There’s a lot of Claypools in Missouri, that’s all I know. My grandfather—who’s still alive, he’s ninety-seven—is from Missouri. He was a cowboy carpenter. But beyond that, I don’t really know. There’s been a rumor of Claypools on the Mayflower, but I don’t know. We’re all mutts. My mom’s side, my grandfather, he’s Italian—second-generation Italian. Actually, it’s funny, because I moved up here to West Sonoma County, and that’s where my great-great-grandfather settled when he came over from Italy. It was fairly close to where I live, and I didn’t even know that until I moved here. The old Simoni farm—Simoni is my mom’s maiden name. There’s a big hunk of Italian in there somewhere. I used to wear the old Italian good luck horn when I was in high school. I have a brother, a sister, a stepbrother, and a stepsister.
I started playing bass when I was right around fourteen years old. I’d always wanted to play something, but I remember when I was a kid, and the teacher—I think his name was Mr. Capelli—came around the grammar school to see what kids wanted to play. Some of the options were trumpet, clarinet, cello, or violin. And I was told that cello and violin were very difficult. I wanted to play trumpet, but he said my teeth were too “bucked” to play the trumpet, so maybe I should play clarinet. Unfortunately, I didn’t see the appeal of clarinet, so I opted not to play anything. Hindsight, I wish I’d taken up clarinet, because I now love the clarinet and perhaps I wouldn’t have bastardized the instrument as bad on Seas of Cheese.
Years later, in high school, there was a kid in my algebra class who was kind of this burnout dude, with these big, thick pop-bottle glasses. A little Filipino guy, with long hair and a dirty white T-shirt. He’d sit in the back of the class, and he’d always have these guitar magazines. He’d show these pictures. He’d go, “Hey Claypool, look at this, man, that’s going to be my guitar,” and he’d show me a Stratocaster he was going to buy. “Man, I’m telling you, I’m going to be big, because I know all the key elements, man—sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll!” And that guy was Kirk Hammett. He used to sell me weed, actually. I bet a lot of people that went to our high school don’t even know that they went to high school with the guitarist from Metallica, because he was just this little skinny guy, with thick pop-bottle glasses, that hung out, out back—which was where everybody who smoked cigarettes hung out.
KIRK HAMMETT [Metallica guitarist]: I first met Les in algebra class. He sat right next to me. He saw me one day looking at a Guitar Player magazine. He was interested, and at that point he was interested in music more as a fan or a listener, rather than as a musician. I remember telling him, “I got a band together and we need a singer. You want to join my band?” And he said, “What’s the name of it?” And I said, “Exodus.” And he goes, “Wow, that’s crazy!”
LES CLAYPOOL: He had this band Exodus that kind of sounded like AC/DC back in the day. I was always singing songs—I’d come into class singing songs, like Aerosmith or Zeppelin. So Kirk said, “Hey, man, you’ve got to come audition for my band and sing.” He used to give me these cassette tapes of various things. He turned me on to Hendrix, and wanted me to learn “Sunshine of Your Love” by Cream. He wanted me to audition for his band, but I was too bashful. I couldn’t do it.
KIRK HAMMETT: Literally, the next day he bought a bass, and the next day after that he joined some other band. I was so mad at him, because I thought he was going to come by and try and sing and be the singer of my band. And then, when I actually got to see him play a few months later in the band that he joined, I was so impressed at how well he could play, and how much technique he already had at that point. I was so impressed by his whole approach. Even in the early days, his playing was highly stylized. You could tell whenever he played—it was Les playing, it wasn’t the other bass player down the street playing bass. He did a lot of finger pops and thumps—it was totally like Larry Graham and Stanley Clarke. It was very evident that he was on his way to becoming a very accomplished musician. Even at that time.
LES CLAYPOOL: I ended up meeting this guitar player who was sort of the local hot-shot guy, and we became buddies, and he needed a bass player. I had this friend who was selling this little piece-of-crap bass for thirty bucks, and I think I had fifteen bucks. So I went to my dad and said, “Dad, I really want to play bass. This guy has this bass for sale, and it’s thirty dollars. I have fifteen dollars, can you loan me fifteen dollars?” And he said, “Is this something you really want to do?” And I was like, “Yeah, Dad, I really want to do this!” He says, “Well, if we’re going to do this, let’s do this right. We’re going to go down and see Al at Al’s Music.” And I remember him and my stepmother getting into an argument about it, because she thought I wouldn’t follow through—like the swim team, I wouldn’t stick it out.
So we went down to Al’s Music and picked out this bass. Al was a buddy of Dad’s, but I don’t think he gave him that great of a deal. Anyway, I got this Memphis P Bass. And I was instantly in a band, because back then everybody wanted to be Eddie Van Halen and nobody wanted to play bass. They usually stuck the guy who couldn’t play guitar very well on bass. But I was all about it. I worked that whole summer—I remember working for my dad and pulling weeds at this doctor’s house, just trying to earn the money to pay off this bass. And I would sit and play that sucker nonstop. I didn’t have an amp, so I would sit on the edge of the couch, listen to music, and play along even though I couldn’t hear what I was doing. That’s kind of one reason I don’t really know a lot of other people’s music, unlike guys who knew every Rush song lick for lick, or every Zeppelin song lick for lick. And I just never learned that stuff, because I was jamming along with those records, and basically playing them my own way. And probably completely out of key. So I would get the sense of the rhythms, but not necessarily the notation.
I learned to read music around that time, because a buddy of mine was a drummer in the jazz band. He said, “Hey, they need a bass player in jazz band, and I told them about you.” So I went in and saw Mr. Johnson, and I said, “I’m a bass player.” He signed me up, I sat in the class, and unfortunately the amp was broken. So I had to sit there for a while until the amp got fixed—for several weeks. So I got in trouble one day for chatting it up with the drummers, because there were always a shitload of drummers in jazz band. While one guy is playing, the other three had to sit around.
So I got in trouble for being disruptive, and he said, “Why don’t you at least grab the sheet music and read along?” And I said, “Well . . . I don’t know how to read music.” And he’s like, “You don’t know how to read music?!” He was all flustered. He took me aside after class and showed me the fundamentals of reading music. He said, “You need to learn this, or you can’t be in the class.” So I went out and got a Mel Bay book and learned how to read from that. But I’m not very good at it. I was okay at it back then, but I haven’t read in years. I tried reading some stuff recently, and I could barely get through it.
CHRIS “TROUZ” CUEVAS [Primus tour manager 1989–1996]: The only friends that I am still friends with and in contact with from high school are Kirk and Les.
LES CLAYPOOL: Chris Cuevas, his nickname was “Chris Quaalude.” I saw him around high school—he didn’t really show up to high school very much. I think he made it through the ninth grade. I kind of knew him as the guy who stole my drummer’s girlfriend. So I’m thinking, Who is this guy? But then, years later, I became friends with Chris—his mom was big in the music scene, and she was helping out some different bands, and she started helping us out. She used to hang out and work with the Metallica guys and all these different bands.
CHRIS “TROUZ” CUEVAS: It doesn’t really mean anything [the nickname Trouz]. If you know Les, he’s very rhyme-y. He likes to make things rhyme and come up with nicknames. So the two of us used to make up names for a lot of our friends. Somehow, because Trouz rhymes with cows, Les thought that was funny. So he would create certain songs, like, “Trouz, Trouz, drives the cows,” and, “Trouz, Trouz, is scared of the cows.” Silly stuff like that. It never