A Perfect Circle’s Billy Howerdel Plays ‘Wikipedia: Fact or Fiction?’
Welcome to our season finale of ‘Wikipedia: Fact or Fiction?’. For this clip, we sat down with A Perfect Circle guitarist / songwriter Billy Howerdel so he could confirm and deny what’s been written about him on Wikipedia.
Before Maynard James Keenan jumped on board, Howerdel envisioned a female singer leading a Perfect Circle. More specifically, Howerdel wanted Elizabeth Fraser from Cocteau Twins, but he had no access to her at the time.
One of the best stories Howerdel shared is how A Perfect Circle chose “Judith” as the lead single for their debut album, Mer de Noms. At first, Billy and Maynard wanted to go with “3 Libras,” but during a meeting with Judas Priest legend Rob Halford, the Metal God gave them some sage advice — “You’ll sell a million records if you release [‘Judith’] first, but do whatever you want.” Mer de Noms attained platinum status within a few months.
Wikipedia states Howerdel had been working on and presenting Keenan new material for Eat the Elephant since 2008, but the guitarist says that that isn't true. Howerdel had actually worked on the tracks for longer than a decade, but when it comes to sharing them with Maynard, a lot of APC’s new material came to be in 2014 and 2017.
Check out the A Perfect Circle edition of ‘Wikipedia: Fact or Fiction?’ in the clip above.
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