Les Claypool – An Xperience Interview – by Rachael Skinner.
Les Claypool is one of the most remarkable bass virtuosos of his time. His unique bass-playing style showcases a wide array of eclectic techniques, characterized by an innovative combination of strumming, plucking, and creative whammy bar manipulation. This results in the funky, gritty, and raw sound that has become synonymous with Claypool’s bass playing, making it exceedingly difficult for other musicians to imitate. His mesmerizing flamenco and funky slap bass skills are unique to his style of performing and, when paired with his distinctively unique vocals, have set an exceptionally high benchmark for what it means to be the King of Musical Eccentricity. He is widely acclaimed for his contributions to the thrash-funk band Primus, which ultimately provided him with a platform to explore all of his creative pursuits over the years. Claypool’s passion, creativity, and soul are vividly expressed in all of his musical endeavors. He refrains from confining himself to a single performance style and consistently approaches his music with a genuinely innovative creative process. Recently, I had the incredible honor of being able to have a chat with Les, and I would love to share with the universe what we discussed.
RRX: How was it was celebrating with Maynard for his 60th birthday during the Sessanta tour. Did anything unforgettable unfold that you would wanna share with us?
LC: Well, the thing about the tour itself – is none of us are really sure. Like, how does this even work? We’re all gonna be on stage? What the hell are you talking about? And it ends up being spectacular! It was one of the funnest tours, I think, and we all agreed on this. One of the funnest tours that any of us had ever done. Just because we were engaged the entire show. Oftentimes, you do a show – like we’re out on this tour right now, and I very much enjoy the opening band, but I’ll watch them a few times throughout the tour, and then you’re just kinda hanging out and doing your thing. Whereas this – you were forced to sit there on stage and watch every night’s performance, and be involved, and be engaged – and it was spectacular! As far as his actual birthday, we did a show at the Hollywood Bowl, and the Tool guys came out and played. I sat in, and I did the backup vocals on Ænima, and that was pretty spectacular. And I got to wear a hat with golden ram’s horns!
RRX: I actually saw you guys, at the Frog Brigade last year, and I asked you what your favorite scary movie was. You said it was “Evil Dead II,” and I thought that was really cool.
LC: Well, “Evil Dead II” is a spectacular film in general. It’s influenced a lot of filmmakers. It definitely influenced us as we were making videos and whatnot. Just the techniques used in making that film.
RRX: I know you’ve mentioned “Evil Dead” in your lyrics as well. My parents had a video store growing up, so I grew up watching all horror movies. “Evil Dead II” is one of my favorite movies as well. I could totally see where you get your inspiration, especially with the claymation in that movie, within your music videos.
LC: Well, Sam Raimi is a king. He’s a champion.
RRX: Have you ever drank dandelion wine before?
LC: Nothing about dandelion wine. I did years ago when we were on tour; we ran out of weed and were in the van back then.
Someone said, “I hear if you smoke dandelions, you can get high.” So, me and Larry LaLonde and our guitar tech at the time jumped out at this truck stop and gathered a bunch of dandelions, packed them in the bowl, and smoked them. And it was the most disgusting thing we’ve ever done – it was horrible. I can taste it and I get this horrible taste in my mouth when I think about it. It doesn’t work! Don’t try it!
RRX: Out of any live performance that you have ever played, what is the craziest thing that you have ever witnessed that sticks out to you, and you think about it from time to time and are, like, “Wow. That was really wild!”?
LC: I mean, it’s hard to say. We used to play this place in Tijuana called Iguanas. It was this infamous place because everybody from San Diego and whatnot would come down. They’re all underage, and they’d go down and get blasted out of their minds and go to this punk rock club. They had three tiers. It was all concrete and steel, and it had three different tiers. And, we have these crazy pits, and I remember this one guy just diving out of the upper balcony into the mosh pit, and he came up, and he was just completely bloodied. And he ran to the merch booth where our road manager was selling t-shirts, and my road manager said, “Holy sh**!” and gave him a t-shirt to wipe up his face and gave him the t-shirt to put over his face, and the guy/kid just ran right back into the mosh pit. There were people diving off the upper balcony onto the speakers and then off the speakers into the pit, so that was pretty wild!
RRX: How is it playing with Puddles Pity Party?
LC: Well, Puddles is amazing. Do you know of Puddles?
RRX: I only heard of him after I saw that he was touring with you, and I’ve been watching a little bit of him. He is very creative and I’m really excited to see him live.
LC: Yeah. We’ve had some spectacular openers on this tour, too. Obviously, Coheed is very cool. We had Guerilla Toss in the beginning, and then we had Too Many Zooz, which were spectacular. Now, Puddles Pity Party. I’ve known Puddles for years; he’s kind of been peripheral in our world, and he’s sat in with this with Duo de Twang before and whatnot. He’s a very, very talented fellow.
RRX: I actually discovered Neal Francis through you too, when he opened for the Frog Brigade, and I thought they were really cool. So, there is another band that you kind of led me on to. I feel like your projects always lead me on to other bands that I like to listen to.
LC: You know, management always tries to push us towards bands that will, you know, help sell tickets. Then I am always pushing them towards bands that are just cool and that are weird. You know – we found Too Many Zooz. They just popped up on my Instagram one day, these guys busking in the subway in New York. Then I said, we gotta have those guys open for us, and so we had them. They were amazing!
RRX: You have so many amazing side projects. What is your favorite one that you would consider close to your heart like Primus is?
LC: When I’m doing one of these projects, to me, it’s not a side project. That’s my focus, that’s what I’m doing. You know? Obviously, the Claypool stuff, whether it’s Frog Brigade or Fancy Band or whatever you want to call it, it’s just Les Claypool. It’s that key. So obviously, that’s a very important thing to me. You know, Primus, this is a democracy. We get together as musicians, and we write our parts, and we do our thing. Whereas, any of the Les Claypool bands, it’s me writing most everything, and I bring in musicians to fill roles just like you would if you were making a film and you’re bringing in actors to fill roles. I spent a lot of years doing things that aren’t Primus. So, I want to make sure that people know it’s as endearing to me as Primus is.
Primus is where I got the platform to be able to do these other things.
Photo by Rachael Skinner.
