Adam Jones

One of the more distinctive six-string players to surface amid the early-'90s alternative-rock surge was Tool guitarist Adam Jones, whose style merged the weighty riffing of Jimmy Page and Tony Iommi with the experimental leanings of Dave Navarro and Robert Fripp. Jones entered the world on January 15, 1965, in Libertyville, Illinois, where his first instrument was the violin, begun during elementary school. By freshman year of high school he had switched to bass, performing both in the school orchestra and in the rock outfit Electric Sheep alongside future Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello. He soon took up the guitar as well; although he earned a music scholarship, Jones instead enrolled at the Hollywood Makeup Academy, where he also pursued film studies and acquired skills in cinematic special effects that would later serve his band. After completing the program he joined Rick Lazzarini’s the Character Shop, a role that led to makeup and effects work on television and film projects including Nightmare on Elm Street Part 5, Ghostbusters 2, and Terminator 2.

While living in California, Jones crossed paths with singer Maynard James Keenan, then affiliated with the comedy-metal act Green Jelly, for whom Jones contributed costume designs. The two soon joined forces, adding bassist Paul D’Amour and drummer Danny Carey to form Tool in the early ’90s. The band quickly distinguished itself in alternative and hard rock with the 1992 EP Opiate and the 1993 debut album Undertow; Jones further heightened the group’s profile by writing and directing its visually inventive videos, for which he also constructed the sets and stop-motion clay figures. Following D’Amour’s departure and replacement by Justin Chancellor, Tool sustained its ascent with 1996’s Aenima and 2001’s Lateralus, both of which propelled the quartet to worldwide arena-headlining status. Outside Tool, Jones launched the side project Noiseland Arcade with Melvins guitarist Buzz Osbourne—though the band has yet to release material—and contributed to the fifteen-minute track “Divorced” on the Melvins’ 2000 album The Crybaby. That same year he supplied the cover artwork for the reissue of Giving Birth to a Stone, the sole album by Chancellor’s earlier band Peach.