by Greg Prato (Music 781.66 Pri)
Primus is a quirky band that has been a part of pop culture since the grunge days of the 1990s, and their bandleader Les Claypool is generally regarded as one of the best bass players of his generation. Their music often sounds melodically strange but rhythmically sophisticated, and somehow it all comes together to be incredibly catchy. A great book about the band and Claypool himself, called Over the Electric Grapevine by long time music journalist Greg Prato, was recently published in paperback for the first time, and you can borrow it from Polley.
From a writing and editing standpoint, this book is a great example of how to edit oral history accounts into a narrative that has flow and direction. After conducting extensive interviews with band members and participants in a variety of Claypool-related acts, Prato carefully edited interviews to create the whole shape and form of this book. It works beautifully, and I’ve rarely seen this technique handled so well. This usually comes off clunky without some connective sections penned by the author, but if you want to see it done well, consider this book a great place to start.
In terms of content, the book progresses chronologically, starting around high school-age for Claypool. We dive into his life story before he started playing bass, but he was interested in music more generally because of a high school friend, Kirk Hammett, who would go on to become the lead guitarist in Metallica. Like a lot of high school kids interested in music, both of them ended up playing in lots of high school bands, and both seemed to have that luck of having natural affinity for their chosen instruments, and a lot of enthusiasm for playing and learning. They weren’t in bands together, though: Hammett’s high school band became the well-known thrash band Exodus before he joined Metallica, and Claypool started out in a progressive metal band called Blind Illusion. But Claypool wasn’t overly smitten with metal music: he reports that his early influences quickly expanded into rhythm and blues music, progressive rock, and funky bands like the Meters, and his own writing started to combine these disparate sounds into the unique blend that became Primus.
While the book mostly centers around the band Primus, the trio has undergone lots of lineup changes over the years, and earlier members often return to work with Claypool in other bands, or sometimes even rejoining Primus. Early drummer Jay Lane and guitarist Todd Huth, for example, were members of the band during the period where their earliest songs were written, but had left the band by the time their debut album was released in 1990. However, the two returned to join Claypool in a band called Sausage in 1994 (named after the first Primus demo tape), Jay Lane has played with Primus in more recent years, and Todd Huth has joined Claypool in the Flying Frog Brigade. Claypool has created a quirky musical world where bandmates come and go, but everyone seems to remain friendly and open to future collaborations.
With their fairly unconventional sound, it still seems kind of surprising that Primus became a commercial act during the grunge era in the 90s, but their story is a classic tale of hard work and perseverance paying off. After self-releasing their first album and doing their second on a one-record deal, the band simply played as much as they could, touring the country in a small van. It’s the stuff of clichés, but in their case it really worked. The young record label Interscope signed the band on the strength of live performances, which clearly demonstrated that audiences were already deeply into the music. With the release of their singles “Jerry Was a Race Car Driver” and “Tommy the Cat,” from their Interscope debut, both of which received lots of radio airplay and video play on MTV, the band found themselves touring with the largest rock bands of the era. Like other 90s alternative rock acts that are still playing, the band isn’t topping charts these days, but they continue to tour and record regularly.
While the book largely tracks the history of Primus, focusing on elements like all of the bands they befriended on tours and the zany music videos that helped to keep their career moving along, bandleader Claypool has also been active in a wide range of side projects as mentioned earlier, and the sheer volume of those projects requires a hefty proportion of the book’s page count to document. The second half of the book investigates these, starting with the Sausage project that essentially reunited an earlier iteration of Primus, followed by the first Claypool solo album, “Highball With the Devil,” where he explored more of his funk, soul and R&B influences. Later, during a lull in Primus activity, he started the band Oysterhead with Trey Anastasio of Phish and Stewart Copeland of The Police. Then he got more involved with the jam band scene with his big band, the Fearless Flying Frog Brigade. While touring with the Brigade, he ended up sitting in for bassist Bill Laswell, which led to another band, Col. Claypool’s Bucket of Bernie Brains. And more solo albums trickled out between these projects as well.
Toward the end of the book, there’s a chapter just made of reflections and compliments about Claypool’s bass playing from a variety of his bandmates and musical peers over time. The final full chapter builds on this idea, featuring similar quotes from a variety of artists about their thoughts on the influence and relevance of Primus to popular music of the last few decades. These reflections do a good job of outlining the importance of this band: their unique combination of originality and musicianship with a fun-loving kind of approach has no doubt influenced lots of musicians who have followed them. But they still sound incredibly unique all these years later.
My only complaint about this book is that this new paperback edition hasn’t been updated from the original 2014 printing. Without this update, we miss out on a couple of Primus releases, for example, but I was especially hoping for an update including the Claypool/Lennon Delirium project that Claypool has started with Sean Lennon. They’ve done two very interesting records and an EP in the time since this book was first published. Nonetheless, it’s a great read if you’re curious about the unique world of music around Les Claypool.
(If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try Lived Through That: 90s Musicians Today by Mike Hipple or Now is the time to invent! Reports from the Indie-Rock Revolution, 1986-2000 by Steve Connell.)
( publisher’s official Over the Electric Grapevine web page ) | ( official Greg Prato Twitter feed )
Recommended
by Scott S.
Polley Music Library
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