Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan has admitted to accidentally playing two live shows while infected with COVID-19

Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan has admitted to accidentally playing two live shows while infected with COVID-19. The shows took place just weeks before the world crashed when Tool played a two-night residency at the Spark Arena in Auckland, New Zealand, on February 28 and 29 earlier this year.

Keenan admitted this during an appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast in which he stated that a doctor had given him the go-ahead to perform at the shows even though he had lost his sense of taste the night before the band flew off. from Australia to New Zealand to perform in Auckland. “I was just drinking water, hot showers, taking care of myself, hot tea, trying to get over it and it sucked,” says Keenan. “But you still didn’t know how bad this could have been. If I had known how bad this could have been, I would have been freaking out.”

Tool did not want to disappoint the fans who had waited years for the band to return to New Zealand, but changed their set so Keenan would not have to sing “the tough ones”, which he was in no condition to perform. . The band played a nine-song main set each night instead of the 11 the band had played at the previous Melbourne show.

Keenan did not get tested for the virus while in New Zealand because the doctor did not think his symptoms warranted it, however he was eventually diagnosed with the virus after flying to Hawaii and says he has been suffering from side effects ever since.

“I still have a cough,” he says to Rogan. “So whatever cough I have, whatever cough I have in New Zealand, like every other day, I’m going to have a coughing fit, you know, for 10 minutes, coughing things up, so I still have lung damage from that.

Keenan’s diagnosis confirmed with COVID coincided with the first person in New Zealand to do so on the afternoon of the first show, a time when a resident who returned from Iran came back with a positive diagnosis. The fourth person to be diagnosed was a Tool fan who attended the first show and then tested positive.