But the point is, we’re fighting the good fight,” Jones continued during the interview. “We’re going to trial and we want to crush them. But every time we’ve gotten close to going to trial, it gets postponed and we’ve wasted money and time and it has just drained our creative energy. We bought an insurance policy for peace of mind, but instead we would have been better off if we never had it and just dealt with the original lawsuit.”
Over the years, there were moments of false hope where rumors surfaced that the group may release an album. According to their Rolling Stone interview, it seems that Tool has not even completed a single track throughout their hiatus. Now that the suit is over, fans can only hope to see Tool complete some of their works-in-progress in the near future.
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