years too early I guess. I remember after the audition, I followed Kirk out into the little waiting room, and I’m like, “Hey, man,” waiting for him to say, “Good job,” or anything. I could tell he was avoiding even looking me in the face. [Laughs] Like he didn’t want to tell me, “Dude . . . that fucking sucked.” [Laughs] I could just feel it. I didn’t fit. I still don’t fit. They’ve got the greatest guy they could get right now—Robert Trujillo is an amazing player and he’s the fucking nicest guy on the planet.
ROBERT TRUJILLO [Suicidal Tendencies bassist, Infectious Grooves bassist, Ozzy Osbourne bassist, Metallica bassist]: It’s hard for me to see [what Metallica would have sounded like with Les on bass], because I feel that Les is kind of a powerful personality in himself. He’s a leader. And Metallica, between James and Lars, there’s not a whole lot of room for extra leaders . . . especially these days. I don’t know. It would have been interesting. I think it’s great that Les has been able to carry on, waving his own banner and just taking on the challenges of what he’s been able to do.
It’s almost like, to me, Metallica is this beast that stays within itself, in a way. And I mean that in a positive way, it’s not a negative thing. And Les is somebody who really likes to collaborate. He’s his own guy, but he loves to collaborate and get into the mix with other musicians. Whether it’s someone like Bernie Worrell, Tom Waits, or Buckethead—he likes to get out there and get in different situations and be creative. It’s sort of a different form of energy.
But I think if, god willing, from Hetfield and Lars, if it would have happened, it would have been incredible, anyway. It would have been a bit more progressive and maybe a little different than what had been going on. But I think it would have been quite the adventure. I would have loved to have seen it, for sure. Maybe it wasn’t the right time at that moment, because at that time, it’s almost like they stepped away from bass for a minute, with the . . . And Justice for All album. Metallica sort of detoured from it for a minute. They were still kind of healing from the whole experience with Cliff.
LES CLAYPOOL: I was such a fish out of water for it, I was listening to, like, Fishbone back then. So to play the Metallica audition . . . there’s a reason why I didn’t get the gig. They say on VH1 that I was “too good.” Well, that’s not the case at all. I didn’t fit. I had baggy skater pants on, with two different-colored tennis shoes, and a weird blond Mohawk. And I was smacking my bass with my thumb. Going to the audition to do the Metallica thing, Kirk was telling me on the phone, “I’ve got to tell you, one thing you might not want to do is don’t use your thumb.” And I had already figured out “Master of Puppets,” how to do it all peck-it-a, peck-it-a, peck-it-a. After I did the audition, I was like, Wow, this music is pretty cool, because I had gotten into listening to all those records, having to learn the parts.
KIRK HAMMETT: I don’t think that it was [recorded], because we had such a high turnover. On the first day, we tried out, like, fifteen people. They’d come in, they’d play the song. If they were good, we’d play two or three songs with them. But if they weren’t very good, we would set our instruments down and walk out of the room, and someone would walk in and tell them, “Thank you for coming, but we’ll see you next time” sort of thing. No one really bothered with recording anything, because it was an audition, and like I said, it was a high turnover rate. We were only interested in recording people that made it to the final three. It was down to three different guys, and that’s when we decided to record the people who were playing with us.
LES CLAYPOOL: I didn’t get the gig.
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
