Adam Thomas Jones (born January 15, 1965) is an American musician and visual artist, best known as the guitarist for Tool. Jones has been rated the 75th-greatest guitarist of all time by the Rolling Stone and placed ninth in Guitar Worlds Top 100 Greatest Metal Guitarists. With experience in special effects and set design in the Hollywood film industry, Jones is also the director of the majority of Tool's music videos.
Biography
Early years and personal life
Jones was born in Park Ridge, Illinois and raised in Libertyville, Illinois. He was accepted into the Suzuki program, and continued to play violin through his freshman year in high school. As a child, he had an interest in animation, turning his ideas into three-dimensional sculptures, which explains why Tool's music videos often had 3D-clay effects. He later began to play the double bass in an orchestra.
In addition to playing classical music, Jones played bass guitar in the band Electric Sheep, with Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine playing guitar, until Jones moved to California (Morello soon followed). According to both of them, the band was quite unpopular at the time. Jones never received traditional guitar lessons, but he and Morello learned from each other.
On July 6, 2013, Jones married painter Korin Faught. They have two sons and a daughter.
Film work
Jones was offered a film scholarship but declined and chose to move to Los Angeles to study art and sculpture. His interest shifted to film, and he began to work as a sculptor and special effects designer, where he learned the stop motion camera techniques he would later apply in Tool's music videos, such as "Sober", "Prison Sex", "Stinkfist", "Ænema", "Schism", "Parabola", and "Vicarious". He graduated in 1987.
After graduation, he went to work at Rick Lazzarini's Character Shop. During the next two years, he worked on the TV show Monsters. He designed and fabricated a Grim Reaper makeup and a zombie head on a spike (later used in Ghostbusters II) among others. After that, he went to Stan Winston's special effects workshop, where he worked on Predator 2, sculpting a unique-looking skull for the Predator's spaceship interior.
Jones worked on several other films in Hollywood doing makeup and set design, including Jurassic Park, Batman Returns, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Dances with Wolves, and Ghostbusters II. He did the "Freddy Krueger in the womb" makeup for A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child, as well as work for A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master.
He also worked on commercials for salad dressing (never aired), Olympic Paints & Stains (Albert Einstein makeup), and Duracell (boxers and taxicabs).
Music career
Jones also toured with Jello Biafra/The Melvins band and contributed to their albums Never Breathe What You Can't See and Sieg Howdy!. Jones and Melvins guitarist/vocalist Buzz Osborne are close friends. Jones also appeared on the Melvins album Hostile Ambient Takeover, the Melvins/Lustmord collaboration Pigs of the Roman Empire and the Isis album Wavering Radiant.
On Mr. Show, he appeared as the fictional guitarist of Puscifer along with bandmate Keenan, and can also be spotted in the audience seated at a table with Keenan in the series' first episode.
On August 14, 2011, Jones performed the national anthem of the United States at the outset of WWE's SummerSlam (2011) wrestling event in Los Angeles.
