Primus’ Les Claypool Compares Band’s Album Cycles to Tool

2012-01-02

Story by Cat Badra

Primus frontman reveals band broke up for three years

Les Claypool and his dizzying bass guitar-driven team in Primus had a big 2011. For starters, they released their first full-length in 11 years, “Green Naugahyde,” a suite packed with giddy bass guitar and drum grooves, fevered vocals and colorful lyrics, in true Primus music tradition. Then, the band embarked on a large-scale North American tour, which had the guys playing the entire new album, as well as Primus favorites, every night.

With the success of Primus’ latest run, many fans are wondering just what took so long. As it turns out, Claypool says the band, for all practical purposes, broke up for a good three years, even if fans were unaware. “ … Primus stopped for sure,” Claypool told Spinner. “Then we came back and did the nostalgia thing, in ’03, with a pretty big tour. And then in 2006 we did another round. But those tours, they were just — they were what they were. They were nostalgic tours; we weren’t writing anything, we weren’t talking about writing anything.”

Claypool added that, like prog-metal band Tool, Primus tend to take their time between albums. For that reason, people didn’t really catch on when they broke up for those three years. “ … You know, Tool wait like five years between records and what-not, which is probably not a bad idea,” he said. “But we’re kind of under-the-radar guys. We’ve got to go out and work. So for us to stop like we did — we weren’t even talking. We definitely broke up. We broke up, but we didn’t want to tell everybody, so we said, ‘Well, we’re on hiatus.’” Tool is on target to tour the U.S. in early 2012. Find their current tour itinerary, here.

 




Cat Badra
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