KIRK HAMMETT: It just was one of those things that wasn’t meant to be.
LES CLAYPOOL: The thing that should not be? [Laughs]
Chapter 4
How to Make Sausage
LES CLAYPOOL: I used to roadie for some bands. There was the whole world beat scene that was pretty popular in the Bay Area, with the Freaky Executives, the Looters, Big City, and Zulu Spear. It was this amazingly vibrant scene. But then, all of a sudden, David Rubinson got involved—who managed Herbie Hancock, and ran The Automatt recording studio—and he tried to commercialize it, and totally destroyed the whole scene. The whole thing fell apart. But David Lefkowitz had come from the East Coast to work for him as an intern. So he was working as a roadie, and then he started booking a couple of the bands. And he started booking Primus as an agent. Chris Cuevas was acting as our manager at the time, and he was my best friend. It really wasn’t working out and it was getting awkward, so we said, “Let’s try Lefkowitz.” So he took over. His nickname became Smiley. He worked out of his bedroom in Haight-Ashbury, and he became the guy.
DAVID LEFKOWITZ [Original Primus manager]: I graduated from college in 1986 and moved to San Francisco to be in the music business. I had an opportunity to work in a management company called David Rubinson Management. I don’t remember necessarily the first time I saw Primus for sure, I definitely remember an early show in 1986, where they were on a bill opening for Big City. Curveball was the drummer of Primus at that time, and I remember Curveball wearing underwear on his head, and coming to the front of the stage to sing some a cappella Michael Jackson song. [Laughs] Which sort of foreshadowed his ultimate vocal career—fronting a popular cover band called Curveball.
CHRIS “TROUZ” CUEVAS: When we met Dave, I didn’t really realize that becoming a manager could be pretty lucrative. [Laughs] And so basically, I said, “Hey Dave, I’d rather be on the road. Why don’t you manage the band?” Les thought that was a good idea, so I sort of organically formed with Dave doing that. We all came up together as friends the whole time, and spent all of our time together. Even though we worked together, we were really close.
DAVID LEFKOWITZ: That happened at the end of ’86 or early-’87, when Chris opted out.
CHRIS “TROUZ” CUEVAS: Dave taught me a lot. I hope I taught Dave something too. We were a pretty tight team—it wasn’t like Dave in his office in LA trying to manage the band, and being disconnected. He was on the road. Even though we fucked with him endlessly when he was on the road. For a manager, Dave was never on the bus, in the lobby, or anywhere on time. Ever. Usually, we’re waiting for the drummer or the guitar player. Nope, we’re waiting for the manager. If anyone got so much shit and got fucked with the most, it would probably be Dave Lefkowitz. A lot of it very funny and in good spirits. But man, it was always a Dave roast fest.
DAVID LEFKOWITZ: That first demo that I was involved with, Primus Sucks, I believe that was produced by Matt Wallace. Matt went on to produce Faith No More and many other things.
MIKE WATT [The Minutemen bassist, fIREHOSE bassist, Stooges bassist, solo artist]: When they first came out, he had a slogan, Primus Sucks. Like a self-mocking kind of thing. That was a good thing, because there was some self-deprecating humor about punk, especially in the early days. But maybe it got lost, and he embraced it. To me, he personified some punk ethics, that kind of coincided with the philosophy of me and D. Boon, where punk was more a state of mind. He seemed to be right up that alley.
DAVID LEFKOWITZ: [The Primus Sucks demo] was just a black-and-white cassette cover that Les designed, that had a graphic image on it that he had drawn, which was very similar to the Suck on This cover. I can remember we must have been very engaged in trying to get record companies—large and small—interested in the band. There was a club in LA which was extremely prestigious called Scream. This was a club where Jane’s Addiction came out of—it was just the cool place to play in LA.
Primus was the first of four on the bill, and we knew that Rick Rubin was going to be in attendance that night. I had this bonehead idea that I wanted to try to delay the band’s set for as long as possible, so that I could ensure Rick Rubin would have arrived by the time they played. [Laughs] I didn’t exactly kidnap Curveball, but I convinced him to get in the van with me. I think he needed some sort of throat spray for an ailment he had at the time. So we just took off. The band’s set was almost canceled because Dale Gloria [who ran the venue] was so mad. But they played, and I don’t remember if Rick Rubin got to see them or not.
LES CLAYPOOL: The Curveball thing just wasn’t working. There were some issues, as there just is. So we were once again without a drummer, so I called Jay Lane, because he was sort of a local hero, and said, “Hey, Jayski.” Well, he wasn’t even Jayski then, he was just Jay Lane. We all worshipped Jay Lane. And I said, “Hey Jay, do you know of any drummers? We’re looking for a drummer.” And he’s like, “DUDE, I’M IN! I WANT THE GIG! I’M IN!” And we’re, “Oh my god, this is the drummer from the Freaky Executives.” Because they were huge back then in the Bay. And I called Todd: “Hey, Jay Lane wants to be our drummer.” And he was like, “You’re kidding me!”
CHRIS “TROUZ” CUEVAS: [The Freaky Executives] always blew me away. We went to those shows and had the best time, because it was like going to see Morris Day and the Time. I have a lot of fond memories of Jay back in the early days, and that whole funk/world beat scene was pretty cool.
JAY LANE [Primus drummer 1988–1989 and 2010–present, Sausage drummer, Frog Brigade drummer]: I would have to go back to Proposition 13—and let’s not get right into politics already—but yeah, it was Proposition 13 in 1980 that wiped music and arts out of the public schools in San Francisco. It was a tragedy. And I was fortunate enough right then, I think I was going into high school that year—right at the year that the teachers were fighting for their budgets and to maintain music in the schools. I had a really cool band teacher in junior high school that turned me on to jazz music. And that got me all obsessed with music—listening to Weather Report, Stanley Clarke, and fusion stuff back in the seventies.
I had been taking drum lessons before that, then my mom suggested I go to this place called Cazadero Music Camp in Northern California. I grew up in San Francisco, so I met a bunch of kids that went to Berkeley High School, and kids from East Bay, where they still had their music program thriving. So there were all these talented kids and kids in bands. I came back from that music camp and went back there the next year, kind of bonded with a few of these kids, and ended up joining a band in Berkeley after high school with some of these kids.
From there, I joined another band in Berkeley. The first band was called the Uptones, the second band was called the Freaky Executives. The Freaky Executives rehearsed at a studio in Emeryville, right next to Berkeley, that a bunch of bands rehearsed at. And Les had a room there—he, Todd Huth, and Peter Libby used to play and rehearse there a lot, and they were gigging as Primus. So I knew Peter for a while—we’d go and hang out in his room and work on drum stuff. And I got to know Les. Then Peter was out of the group and they got another drummer called Curveball, and I knew Curveball. Everybody was in this larger music scene. So I ended up joining Primus. That was 1988.
LES CLAYPOOL: We started playing with Jayski, and all of a sudden everything clicked—you could just feel the band come together. It was as if we had this really cool car, but it was only firing on seven cylinders. And then along comes Jayski, and boom!
JAY LANE: The thing was, I was coming from this funk background, so I was coming from playing with a lot of bass players who played that plucking style. So for me, I fit right in. I was like, Oh yeah, I can just go right with that.
LES CLAYPOOL: We had all this material we had written over the years. You have to figure, we’re into the band by this point by about three years,