He’d come to this place to remember the seasons’ cycles, to learn again the rhythm of the sunrise, the work that could be done before it set. In this place, spring water flowed down the mountainside behind his house and meteor showers spangled the August sky. The earth spirits Geronimo had called upon for protection surely whispered here still. In this place, he might find again the unobstructed path that led toward his deepest desires.
And the story, like the very best stories, need not have one outcome only. Its narrative, he thought, was like a spread of tarot cards upon a table draped in a bright red cloth. It was within his power to read in it one or another destiny, or many, and none an exile from the magic. With the slightest shift in perspective, the stories would branch like the stream in the valley in turnings at once parallel and divergent, and one story all the same.
At the height of Midsummer, Maynard received in the mail a compact package weightless as light and bearing an Ohio postmark. He filled two five-gallon buckets with caliche and limestone soil and blended with it the gritty powder packed inside.
On the hillside beside his house, workmen bent over their shovels, digging holes in tidy rows, and into each, Maynard placed a quantity of the mix. He scooped from one of the buckets a handful of earth and ashes, opened his palm, and let the small breeze carry it over the land, over the terraced garden where Cabernet and Nebbiolo and Malvasia vines would grow.
1 Steve Morse, “Tool Hammers Out a Multimedia Triumph,” Boston Globe, August 17, 2002.
Maynard hadn’t moved to Arizona to start a vineyard. A decade into his music career, there was no logical reason to change course now.
Tool and Perfect Circle were creative outlets, and I wasn’t about to abandon them, but I felt unbalanced. No, I didn’t move to Arizona to start a vineyard, but when I got there, I wanted to express my ideas in a three-dimensional form—which becomes a four-dimensional form if you do it right.
Rehearsals and recording kept him in L.A. much of the time, and to maintain his center as best he could, he installed mats in the Tool loft and scheduled private jiu-jitsu lessons with Gracie studio instructor Henry Akins.
Akins arrived one afternoon with his friend and fellow martial arts enthusiast Todd Fox. “Tool had just wrapped a rehearsal and Henry was going to give Maynard a lesson,” Todd explained in a 2014 interview. “He asked if I’d mind helping him do a little training.”
In his years working security for celebrities from Janet Jackson to Madonna to Mötley Crüe, Todd had crossed paths with plenty of entertainers, and after an afternoon of wrestling and leverage training, he knew that Maynard was unique to the industry. “He was quiet and down to earth, and there was no pretentious vibe,” Todd would recall. “Maynard can get work done and he can joke around, too. He can transition between worlds, which not a lot of people can do.”
It wasn’t long before the two had found a comfortable camaraderie. They met often to discuss their shared military backgrounds and their careers, their common interests in travel and music and fine wine. And just before the Lateralus tour began, Maynard suggested Todd come onboard to not only provide security, but to serve as Maynard’s on-the-road jiu-jitsu instructor.
From the days of Tool’s first European tour, Maynard had seen from the bus windows the terraced hillsides of Tuscany, vines trained up over trellises, and plump clusters of grapes among the leaves. His cellar and his palate had expanded since Tori’s gift of the Silver Oak, and he’d grown more and more curious about the process that could transform fruit and rain and sunshine to Barolo and Shiraz and bold California Cabernet.
A free afternoon in Italy during the 2000 Mer de Noms tour had left time for a stopover at Ken Berry’s vineyard just outside Siena. The head of Virgin Entertainment managed every facet of his small winery on-site, and the visit would be Maynard’s chance to conduct a bit of firsthand research. “He wanted to know everything,” Nancy Berry would recall. Ken pointed out his vats and barrels, explained the quality-control lab and the bottling area and the corking apparatus. Maynard looked out over the lush rows of vines as Ken described the soil composition and climate that made Siena an ideal spot for a vineyard. “I had no frame of reference to understand what he was talking about,” Maynard would recall. “I just knew this is what it felt like when I stood outside my house. It didn’t look much different from where I lived.”
