Quotes from Danny Carey

Anybody who digs your art, you what to share it with.

It drove me mad not being able to know more about Pink Floyd when I was a little kid. But that's the great thing - there was this mystery behind it, and we couldn't find out enough. It made your mind work, it made you seek after it or try to interpret it. It made you envision or imagine what they were doing.

Pink Floyd and Yes and some of the old art-rock bands, you didn't know what they looked like. You were always looking for pictures, and that added to the mystique. It's much more interesting when you're forced to imagine or guess at these things because usually it's better than reality.

We're not in the business of putting up barriers; that's the job of politicians. They're the idiots who want to build walls between people.

The lead singer is such a prominent thing, where drums are more of a supporting instrument.

Our crowds seem to keep growing whether we put out a record or not, so I feel very lucky to have that support.

I think there is a collective unconsciousness, or some sort of consciousness, that you can tap into if you're open and brave enough to let everything go and be part of that.

Tony Williams, Billy Cobham and Lenny White; some of those guys were big influences on me.

It seems like on every record we have this big, epic thing like 'Rosetta,' 'Wings For Marie' or 'Lateralus.'

We have pretty much all the facets of our business under our control now. Relying on someone else to do the right thing, you're just setting yourself up to get screwed. We control our own destiny and it's a really good feeling.

We're dealing with the chaos of life, and we're rubbing it down. The deeper you rub, the more patterns you can see until you realize that it's really an organized chaos. There isn't really ever any chance to understand it all, but we're here to keep rubbing.

All my best drumming, I'm sure, has never been recorded.

We rarely write in the studio. Everything's already completely arranged before we go in. That way, we can really focus on getting the recording right.

Chaos is the undercurrent of everything that happens in life.

I've been taking tabla lessons and they've helped expand my rhythmic horizons.

Every record I've ever done with Tool has been on tape.

There are no leftover Tool songs because of the process it takes to compose our songs - the way we hash it out in a room with all three or four of us, that there's tons of riffs and jams and things. But there's no put-together songs that are sitting in the eaves.

We've never really been susceptible to pressure from anyone from the outside. We've been really good at negating any outside influences. We're really hard on ourselves. The filter that we put upon things qualifying to end up on a Tool record is pretty extreme, so we figure we've got that part of it under control.

We've always considered our music to be a healing process. It's our 'tool' to work things out with each other and try to communicate with each other and learn things. And it's good for everyone - us and our audience - to get together.

Most of the parts are really gone over and over and over again with Tool. It's a very composed situation. We spend weeks if not months working on all those songs. There's not much room for improvisation.

Making 13-minute tracks is pretty alternative, I think!

We got full artistic integrity and autonomy over what we were doing, and that was the main important thing that kept our band alive.

We try to write things that can be interpreted on lots of different levels. There's not a right way or a wrong way... people can adventure a little.

Yeah, I grew up playing lots of jazz music in school.