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Maynard James Keenan Gives One Star to Your Bad Yelp Review of His Winery

NEW YORK, NY - JUNE 04: Maynard Keenan of Tool performs onstage during the 2017 Governors Ball Music Festival - Day 3 at Randall's Island on June 4, 2017 in New York City. (Photo by Steven Ferdman/Getty Images)

Maynard James Keenan generally has a difficult time masking his disdain for obsessive Tool fans. In a new interview with the New Zealand website Stuff, he jokes that “there will always be a percentage of our fanbase who need to stay on their meds,” and “that sort of intensity can be enjoyable for a while, until it crosses a line and you have to get your taser out.” (To be fair, they can be a pretty wacky bunch.)

These days, Keenan seems at least as invested in making wine as he is in music. It’s easy to imagine as an outside observer that his passion for grapes has something to do with the fact that vintners aren’t regularly hounded for autographs or confronted with theories about which obscure vintage nebbiolos influenced their latest batch. But according to Keenan, oenophiles can be just as bothersome as your average hardcore fan of punishingly dense progressive nu-metal. From the same Stuff interview:

“That thing is f…ing poison! Sites like Yelp have fostered this generation of novice experts who have the power to open their mouths but haven’t actually put the work into knowing what they’re talking about. I’ve had bad Yelp reviews of my tasting room, but it had nothing to do with the wine. The reviews were bad merely because I wasn’t there! That’s like giving my record a bad review because I wasn’t in the record store when they bought it! I can only say to those people: shut the f… up!”

You heard the man: whether you’re into “Stinkfist” or Merkin Vineyards, just be cool about it.