NAMM [National Association of Music Merchants] shows and all that stuff. I remember seeing this thing advertised—this bass Kahler [tremolo system]. And I thought, Holy shit. That looks amazing! So I got one through the company, and I actually had Dan Maloney put it on for me, because I knew he was good. He put it on there, and we had to change the nut around a little bit, because intonation is always an issue when you put these things on. They stay in tune to an extent, but not terribly well. So you’ve got to watch that. But that’s part of the Primus sound too—the intonation is pretty loose. [Laughs] And there’s a little bit of glory to that. Some of my favorite guys are these guys that play pretty janky instruments, and you kind of hear that looseness in pitch. I like that.
My dad was always a very practical fellow. He always said, “This music thing is fine and dandy, but you better learn a trade.” Because they were all a little bummed that I didn’t go to college. I was the guy in the family who was kind of smart, and I would have been the first one to go to college. But unfortunately I needed to work, because we didn’t have money. I couldn’t work, go to college, and seriously pursue my music thing. Since I was fourteen, I knew I wanted to be a professional musician, so I worked and played music.
My dad encouraged me to learn many trades, so I think my very first job, I worked in a cheese shop. But then I immediately went heavy into the automotive world, because it was such a huge part of my background. I was an assistant manager at the Shell station—El Sobrante Shell—and then worked for Big O Tires, busting tires. I mixed auto paints for a while. I went to work for an audio company, basically in assembly, shipping and receiving, and quality control. Did a little bench-teching while I was there. Then I became a carpenter. I really enjoyed carpentry, and you make good money as a carpenter. Then after that, we started making T-shirts—we’d print T-shirts for the shows. After that, I became a professional musician.
Chapter 2
Dad, What’s a Primate?
LES CLAYPOOL: So the next thing I know, I’m hanging out with Chris Cuevas, who I remembered from dropping out of high school. And he was this total punk guy—he had his sleeves cut off and his hair all spiky. He was always going to all these shows in Berkeley, and I said, “Look, I’ve got a car. You get us tickets for these shows, and I’ll drive.” So that was kind of the deal—he was always winning tickets off KALX and KUSF. Like, every day. I had just broken up with my girlfriend, so I was all bummed out, and he and I would go clubbing every single night. We’d go see a band somewhere or see a comedian—whatever he’d win tickets for. And some of the shit was like, Why are we even going to see this? We didn’t even know who the hell they were. But it was free tickets, so we’d go. And then, he and I became best friends.
He had a place in Berkeley, and I’d go stay out there all the time. And then the next thing you know, we had a place in Berkeley. We had several places in Berkeley throughout the years. We had construction jobs together, and for my years in Berkeley—ten or twelve years there—he was my best friend. He became involved in this whole world beat scene by working with the Looters, and that’s how I got involved in that scene. I used to roadie for Joe Gore, who later would play with me, and through the world beat thing is how I met Jay Lane. Just that whole scene was really amazing.
It was during the time the whole metal thing was going on, but I was oblivious to that—I was more working for these world beat bands, like Big City, the Looters, and the Freaky Executives. The Looters should have been a huge band. And it wasn’t like what you’d now think of “world beat” as—there was a lot of stuff like that going on in England, but Looters was this Afro-Cuban/South African meets reggae meets U2, or something. It was a pretty vibrant scene . . . but then, like what usually happens to cool scenes, some big-time manager/producer got involved and convoluted the whole thing and it just kind of took a shit. It was the beginning of my wariness of producers.
KIRK HAMMETT: We were all kind of running in the same circles. And then he left Blind Illusion and formed another band, Primate. He had found this one guitar player who I had never heard of, Todd. And their first drummer . . . I can’t remember his name. I think it was when Curveball was in the band. They were a three-piece, and I remember getting a phone call from Chris Cuevas—he and I were really close and hung out quite a bit—and going to see Les’s band for the first time. That was Primus right there.
LES CLAYPOOL: I was a huge Peter Gabriel fan, and I went to the NAMM show and was able to get a LinnDrum machine, for half price. Those things were three thousand dollars, so I was able to get it for fifteen hundred. Can you imagine? That’s how much drum machines were back then. And I got this thing, and had a little Fostex recorder, and started recording songs in the bedroom of my apartment. I called it Primate, because when I was a kid my favorite animals were monkeys, so I figured that would be cool. And we had these little characters, Hector and Louie, who were these little anatomical drawings of a human and an ape. So it was just me and this Fostex recorder and a LINN drum. And “Too Many Puppies” was the very first thing I recorded. I played bass, had the LINN drum, and borrowed a guitar from my buddy Ray Wing from the Tommy Crank Band.
In the apartment, I was too embarrassed to sing. The only reason I started singing was because these bands I was in, the singers, I didn’t like how they sang my lyrics. So I decided, Well, I’ll be the singer, even though I couldn’t sing for shit. I even took some singing lessons from this lady, who I think just wanted to see me with my shirt off, because she kept making me take my shirt off when I’d sing. [Laughs] It was weird, singing this Elvis Costello song, over and over again. So I sort of started singing by default. I was never that comfortable with my voice, until more recent years. I always thought of myself as the narrator.
Anyway, I recorded “Too Many Puppies,” and I was too embarrassed to sing it in front of anybody in the apartment, so my roommate, old Kern Kern the Butter Churn, his girlfriend was the preacher’s daughter, so he gave me the keys to the church across the street. I remember going over there and screaming the lyrics to “Too Many Puppies” into my Fostex, while at the podium in this church. [Laughs] But I made this little demo tape, and all of a sudden I get a phone call from Todd Huth, who I had known from years before, by jamming with his band Wraith. And he said, “I hear you’re looking for a guitar player.” And I’m just thinking, This guy? No way. Because he was a total Joe Walsh/Tony Iommi kind of guy. And I was looking for a Robert Fripp/Adrian Belew kind of guy—somebody who was kind of a freak. So I said, “Well, let’s jam.” So we got together and jammed, and came to find out that Todd is actually a freakier guitar player than any of those guys. So there was Primate.
TODD HUTH [Primus guitarist 1984–1989, Sausage guitarist, Frog Brigade guitarist]: I was born and raised in San Pablo. As far as guitar goes, I started playing when I was eight years old—playing more folk-type stuff on the guitar. That’s what the guitar teacher was teaching me. Then I bought my first electric guitar when I was about twelve, and started playing with a couple of guys in junior high. And then the rest is history, I guess.
The first time [Les and I] met was probably when we were about thirteen. We both went to the same school—only for about a month or so. Then he went to another school. In high school, I was in another band, Wraith, and we needed a bass player for one of our shows. Through the grapevine, I heard that Les would do it. So he came along and started playing shows. So we kind of met each other more when we were doing the band thing in high school.
Les and I, we heard that each other were looking for people to play with. Actually, he wasn’t that into it, because he knew that my style and his style . . . In the past, I hadn’t really done what he wanted to do. So we sat down in this little room in El Sobrante, and he had a drum machine. We started playing and I just started making up parts to what he was doing.
We started to record with a guy, Vince “Perm”
