I've been in love with Primus since I heard them, by chance, opening for the Red Hot Chili Peppers at the end of 1989. I'd come to see the Peppers do their socks-on-cocks routine, and instead was blown away by this wacky warm-up band with songs about sex-crazed cats, crack-addicted club crawlers and seafaring fishermen.
The cartoony presence of their nasal-voiced frontman dazzled me. In the car on the way home, I asked my date, "Did you see that band Primus? They were so cool!"
His half-hearted response: "They were okay."
Little did we know just how big Primus would become, and in the process carry the freak-rock torch of such '60s, '70s and '80s artists as the late Frank Zappa and the Residents through the '90s.
In high school, my hipper classmates traded dubs of the band's first EP, the live Suck on This, like it was rare currency. By the time their full-length debut Frizzle Fry was released in 1990, I was a fan for life.
After four more solid albums and several side projects, Primus have recently delivered the Brown Album. Like the Beatles' White Album or Metallica (known to their fans as the Black Album), the new Primus album is a milestone recording in Primus' career. Milestone has been the watchword in the past year as the band divorced from longtime drummer Tim "Herb" Alexander, took in Brian "Brain" Mantia and saw the birth of vocalist, bassist and band leader Les Claypool's son Cage.
I catch up with Primus one afternoon at a San Francisco video production lab, where they are putting the finishing touches on a clip for "Over The Falls" (a song on the Brown Album). The trio has just returned from a two-week stint in Europe and are about to embark on the H.O.R.D.E. (Horizons of Rock Developing Everywhere) tour with Neil Young, Beck, Morphine and the Squirrel Nut Zippers.
When I arrive, Claypool is on the phone, tracking down the second of two dud interviewers.
A curly-haired friend edits black-and-white scenes of a man constructing a chamber meant to carry him over Niagara Falls. He cuts these with footage of the band performing on the beach, decked out in vintage suits, as Claypool gives occasional critique.
Finally Mantia and guitarist Larry "Ler" LaLonde file in, looking like teenage skaters in their worn clothing and low-slung ski caps. Mantia informs us he's in a good mood because he's just bought a new pair of shoes, and LaLonde pulls off his cap to reveal a shock of blackened hair, dyed especially for the "Over the Falls" shooting. "It's still black!" he proclaims. "I can't get it to wash out!"
Claypool suggests we move to an adjacent room, and for the first time I take notice of his recent appearance: minimalist handlebar mustache, pointed goatee, slicked-back black hair. A bright silver wallet chain dangles from the pocket of his khaki pants. He and his bandmates are chatting playfully with one another, and I've made the mistake of trying to start the interview with serious questions. I'm intent on getting to the bottom of the new record, but every time I try, I'm rewarded with the Primus boys' inescapable deadpan humour.
ATN: Can we talk about the new album?
Claypool: No. We can only talk about the first album.
ATN: If you were going to introduce the Brown Album, what would you say?
Claypool: What would I say?
ATN: Yes.
Claypool: [Adopting an announcer's tone.] I would say that this is the greatest album ever recorded - at my house.
Eventually I get some earnest words out of Claypool. "I would say this is probably the most aggressive Primus record we've ever done, next to maybe [Suck on This]."
In addition to making the album in the studio at Claypool's rural Rancho Relaxo home, the band decided to record Brown with analogue equipment. Previous albums were made using multi-track digital recorders. "It was Brain's idea," says Claypool. "He was Studio Bob for a bunch of years, and he said, 'Digital schmigital. Go analogue.' I love the way it sounds. It has that old Physical Graffiti warmth to it."
LaLonde has an alternative explanation. "The way Brain works is, he has to actually be able to see the tape going 'round in circles. He stares at it for, like, two and a half hours. And then he goes and plays the drums."
Mantia might be new to Primus fans, but he's been working with the Primus boys for a number of years. He played with Claypool's Holy Mackerel team last year when they toured to promote the band leader's solo album, and was Primus' drummer for a few weeks in the 1980s before a skateboarding accident sidelined him. In the interim he worked with such other San Francisco bands as Godflesh and the Limbomaniacs.
ATN: Was it hard for you guys to adjust to the new guy?
Mantia: Are you saying that because I'm Japanese? [Les and Ler burst out laughing.] We've known each other for so long, I'd come in and it was like, "Oh, hey, it's Brain. Go play your drums now."
Claypool: We had to keep fending off his sexual advances. That was the hard part.
ATN: Brain, is being in Primus what you thought it would be?
Mantia: Well, sexually, yes. Musically, no.
Mantia's presence in Primus has changed more than the production style of the trio. For starters, his drum kit is completely different from Alexander's. "We have a lot less drums than we ever did," LaLonde explains.
"I haven't made enough money to afford the rest," Mantia says, grinning.
What he has done is completely reinvent Primus' bottom end. Instead of the double-bass attack that was Alexander's trademark, Mantia operates with a single enormous kick drum. "[It's] so big, I just hit it once and it sounds like four," Mantia explains.