And not long after, a break in the Lateralus tour allowed him to accept an invitation from concert merchandising exec and oenophile Bruce Fingeret. The dinner would include a double-blind wine tasting, and Maynard thought it might be his next step in understanding.
Never one to blindly follow standard operating procedure, Maynard insisted Todd join him at the table. Bodyguard protocol required that security station themselves apart from the main event and keep the curious and the questionable a safe distance from their charge. But, Maynard reasoned, Todd was a part of the team, and he would share in the experience. And Todd was no stranger to fine wines. “I’d sometimes run errands for the artists I’d worked for,” he would explain. “I’d bring back Gaja or Lafite or Latour to them and attended samplings on my nights off.” He’d surely enjoy the evening as much as Maynard.
Appetizers and entrées and desserts appeared in their turn—dishes chosen to complement and contrast with the wines and create pairings that enhanced the subtle characteristics of both. Sommeliers circled the table with Burgundies and Bordeaux, their labels disguised in brown paper wrappers, and the guests accepted the task of identifying just what they were drinking. Maynard and Todd—spittoon at his side—sipped Lafite Rothschild and Ponsot Griotte and Montiano and tried their best to appreciate balance and texture, hints of fruits and flowers and spice. They left it to the others to discern varietals and vintages and even—based on subtle terroir—particular vineyards, to peg the 1997 Flaccianello, the 1998 Cheval Blanc, the 1982 Trotanoy. “I’d never seen anything like it,” Todd would remember. “If you’d told me somebody could do that, I would have called bullshit immediately. But several of them were around 80 percent accurate, which is pretty phenomenal.”
Maynard and Todd didn’t have quite the refined palates of their companions, but they’d uncorked their share of Merlots and Rieslings and were experienced enough to realize that the 1990 Gianfranco Soldera Riserva far outranked the other wines in the flight. “It was just off the charts,” Todd would recall. “It was as velvety as you can get and really round with a long finish. No bitterness or bite whatsoever. It was like experiencing four or five or six different things off one sip. It was like cherries on steroids.”
Everybody has that moment when they suddenly see the light about wines. I had that moment with the Silver Oak from Tori. Then this dinner flipped the other switch. Not only was I into wine, I now wanted to plant vines and see where I could take this.
Maynard realized he wasn’t far from the makings of fine wines. The hills surrounding the Jerome house were the same southeast-facing slopes he’d seen in Spain and Piemonte, the Arizona soil similar to that in Bordeaux and Champagne.
But constructing a vineyard would take work, more work certainly than pulling together a band. It would mean dirt under his fingernails and learning about zoning regulations and water rights and root systems and powdery mildew. But he approached his mission with the same methodical passion he’d brought to Tool’s formation. “Maynard’s projects are not just businesses to him,” Nancy Berry would explain. “He has a very deep personal commitment to everything he does, and he’s very hands-on.”
One step at a time, he would put the pieces in place. He drew sketches of vineyard design and read about pH levels and soil preparation. He bought up suitable properties and hired contractors to grade the earth. And by 2003, the garden near his house had been planted with Cabernet Sauvignon and named the Judith block.
By necessity, much of the initial development was done remotely, with help from Mike, who’d stayed in J
erome when Maynard set off on a 19-city Lollapalooza tour to promote APC’s second album. Recorded in Billy’s basement studio with assistance from guitar tech Mat Mitchell, Thirteenth Step was a 12-song collection that moved from hard-driving rock to symphonic instrumentals to Joni Mitchell–inspired guitar, reflecting its theme of multiple paths to self-discovery. The album’s release on September 16, 2003, kicked off the tour in earnest, a tour that would keep APC on the road for nearly a year.
When Maynard at last unpacked his suitcase the next summer, it was time to begin work on the next Tool album. If the vineyard was ever to be a reality, he’d need help keeping his plates spinning and the pieces of his life in order.
Lei Li had never intended to work for a rock musician, particularly one she’d read could be difficult and distant. When a mutual friend introduced her to Maynard, she was far from starstruck. “I knew of Tool, but I didn’t listen to their music,” she recalled in a 2015 interview. “I’d heard that they weren’t nice to people, so I didn’t really want to meet him because I was afraid. What do you say to somebody like that?”
