It may be an old joke, but there’s something to be said for taking things up a notch, and this month the bass community did just that with a heap of new products, ranging from downloadable plugins to vintage-style reissues, and a whole lot more besides.

In the month that saw Suzi Quatro promote the release of her 18th studio album, and Paul McCartney launch his first solo album in over five years, we’ve been talking shop with the best luthiers, bass builders, and low-end gurus, to bring you a must-read report on the latest new gear.

For starters, Fender marked the 75th anniversary of the P-Bass with three new limited-edition models. Will anyone ever topple the Precision from its perch as the best-selling bass of all time?

EMG was also celebrating its 50th anniversary with the launch of three new signature pickup sets for session legend Lee Sklar, Living Colour trailblazer Doug Wimbish, and Metallica powerhouse Robert Trujillo.

Here’s our pick of bass gear releases in May.

Pachyderm Instruments Whamola

Despite slapping down the years on a variety of bass guitars, most of which have been custom jobs from Brooklyn luthier Carl Thompson, Primus bassist Les Claypool has also employed a range of other instruments, including the famous Whamola, which is featured on the song Whamola by Claypool’s Frog Brigade as well as the South Park theme song variations and the Robot Chicken theme.

“It’s a one-string instrument with a handle on it, and I hit it with a stick,” says Claypool. “It’s basically a percussion instrument, the way I play it: it doesn’t have a lot of tonality to it, but I tend to pick up whatever’s handy.”

Pachyderm Instruments has now announced that a small run of Whamolas will be available at the merch booth during the Claypool Gold Tour, which began on May 20th and will continue through July 4th.

We make no promises that fans will come out playing it like he does, but if anyone knows about taking the instrument to the next level, it’s Les Claypool.

Rickenbacker 4000V CB TB

Few players are as closely tied to the Rickenbacker sound as Geddy Lee, whose snarling 4001 tone helped define classic Rush records throughout the ’70s.

Ahead of the upcoming Fifty Something reunion tour, Rickenbacker has revealed a new custom bass built to Lee’s own specs: an unapologetically retro four-string. that blends vintage appointments, and a Turquoise Blue finish.

Originally offered on the late ’50s combo series instruments, the Turquoise Blue finish is accented with checkerboard binding around the body. Another notable throwback is the bridge, which is the 425 style with four saddles as found in the early 4000 and 4005 models.

The 4000V CB TB is fitted with a Vintage Single Coil Toaster Top and a Bass Horseshoe pickup. Rather than volume and tone controls, Lee requested two volume knobs (one for each pickup) that are wired to a mono output.

Most of the rest of us will never get to own one, but a bassist can dream, right?

Electro-Harmonix Deluxe Bass Big Muff Pi 2

For many, the stompbox daddy of all fuzz is the Electro-Harmonix Big Muff Pi. The recently released dual op-amp Bass Big Muff 2 has now been upgraded with the release of the Deluxe Bass Big Muff 2.

Bass-centric upgrades include a blend knob, and a foot switchable crossover section that splits your signal into two bands. The pedal’s I/O section has also been expanded to include a pad switch on the input, a DI output, and a Direct output.

Looking for a Big Muff? Well this one’s massive.

Fender Limited Edition 75th Anniversary Precision Bass Collection

It was way back in 1951 that Fender first put their Precision Bass into production, so 2026 sees the 75th anniversary, not just of that instrument, but pretty much the concept of the electric bass itself. Without it, your instrument of choice would be radically different, and we wouldn’t have jobs.

Fender is marking the occasion with a trio of limited-edition models.

Leading the pack is the American Vintage II 1951 Precision Bass, a recreation of Leo Fender’s original slab-bodied design. It’s finished in classic Butterscotch Blonde and equipped with a period-correct single-coil pickup.

At the other end of the spectrum sits the more contemporary American Professional PJ Bass, which pairs a traditional split-coil Precision pickup with a Jazz Bass bridge pickup. Other modern upgrades include a HiMass bridge, figured maple top options, and gold hardware.

Meanwhile, the Player II Precision Bass offers a more accessible route into the anniversary lineup. Despite its lower price point, the Player II P-Bass still packs upgraded appointments, a performance-focused neck profile, and a Diamond Dust Sparkle finish.

Darkglass Anagram Marketplace

Darkglass Electronics has officially launched the Anagram Marketplace, a plugin ecosystem designed to expand the capabilities of its flagship Anagram multi-effects processor with third-party effects, and creator-developed tools.

Darkglass describes the move as “the next evolution of the Anagram platform”, transforming the unit from a standalone processor into what is effectively an app-based environment for bassists, producers and sound designers.

Available through the Darkglass Suite, the Marketplace introduces downloadable plugins created both by Darkglass and external developers, opening the door to a continuously evolving library of sounds and processing tools.

Surely worth the attention of every single person who has ever applied finger or thumb or pick to string.

EarthQuaker Devices Scrolls Bass Odyssey

On the list of effects pedals guaranteed to get the average bass guitarist's pulse racing, an all-analog bass preamp is unlikely to feature highly. However, having complete control over your tone has long been the secret weapon in many a pro player's rig. Some use it to add extra polish to their overall sound, while others use it in conjunction with other effects to tweak them to perfection.

The Scrolls Bass Odyssey from Ohio's highly-rated EarthQuaker Devices combines a comprehensive active EQ section with a tube-style drive circuit. Add to that an effects loop, parallel output and balanced XLR out, and you’ve got a studio-ready pedal that’s ideal for use in any setup with multiple signal paths.

Play one of these high-end pedals and you’ll understand exactly how boutique makers such as EarthQuaker Devices earn their keep.

EMG Signature Bass Pickup Sets

EMG is celebrating its 50th anniversary with the launch of three new signature bass pickup sets for Metallica powerhouse Robert Trujillo, Living Colour trailblazer Doug Wimbish, and session legend Lee Sklar.

The Lee Sklar P Set is a recreation of the original split-coil pickup configuration housed in Sklar’s famed “Frankenstein” Precision Bass.

According to EMG, the set revives the look and sound of the company’s earliest production runs, complete with raised-logo covers and a specially tweaked preamp designed to mirror Sklar’s long-running 18-volt setup.

Doug Wimbish’s DW Set takes a similarly archival approach. The PJ configuration – previously exclusive to his signature Spector basses – has now been released as a standalone aftermarket set for the first time.

EMG says the pickups were recreated directly from the exact PJ combination Wimbish has used since the early ’80s, with vintage-style branding and both long- and short-Jazz sizing options available.

Meanwhile, Robert Trujillo’s existing RT “Rip Tide” signature set has received a flashy anniversary makeover in a new gold finish. While the electronics remain unchanged, the updated aesthetic joins a broader series of special-edition EMG anniversary products tied to Metallica’s long-running relationship with the pickup giant. All three pickup sets ship with EMG’s solderless wiring system.

Nordstrand Acinonyx V

Nordstrand Audio has expanded its retro-inspired Acinonyx lineup with the launch of the new Acinonyx 5 – a five-string evolution of the company’s offset short-scale bass design that arrives after a limited-edition run last year.

At the heart of the Acinonyx 5 is a compact 30.7-inch short scale, paired with an Indian rosewood fingerboard featuring a compound radius for a more modern feel across the neck. Nordstrand also promises a comfortably worn-in playing experience, describing the neck profile as one that “fits the hand like an old broken in glove.”

Seamoon FX More!

Sounding like a machine from Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, the More! By Seamoon FX is a totally different breed of octave pedal.