That booming sound is part of the reason for Brown's aggressive sound, especially on tracks like the closing cut "Arnie." It's an expansive instrumental piece - layered with a brief narrative about a man who sets himself on fire to be remembered - where Mantia's drum line is reminiscent of Led Zeppelin's "Moby Dick."
"He just played these big old ugly drums in this big old ugly room with tile and two microphones," Claypool explains. "And we had the John Bonham sound."
When I ask Claypool if he feels like Brown has a theme, he seems taken aback. "A running theme, on this record? I would say no." He does admit the characters on this album are more reality-based than, say, the psychotic hick from "My Name is Mud" or the tragic figure in "Jerry Was a Race Car Driver." "It's like our Fargo, as opposed to Baron Munchausen," he says.
And what of the violent nature of material on Brown, ranging from the kid who burns down the local movie theatre in "The Chastising of Renegade" to the murdered boxers in "Fisticuffs." "Fires and death. That sells records, fires and death," Claypool says with a wan smile.
With "Fisticuffs," he explains, the lyrics came by an unusual route. In the song, "Brain plays the snare on the up-beats as opposed to the backbeats. And I just had this image in my mind of these bare-knuckle boxers," he recalls. "I went to the library and researched. Because I didn't know anything about 19th century boxing. I found some old stories... and they became the song."
For other tracks, Claypool returned to some long-standing Primus characters, such as Bob Cock in "Bob's Party Time Lounge" and Sathington Willoughby in "The Return of Sathington Willoughby." "['Sathington'] was one of the last songs to be titled," Claypool says. "I just had this character that was sort of such a right-wing, Jerry Falwell type, spewing into the microphone. He's talking in circles. It's extreme right-wing rhetoric. It's taking the piss out of our Jerry Falwells and Rush Limbaughs. I realized that we had this character Sathington Willoughby that had appeared in records past that would fit that description perfectly. So we brought him back."
Claypool turned to his local turf for "Coddingtown," a ditty written about a Northern California shopping center. "We travel around the country and it always amazes me when the guys want to go - 'Well, what are we doing today?' 'We're going to the mall!' The hair on the back of my neck stands up when I go into a mall," he says. "Malls in general are very surreal, eerie, scary, horrible places. And Coddingtown definitely has that element to it. The song itself is pretty grating, it has an agitating sound - that's kind of the way Coddingtown is. Like the song says, 'I've shambled around now too damn long/ I wanna go, I gotta go.' The guy has to get the hell out of there before it drives him nuts."
ATN: Are you often inspired by places you live?
Claypool: You know, people who don't even know about Coddingtown are going to think it's a town somewhere. It's a weird place. Sometimes just the names or the imagery you can draw from using little bits and pieces are more exciting than what you're actually writing about. It's like the Beatles' song where George Harrison and Eric Clapton wrote the song, it's on the White Album, about going through a box of chocolates. What the hell's that song?
LaLonde: "Glass Onion?"
Claypool: No, not that one. Come on, you know that song. We gotta think of it now. Anyway, it's all about a box of chocolates and they're just reading the damn names off the chocolates and they wrote this song. What the hell was the name of that song?
Mantia: Are you sure it wasn't "Stairway to Heaven?"
Claypool: I'm sure that was it.
I ask Claypool about these characters which spring from his mind. Are they skewed representations of Claypool's own psyche? "Sometimes it's a little bit of me... or people around me, or people I've experienced. I like to go with what I know," he replies. "I think that's characteristic of most writers. They throw in little pieces of themselves. Having characters is a good way of making points without actually standing on a soapbox and voicing one's opinions. And it's not always my opinion. It could be a parody of an opinion, like 'Sathington'."
Primus road-tested several of the new characters, along with many old favourites, during their recent pre-release tour of Europe. Fans in Germany, Denmark, France and England were treated to Primus' wild live performances. Their response? "They loved it. They were just falling over, dropping dead in the aisles. We couldn't get them out of there. They were tossing wads of money up on-stage," Claypool says with a laugh. "No, it went good."
Another new element Primus needed to iron out was how Mantia would cover Alexander's old drum parts. "It was hard at first. It took us a while to even find out if I was going to learn the double bass," Mantia explains. "I've studied drums and I probably could have learned it, eventually. But every time I tried, Les would look back at me kinda like, 'What are you doing?' And it wasn't really me. I'm not that kind of a player."
Adapting to the daily grind of touring, however, was easier than expected. "We had some really good shows [in Europe] and I had fun playing, and usually it's hard for me to do that when I'm playing every night," Mantia says. "Before, I could do only like one gig a month, and after that gig I would die."
Claypool: Plus Ler lets him drink his mini-bar after each show.
LaLonde: Not every show. It gets too expensive.
Claypool: Every other show.
It's a good thing that Mantia bears up under a strenuous tour schedule, because Primus is currently working a four-week stint on H.O.R.D.E. When the tour's organizers originally approached the band, they refused. "[The lineup] was a bunch of pop bands and older bands that didn't appeal to us," Claypool says. "When they came back and said they had Crazy Horse and Morphine and Beck and the Squirrel Nut Zippers and Kula Shaker, it looked like a good bill so we jumped on."
