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, “Hey, Todd left the band. Do you want to be in the band?” I was like, “Yeah!” He said, “Do you want to think about it?” And I was like, “Nope, I’m good. Let’s go.” That’s about all it took. Thank god there wasn’t an audition, because I probably wouldn’t have made it.
LES CLAYPOOL: So then Ler’s on board, and like I said, I didn’t know how well he could play. So I said, “Okay, learn these songs, we’re auditioning drummers.” I remember when we were auditioning these guys with Ler, he is fiddling with his amp and he’s kind of playing the song, and we start playing with this one guy, and he was just this super-fuse-o guy, and he was like, “Hey, let’s do a song in thirteen.” And he’s playing all this stuff. We’re like, What the hell? and we’re noodling along with him. Couldn’t even tell where the downbeat was or what the hell was going on. And then after he got done playing, a girl was there to audition, and she’s setting up and says, “I can’t play quite as well as him, but here we go.” And it was the polar opposite—we start playing with her, and she basically couldn’t even hardly play a backbeat. But you’ve got to be polite and at least go through a few songs before you say, “We’ll call ya if we need ya.”
So it was after that day, I looked at Ler and said, “There was this one guy that Todd and I auditioned that was actually really good. I think we should go with him.” Tim Alexander played with this other band called Major Lingo. But he heard the Sausage tape and got very excited about it, so he came down and auditioned for us. We were like, This guy’s pretty good. Kind of a strange guy . . . but he’s pretty damn good! But it was a totally different feel than Jayski. It was this Neil Peart/Bill Bruford style, whereas Jayski is this super crispy, funky guy. Jayski is more of a cross between Stewart Copeland and Dave Garibaldi. But you could feel the energy, you could feel the chemistry was good. And so we’re like, This guy is good, and we auditioned a few more people. Then I get a phone call from Todd, and he says, “I’ve got to quit the band.” So I’m halfway through interviewing drummers, and then the guitar player quits. I’m like, Holy shit.
So I called Tim Alexander and said, “All right, dude, you’ve got the gig. But I’ve got tell you, Todd’s not in the band anymore.” And he says, “What?” I say, “He quit, because he had a couple of babies. But I’ve got this guy Larry, and he’s amazing—it’s going to be really cool.” I remember just the sound of Tim’s voice, like, “Uh . . . okay.” So we got together with Tim and we played. I remember Ler spent most of the time fiddling with his damn amp and he kind of could half-ass play the songs. Some of those songs were pretty damn tough. I remember Tim coming to me after the jam and going, “Is he going to be able to pull this off?” And I was like, “Don’t worry, he’ll get it.”
TIM “HERB” ALEXANDER [Primus drummer 1989–1996, 2003–2010, 2013–present]: As long as I can remember I’ve been banging on things. I have a vague memory of reaching up over my head to hit a snare drum. One year, for Christmas, my mother gave me one of those toy sets made with paper drum heads and I immediately