Unlike regular octave pedals or synth-style processors, the More! appears to focus on enhancing the fundamental low frequencies beneath the original signal, offering what Seamoon describes as a more “felt than heard” effect.

The pedal sports a notably stripped-back control layout, featuring a single level knob alongside a toggle switch that shifts between two distinct bass emphasis modes. One setting prioritizes deeper sub-bass response for smoother, weightier tones, while the second introduces a more aggressive mid-bass character with increased dynamic saturation.

Kikichi Guitars

Japanese boutique bass builder Kikuchi Guitars has officially launched in Europe and the United States, bringing the craftsmanship of veteran luthier Yoshiyuki “Yoshi” Kikuchi to a wider global audience.

Kikuchi’s résumé reads like a history of high-end bass building. After founding Atelier Z in the 1980s, he relocated to New York in the early ’90s, where he worked alongside respected builders Roger Sadowsky and John Suhr. He later oversaw production of the acclaimed Sadowsky Metroline Japan basses – experience that now feeds directly into his own boutique operation.

With a pedigree rooted in some of the most respected names in boutique bass building, Kikuchi Guitars arrives as a serious new contender for players chasing vintage-inspired tone with modern precision.

The art of luthiery is equal parts art, engineering, craftsmanship… and a whole lotta dreaming.

Les Godfrey from Godfrey Guitars is one such individual who, in his own words, “dreams of guitars all day and night. I just move lines around, and I do like to have fun with the classic shapes,” and has been doing so since his first attempt to make electric basses in 1995.

An apprenticeship with Carl Thompson, Les Claypool’s go-to luthier, and later, a move out to the country were catalysts for Godfrey’s career. “The isolation allowed my obsession with building instruments to be more realized,” he says.

In fact, the Canadian luthier's latest oeuvre, the Telecasso, turns the tried-and-tested Telecaster design on its head – with a touch of Cubism, and, as the name suggests, Picasso – and is the result of thousands of drawings.

“The motivation behind the Telecasso was merely to make a crazy guitar that I want to rock the crap out of!” he says. “Make people think, what the fuck is that?! The Telecasso is very comfortable to play, and it functions on a high level, regardless of the visual differences.”

Godfrey had a few guitar players in mind when he drew up his first back-of-the-napkin sketch.

“The person I design for, or imagine the designs on first, is ’70s era Ace Frehley, as well as Albert King and several others. I also make them with new talent in mind and imagine them throwing down like a maniac with their one-of-a-kind guitar!”

Godfrey explains that the design itself took two to three months to realize, from the initial sketch to actually crafting the two prototypes.

“The Telecasso design just came from drawing lines and arcs [but] I [mainly] based the design on the classic Tele format. That long, curved line and straight line of a Telecaster pickguard... I changed many things, but the weight is similar, and the influence is very much there.

“I see what I like and what I want to stretch, or chop, warp…” he adds. “I like to repeat a primary shape and have that theme and variation carried throughout the design.” As he himself admits, “It’s a challenge. It’s a puzzle and a mind-bender.”

Specs-wise, Godfrey opted for a one-piece butternut body – with a nitro lacquer finish – for the off-kilter model, alongside “one-piece [oil-varnished] necks [with] a very thick profile, no truss rods, [and] special pickups made by MJS [Mike Smitty Smyth] Pickups, which include a hidden coil wired in series with the bridge single coil.”

There is also a push-pull tone knob for switching between series and parallel wiring – the guitar is always in hum-canceling mode, so players can go “from a thicker tone to a more twangy tone, without the hum”.

After Godfrey posted photos of his creation, the Telecasso set guitar geeks’ tongues wagging – an experience that caught Godfrey, who’s been at it for the better part of three decades, offguard.

“I was very surprised by the reactions to the design!” he confesses.

“For the most part, people seem to really like it, while there are others who have been very vocal about hating it. It’s just a guitar. As long as I like it and the customer likes it, that is all I care about. It has always been a custom thing. It’s personal and not made for mass appeal. Almost the opposite.”

Godfrey is already working on his next idea, so expect more off-kilter designs in the not-too-distant future.

“Form and function. It has to excite me,” he says. “I enjoy making many different instruments. My favorite one is usually the next one!”

For more information, head to Godfrey Guitars.

As the son of a Beatle, Sean Lennon had a tough job stepping out of his father’s looming shadow. With his psychedelic, Primus-coded collaborative project, The Claypool Lennon Delerium, he’s done that in style. And it’s a gig that requires some wonderfully weird pedals.

The band – which also features Primus bass player and vocalist Les Claypool – is set to release its third album, The Great Parrot-Ox and the Golden Egg of Empathy, next month. That’s seen Lennon sit down with Guitar World to dish the dirt on the stompboxes coloring their latest trip.

“My Delirium pedalboard is pretty basic,” he admits. But there’s an outlier: “The most interesting pedal is actually on the song Melody of Entropy [currently unreleased]. On that, there’s a famous pedal called the Tremopolis.”

The pedal isn’t a household name quite like an Electro-Harmonix Big Muff or a Dunlop Cry Baby wah, but there’s a huge amount of mystique and intrigue around it.

“It’s famous because it’s impossible to get, and it’s extremely bizarre,” Lennon notes. “It’s a tremolo pedal made by this very strange guy, who disappeared. No one knows where he is, but he was this pink-haired dude on Facebook who made a couple of these pedals.

“They’re extremely strange, and you can hear this tremolo that reacts to volume, like an attack. So, you have the speed of the tremolo changing very drastically depending on how the guitar is played, and it makes some really wild sounds. The tremolo goes up so fast that it almost sounds like a glitch.”

Famous it may be, finding information about it online is not easy. Even Tremopolis images are rare, and there's no mention of it in Josh Scott's (of JHS Pedals) in-depth explainer video on the effect, its history, and the pedals that define it. So, we'll have to take Lennon's word for it. But color us intrigued all the same.

Talking to GW upon the release of Delerium’s second album, South of Reality, Lennon discussed Hendrix, having famous parents, and pushing his playing. Claypool, meanwhile, recently looked back on his disastrous Metallica audition.

Lennon’s new interview with Guitar World will be published in full in the near future.

Les Claypool may be lauded as one of the bass’ undisputed virtuosos and most influential innovators.

However, according to the man himself, this wasn’t enough to earn him a spot in Metallica when he auditioned back in late 1986, following the death of Cliff Burton.

“I didn’t know how popular they were,” Claypool admits in a new interview with The Guardian, explaining he totally misread the room.

“We played a song or two and I said, ‘Hey, you guys want to jam on some Isley Brothers?’ Nobody laughed.”

Claypool was high school classmates with Kirk Hammett but suggests a personality clash was the reason why he never ended up in Metallica. Later, in Behind the Music, James Hetfield diplomatically disagreed, stating: “He was too good.”

In a 2005 Bass Player interview, Claypool spoke more on the experience. “I can't really remember what songs we played, but I didn’t fit in, that was really obvious,” he said.

“I believe Lars said. ‘You're not really used to this kind of music, are you?’ My first response was, goddamn, this is loud!”

As for his response to Hetfield’s reasoning on Behind the Music, Claypool has since scoffed at the suggestion.

“No, it wasn't that – I just didn’t fit in,” he later told Kerrang! “I had a blonde Mohawk and baggy skater pants and two different coloured tennis shoes – and this was back when they had long hair long hair and tight pants.

“I told him he was full of it, and thought I was a freak! That was why he didn't want me! And he [Hetfield] just laughed, because it was true. I wouldn’t have fit. They’re not dumb.”

