A Perfect Circle Honing Unity on the Road

10/23/2003 8:32 PM, Reuters
John Benson

After exiting Marilyn Manson in June 2002 to concentrate on his solo career, Jeordie Osborne White (aka Twiggy Ramirez ) had a chance meeting last New Year's Eve with A Perfect Circle 's Billy Howerdel and Josh Freese that lead to his joining the band.

"I really wasn't looking for another band," White told Billboard.com. "I had two auditions at the time. I auditioned for Metallica and APC within six days of each other. Both of those bands approached me. I just got out of a big band and wasn't really running to get involved in another one. But it just sort of ended up working out, and the music was right and everything was in the right place at the right time. It just worked out that way."

White admitted that A Perfect Circle, which recently released its second Virgin disc, "Thirteenth Step," is more technically challenging compared to his duties in Marilyn Manson. As for breaking ranks with the latter, where he had spent nearly a decade writing "pretty much 95% of all of the music," the June 2002 decision was a simple one for many reasons.

"Pretty much creative, personal, financial," says White. "I was just looking to do something different. It wasn't like I left to do my own thing. I kind of left because it just really wasn't doing it for me anymore. It wasn't like if you were married and you meet someone else, and you want to leave for that. It was just not working out anymore."

From there, White worked with Queens Of The Stone Age's Josh Homme on the recently released "Desert Sessions Vol. 9-10" album, and focused on his own material, which won't be released as a solo project. Instead, he hopes to put a band together, with perhaps a revolving door of members. The bassist acknowledges the appeal of joining A Perfect Circle was the eventual downtime expected between releases, when lead singer Maynard James Keenan returns to Tool to work on that band's next project.

While White played on the entirety of "Thirteenth Step," he has songwriting credits for two tracks ("The Package" and "Crimes"). "I think on the next record, we're kind of shooting for a little more of a band effort," says White. "We play together so well now. This band is really strong and we really want to capture that. We didn't really have that while we were making the record because I had just joined and we didn't even have James yet. So, you have this great band that we're touring with that is not really 100% on the record that we made."

A Perfect Circle begins a month-long arena tour of the States on Halloween (Oct. 31) in San Antonio, followed by a slot on Australia's Big Day Out festival early next year. White expects A Perfect Circle to tour through the summer.

Reuters/Billboard