Primus vocalist/bassist Les Claypool sat down for a lengthy discussion with Rick Beato recently, opening up on his musical inspirations, his prolific career, his creative process, creature comforts, and a whole lot more.
Some interesting topics were broached amid the chat, including the impact the band’s 1997 outing, “Brown Album“, had on their career, and an early 90s track they’ve largely phased out of their setlists due to the challenges it presents for Claypool to pull it off live.
Amid the height of their early success, the oddball alternative metal outfit were largely able to chart their own path, being granted the freedom to self-produce their albums. That creative autonomy helped guide a number of their hit albums, including 1991’s platinum-selling “Sailing The Seas Of Cheese“, 1993’s “Pork Soda” and 1995’s gold-selling “Tales From The Punchbowl“.
However, when 1997’s “Brown Album” underperformed, the group succumbed to external pressure from their label at the time, Interscope Records. The latter had long been urging them to work with a producer, but the band’s continued success had kept them free to operate as they had pleased.
As history shows, following through on the label’s suggestion didn’t exactly pan out, as Primus enlisted various friends and peers to get behind the boards on their next outing, 1999’s “Antipop“. The studio team for that effort was a diverse array of friends and fans, with the likes of The Police‘s Stewart Copeland, Rage Against The Machine‘s Tom Morello, experimental blues rocker Tom Waits and ‘South Park‘ co-creator Matt Stone all taking a crack at select tracks.
However, the album received a somewhat chilly reception from fans at the time, which when paired with growing problems and tensions in the band, resulted in Primus taking a hiatus for several years. As part of this new interview, Beato brought up how uncommon it was for a band signed to a major label to release one album, let alone several, while not being saddled with a label-chosen producer. Claypool replied [transcribed by theprp.com]:
“Yes. But I didn’t know that. I just knew that. I mean, look, when people want you, you get bargaining power. So, this other label wanted us and Interscope wanted us, right? So, part of our thing was, well, if you want us, you got to let us do our thing. And Tom Whalley [Interscope head of A&R,] he fought the fight for us. He always would say, ‘No, let these guys do… it’s working. Let these guys do their thing. Let these guys do their thing…’
Until, like I said, ‘Brown Album‘. And then everybody was like, ‘Ehhh, wait a minute. That album sounds quite a bit different.’ And it didn’t sell as well as the one previous, [so the label said] ‘Maybe you guys…’ And so that’s why the next record we did [‘Antipop‘], we worked with a bunch of different people as producers. But um for a while there, we were, you know, we we hadn’t sh*t ourselves yet. So they let us just do whatever we wanted.”
Later in the conversation, Claypool revealed one of his biggest regrets was turning down a tour with Nirvana, just as their grunge landmark, 1991’s “Nevermind“, was picking up steam. Claypool said of that:
“…There was one thing that I’ve always I’ve always regretted, this is right around this time [the early 90s] Don Muller — who was our agent — spectacular man, great guy, he said, ‘Hey, how about I’m putting together… We want to do a co-bill Primus and Nirvana.’ And this was right as ‘Nevermind‘ was just coming out.
And I’m like, ‘No, no, no. We want to do our own tour. We want to do our own tour.’ Because we’d had been doing these, you know, 45-minute sets, short sets, opening for all these bands, or playing with these other bands. We wanted to do our own tour, play full set. I’m like, ‘No, no, no. We don’t want to do that.’ And we didn’t do it. And of course, the whole thing blew up. And I never really, you know, we never really ever played with those guys…”
When asked if he ever saw Nirvana perform live, he responded:
“I saw a show. It was at the Cow Palace, which was a pretty spectacular show. It was the Chili Peppers with Nirvana and Pearl Jam. I think Pearl Jam was opening. That was pretty amazing. But, uh, that was one thing I regretted ’cause I think we would have had a good time on that tour. ‘Cause we always became really good friends with whoever we played with, you know, ’cause we like, we’re fun guys. And I think it would have been a good, good thing. I mean, I’m friends with with Krist [Novoselic, Nirvana bassist/vocalist] now.”
A bit further into the chat, Beato asked Claypool what Primus song is the hardest to sing and play live. His answer wasn’t a surprising choice, with the erratic bass-driven “DMV“, the second single off of “Pork Soda“, being his answer.
That track has largely been phased out of the band’s setlist, with some known 27 live performances of it having transpired, the last of which took place back in 2015. Prior to that it had been absent from the band’s setlist since 2003. Claypool elaborated on that a bit on shelving that song, stating:
“…There’s a song ‘DMV‘ which we just don’t even play because it’s so fucking hard [laughs]. It’s one of those I wrote that when I was a young guy songs and I probably can’t even play it. I wouldn’t even play it on this bass. It’s like… But I play it on the six string, so it’s even harder.”
