Ministry’s Al Jourgensen: I Drugged Tool + Made Them a Psychedelic Band
Is there anything more fun than Story Time With Uncle Al? This time, the Ministry mastermind takes fans back to Lollapalooza 1992, when he accidentally dosed Tool with LSD and apparently turned them into a psychedelic band.
Tool’s Aenima awakening is one of the most significant events in modern music. The band had already become an underground phenomenon with Opiate by the time they performed at Lollapalooza 1992, but Tool were far from alternative metal’s spiritual Mecca. Al Jourgensen takes the credit for pushing Tool in that direction, albeit accidentally.
"I used to live with Timothy Leary, and he had given me these bottles of liquid LSD to bring on tour," Jourgensen told Revolver. "I'd put two drops in my bottle of whiskey that I'd bring onstage. I'd drink about half the bottle during a show. So we were on Lollapalooza in '92, I think it was San Francisco, and when we came offstage there were these two guys who were like, 'Great show, dude!' So I gave them my bottle of Bushmills, but I forgot that I had put LSD in it. So they drank it and they were tripping balls for, like, two or three days.”
Al continues, “They didn't know what was going on and they were freaking out. They were ready to call suicidal hotlines. It turned out to be Paul and Maynard from Tool! ... But he actually thanked me for that moment because he said it really got Tool going into being a psychedelic band. Pretty cosmic, right?"
According to Jourgensen’s memoir, Ministry: The Lost Gospels, Tool returned the favor by dosing Al with the most powerful psychedelic he’d ever experienced, so it seems Tool were pretty well connected back in 1992.
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