As it turns out, the rejection set the bassist onto his true path, as the classic Primus lineup of Claypool, Ler LaLonde on guitar and drummer Tim Alexander led to 1989’s Suck On This and 1990’s Frizzle Fry – and their success landed them a major label deal with Interscope in 1991.

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.

“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.

Seeing Primus' Larry LaLonde and Les Claypool at a local Guitar Center may not have been on anyone's bingo card for 2024, yet that's exactly what happened after the two guitar and bass behemoths realized their gear had become stuck between Red Rocks and Vegas en route to a festival.

“The weirdest thing was, kind of in the back of my mind, I was thinking, ‘Is this gear gonna make it? These numbers aren’t adding up…’” LaLonde tells Guitar World in a new interview.

“We were on tour with A Perfect Circle, so all our gear was in the same truck, and it got stuck in the snow. So, really quickly, we were like, ‘Okay, the truck’s not making it, the gear is not making it. What are we going to do?’”

Their solution? To head to the local Guitar Center for some brand-new gear.

“I think at the same time, Les and I both had the same thought, because he texted me as I was about to text him, ‘Hey, should we just go to a local guitar store and just buy some stuff,’ which in itself, is like, an excuse to go buy some gear, which is awesome,” LaLonde recalls with a laugh.

“We went in with the limited time that we had and grabbed some stuff. That turned into us trying to find matching guitars, like, a bass and a guitar, and then whatever pedals were in there that seemed like they might get us through the show.

“So, it went from a thing that sucked to turning into an opportunity to be something fun. It was interesting, for sure.”

Asked whether any fans spotted them at the store, LaLonde replies with, “I don’t think anyone even knew who we were.” Pressed for time, the shopping spree lasted less than 45 minutes and saw LaLonde grabbing a white Strat and Claypool opting for a matching P-Bass.

As for what happened to the instruments, the two decided to auction them off for charity and donated the proceeds to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

“So, that was another win from the whole thing, you know?” LaLonde explains. “We actually got the opportunity to do something good with them.”

Guitar World's interview with Larry LaLonde will be published in the coming weeks.

Frontman with Primus and a whole string of side projects including Sausage and Oysterhead, Les Claypool is best known for his stunning slap-and-pop technique which, combined with near-impossible speed and eccentricity on a host of fretted, fretless, whammy-barred and multi-stringed instruments, leaves all but the world's best bass players in the shade.

In 2003 when Primus announced a reunion tour, on which the band played its 1991 breakthrough Sailing the Seas of Cheese album in its entirety, bass fans immediately paid attention, and it all flowed from the hands of the three old friends – Claypool, Larry Lalonde on guitar, and Tim Alexander on drums.

A new EP featured five new Primus tracks and a companion DVD that included every Primus video alongside a host of previously unreleased live performances.

“Going through the old stuff is always nostalgic,” Claypool told Bass Player. “Seeing old friends, not to mention the hairstyles and clothing. But more than anything, it was special re-experiencing those songs. There's just something Larry, Tim, and I have together that we'd forgotten about.”

“Tim has a unique style, especially the way he uses the kick drum, so we rediscovered this vast catalog of material. Some of it is just so far out – really bizarre. I don't really listen to Primus records. It amazes me that we wrote like that. It's not exactly classic rock, that's for sure.”

The following interview from the Bass Player archives took place on the eve of 2003’s Tour de Fromage, which presented the best-known Primus lineup in a “multimedia theatrical stage production.”

How did it feel to dig so deeply into the old material?

“My first reaction was, ‘This is some strange stuff!’ I can't remember the last time I had heard Seas of Cheese. I did listen to Frizzle Fry when we remastered it, and that was one of the things that got me going to do something with Primus again.

“I hadn't attempted to play it for so long, mostly because it's just so different from what I've been doing with Oysterhead and Frog Brigade.”

What did you make of your playing on the earlier songs?

“I imagine it's a reflection of my youth, but I was surprised to hear how cocky some of it is. I mean, I had a 6-string bass guitar made for me, and then I had them pull out the frets – just because I wanted to try something different! Then I brought it into the studio and just began playing it, like it was normal.

“Same with Tim. The day we started recording Seas of Cheese, he got this massive drum set delivered to the studio. He'd never even seen it before, but he set it up and tuned it all by himself. The result was the oddest-sounding drum kit ever. Meanwhile, I was just fumbling my way along on this incredible bass, and here we were making our first major-label record.”

You do have a highly developed style. When you're writing, are you thinking, ‘This part needs one of those upper-register ostinatos I'm famous for,’ or is that just...

“Actually, with the new material, I was very conscious of making it sound like we sounded the first time around. When we got Brain (drummer Brian Mantia, who later joined Guns N' Roses) in the band, we shifted gears completely. We wanted to be like Led Zeppelin, with huge rock drum sounds – totally different from what we'd done with Tim – and it was great.

“But this time out I told Tim, ‘You have to get a kit with a gazillion drums and a gazillion cymbals, just like your old set. We'll get that tiny kick drum sound. It'll be like Seas of Cheese, man!’

“I also had Carl Thompson do some work on my Rainbow bass. I quit using it when Brain joined the band because it had just become so difficult to play. So I had Carl reshape the neck and lighten the headstock considerably. That bass was always very awkward, and I always had to force myself to play it.”

Is the Rainbow bass as heavy as it looks?

“It actually doesn't weigh all that much, but it was very top-heavy because the tuners were so big. So Carl put different tuners on it and reshaped the neck a bit, and it's way better now. It's incredible how great it feels.

“Once I decided to play that bass, I pushed Tim to just go crazy, to be as aggressive as he'd ever been. That's why we ended up just bouncing off each other like we used to, and that's why the new songs sound the way they do.”

Your influence in the bass world is undeniable. How much do you think about your status as a bass player?

“I'm never trying to be a bass superhero, that's for sure. I think in terms of images and songs, not in terms of how groundbreaking a bassline can be. I do love the fact that there are kids who look at me the way I looked at Geddy Lee and Tony Levin. That's marvellous and wonderful, and sometimes it can be incredibly touching, but it's not something I think about when I'm playing.”

Did you ever picture yourself as anything other than a bassist?

“Oh, yeah. The bass is just something I happened to pick up. It wasn't a random choice, of course; it was because I like the instrument's sound. But I was going to be either a bassist or a drummer, and I still play both. Still, I'd be writing the same material if I were a guitar player.

“Now I'm so comfortable with the bass that it's become like my pencil – but it's like a cartoonist choosing a pencil over a Sharpie or some water colors. It may look or sound different, but the underlying material is similar.”

Is technique something you still have to think about?

“I still sit down in front of the TV with my bass and noodle around, just to keep things lubricated. I need to as I get older. I never used to practice before gigs or anything. Todd Huth, our old guitarist, used to warm up completely before every show, but I never did. I'd just sit around drinking beers and smoking weed. But as I get older, I do find that I play better if I keep the gears in shape.

“My most intense playing over the past few years has been on the road with the Frog Brigade. I was constantly challenging the band with material. We'd play Pink Floyd's Animals from start to finish, or we'd learn new tunes every day.

“These were just ways to stay fresh, because out on the road, you need to keep up your chops. But coming together with Larry and Tim is a completely different thing. For example, it never occurs to me to do much tapping with Frog Brigade, mainly because there are so many guys up there. There just isn't much space for that kind of bass playing.”

Primus can fill up space, too – My Friend Fats is quite a racket!

“That's me hitting every button on every pedal I had going.”