To her surprise, she found Maynard soft-spoken and approachable—and not a little attractive. They eased effortlessly into a comfortable friendship, and when he asked if she’d become his personal assistant, she realized it might be her ticket out of her small Midwestern town and a step closer to applying her art degree.
For the next two years, she maintained Maynard’s schedule and ran his errands and kept the L.A. house functioning smoothly, a plum assignment while she searched for the perfect job with one of the city’s galleries or museums. And when plans for the vineyard were well under way, he suggested she come to Jerome and oversee operations there. “I was like, yeah, right,” she would recall. “I’d always wanted to move to the city, and now he was asking me to come to this town that’s smaller than my high school class.”
But the two worked well together, laughed and conversed and enjoyed each other’s company, and joining him in Arizona wouldn’t be the worst move she could make—so long as she kept an eye out for other opportunities and maintained her professional distance. Over the years, she’d had a front-row view of his romantic indiscretions, the dramas and deceptions, and she knew he wasn’t exactly prime relationship material. She’d seen too All We Are Saying, Rosanna Arquette’s 2005 documentary of entertainers from Burt Bacharach to Yoko Ono to Steven Tyler, who spoke of their inspirations, their struggles to balance family and fame, and their takes on the changing music industry. She’d listened to her boss explain in his two-minute monologue that, at 40, he was too old to change, that his destiny would never include monogamy.
“I thought I was doomed to a series of failed relationships and sexual recklessness,’” Maynard would explain. “Ending that took getting a dog.”
The family dog, a white picket fence, Saturdays spent planting peas and lettuce with his children: Despite his doubt, the dream was still attractive. Just maybe his girlfriend of the moment was the one he’d been waiting for—he’d moved her some time before into the L.A. house. But one afternoon, Maynard and his little Yorkie, Miho, discovered she hadn’t taken her vow of fidelity quite as seriously as he.
I came home and found that my home and my trust had been violated. I was enraged. Then my dog looked up at me. She looked down at the truck keys I’d thrown down and then up at me. Here was the physical manifestation of my inner voice in the form of Miho. It’s like she was saying, “Let’s just pick up the keys and drive to the vineyard and walk away from this chaos.”
Things had to change. I picked up the keys. I picked up the dog. I got in the truck and headed to Jerome. The dog saved my life.
Maynard’s friends had for years cleared their social calendars when Tool or APC came through town. When he’d begun to cut breakfasts short and bring glamorous strangers to dinner, when his phone calls stopped altogether, they joked among themselves that he’d gone hopelessly rock star. But they’d been patient. They knew that no matter how circuitous his detour, the Maynard they remembered would be back. “Maynard always opts to reconnect,” Todd would explain. “Comfort and familiarity are fuel for him. He needs that foundation to continue moving forward. And once he establishes a sense of connection, he rarely lets it go.”
It remained in city after impersonal city, that connection forged over seafood omelets and turkey dinners, the family created from strangers on sunny roof decks and fifth-floor walkups where candles burned and where, regardless of miles and time, no one needed be alone.
“There were a couple patches of years when I didn’t even talk to him,” Laura Milligan would recall. “But Maynard is loyal. When he’s your friend, he’s your friend forever.” When he returned to Tantrum, she’d be in the wings ready to pull on her cowgirl boots. Sheila would welcome him at the Neighborhood and refill his coffee cup before he asked. Steele would retell stories of fish food hors d’oeuvres, and Ramiro would be waiting to puzzle out with him synchronicity and convergence. Kjiirt would turn, catch his glance, and understand the unspoken joke.
“I didn’t have a trail of bread crumbs to get me back,” Maynard would explain. “I had 30-pound-test fishing line. The tether was strong. These weren’t bread crumbs. They were shining rubies.”
He turned from the dusty road and parked the truck in the driveway. In the backyard, Lei Li was hard at work, surrounded by hammers and drills, repairing the dog house. She’d filled the irrigation pool, coiled the garden hose neatly around the hook at the side of the house, and shut off the sprinklers in the vineyard.