After H.O.R.D.E., the band plans on headlining its own American tour, but not before Claypool attends to a more personal matter. "In between the two tours my wife and I are having another baby," he says. "I'm going to take a little time off."
The second Claypool offspring is due in September, but fans might see Primus on the road again by the end of October. Though Claypool's family might be a hindrance to the band's hectic schedule, their presence in his life is dear to Claypool's heart. "Since 1984 my whole world has revolved around Primus. Now my whole world revolves around this little guy," he explains tenderly. "So it makes being on the road a little harder. But I gotta bring home the bacon."
On tour, Primus plays a lot of material from Brown but also a good deal of work from older albums like Frizzle Fry and Sailing the Seas of Cheese, avoiding much of 1995's Tales from the Punchbowl. "When I listen to the Punchbowl album I... wince a little bit. I don't feel comfortable playing it now," Claypool says. "When we made that record the band wasn't in the greatest space. This whole thing with Tim, our old drummer, wasn't something that just came [he snaps] like that. It came over a long period of time. So it wasn't necessarily the happiest time. It wasn't a horrible time, but it wasn't the happiest time. Maybe in a couple of years I'll look at that record a little more fondly, but right now we don't play much off of it."
"You always look back at some stuff and wince a little, like when you look at your high school haircut. Of course, I have my high school haircut," he says, gesturing to his greased-back "do."
For its stage show, Primus plans to keep things a bit more simple than they were for the Punchbowl tour, which Claypool describes as "this whole scrim with windows that you could see through, and when certain lights hit them there'd be things behind them. It was pretty elaborate, but it was also unbelievably expensive and we didn't make a dime on it."
This time around, they want to play smaller venues and keep costs down. "There'll be some interesting things, but it's going to be more about performance," he says.
LaLonde: We're trying to get a smoke machine. Do you know where we can get one?
Claypool: We're going to go with fog. No one does dry ice anymore. Just pump it in there, and we'll put up some fake tombstones.
LaLonde: Sounds pretty good!
Claypool: It's going to be the Ed Wood Show.
Other future plans include the release of the single and video for "Over the Falls" in early fall as a follow-up to the current offering, "Shake Hands With Beef." In that video, the band is depicted as tiny insects eavesdropping on a family's outdoor barbecue. There's only one problem: the bug zapper.
With Primus entering its thirteenth year of service, I ask Claypool and LaLonde whether they ever get tired of being in the band. "You just try to keep it as fresh as you can. Like doing this H.O.R.D.E. festival is a totally different kind of thing," Claypool replies. "And Lollapalooza was a lot of fun. There's definitely an energy in the band now that there hasn't been since the very beginning, because we got this Keith Moon character on the drums." He gestures to a sheepish-looking Mantia.
ATN: Ler, how about you?
LaLonde: What was the question?
ATN: Does Primus ever feel like "just a job?"
LaLonde: Naw. It's always fun. I don't know how to do anything else. [laughs]
Claypool: What are you talking about? You're a computer whiz kid.
LaLonde: That's right, I'm a computer whiz kid. I've already figured out that that's my destiny: to sit in a dark room for hours on end.
Speaking of computers, it's possible that Primus will eventually re-release Punchbowl in order to include some of the material from its CD-ROM companion, which was released some seven months after the original album came out -- and disappeared instantly. Hampered both by technological and marketing troubles, the interactive Punchbowl disc is a rarity. "It wasn't like Myst, but it would take you a couple of hours to get through it," Claypool says of the CD-ROM. "You actually drove the boat through the punchbowl. You could pick a destination on the compass, you'd go to this island and then something interactive would happen on the island, and you'd back off and go to another island. It was pretty cool."
"We get a lot of hits on our web site [www.primussucks.com] about it, because a lot of people are pissed off that they can't get it to work," Claypool said. "Of course, the 1-800 number doesn't do anything, because the company that produced it is now out of business."
All the serious talk is making the Primus members a bit restless, and in any case it's time to wind things up with a closing question. Unfortunately, getting a final thoughtful response out of these guys at this point isn't easy.
ATN: What's the best thing that's happened to you in the past year?
LaLonde: Oh, I don't know [much laughter from the others]. Next. I can't even get near that.
Claypool: I'm not trying to sound cornball, but of course the birth of my son was the most amazing thing that's happened for me in the past year.
LaLonde: I know what Brain would say.
Claypool: I know what Larry's is, but I won't say anything or we'll get in trouble.
Mantia: I think, um, hanging out with Tommy Lee was probably the greatest thing that ever happened to me.
LaLonde: I learned to do kick flips, that was pretty good. I think the best thing was I got a free snowboard.
Claypool: What the hell's a kick flip?
LaLonde: It's where you do an ollie, and you kick your foot down hard, and you make it look like you know what you're doing. It looks cooler than it is.
ATN: That's always the best way.
LaLonde: That's what 99 percent of life is, looking cool.
Claypool: Jimmy Page said...
LaLonde: "It's 99 percent how you look." We're going with 100 percent. You can tell by looking at us right now. There's a couple of people coming down from Maybelline to work me out.
This article was originally published in Addicted to Noise.