Maynard James Keenan to Coronavirus Truthers: ‘Eat a D*ck Dude’

Maynard James Keenan revealed earlier this month that he was one of many that had contracted coronavirus, revealing how the illness affected him. Now the singer, who is prepping for a new Puscifer record, appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast (heard below) to further discuss what happened and deliver a message to coronavirus “truthers” – “Eat a dick, dude.”

While on the podcast, Keenan revealed that he first noticed something was happening while on tour with Tool in Australia back in February, stating that his food began to taste weird. Shortly after, he fell ill and spent four days in his hotel room in New Zealand.

“I was just drinking water, hot showers, taking care of myself, hot tea, just trying to get through it and it sucked,” he recalled to Rogan. “But you didn’t know yet that like what, how bad this thing could have been. If I’d have known how bad it could have been I would have been freaking out.”

At that point, the world hadn’t taken strict measures to shut down public events but the news of Covid-19 had started to make headlines. Keenan said he asked his doctor if he thought it might be Covid-19 and when the doctor asked if he had had a fever and Keenan couldn’t remember, it was ruled out. But as we now know Covid can present as asymptomatic.

Given the go-ahead, Tool then played their show, but Keenan suffered through it. “It was not fun,” Maynard admitted. “We had to kind of adjust to set around a little bit, don’t put the hard ones in.”

The vocalist told Rogan that he felt arthritis in his wrists and would suffer from 10-minute long coughing fits. So he decided to return to a specialist and after revealing the details of his illness, it was determined that he did have Covid-19 after all.

“[I was having] some kind of a rheumatoid response. That alone would be, well, maybe, I’m just 56 and I have arthritis, but my blood work was completely clean everywhere else no other issues anywhere else in my body but just the wrists, explaining that, but I still have the cough,” he explained. “So whatever cough I had, whatever cough I got in New Zealand, like every other day, I’ll have a coughing fit for, you know, for 10 minutes, coughing up stuff, so I have lung damage from from it still.”

Keenan revealed that he still has some residual effects from the illness, and he had a message for those doubting his reasons for speaking out. “I feel like there’s a bunch of people that — maybe I didn’t almost die — I have friends who almost died,” he said. “Yeah, it was close. So then you have people going … apparently I’m being paid to say [that I contracted COVID-19]. Eat a dick, dude.”

Keenan stated earlier this month that he had to take some medications to try to undo the effects of the virus and added that he still has the cough. Meanwhile, the inflammation from his wrists and hands recently finally subsided. “From what I understand, it attacks weird spots and it’s random,” stated Keenan. “So that’s what I got. That was my prize.”

Keenan has been able to return to music. Puscifer will release their newest album, Existential Reckoning, on Oct. 30. Click here to pre-order the album. (As Amazon affiliates, we earn on qualifying purchases)