MATT WINEGAR: I remember going back there [at another early show] and watching Flea and Les sitting back there, playing bass face-to-face—all intense. Slapping basses, like, “What do you do? Slap it this way?”
LARRY LaLONDE: I think [Kirk Hammett] probably had something to do with some sort of funding during it [the recording of The Sane Asylum, which lists Hammett as a coproducer with Marc Biedermann]. [Laughs] I remember hanging out with Kirk a lot, but I don’t know how much producing he actually did. Who knows—I wasn’t there for a lot of it.
KIRK HAMMETT: Les was great—he walks right in, he played his parts very quickly and very accurately, and then was gone again. It was very difficult for him to be in Blind Illusion, because the guitar player was the main songwriter and called all the shots. I think there might not have been enough creative room for Les and the guitar player, Marc Biedermann, coexisting. I always thought that Les was better on his own, anyway. And his songs, when he did play his songs with Blind Illusion, they stuck out like sore thumbs. I remember there was a song that he wrote called “Pinstripe Man” or something like that, and it was so funky and so different from the rest of Blind Illusion’s songs. It was just very obvious that it was being written by someone else other than the guitar player. A lot of Blind Illusion songs were kind of Black Sabbath-y, but progressive at the same time. And Les’s songs, like I said, were funky, melodic, and quirky.
LES CLAYPOOL: There wasn’t much to it for me—I just came in and did my bit. I think there’s been more made of my involvement in Blind Illusion than there actually was. In the early days, in high school, I was much more involved. But by the time we made The Sane Asylum, I didn’t write any of those songs, I wasn’t around when any of those songs were written. Some of the songs I don’t even play bass on. I came in, played my parts, hung out, it was a good time—those guys are super-fun guys. And I got my free bass amp out of it, and did a couple of tours. And that’s where I learned to smoke weed. I smoked weed with those guys in high school, especially Marc . . . and I’m not trying to undermine Marc. Marc was a spectacular guitarist, an amazing guitarist. And unfortunately, he had some issues with substances and whatnot. He could have been one of the best players on the planet for that kind of music. But unfortunately, he had some issues—he kept falling out, he kept undermining himself with these issues. It’s sad. And I’ve seen that a lot over the years, guys that were spectacular, and they fall out of the game for some reason or another, not necessarily always because of substances, but for various reasons.
I don’t want to take anything away from Marc, because he was the guy that basically got me started playing bass. I was learning how to play his songs, but then I started watching these other players, and learning how to thump and pluck and all this stuff. But recording the Blind Illusion album, it was fun. What had happened was I was in the band in high school, when I first got started. I didn’t even know how to play music, I just learned how to play his songs. We were very good friends, and he’s the one who first got me started playing the bass. Then I discovered Stanley Clarke and Larry Graham, and I just didn’t want to be a metal guy. Metal back then was a different thing. I went and did my own thing, and played in the band again just out of high school, and it sort of fell apart again. But that’s where I met my good friend Bryan Kehoe, because he was playing in the band. And then I did Primus, the Tommy Crank Band, and these other things.
Then a good friend of ours, Gino, was playing bass in Blind Illusion, and that’s when metal became what people knew metal was. That’s when Metallica and those things were becoming popular. And I was somewhat oblivious to all of that. And when I did the Metallica audition, Biedermann had heard that I had auditioned for Metallica, and was like, “Shit, I’m going to get Les to play with us.” Gino had left the band, and I went in to take his place to make this record. But I was definitely a hired gun the last time through.
When Marc asked me to do the Blind Illusion thing, I went down and played with those guys, and I had to learn all these intricate metal parts. It was fun for me. And playing that stuff with Blind Illusion is partially why some of the songs, like “Frizzle Fry,” came about. The original “Too Many Puppies” was double time of what it is now, as far as the backbeat. And then playing this metal, and when Herb showed up, he just played it half time.
LARRY LaLONDE: It was a pretty insane scene then. We were both kind of on the outside and came in and played on this record. Marc had gotten a budget to record this thing, so we weren’t really a huge part of it.
BUZZ OSBORNE [The Melvins singer and guitarist]: The first time I saw those guys play was in a different band—Blind Illusion. If I’m not mistaken, it was Les and Larry, with a bunch of other guys. They had some hippie guy playing a stick with a string on it, dancing around out front. Blind Illusion was cool, but I like Primus a lot more than that. That was the first time I saw those guys play. They seemed like competent musicians.
ADAM GATES: They needed a bass player. [After Les exited Blind Illusion in 1988, Gates filled in as bassist.] We would show up in like, Cincinnati, and the promoter would come out and say, “What show? What are you talking about?” And we’d just play for the promoter. It was a tour fueled by LSD. Good times!
Chapter 6
Herb the Ginseng Drummer
LES CLAYPOOL: Larry and I had become pretty good friends, just from touring around in this box full of sweaty men, traveling the country, skateboarding and whatnot—smoking a shitload of weed. So when Todd bowed out, I said, “Well, dude, I’ve got to keep going. Is it okay if I keep going, and use the songs and the name?” And he said, “Sure, no worries.” So the first person I called was Larry, because we were such good friends. But the strange thing was I never really heard Larry play that much. Because he was the rhythm guitarist in a metal band, and usually you don’t hear the rhythm guitarist so much. [Laughs] It’s just part of the soundscape.
I would hear him play these little Robert Fripp licks once in a while during soundcheck, but I wasn’t sure the caliber of player he was. But he was a really good friend of mine and was a great hang, and I was like, Fuck it—I’m going to get Ler in there. I know he can play some Robert Fripp licks, at least. So I called him up and said, “Do you want to be in Primus?” And he was like, “Hell yeah.” I remember him telling me once that one of the reasons he joined was because I had just gotten this girlfriend—this tall, blond woman—that I met at one of our shows. I think he was pretty impressed by the notion that women like that were coming to our shows. [Laughs] Because you didn’t see gals like that at those metal shows.
LARRY LaLONDE: I had seen them a couple of times, and he was like, “I’ve got this band, Primus.” He’d played me a tape that sounded kind of crazy. So just from hanging out with him, I think I did lights for them a couple of times—I had no idea what I was doing. I think I’d seen them three or four times. Now, people have heard lots of crazy music. But back then, I didn’t really get it at first. I didn’t know what was going on. The few times I did see them, it was kind of different every time. So it was kind of hard to grasp on to what it actually was.
ADAM GATES: There’s so much [to remember about early Primus shows], but most of it was, “Remember we were on acid?” Me and Larry . . . Primus were playing a country club—this was before Larry was in the band—and we were doing lights for some reason, and we had taken acid. The country club had a tennis ball serving machine, and it was inside this small room, so we plugged it in, turned off the lights, and turned on the machine—balls flying everywhere, dosing, me and Larry. That is a fond memory!
LARRY LaLONDE: Todd was married and having kids—he had a real life. I don’t think he really had the time to sit around in a smelly van, driving around the country, playing for three people a night. But I did have time for that. [Laughs] They were left without a guitar player and Les called me up and said,