Somehow, it still sounds like you three are playing together. How long did it take to feel comfortable with each other again?

“It was strange, because I usually know my stuff, but I couldn't remember words, and I couldn't remember transitions. Luckily, those guys knew the stuff pretty well. We did have trouble getting all the way through songs at the beginning, but that was because of me. I think I just had so much other material in my head.”

Was there a moment when you felt you had to play together again?

“Probably during an Ozzfest tour, when Brain was still in the band. It wasn't because anything was lacking with Brain in the band at all; the stuff we did with Brain is great. I love the Brown Album. It's such a departure, and it was a huge risk to make this really garage-y record.

“But I remember watching Sabbath – and I'd seen Sabbath play with Carmine Appice and Mike Bordin and some great drummers over the years – but this was the original lineup with Bill Ward on drums, and it was mind-blowing. That was it, right there – it was magic. And at that point, I realized that someday we had to do Primus with Tim again.”

2024 Year in Review: What do you do when you get to the venue but your gear has been delayed in transit? Unless you’re able to borrow what you need from another band, you’ll probably have to visit the nearest guitar shop.

Which is precisely what Primus did when they arrived to play Sick New World Festival in April, with their equipment running late due to extreme weather.

Maybe some bands would have struggled without their tried-and-tested tools, but not Primus, with fans commenting how the California trio sounded as good as ever come stage time.

“Just further proof that the gear doesn’t matter when you have the skills to pay the bills,” one person noted, with another fan agreeing how “Les sounds like Les on any bass” and declaring their love for how “he kept the tags on.”

Slap bass has come a long way since Larry Graham first championed the style in the 1970s. Graham has said that he was simply trying to create a drum-like sound to flesh out the rhythm in the then drummerless Family Stone.

In the hands of the bass players you're about to read about, it has truly become a worthy addition to the electric bassist's technical arsenal. 

From Larry Graham (the godfather of ‘thumpin’ and plucking’) to Flea’s furious slaps and pops with the Red Hot Chili Peppers and, of course, the phenomenal Victor Wooten, be sure to listen to all of the players mentioned in this list – there is a lot to be learned from each of them.

Oh, and don’t forget to also check out our guide to the 20 best bass solos of all time, too.

20. Throwback – Ida Nielsen (Bassist: Ida Nielsen, 2016)

As a member of Prince’s NPG and power rock trio 3RDEYEGIRL, Ida Nielsen’s old-school funk meets new-school soul style undoubtedly pays homage to the purple one. 

In the months following Prince’s passing, Nielsen returned to her native Denmark to finish recording her solo album. Throwback is a fine example of her aggressively precise slap technique.

19. Emergency on Planet Earth – Jamiroquai (Bassist: Stuart Zender, 1993)

Stuart Zender made an audacious statement with this killer bassline from Jamiroquai’s first album. Although quite simplistic in structure, there’s nothing simple about the groove and feel. 

Funkier and funkier with every turn, Zender brought his slap bass chops together with a sense of restraint that he became an expert at employing throughout his tenure with Jamiroquai.

18. If That’s Your Boyfriend (He Wasn't Last Night) – Meshell N’dgeocello (Bassist: Meshell N’dgeocello, 1993)

Loaded with crisp energy, the deep-pocket slap groove holding down this uncompromising hip-hop/funk anthem just will not stop. Slides, fills and ghost notes make it impossible to pin down.

There’s little harmonic variation, but N’dgeocello's percussive bass technique creates a feel all of its own.

17. Lopsy Lu – Stanley Clarke (Bassist: Stanley Clarke, 1974)

Featuring razor-sharp pops, huge string bends and his usual disregard for convention, Stanley Clarke threw everything into the mix with Lopsy Lu and changed the face of slap bass playing in doing so.

It remains a reminder to all of us that no matter how much we think we know, there's always more to learn…

16. D-Code – Alain Caron (Bassist: Alain Caron, 1997)

D-Code sees Alain Caron taking care of business with a percolating funk groove that’s played with an immaculately even technique. 

Caron mutes the lower strings with his right palm and anchors his little finger against the body of his bass guitar in what Bruce Lee would have called economy of motion.

15. Thriller – Dirty Loops & Cory Wong (Bassist: Henrik Linder, 2021)

Henrik Linder was a student at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm when Dirty Loops first broke the Internet with their fusion covers of pop hits. His virtuoso slap, pluck and chordal style is both anchor and color for the Swedish group’s unique sound.

Here, he delivers a state-of-the-art slap bassline alongside guest guitarist Cory Wong.

14. Stone Jam – Slave (Bassist: Mark Adams, 1980)

Over the course of five Slave albums released between 1977 and 1980, Mark “The Hanselor” Adams perfected a distinct approach to slap bass. But if you could get just one Slave album, make it 1980’s Stone Jam.

Adams lets loose on the title track with a monster slap groove in F# minor. Fast-forward past the epic guitar solo to hear him go for broke in the last minute.

13. Take the Power Back – Rage Against the Machine (Bassist: Tim Commerford, 1991)

Slap bass and rock music – always a touchy subject, and while Tom Morello's innovative guitar work and old-school shred combine to great effect on this landmark RATM track, it’s Tim Commerford who sets the groove from the start, slapping and popping his way through the lead riff. 

12. Love Games – Level 42 (Bassist: Mark King, 1981)

Level 42’s Mark King stands shoulder to shoulder with the all-time greats on the slap summit. Need proof? Check out his trademark ‘chugging’ slap rhythm for this classic Level 42 line.

Note the left-hand pats throughout, a key in King’s machine-gun style, especially on triplets.

11. Stomp! – The Brothers Johnson (Bassist: Louis Johnson, 1980)

Stomp! clocked in at 6:20 on the Brothers Johnson Light Up the Night LP, with over two minutes shaved off for radio. But both versions had a most pleasantly surprising centerpiece: a slap bass solo.

Louis “Thunder Thumbs” Johnson’s ability to throw all kinds of slapping, tapping slides and chording into the mix makes it a true one-off. Musically adventurous and funky to a tee.

10. Endless – Toby Petersen-Stewart (Bassists: Toby Petersen-Stewart and Jacob Umansky, 2023)

Toby Peterson-Stewart’s 2023 solo release, Endless, sees him trade licks with six-string bass mastermind Jacob Umansky.

“It started with a two-riff idea that I sent to Jacob on Instagram,” he told Bass Player. “He added another riff and before you knew it, we had a song.”

If you can play along with the blistering picking-slap-hybrid licks, you’ve arrived as a bass player.

9. Run for Cover – David Sanborn (Bassist: Marcus Miller, 1981)

Once dubbed the “thumbslinger” for his cutting edge slap-style, Marcus Miller was just 18 or 19 when he recorded Run for Cover.

The acute sense of time and feel evident in his muscular bassline, combined with the signature tone of his Jazz Bass is unmistakable.

For a slap-bass workout, you need look no further.

8. Tommy the Cat – Primus (Bassist: Les Claypool, 1991)

Tommy the Cat is probably the best way to hear Les Claypool doing his thing. He slaps, taps, and strums his Carl Thompson bass to produce a frenetic whack-fest with a strong, slightly swinging 16th-note groove. 

Break it down and you'll come up with a combination of chord strums, ghost notes, palm slaps and pops. The difficulty comes when you try to play it at the same speed as Les Claypool does.

7. Higher Ground – Red Hot Chili Peppers (Bassist: Flea, 1989)

Higher Ground, the first single from the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ fourth studio album Mother’s Milk, created air bassists out of all of us.

