I’ve covered a lot of artists whose videos MTV banned including Soundgarden, Neil Young,
and Danzig. In pretty much all of these instances their videos either criticized
the network, broke their policies or had imagery that was too provocative,
but it’s rare that video has no violence, no nudity or criticizes the network and still
gets banned. Well that’s what happened to TOOL. Let’s discuss in today’s video.
Formed in Los Angeles in the early 90’s by frontman Maynard James Kennan,
guitarist Adam Jones, drummer Danny Carey and original bassist Paul D’Amour
Tool would shock everyone with the one two punch of their debut EP 1992’s Opiate
and 1993’s Undertow. For the members of the Tool it was important first and foremost to
have creative control with guitarist Adam Jones telling Revolver Magazine “When we got signed
[by Zoo Records in 1992], the most important thing for us was to have creative control,”
And that creative control extended not just to their music, but to their music videos.
In fact before starting the band Tool both Maynard James Keenan and guitarist Adam Jones worked on
film productions doing visual effects for several big hollywood films including Terminator 2 and
Jurassic Park. In the same interview with Revolver Jones would add “We went, ‘OK, if we take less
money can we have control of the music?’ And the label went, ‘Yeah, no problem!’ And we said,
‘If we take even less money can we have final say over the videos.’ And they went, ‘Sure.’”
Of course in theory all this is great, but Tool would soon butt heads with their record label. The
second single from Undertow Sober would feature a stop motion video as did the video for their third
single Prison Sex. For record labels you don’t just sell the music, but you sell the image of the
band and Jones would tell Metal Hammer. “There was a lot of banging heads with the record company,
because they still wanted to do things in the traditional way,. “They’d go, ‘Well, if you’re
not gonna be in your video, we’re not gonna pay for it.’ And we’d say, ‘What do you mean?
We’re supposed to have creative control.’ It was typical, slimy shit, but in the end they gave in.”
Even during the filming of the video the band ran into some serious issues. As filming began
with Sober director Fred Stuhr in January of 1994 in Los Angeles the city would be
rocked by a 6.7 magnitude earthquake that killed dozens and injured nearly
10,000 people. Jones would tell Loudersound “We were still there at three in the morning
when the ’94 earthquake hit Los Angeles,” “We were on the second floor of this old brick building
that used to be owned by [American filmmaker] Cecil B. DeMille, and it wasn’t too sturdy. The
rooms started shaking, and before I even know what was going on, Fred ran over to stand in
the doorway, because that’s what you’re supposed to do in an earthquake. But the other five of us
who were there just ran out and ploughed him over and left him lying on the ground. It was the worst
thing that’s ever happened to me, and the best thing. When I looked out I could see downtown
Hollywood, and all the transformers were blowing. They were popping, so there were these lightning
strikes everywhere and it looked like the city was being bombed. It was just so beautiful.”
The subject matter of Prison sex dealt with childhood trauma , something the video depicted
metaphorically. The message of the song is that those who suffere trauma early on in their life
are capable of inflicting the same trauma as they get older. It’s been
speculated the song was written about Maynard James Keenan’s step father,
whom the frontman has repeatedly expressed his distaste for.
The message of the song wasn’t lost on both muchmusic in canada and mtv banned the video after
a few plays. Despite this move the video still snagged a nomination for best visual effects.
The reason for banning the video was that MTV complained the video was too unsettling.
Despite the controversy over the lyrical content the song got airplay in the states peaking
at number 32 on the mainstream rock charts. The band for their part found MTV’s attitude
towards the video hypocritical. Frontman maynard james keenan would tell the san
francisco chronicle “What got to me about the whole situation was, here you have these other
videos where Steven Tyler's daughter is stripping in front of old men, or where Janet Jackson is
practically having oral sex,” I kind of find that disturbing, yet it's something that's just
thrown in people's laps and they don't think twice about it. So I guess anything that deals
with that sort of subject matter [in 'Prison Sex'] is going to end up hitting road blocks.”