“I was instantly in a band because nobody wanted to play bass back then”: How Eddie Van Halen led to Les Claypool picking up the bass – and how he nearly joined Kirk Hammett’s band

Les Claypool sits comfortably in the pantheon of bass greats, thanks to his off-kilter slapping-and-tapping playing style and bold basslines that have captured the imagination of generations of players.

Yet, according to the Primus bassist himself, he only started playing bass because, growing up, “everybody wanted to be Eddie Van Halen”. That, and he received a little coaxing from Kirk Hammett.

In a recent interview with Rick Beato, Claypool reveals that the two used to jam together – back when they were a bunch of high schoolers at De Anza High School in Richmond.

“He actually tried to get me to sing for his band. We had algebra together, and he sat behind me in algebra, and he would always go, ‘Hey, Claypool. Hey, Claypool, check it out, man.’

“I still, to this day, remember this ad. It was the ad for a Stratocaster where the guy's holding it, and he's going, ‘It's a rock machine,’ and the guy behind him is going, ‘No, it's a country machine.’ And he's [Hammett] like, ‘Here's my guitar, Claypool, man. It’s the one I'm getting.’”

Hammett eventually got his Strat, and eventually attempted to recruit Claypool as a singer for his band, which didn’t quite work out. “I chickened out,” he admits. “I was a total Bobby Brady, croaking and cracking. So I chickened out.”

Meanwhile, another “guy needed a bass player,” which piqued Claypool's interest, leading him to invest in his first bass.

“There was a guy who had this bass for sale for 15 bucks, some old piece of shit, and actually [it] was 30 bucks, and I had 15. I said, ‘Dad, can I borrow 15 bucks?’ He's like, ‘Is that really what you want to do?’ And I said, ‘Yep.’ He's like, ‘Well, let's go down and talk to Al's Music’ – it was a buddy of his.

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“We went down and we got a brand new P Bass copy Memphis. I got this thing, and I had to pull weeds all summer to pay for it, but then I was instantly in a band because nobody wanted to play bass back then.”

As Claypool explains, “Everybody wanted to be Eddie Van Halen. So bass players were a very rare commodity.”

Alas, “it wasn't Kirk's band, and I didn't find out till years later that he was kind of pissed at me for bailing on his thing to go play bass in this other band” he quips.

Recently, Claypool's bandmate, Larry LaLonde, revealed how the two ended up with off-the-rack gear from Guitar Center right before a show.