With Flea’s slap bass replacing the clavinet of the original Stevie Wonder hit, it’s a perfect entry point to playing alternating groups of slaps and pops; also note the ghosted and muted notes, which add to the part’s percussiveness.

5. Glide – Pleasure (Bassist: Nate Philips, 1979)

Glide, the Top 10 R&B single from Pleasure’s 1979 album Future Now, sports some of the finest bass work of the era. Using a double-stop slide to connect two impossibly funky licks, bassist Nate Philips drives the track with his formidable slap-and-pop technique.

“Everybody asks how I got that tone,” Philips told Bass Player. “I used my ’70 Fender Jazz, which has a maple fingerboard with block inlays. I remember putting a fresh set of Rotosound roundwounds on right before doing that take.” 

6: Slapocalypse – Charles Berthoud X Giacomo Turra (Bassist: Charles Berthoud, 2024)

Another gem from YouTube star Charles Berthoud, this bassline is one of his funkiest.

Everything on this song clicks: his slap skills are totally in the pocket and guitarist Giacomo Turra’s angular funk makes it impossible to stand still.

An object lesson for anyone interested in the inner workings of slap bass. 

4. Hair – Graham Central Station (Bassist: Larry Graham, 1974)

Having invented slap bass with Sly and the Family Stone, it’s no overstatement to say that Larry Graham impacted the bass world with as much force as Jimi Hendrix did with the electric guitar.

Hair is pretty much based around an E7 chord, with the frequent use of a b3rd, but check out Graham’s phrasing and how he plucks a high note on the onbeat instead of the offbeat. He really was a one-man rhythm section.

3. Forget Me Nots – Patrice Rushen (Bassist: Freddie Washington, 1982)

Yes, it's the Men in Black song. Forget Me Nots revolves around the eight-bar bass hook “Ready” Freddie Washington lays down at the top of the tune. His incredibly catchy popped line will not leave your brain once you've heard it.

“That bassline is the whole song,” Washington told Bass Player. “If I had switched to a different line in one of the choruses or on the ride-out, I wouldn’t have been playing Forget Me Nots anymore!” 

Washington played his ’72 Fender Precision Bass with new roundwound strings. He plugged direct into an API console and added some dbx 160 compression. 

2: Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) – Sly and the Family Stone (Bassist: Larry Graham, 1969)

This classic Larry Graham bassline kicks off with a simple slap and pop riff that brings his blend of funk and R&B to the table in no uncertain fashion.

After a few minutes of this, you’ll be dying to play it yourself – and it’s simple enough that you’ll probably nail it, too. But will you have as much funk in you as Larry? 

1. U Can't Hold No Groove (If You Ain't Got No Pocket) – Victor Wooten (Bassist: Victor Wooten, 1996)

A decade before YouTube made extravagant bass parts available to everyone, you had to buy a CD and figure out what was going on – and we all attempted to do just that with Victor Wooten's debut solo album, A Show Of Hands.

This opening cut set out his stall with a mixture of strummed chords, melodic runs and percussive slap techniques.

The tone, the energy and the sheer enthusiasm of a young Wooten, perhaps the greatest bassist of his generation, shine through.

Last weekend, Primus were left without their instruments after all their gear got delayed in transit due to storms. Fortunately, they were still able to play their set at the Sick New World Festival after a local Guitar Center kitted them with new gear.

In an Instagram post, Les Claypool explained how he and Larry “Ler” LaLonde ended up with two matching Fenders: 

“Because of storms, our gear got stuck between Red Rocks and Vegas so Ler and I bought a pair of matching Fenders that day for the Primus Sick New World set. It was an insane, bare bones show and we will now be auctioning these instruments off and donating the proceeds to St. Judes Children’s Hospital. Stay tuned for details.”

Some of his fans couldn't help but wonder why he opted for a P-Bass over a Jazz bass or his go-to Carl Thompson 4-string. Claypool settled the debate in the comments:

“Seen comments about Pbass over Jazz. Yes, I normally would play a Jazz but the only matching Jazz they had that day had a cracked neck. Ler and I wanted to match up (like ZZ Top!). My first bass was actually a Memphis Pbass copy. The bass turned out to be very nice and played like a dream.”

Despite the last-minute gear change, festival attendees confirmed that Primus still sounded like Primus. “Just further proof that the gear doesn’t matter when you have the skills to pay the bills,” commented one fan, while another added, “Les sounds like Les on any bass. Also, I love that he kept the tags on.”

In a recent interview with Guitar World, Claypool described his open-minded approach to instruments. “I don't even think of it just as a bass guitar at this point. It all depends on the gig, you know? It's like, ‘Okay, what crayon am I pulling out of the box for this one?’ And even if I'm drawing similar pictures with my crayons, the expression is different because the situation calls for that.”

Primus are currently on the last few dates of Maynard James Keenan's Sessanta tour alongside A Perfect Circle and Puscifer.

If Jaco Pastorius was the greatest bass player who ever lived, then Les Claypool – bassist, banjoist, sometime Metallica wannabe, producer, novelist and low-end guest to the stars – is surely the most likely contender to his throne. Frontman with the perennially remarkable funk-rock band Primus and a whole string of side-projects including Sausage and Oysterhead, Claypool is best known for his stunning slap-and-pop technique which, combined with near-impossible speed and eccentricity on a host of fretted, fretless, whammy-barred and multi-stringed instruments, leaves all but the world's best bass players in the shade.

But Claypool is no mindless shredder. Technique is only an adjunct to feel in his philosophy, with the butt-shaking groove of his playing the mainstay of his approach. In 1986 Claypool got the chance to audition for Metallica following the death of bassist Cliff Burton following a horrific bus accident. Although the perfect replacement eventually came in the form of Jason Newsted.

In 2005, Claypool was asked about his audition. “I can't really remember what songs we played, but I didn't fit in, that was really obvious,” he told BP. “I believe Lars said. ‘You're not really used to this kind of music, are you?’ My first response was, goddamn, this is loud! And then I asked them if they wanted to jam on an Isley Brothers tune, just as a joke. which they didn’t think was very funny.”

Was Claypool serious about wanting to join? “Back in 1986 I was a carpenter and would have joined any band that paid me! At the time I think it would have been a fantastic, fun thing to do, but I'm incredibly glad it didn't happen. Kirk Hammett's an old high-school friend of mine, so he called me. He used to give me guitar magazines and was the guy who turned me on to Hendrix.”

Claypool was later asked by Kerrang! whether the rumours were true that when he auditioned, Metallica frontman James Hetfield rejected him on the basis of the bassist being too talented for the role. “No, it wasn't that – I just didn’t fit in. I had a blonde Mohawk and baggy skater pants and two different coloured tennis shoes – and this was back when they had long hair long hair and tight pants. I was talking to James a few years ago, and he'd said in this Behind The Music documentary on Metallica that I was too good. I told him he was full of it, and thought I was a freak! That was why he didn't want me! And he just laughed, because it was true. I wouldn't have fit. They're not dumb.”

Listening to Claypool play with Primus , there’s no shortage of virtuosity on show. He slaps, taps, and strums his Carl Thompson bass to produce a frenetic whack-fest while hardly wasting a note. “My style in Primus evolved from me consciously trying to play bass and rhythm guitar at the same time, at least at the beginning. Primus was all about doing something that nobody had ever heard before, and the guitar players I used were textural players. I wasn't really used to playing with regressive players who wanted the bass to stay in the background. I was more into Adrian Belew and Robert Fripp and Andy Summers, who were textural. Primus's guitarist Larry Lalonde was exactly the same way.”

