Primus - interview

How best to explain a band like Primus to someone unfamiliar with their music? You could throw around words like ‘quirky’, ‘oddball’, or just plain ‘weird’. You could attempt to stick genre tags like alternative rock, alternative metal, funk metal, or progressive metal to the band, but none would be entirely sufficient. Singer/bassist-extraordinaire Les Claypool once described the trio’s music as ‘psychedelic polka’, which seems apt coming from the horse’s mouth. They’re probably the weirdest American band to be signed to a major label – except Mr Bungle, perhaps. Despite writers’ frequent inability to accurately define their work, one factor has remained consistent throughout their 26-year lifespan: prodigious musical talent.

Formed in California in 1984, the band has been through several iterations over the years; Claypool has been the only consistent member. Though their last original album was released in 1999 (Antipop), the band have been infrequently active since 2003. In March, their website announced a seemingly permanent reformation with long-time contributors Jay Lane (drums) and Larry LaLonde (guitar).

Ahead of their appearance on the national Soundwave Festival tour in late February and March 2011, The Vine was patched through to Primus’ guitarist, Larry LaLonde, whose style is generally characterised by searing lead phrases and unconventional guitar sounds that interplay curiously with Les Claypool’s bass – which is, in effect, the band’s lead instrument.

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Hey Larry. Where are you calling from?

We're in Argentina. It’s about 6 o’clock at night. What time is it there?

7.20am.

Oh right, you tired?

Yeah man, I'm getting up especially to talk to you.

Nice!

How many shows are you playing in South America?

We're going one tonight and then we're playing one in Chile with Faith No More. It should be cool.

Awesome. That's a nice little segue, because you’re playing Soundwave Festival next year, and Faith No More headlined last year.

That's right, I heard. How was that, did you go?

I went and it was fantastic. What else have you heard about Soundwave Festival, Larry?

I don't know a lot about it. I just heard that Faith No More played it and my guitar tech was telling me it's fun. And I saw a bunch of the bands; I’m a super huge Iron Maiden fan so that's going to be awesome. And Slayer. Slayer's always great.

I know you’re a big Slayer fan. Are you looking forward to seeing them play five times from up close?

[Laughs] Yeah. We toured with them before in the States too, it was pretty fun. I could watch Slayer every day, and Iron Maiden should be cool to see too. There's tons of bands, a lot of bands out there that I like.

Here’s a bit more of info on Soundwave for you: it’s Australia's biggest rock and metal festival and it generally coincides with the hottest day of the year in every respective city.

Oh, really?

Yeah, last year was brutal.

Great! [laughs] So I should pack light, bring lots of shorts?

Yeah dude, shorts and singlets, that's about it. I saw that you're playing a sideshow with the Melvins, which is interesting to me, as I think you're both kind of musical outsiders in a way. Do you think there will be much of a crossover between Primus and Melvins fans?

You know, we'll find out. We toured with the Melvins probably 10 or 15 years ago in the States. It seemed to go over pretty well.


Primus - 'Lacquer Head'

I want to touch on the band reforming earlier this year. I was reading an interview with Les where he said that you were a driving force behind the decision. Could you tell me a bit more about the reasons why you wanted to get back together with Les and Jay?

Most of it just had to do with [the fact that] Primus is the main thing I've always done my whole life. Every now and then we take a little break and usually I try to push everyone to do it again, but I think one of the main reasons why we never really did it for a long period of time was because with our old drummer Tim, it was just really wasn't working out. I don't think he was that interested. So it just becomes a really fun thing for everyone to do, just kind of ‘get together and do a couple of shows’.

So this time what we decided to do, we were like ‘OK, if we're going to do it, we have to think about a different drummer’, and Jay was the first person that came to mind. It worked out so great with him as soon as we started playing with him; he's a great guy to hang out with and it's the most fun we've ever had with the band now. It's going great.

There's sometimes an element of scepticism when bands reform. Some people think that they're just in it for the money. Did you discuss that kind of thing with Les and Jay before you made the announcement?

No; the funny thing about Primus is we don't make that much money [laughs] So it's usually pretty easy to figure out that we're not just doing it for the money. One thing about, especially Les, he would never do anything just for the money. He really has to be in it and do it for fun. The whole thing about this band is about fun. When it's not fun, then we don't do it and that's usually the reason that we'd taken a break before. It just wasn't fun. For me this is the most fun I've ever had in this band. I'll take the money too if it's there. [laughs]

What about Jay? You mentioned that Les is pretty adverse to that kind of thing, and I saw in another interview he was saying Primus’ music is ‘never going to appear in beer commercials’. But how does Jay feel about that kind of thing?

Jay is a pretty easy-going guy. I think that if you told him ‘Hey, they're going to use our music in a beer commercial’, he'd be like ‘Hey, cool man!’. [laughs] He's a ‘go with the flow’ kind of guy. He's also likes things to be good and he doesn't like things to be fake, or just going through the motions. He has a high level of integrity.

Was there much self doubt being thrown around when you started rehearsing again? Did you question whether you'd be able to do it together?

Not really. You never know if you can take time off. If you go back on tour, you don't know if people are going to still be into it, if they're going to still come to the show; that part of it, you never know. But as soon as we started playing, I was surprised at how good it sounded and for some reason all the songs were really easy to. We were having so much fun doing it, but yeah, you always wonder. You can sit there and rehearse a bunch, learn all the songs; things are all ready to go, but then you never know what's going to happen when you go off to tour. There could be three people there.

