Producer Recalls Turning Down Job With Prince to Work With Tool

Producer Recalls Turning Down Prince to Work With Tool

Throughout Prince's iconic career, the singer was usually the one saying no. Working with Prince was a career-changer for many musicians, so it was rare for someone to decline his offer.

But producer Sylvia Massy was the exception to the rule; she turned down an offer to work with Prince in 1993 to instead work with an little-known Los Angeles-based alternative band called Tool.  

While Tool eventually reached legendary status in its own right, the band's legacy has yet to approach the omnipotence of Prince's. Massy has no regrets, though. She explained in a recent interview with the Grammys that she saw something special in what Tool was doing.

"I had to make a choice, so I turned Prince down," Massy said recalling Prince's offer to work with him at Paisley Park. "I knew Tool was an important band, and the album Undertow would be their big breakthrough."

Massy described how Tool came across and an utterly original band that was doing something that she was sure would be genre-defining with her guidance.

"Tool was a fantastic live band, and my biggest challenge was to capture the live energy in a studio setting, so generally during the first recordings I was just letting them do their thing."

The young four-piece began to hit some writer's block and was having some disagreements on where to go with its music. Massy recalled that she served as the all-important tie-breaker.

"They knew I was not there to change their music, just enhance it," Massy said. 

She went on to recall some of the suggestions she brought to the band: using a Leslie speaker on "4 Degrees," recording a Peruvian flute band on a song, record the sound of old upright pianos being destroyed on "Disgustipated."

But when she suggested trimming the intro of "Intolerance"..."they told me to f*** off," she laughed.

Elsewhere in the Grammys interview Massy recalled the tedious editing of the record on 2-inch tape and how singer Maynard James Keenan was performing stand-up comedy on off-nights. 

"He is a really funny guy, but you wouldn't think so just listening to the music," she said. "But to know Tool is to realize all the lyrics have hidden double meanings, usually not what you'd expect."

Tool began recording a new album in March, 12 years since the band's last studio effort. Keenan recently joked about the delays and anticipation around the new Tool album, comparing it to Guns N' Roses' Chinese Democracy, which took about 11 years to be completed. 


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