Ironically, Cliff Burton was also an incredibly elaborate player. “Cliff was, and I think he would have gone on to be one of the superheroes of the bass. He really had charisma, not only from his personality, but from his playing.”

After so many years at the low-end, what wisdom does Claypool have to offer the world of bass? “I tell young players all the time to play with as many different people as possible, because there are so many different approaches to music and so many cultures. Until you're dead, you're always learning - unless you're a close-minded individual who just plays the same thing over and over again. Unfortunately, the majority of people are!”

A new four-part docuseries, Geddy Lee Asks: Are Bass Players Human Too?, is set to premiere on Paramount Plus on December 5th – and you can watch the first trailer below.

Highlights include snippets of Lee fishing with Les Claypool, flying a plane with Krist Novoselic, and surfing with Robert Trujillo. “The idea for this show was born out of interviews I did for my first book, The Big, Beautiful Book of Bass,” says Lee. “I was struck that these accomplished musicians also lived incredibly interesting, multifaceted lives offstage.”

The series follows Lee as he travels to the homes of four bass legends: Nirvana’s Krist Novoselic, Metallica’s Robert Trujillo, Primus’ Les Claypool, and former Hole and Smashing Pumpkins bassist Melissa Auf der Maur.

“I’m trying to show the world that a bass player can do many things,” Lee says in the trailer. “Join me as I try to answer one really important question: are bass players human too?”

Another neat takeaway from the trailer that’s bound to get bass guitarists raving include Trujillo’s rendition of Portrait of Tracy on what appears to be Jaco’s Bass of Doom. Trujillo helped the Pastorius family to recover Jaco’s infamous 1962 Fender Jazz Bass back in 2010.

As well as glimpses of Lee trading bass licks with Auf der Maur, the trailer also pays tribute to Lee’s world-conquering curiosity, with the Rush frontman stripping his coveralls following a tour of Claypool’s “Rancho Relaxo” home in Sonoma County, before defiantly asking, “Is this what they call good TV?”

Aside from the new series, Geddy Lee is also gearing up for a book tour in support of his upcoming memoir, My Effin’ Life, which is set to arrive on November 14th. The tour starts in New York City on November 13th, and runs through to December 7th in Toronto. See below for a full list of dates.

• November 13 – New York, NY @ Beacon Theatre
• November 15 – Philadelphia, PA @ The Met Philadelphia
• November 17 – National Harbor, MD @ The Theater at MGM National Harbor
• November 18 – Boston, MA @ Orpheum Theatre presented by Citizens
• November 19 – Cleveland, OH @ State Theatre at Playhouse Square
• November 21 – Montréal, QC @ Théâtre Maisonneuve
• November 23 – Vancouver, BC @ The Centre in Vancouver
• November 24 – Seattle, WA @ Moore Theatre
• November 26 – San Francisco, CA @ The Masonic
• November 28 – Los Angeles, CA @ Orpheum Theatre
• November 30 – Denver, CO @ Paramount Theatre
• December 03 – Chicago, IL @ Auditorium Theatre
• December 04 – Detroit, MI @ The Fillmore Detroit
• December 07 – Toronto, ON @ Massey Hall

Geddy Lee Asks: Are Bass Players Human Too? premieres on Paramount+ on December 5th. My Effin’ Life is out 14th November via HarperCollins.

Primus frontman, novelist, film director and bassist Les Claypool isn’t your average musician. For starters, he doesn’t think like you and I do. As he says: “I don’t necessarily think of my bass as a bass. If I got a gig with Booker T and the MGs, I would approach it differently. I would do my job. But for me, the bass just happens to be the crayon I pulled out of the box. I would still be drawing the same kind of picture if I was playing an accordion or a guitar.”

Claypool has the added luxury of a studio in his house in northern California. “My studio would make some engineers cringe and some engineers ejaculate,” he told BP. “It’s just a room full of crap, but I’ve got an amazing collection of old vintage gear. For the bass guitars, I have a plethora of boxes all wired together, and every now and then I hit a button and a sound comes out.”

Bass-wise, Claypool is still using his famous Carl Thompson 4-string. You know the one – it has the funky scrolled-up horns and the bit of wood bearing Geddy Lee's autograph nailed to the headstock. Asked if manufacturers ever approach him about a signature bass, he replied: “Most people know that I play a Carl Thompson. If I was to play a production bass, I’d probably play a Fender Jazz.” Like Geddy Lee? “Actually, if I wanted to sound like Geddy Lee I’d play a black-and-white Rickenbacker.” 

In 2022 Claypool got his chance, as Primus stepped out on their A Tribute To Kings Tour, playing a set of original material before covering the 1977 Rush masterpiece in its entirety.

“The thing about those basses is that they all sound different, depending on what year they were made. I have a really old Rickenbacker 4001 with the herringbone binding signed by John Entwistle. I bought it the week before he died. It is a spectacular-feeling and sounding bass, but then I have another one that I got from Alex Lifeson that doesn’t play as well and doesn’t sound as good. So they’re not that consistent. I love the tone, though – it’s super cool.”

You probably know Claypool as a highly technical bass player, squeezing off flurries of notes from his bass guitar like there’s no tomorrow. However, this isn’t all he can do: on his 2009 solo album, Of Fungi And Foe, he threw all notions of technical playing for its own sake to one side, specifically on jammed tracks such as A Bite Out Of Life. As he explained: “I recorded that song after a night out of vodka debauchery. I just accompanied the guitar part – and what came out was almost like an old Bow Wow Wow bassline.

“On the song Booneville Stomp I played a Dobro bass – just a cheap thing made in China. I picked it up and de-tuned it, and had EMG stick a pickup in it, and it’s great because I can bang on it and not worry about it. EMG told me that it was a total piece of crap, but sometimes these little finds have a lot of personality.”

The off-the-wall nature of Claypool’s various activities have led to him being labelled as an eccentric maverick, but it’s all part of taking the path less travelled, he insists. “You can apply what I've said about bass to many aspects of existence on this planet. We're all taught and encouraged to conform and fit in, and wear the same style of collar and hair and shoe, and the people who raise a few eyebrows are the ones who change things.”

As well as the Carl Thompson and the Rickenbacker, Claypool has employed a range of other instruments during his career, including the famous Whamola. “It’s a one-string instrument with a handle on it, and I hit it with a stick. It’s basically a percussion instrument, the way I play it: it doesn’t have a lot of tonality to it, but I tend to pick up whatever’s handy.”

As bass players, perhaps the most important thing we can learn from Claypool is to place ourselves within the music and not worry about the details so much. As he says, “I’ve always tried to be pretty casual about the way I approach things. Because I have so many different projects going, I just start assembling songs, like making a junkyard sculpture. Y’now, like there’s an old gas tank over here and a bit of tractor over there… so when it comes time to record, I look and see what lyrics I’ve got and start building. It’s like doodling on a scratchpad.”

Les Claypool’s use of chords on bass guitar, his technically brilliant right-hand technique, the way he plays fast-moving triplets (or even quadruplets), his use of hammer-ons and pull-offs, and the hip grooves he comes up with. All of these elements made Primus, together with drummer Brian Mantias and guitarist Larry LaLonde, a band to be seriously reckoned with.

How did he come to develop such monstrous technical chops? “The slap stuff came out of my love of Larry Graham, Louis Johnson and Stanley Clarke,” he told BP. “All the chordal stuff I do comes out of necessity from the style of guitarist that Larry is. He’s a very textural guitarist, so I lay down a foundation with the drums and then and then throw in some chords to mimic a rhythm guitar part.” 

