TOOL’s Maynard James Keenan Says He Had COVID Four Times Already

The frontman of legendary rock band TOOL, Maynard James Keenan, has revealed that he has been repeatedly infected with COVID-19. In an interview, he ties his repeated infections of the virus to touring with the band.

Blabbermouth quotes the singer stating that “I just had it the fourth time. I got the European-flavored one. That was fun.” He didn’t seem too bothered with his latest infection with the virus, describing it as “a flu. It’s done.”

He goes on to note the ways that touring around the world can lead to musicians being repeatedly infected by the virus: “I mean, when you’re in a room full of thousands of people, it’s being passed around. You get into a tube and you fly 10 hours in a contained environment, you’re gonna get it. If somebody has it and you’re gonna get it, you can get it. That’s just the nature of what it is now.” He goes on to recommend that we “embrace that and stop freaking the (expletive) out.”

Maynard had previously been infected with the virus twice prior to first getting vaccinated in March of 2021. The artist’s description of his second infection seemed far more severe than his latest infection, leading to him getting hospitalized in December of 2020, stating that the experience was “Ugly, ugly. Couldn’t breathe. I could barely put two words together without going into a coughing fit that, you know? It ended up kind of also progressing into pneumonia. So, if I stayed in the hospital, they said, ‘Okay, we can keep you here, but you’re fighting 12 other people for a bed and a ventilator we don’t have, so what do you want to do?’ I’m like, ‘Well, I need to breathe and I need to sleep.’ So, you’re just treating symptoms at that point. There’s nothing you can do other than treat the symptom, so for a real cough medicine, not the crap over-the-counter and then like an inhaler, and some antibiotics to fight the pneumonia and strap the fuck in.”

Read Maynard James Keenan’s full interview with Arizona Republic here.

TOOL’s latest album, their 2019 Fear Inoculum, has recently returned to the top of Billboard’s top album sales chart.

Photo Credit: Marv Watson