Plenty of naysayers had told Maynard his venture was a fool’s errand, that grapes could never grow in the Arizona desert. But Maynard had done his research and accepted the job not as a chore but a perfectly doable challenge.
Miho bounded across the yard to greet Lei Li, and Maynard stood for a moment and looked out over the Judith block, where green shoots trembled in the evening breeze.
At the end of the movie Bliss, when the father plants trees, it’s really a love letter that took seven years to deliver. I understood that planting those vines on some level was my love letter to my family, to my community, to my younger self, to my future self. I’d already started writing that love letter, but I’d been sending it in the wrong direction.
If you’re going to do something, you do it. You don’t worry about who your audience is. You do it for you. You do it for the music. You do it for the art. You do it for the vineyard.
The vineyard was an oasis of greening vines, of hummingbirds and hawks overhead and praying mantises in the grass and the resident roadrunner just down the hill. Maynard rose with the sun and knelt in his gardens, his senses tuned to breezes and honeybees, to rain clouds that gathered each afternoon in the east. He helped his crew remove weeds and clear debris from the paths between Sangiovese and Cabernet and lined the steep terraces with white limestone boulders the way he’d seen done in Tuscany and Siena.
Creating a vineyard was a test of himself as much as of the land, a chance to allow the synchronistic accidents of weather and will that might alter his story. And in a few years, he imagined, his harvest might produce a palatable bottle or two.
His dream wasn’t so far-fetched. “Grapes actually started in the desert,” he would explain. “They were originally drought-tolerant plants, bred for exactly this kind of environment. Read your Bible.”
The Arizona soil was ideal for grape growing: the layers of volcanic ash deposited long ago and the rich caliche, the remnant of the vast inland sea that had once covered the state. Spanish missionaries had arrived there in the sixteenth century and found the valley purple with wild grapes, and they’d made of them their sacramental wine. Later, Prescott hotelier Henry Schuerman had established the area’s first winery and provided libations for loggers and cattle drivers and miners—until the vines were destroyed with the advent of Prohibition in 1915.
By the late 1980s, a hopeful few had begun
to resurrect the state’s vineyards and try their hand at wine making, and Maynard saw no reason he shouldn’t join them.
Stepping from the spotlight never crossed his mind—not while his career continued its upswing. Just before his first vines went in the ground, Ænima was certified triple platinum, and Lateralus reached double platinum by that August. The next November, just in time for Election Day 2004, when foreign relations and the War on Terrorism were top of mind, A Perfect Circle released its third album. Certified gold only a month after its release, eMOTIVe included originals and covers of antiwar anthems from Joni Mitchell’s “Fiddle and the Drum” to John Lennon’s “Imagine,” the fresh interpretations a portal to hearing the familiar lyrics as if for the first time.
And the next year, Maynard’s acting chops were at last showcased. He’d appeared a few years before in the low-budget Bikini Bandits action film parodies, but it took his role opposite Ed Asner and RATM’s Brad Wilk in the indie murder mystery Sleeping Dogs Lie to bring accolades from reviewers and recognition of his comic skill from fans. “Maynard brought such a depth to the character,” coproducer Ford Englerth said of his deadpan portrayal of bumbling Deputy Sheriff Lance. “He took a character that was a very kind of quirky, not so bright kind of deputy and he spent a lot of time developing particular nuances about how the character thinks and his motivation.”1
Limelight aside, what mattered now was determining which vines might be best suited to conditions on the mountain. Keenan family lore included the tale of Great-Grandfather Marzo, who, in some time out of mind, had lived on the Italian-French border and made wines from grapes that grew in his arbor. Maynard knew little more of his paternal heritage, and in a nod to this Marzo—whatever his full name, whatever his story—he planted on the Judith block alongside Aglianico and Tempranillo a Nebbiolo clone of a grape native to his ancestors’ homeland.
A Perfect Union of Contrary Things Page 28