It was on Primus’s major-label debut, Sailing The Seas of Cheese, that Les first recorded with his legendary 6-string fretless, made by famed luthier Carl Thompson. “At first it was like wrestling an octopus. I started banging on it and tapping on it, and before you know I’d written the riff to Jerry Was a Race Car Driver. You know, now I come to think of it, that riff might have been the first I ever wrote on the 6-string.”

Claypool’s bold basslines tend to use one- or two-bar phrases with small variations from measure to measure. His parts feature lots of muted, thumbed, popped, and strummed notes. Speaking to Claypool in 2013, he was happy to help us break down some of his finger-knotting basslines.

Jerry Was A Race Car Driver (Sailing the Seas of Cheese, 1991)

“I became known for tapping after Jerry Was A Race Car Driver, but it wasn’t because I was saying, ‘Hey, look at me go, I wanna be like Eddie Van Halen.’ It was more I was trying to emulate what Tony Levin was doing on the Chapman Stick.” 

Despite Claypool funking things up on his Carl Thompson fretless 6-string, it’s possible to play this bassline on a fretted 4-string by moving all the notes down an octave, but it’s harder to execute. None of the notes are plucked – they’re all either hammered or pulled off. The ghost notes are produced by slapping the left hand down on the strings without letting any of the actual notes sound.

Cosmic Highway (Purple Onion, 2002)

Cosmic Highway is the big prog-rock song from Claypool’s Purple Onion, which was billed as his first solo album in 2002. “That song started off with the drumming bass part, which is something I’ve done on a few Primus songs, like Fish On and Southbound Pachyderm. I drone on one string and then play a melody line on the next string up. I used my Thompson 4 with some Kong envelope, and halfway through I hit a MIDI pedal that triggers this Taurus-like patch on my Access Virus analog synth.”

Check out the start of the guitar solo as Claypool continues this drone approach,with his open D string ringing out. He also punctuates the groove with melodic ideas on the G string. Look out for the clashing G major tonality that Claypool alludes to in the second ending. 

Tommy the Cat (Sailing the Seas of Cheese, 1991)

With it’s monstrous slap lick and stuttering scat-style vocals Tommy the Cat is a perennial favourite in the Primus back catalogue. “I had that riff in my head for a long time and would bounce it off different drummers, then I had that vocal line ‘Hey baby do you wanna lay down with me’ and I just kept trying to force them together. Eventually I made it work. It was a nightmare, but once you’ve got it, it’s like riding a bike – you never forget how to do it.”

Pseudo Suicide (The Grand Pecking Order, 2001)

Claypool’s Black Sabbath influence is clear to hear in the main riff from Pseudo Suicide by Oysterhead – Claypool’s trio with Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio and Olive drummer Stewart Copeland. “That riff started as just a low E to a high E, and I gradually fleshed it out to include the hammer-on and the b5. I came up with the Geezer Butler-like main riff, and tried to get Trey to add a Tony Iommi vibe. Then the outro goes into a live-Zeppelin rock-out thing.” Claypool also added some envelope and chorus.

Bob’s Party Time Lounge (Brown Album, 1997)

“I used a trick I got from Stanley Clarke’s Schooldays where the chords get strummed, then he slides down the neck – bang! So I’m doing like a clawhammer downstroke, then hammering-off. It’s sort of a pull-off hammer-on: I do a lot of the clawhammer – I call it that because I relate it to banjo technique, and so I downstroke it then hammer-off and catch it on the way back up – it’s almost four notes, they’re just so slurred it sounds like a triplet.”

Shake Hands With Beef (Brown Album, 1997)

“That bassline’s a quick little ’thump and pluck’ octave thing. Kinda ‘da-ga-da gong…’ instead of ending on the same octave, I go down a whole step. It’s hard because it’s on a 6-string and on my bass the strings are very close together. I don’t know if there’s really a thing as a ‘traditional’ 6-string bass of course, but Carl Thompson built this bass and the strings are very close; it’s hard to get in there and get some of those notes.”

Eleven (Sailing the Seas of Cheese, 1991)

Another track from 1991’s Sailing The Seas of Cheese, in the 11/8 time Eleven the beats are grouped in a way that’s easy-to-grasp: one-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three, one-two. The strums should be strong to emphasise the beats they fall on (the pa-pa of the oom-pa-pa feel). The hammered notes should be merely embellishments. For the slides, fret the D-string with your middle finger and the G-string with your ring finger.

Les Claypool’s Fearless Flying Frog Brigade have announced additional dates for their Hunt for Green October Tour, which launches in Oakland, CA on Wednesday, October 11th – see LesClaypool.com for dates.

Few musicians manage to stay as busy – or turn out quality music at as consistent a rate – as Les Claypool. One would think that, given his propensity to hop from project to project, the quality of his work might suffer. Yet that's far from the case for the Richmond, California native.

Instead, Claypool seamlessly shifts gears, sometimes waiting years to return to past musical lily pads. To be sure, though, when he does return, it's usually worth a listen, and certainly worth the wait. And so, when Primus most recently came back down to Earth from their typically chaotic madness, Claypool reassembled his much-loved, long-dormant Frog Brigade group.

According to Claypool, "The Frog Brigade went on hiatus because we were too chickenshit to say we broke up. I'm happy to be back out with these guys. This band represents the early period of my solo work, and it's cool to be revisiting it. And I wanted to do Pink Floyd's Animals because I've always loved that record.

"It's interesting to do it in its entirety this time because I've got some different folks with me who will interpret it in their own ways. The goal is always to do something different outside my Primus endeavors."

Of course, Claypool is a member of a number of other collectives, as well. There's no denying that the dizzying array of projects can be challenging to take in. Still, there are sonic constants, the most prominent being Claypool's bombastic bass licks. Given the eclectic nature of his style, though, what's also undeniable is that it's nearly impossible to hone in on where it originates from.

When asked, Claypool takes a moment to ponder the question before quipping: "My attraction to the bass was due to my repulsion of the guitar. In high school, there was a talent show, and these guys played the Allman Brothers Band's Ramblin' Man through these cheap Fender Champ amps, and it just sounded awful. After that, I decided the bass sounded way cooler because it never sounded wimpy, and I could do all sorts of cool things with it.

"Later, when I started wanting to be in a band, I found that my being a bassist was great. No-one wanted to play bass, so it was way easier for me to find gigs because there was always demand."

From there, Claypool expands on his approach and how his perspective changes as he shifts from one project to the next, "I don't even think of it just as a bass guitar at this point. It all depends on the gig, you know? It's like, 'Okay, what crayon am I pulling out of the box for this one?' And even if I'm drawing similar pictures with my crayons, the expression is different because the situation calls for that.

"At the end of the day, the bass is the instrument I'm most comfortable playing," Claypool continues. "Historically, I've played with many textural players who are not in your face. So, there's always been a lot of space that I needed to cover. With Primus, originally, I was always trying to hold down the bottom while essentially playing the rhythm guitar parts at the same time. 

"That's why I was always doing so much strumming and whatnot. It wasn't until I began playing with Tom Waits that I approached things much differently. That's when I developed as a supporting player. So, it all depends on the gig."

1. Geddy Lee

"Geddy was my first superhero. He just did things that were a real kick in the ass on bass. But Geddy was a very melodic player, and his tone was always so amazing. 

