In the world of 1990s comedy, Bill Hicks was in his own world. Outside of being funny whenever he got up onstage, he had more than a few good points about the music scene, from the devil still owning all the excellent music to most of the most incredible acts in the world being high out of their mind when they wrote their classic hits. He may have called it as he saw it, but Tool were paying close attention to what he had to say.
Around the same time that Hicks was blossoming as a comic, Tool was hard at work turning metal inside out. After coming off of their debut assault Undertow, Aenema was where they started to spread out a little bit more, incorporating progressive elements into their music, like shifting time signatures and existential musings on society.
Although the band were avid fans of Hicks, they shoehorned some of his material into their songs, writing both the title track and the closer ‘Third Eye’ based on his comedy routines. While Hicks’ original routine had to do with California falling into the ocean and damaging the yuppies with oceanfront homes, Maynard James Keenan plays off of the same idea as he screams, “LEARN TO SWIM”.
