Tool, Puscifer, A Perfect Circle frontman Maynard James Keenan has revealed he contracted COVID-19 during the end of February. In a new interview with Arizona Republic, Keenan expressed how he is still recovering from “residual effects.” The conversation started to highlight updates on Puscifer’s new album, Existential Reckoning, out October 30th. However, the discussion moved to a surprising reveal when asked how he felt when Tool’s tour was postponed due to the pandemic:
“Well, I’m not a delicate flower. You make the adjustment. “OK, well, we can’t do that. So what are we gonna do? Are we just gonna take this opportunity to unplug and kind of step back and reevaluate everything?” It was good. I mean, I was still recovering from having gotten COVID at the end of February. I’m still dealing with the residual effects. But it was ugly. I survived it, but it wasn’t pretty. So I definitely had to deal with that.”
He continued:
“I kind of didn’t want to run around screaming it. But it’s real. And there’s after-effects. I had to go through some major medications to undo the residual effects. Still coughing. There’s still lung damage.”
“Several of my friends, too. Very not old people, young people, in shape, runners, who contracted it as well. And they’re still dealing with some of the after-effects. I lost a few family members.”
Maynard was asked on how he’s feeling now:
“I still have the cough. Every other day, I have these coughing fits because my lungs are still damaged at the tips. And I just got over the inflammation that was going on with my wrist and hands. I had an autoimmune attack on my system in the form of, like, a rheumatoid arthritis. Basically, from what I understand, it attacks weird spots and it’s random. So that’s what I got. That was my prize.”
On wanting to know more about COVID-19:
“If we just knew more. That’s always the paradox, right? You want to know more. You want to do things. And then when you go out to find out, you end up being sick (laughs) and having to go home. There’s so much information out there, some of it not accurate, so you don’t really know how to react. I would love to go out on tour. But I wouldn’t want to put my family through that if something awful happened to friends or family because of it.”
