“My friend talked to Joe Walsh and gave him my number. Awhile later, I got a message: ‘Adam Jones, this is the Talk Box fairy. Give me a call’”: Tool's Adam Jones on taking cues from Meshuggah, unorthodox pedals, and the trick he learned from Robert Fripp

Adam Jones performs with Tool at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California on August 16, 1997.

Under the record industry's model for success, Tool should have been dead and buried a long time ago. Whereas most bands “get it while the getting is good,” releasing albums and touring to support them every year and a half or so until the public loses interest, Tool disappear from the public eye for excruciatingly long periods between albums and tours. Some critics have even joked that their new album is titled 10,000 Days because that’s how long it took them to make it – although 27-plus years is quite an exaggeration, even by Tool’s standards.

“Despite what everyone thinks, it didn’t take us five years to make this record,” says Tool guitarist Adam Jones during our interview in Los Angeles. His point of reference is the group’s previous album, 2001’s Lateralus. “We took a long time off after the last tour.”