Tool frontman Maynard James Keenan made a guest appearance on Deftones' platinum-selling 2000 album, White Pony, but he was only originally supped to be there to executive produce and help the group with writer’s block. He told Revolver, “I stuck around long enough for them to start itching to not have me around. Eventually, it was time for me to let them be. The result of my interruption was for them to unconsciously remember or feel what connected them in the first place. By the time I saw them again, they had opened their own creative floodgates.”
Maynard played on the track “Passenger,” a song he had helped lead singer Chino Moreno vocally visualize during early sessions for the album, according to theprp.com.
According to the band, Keenan would show up to the studio with champagne and Tibetan singing bowls. Keenan said, “I felt like they just needed a bit of new perspective. I had them each switch instruments, play on the bowls, take one loop and try some improvisation. The look on their faces was priceless. I might as well have been wearing hippie beads and bunny ears. I could just feel Stephen thinking, ‘What kind of acid-trip crap is this?'”
Revolver featured Deftones on the cover of their summer 2020 issue, in addition to offering exclusive editions of the band’s White Pony 20th anniversary edition, which will be released on Dec. 11th.