Tool front man Maynard James Keenan came to the Whole Foods Market in La Jolla on November 7 to sign bottles of wine produced at his Arizona winery. Many fans showed up at 2:00 p.m., as radio stations had announced that as the start time. The Union-Tribune and Keenan’s website said he’d be signing bottles of wine from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m., yet calls to Whole Foods confirmed 5:00 p.m. as the start time.

Gerald Marino showed up at 3:00, the time Whole Foods said they’d hand out numbers. He got 193.

“The person that got 192 asked what time he had to come back. They told him 5:00, and he said, ‘But I’m almost at 200. Can’t I show up later?’ They said he had to be here at 5:00. When I got back around 5:45, it took me 15 minutes to find a spot. They already had people lined up into the 300s, but with Rock 105 playing music so loud, I couldn’t hear the announcements.

“They had Maynard at the back of the store, and they set boxes all around him so that nobody in line could see him or take pictures. They had a separate line for you to buy wine. He would only sign two bottles, no matter how many you bought. They ranged from $25 to $110 a bottle. I bought a few different ones, because the artwork was different.

“When I got to the front of the line, they took my bottles in to him. Then security let me go in. I pulled out a ticket stub from 1994 and asked him if he’d sign it. A security guy grabbed it out of my hand and said ‘no.’ Maynard said, ‘If I signed for you, it wouldn’t be fair to everyone else.’ Although, nobody else would’ve seen.”

Dan Solomon was there. He said, “Yeah, they saw me holding my CDs and kept telling me he wouldn’t sign them. I finally put them in my pocket, and when I pulled them out in front of Maynard, he just shook his head ‘no.’ It sucked. I tried to tell him Irather he sign the CD than the 50-dollar bottles of wine. I guess you couldn’t bring up anything about Tool.

“I asked him how he got into wine, though, and it was like I couldn’t shut him up. He told me Tori Amos gave him a bottle once, and it got him more interested. He talked a little about his vine yards in Arizona. Security finally asked me to move on. I was escorted out during the middle of Maynard telling me something about starting his winery in 2000.”

– Josh Board