That's my next question. Did you ever question whether Primus would still have an audience?

[Laughs] So far, so good! We've been lucky so far. I think the main thing and the reason we've been so lucky is we're never really part of any scene. When grunge came around we weren't a grunge band, or whatever the fad was. Every time a kind of music that's really popular dies off, we're usually not really a part of it, so we just kind of keep doing Primus and it seems to keep going.

You're different enough to survive on your own.

Yeah, So far so good, who knows; we'll see when we get to Australia. [laughs]

Yeah, see how you stack up to Iron Maiden and Slayer.

Right, that's going to be quite a mix.

Did you set any goals for the band this time around?

No, we never really set goals; we’ve just done what we're gonna do. Even now, the record that we're working on, we really never sat down and said ‘Hey, let's make a record’. We just got back from the last tour and had all the gear put in the studio and started recording songs. We just go with whatever we're doing. We don't do a lot of planning.

You mentioned earlier that when it's not fun you'll stop. Is that a mutual line in the sand to say when you'll all give it up?

Yeah, that usually seems to be the case. You can usually tell. Sometimes it can stop being fun if you've been going and going, played everywhere there is to play, and you played all the songs. But usually all you really have to do to keep your fun is write new songs, and have new things to do. Definitely with the band that we have right now, I don’t anticipate it not being fun for a long time.

It's been 10 years since you played Australia, I believe. What do you recall from past tours?

I don't remember too much, except for last time there - it's hard to get over the jetlag. Right when you get over the jetlag, it's time to go home. I love Australia. It's one of my favourite places to go. People are cool, the weather's always great when we're down there, and it's a fun place - a lot more fun than a lot of places. [laughs]

Primus has got a pretty hefty back catalogue. How do you go about choosing a setlist before each show?

It comes about when we get to the show, and we'll usually write the setlist about an hour before. We'll kind of just feel it out and think about what we feel like playing, check the audience out to see what feels good that night. We have a lot of songs to choose from; sometimes it gets kind of hard.

How much thought is given to fans' requests when rehearsing songs and planning setlists? I see you've got a pretty big Facebook following who tend to be pretty vocal.

I know – we should start checking out that. That's probably a pretty good idea, that's probably where we should get the requests from, but there's obviously some songs people want to hear every night. It's hard to try to get them all in there.

Those songs people want to hear, how do you go about keeping old songs sounding fresh and feeling fresh?

That's a good question. In a lot of our songs, if there's a guitar solo, middle part, we'll kind of open it up and jam on it, move it around, try to make it different. There's a lot of songs that seem to just have a good energy every night; ‘Tommy The Cat’ is always fun, and a song like ‘Those Damned Blue-Collar Tweekers’ has good energy. Once you're on the stage and everything's going, everything usually feels pretty good.


Primus - 'Those Damn Blue Collar Tweakers'

I've spoken to members of other three-piece bands before and a couple of them have told me that one of the best things about there being three of you is there's always a majority when you're making decisions. What's your thought on that kind of thing?

I guess that's true. I never thought about that, but the three of us usually agree on everything pretty easily. Maybe I'll check that out tonight. I'll try to go against the flow, and see what happens. [laughs]

If you're still happy to be in the same room together after this run of shows, are you going to be looking to record again?

Yeah, that's what we're in the middle of. It's a weird thing; this is the first time we've ever done shows while we're recording. We're recording up until all the gear had to be taken off to South America, so when it gets back we'll record some more. Then we'll have some New Year's shows and hopefully try to get the record done before we come to Australia.

I saw you're doing a performance of [1991 album] Sailing The Seas Of Cheese on New Year's Eve in Oakland.

Yeah.

How do you feel about those full album shows? I saw Les in another interview saying he was pretty sceptical about it until he actually looked at the list and thought "Hey, it's actually not that hard, and we've got Jay in the band now and he knows most of the songs."

Well it’s funny, for that one we were talking about ‘Oh, should we try to do a whole album that night?’. I was like, "I don't know…” then we got to rehearse and learn the songs and we realised that we already play them all anyway. [Laughs] So it's not that big of a deal. It's funny now to see there are so many bands that play whole albums, but we did it a few years ago. We did two tours; one where we did all of Frizzle Fry, another one we did Seas Of Cheese. I'd never even heard of anybody doing all albums before that. It's funny now, at least in the States, it seems like almost every band's doing that.

Back to the idea of recording, are you still a believer in the album format?

Yeah, definitely. I don't know how it is in Australia, but in America there's hardly any record stores. Everything is on iTunes now. But we still make vinyl. We put stuff out on vinyl, still.

So you're still looking to create a long-lasting, hour-long type piece of music?

Yeah, that's the only drag now, since nearly everything's digital. It's hard sometimes to make an album that's a whole hour album; a piece of music, because people will buy one song here, one song there.

My last question Larry; you're known to the world primarily as a guitarist in Primus. Is there anything else you'd like us to know about you?

That's probably the only thing that's worth knowing. [laughs] Everything else is pretty boring about me.

No sweet party tricks or anything?

No, maybe I should work on some. I should come up with some.

Andrew McMillen

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Primus will be appearing this summer at:

SOUNDWAVE FESTIVAL - 2011