Adam Jones (musician)

Early years and personal life

Jones was born in Park Ridge, Illinois, raised in Libertyville, Illinois. He was accepted into the Suzuki program, and continued to play violin through his freshman year in high school. It was said that as a child he was very different from other children. He would always skip church in favor of reading Sunday comics. As a child he had an interest in animation, turning his ideas into three dimensional sculptures, which explains why Tool's music videos often had 3D-clay effects. He later began to play the acoustic bass in an orchestra.^[4]

In addition to playing classical music, Jones played bass guitar in the band Electric Sheep, with Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine playing guitar, until Jones moved to California (Morello soon followed). According to both of them, the band was quite unpopular at the time. Jones never received traditional guitar lessons, but instead learned by ear.^[4]

On January 27, 2013, Jones became engaged to his girlfriend, painter Korin Faught. The marriage proposal took place before the Royal Rumble event. Their wedding took place on July 6, 2013. They have two children together.

Film work

Jones was offered a film scholarship but declined and chose to move to Los Angeles to study art and sculpture. His focus of interest shifted to film, and he began to work as a sculptor and special effects designer, where he learned the stop-motion camera techniques he would later apply in Tool's music videos, such as "Sober", "Prison Sex", "Stinkfist", "Ænema", "Schism", "Parabola" and "Vicarious". He graduated in 1987.

After graduation, he went to work at Rick Lazzarini's Character Shop. During the next couple of years, he worked the TV show Monsters. He designed and fabricated a Grim Reaper makeup and a Zombie head on a spike (later used in Ghostbusters II) among others. After that, he went to Stan Winston's special effects workshop, where he worked on Predator 2, sculpting a unique-looking skull for the Predator's spaceship interior.^[4]

Jones worked on several other big films in Hollywood doing makeup and set design, including Jurassic Park, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Dances with Wolves, and Ghostbusters II. He did the "Freddy Krueger in the womb" makeup for A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child, as well as work for A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master.

He also worked on commercials for salad dressing (never aired), Olympic stain (Albert Einstein makeup), and Duracell (boxers and taxicabs).^[4]

Music career

Jones also toured with the Jello Biafra/The Melvins band and contributed to their albums Never Breathe What You Can't See and Sieg Howdy!. Jones and Melvins Guitarist/Vocalist Buzz Osborne are close friends. Jones also appeared on the Melvins album Hostile Ambient Takeover, the Melvins/Lustmord collaboration Pigs of the Roman Empire and the Isis album Wavering Radiant.

On Mr. Show, he appeared as the fictional guitarist of Puscifer along with bandmate Keenan, and can also be spotted in the audience seated at a table with Keenan in the series' first episode.

On August 14, 2011, Jones performed the National Anthem of the United States at the outset of WWE's SummerSlam (2011) wrestling event in Los Angeles.^[5]

Playing style

Adam Jones is known for not predominantly using any particular guitar playing technique, but rather combining many techniques^[6] such as "alternately utilizing power chords, scratchy noise, chiming arpeggios, off-beat rhythm patterns, and a quiet minimalism".^[7] On Lateralus and 10,000 Days, he made heavy use of triplets. Other techniques used to expand his band's sound repertoire require forms of instrumental experimentation and applications of non-instrumental experimentation as well, such as his use of an Epilady as a plectrum on the Ænima and Lateralus albums for example; continuing in this direction on the Tool song, "Jambi",^[8] Jones uses a talk box. In the song "Third Eye", he makes use of a guitar slide for the opening. He has two synthesizers that are listed below in his effects section. Live, Jones can be seen with a large pedalboard full of effects, including a DOD FX-40B Equalizer (EQ) pedal, Boss BF-2 Flanger, Boss DD-3 Digital Delay, MXR Micro Amp, Dunlop BB535 and two Boss Master switch/power supply pedals among a few others. In a 1994 interview, he mentioned the band Helmet as an influence.^[9]

Visual art

Jones created the liner art for the re-release of Peach's Giving Birth to a Stone, in which Jones's fellow Tool member Justin Chancellor played bass.

He helped Green Jellÿ with their costumes.

In 2007 he received the Grammy Award for 'Best Recording Package' as art director for his work on 10,000 Days.

Jones came up with the make-up layout the actors wore on the videos for "Schism" and "Parabol/Parabola".

In his spare time, Jones shoots photography that is used for the visuals at live Tool concerts.

Jones draws his own comics, a habit he began as a young child manipulating his ideas into 2-D form on paper. An X-Files/30 Days of Night crossover in 2010 was co-written by Jones and 30 Days creator Steve Niles with artwork by Tom Mandrake.^[10]