"For a young man like me, the music of Rush was very enticing because it was unlike anything else. And honestly, Rush fans were unique people, and we still are. It's almost like being a Trekkie. It's like this exclusive club, and, before they got big, there was a cult element to the whole thing. But beyond that, Geddy's tonality, melodic sense, and overall power were all very enticing to me."

2. Chris Squire

"Another guy who had one of the greatest tones in the world. His style really got me going, and I loved it almost as soon as I heard it. It goes without saying that a guy like this would influence me as a player and songwriter.

"His music was so great, and his style is timeless. Again, the tonality was great, and he was one of the most musical players I've ever heard."

3. Larry Graham

"His thumping and plucking were second to none. His style is intricate, and he's basically the guy who popularized that approach to playing bass. 

"To this day, one of the greatest performances I've ever seen is when Larry played live at the Oakland Coliseum. And I was very fortunate several years ago to go to a private event that Larry was playing at, and he just kicked the shit out of everybody in the room. It was unbelievable.

"Larry Graham, for lack of a better term, is who I'd call the Jimi Hendrix of the bass. He changed the entire landscape with his approach."

4. Louis Johnson

"Louis Johnson completely changed my world. I remember watching Don Kirshner's Rock Concert, and I saw this guy standing there, just pumping the shit out of his bass. That was Louis.

"It was crazy, his hand would come almost a foot off the bass before he'd come back down with his thumb. I saw that and was like, 'Oh, my god… that's amazing.'"

5. Stanley Clarke

"I can't underestimate the influence Stanley Clarke had on me. As a kid, I didn't have much money to buy other records, so I was limited to what I could listen to at home. But back when I was in school, there was always that kid with a huge record collection, and I befriended that kid.

"I'd go over to hang out at his house, and one day, he said, 'I know you're really into Geddy Lee, but you've got to check out this guy Stanley Clarke; he's unreal.' So, I did, and it changed my life. His playing opened doors for me that I had no idea existed.

"I had a chance to play with Stanley a few years ago, and, man, he fucking kicked my ass. But I thought it was wonderful to have my ass kicked by one of my biggest heroes. I loved it because he's still a hero of mine. It means he still has something to show me, which I wholly appreciate."

6. Tony Levin

"Next, I have to go with Tony Levin, who was a big influence on me. I was always a huge Tony Levin fan simply because I think he's one of the most tasteful and unique players of all time. As soon as you hear Tony's playing, you know that it's Tony. It's unmistakable. 

"I first came across him when I got into Peter Gabriel, and, of course, he played with King Crimson later. But what I love about him is that he's a more minimalistic player than any of the guys here. Every note Tony plays is incredibly powerful and unique and has his thumbprint all over it.

"As soon as you hear Tony, you know it's Tony. His tone is incredible. I've always been drawn to players who were unique and powerful. Tony was both of those things for me."

7. Mark Sandman

"I'm going to end with Mark Sandman, who is probably one of the most underrated bass players ever. For those that don't know, Mark was the bass player for Morphine, an incredible band from the '90s that people should check out. 

"I became aware of Mark after we played the H.O.R.D.E Festival in '98 or thereabouts. The thing about Mark was he played three-string slide bass, and two-string bass, with the strings tuned in unison an octave higher, which was something that no-one was doing. When he played slide bass, it was honestly the most passionate, emotional, sultry bass playing I've ever heard. That made me realize that you don't have to be some fancy guy with a bunch of strings to create wonderful, compelling sounds. 

"Unfortunately, Mark passed away right as we were becoming close friends. But he was an amazing player and one of the most emotive bassists I've ever encountered."

• Les Claypool’s Fearless Flying Frog Brigade tour the USA May through July – see LesClaypool.com for dates.

Footage has emerged online of a Tool/Primus supergroup jam – featuring Justin Chancellor and Dan Carey, alongside Queens Of The Stone Age guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen – covering Tool’s Ænima.

The performance was part of a recent fundraising gig, which was hosted by Primus on April 17 in support of their friend Jimmy Hayward. An animator and film director, Hayward has been undergoing cancer treatment and related surgeries for a number of years. 

The event was billed as featuring Chancellor and Carey alongside a number of surprise guests, and the ensemble’s Ænima cover has quickly proven to be a highlight of the set.

Outside of the names involved, it is remarkable for several reasons: not least because Justin Chancellor appears to be playing through Primus frontman/bassist Les Claypool’s rig for the duration of the song and, as such, sounds utterly thunderous.

Of course, with Chancellor on bass duties, Claypool – looking particularly fetching in his ram’s horn helmet – is left hands-free and proceeds to absolutely make the most of his arms’ new-found freedom. Plus he does a great, quivering vocal in the vein of Tool’s frontman Maynard James Keenan. 

The track’s pummeling rhythms also really benefit from the joint talents of drummers Dan Carey and Primus man Tim Alexander, who lock in remarkably well, despite the pace and complexity. 

Finally, not to dismiss the talents of Adam Jones, but Troy Van Leeuwen and Primus guitarist Larry LaLonde make a fine pairing here, thickening things up with great results on the sliding crescendo parts – though they still struggle to compete with Chancellor’s monstrous bass sound.

If you’re interested in the intricacies of the track, a few years back Chancellor and Carey dropped in at Berklee and performed Ænima in front of an intimate crowd of college students – allowing you to hear the rhythm section in complete isolation.

Regardless, if you enjoy the performance and want to support Tool and Primus’s fundraising efforts, you can send a donation via Jimmy Hayward’s GoFundMe page.

Best known as the voice behind Primus hits such as Jerry Was A Race Car Driver and Tommy The Cat, cameoing for Generation X in the second Bill And Ted film, running a vineyard and ranting wherever possible about his love of fishing, Les Claypool is one of the most recognisable figures in the bass field. 

Despite slapping down the years on a variety of bass guitars, most of which have been custom jobs from Brooklyn luthier Carl Thompson in various string and fretted/fretless configurations, in 2011 Claypool made the switch from Carl Thompson basses to his own model, the Pachyderm. 

“I basically designed my own bass,” he tells us. “It’s everything that I always wanted out of a bass. It’s amazing, it’s fabulous, and it’s called the Pachyderm.” 

We assume that Claypool himself didn’t cut the wood and file down the fret ends, so who did the actual building? “A buddy of mine who made my banjo bass and one of my uprights. I’ve known him since high school, he built it for me: his name is Dan Maloney,” he says. “I did the design and he cut the shape, and I went in and used Japanese planing tools to fine-tune the shape. Basically I created what I feel is the most comfortable and easy-to-play bass in the world, with tonality that I like, which is a very punchy sound.”

Simplicity is key, Claypool tells us, with the Pachyderm bass as with everything else. “It has one knob on it, a volume knob (we're told a second knob controls LEDs inlayed in the neck). I don’t want any tone, I don’t want anything else on it,” he laughs. “I want it to just turn on and turn off. I pick up basses these days – sometimes super-expensive basses that my friends have – and they have 50 knobs on them and multiple pickups, and I don’t like it. I don’t like the sound and I don’t like the feel. Electronically, my bass is very simple.” 

Unusually for a man whose studio contains basses which vary from a one-string instrument – the famous Wham-Ola – to the six-string fretless beauties that Thompson made for him, the Pachyderm has your average number of strings. 

“I’m mainly playing four-strings anyway,” he says. “On Primus records like Green Naugahyde there’s actually nothing but four-string and upright bass, apart from a Dobro bass which is pretty spectacular. Why do I call it the Pachyderm? Well, that name has become somewhat associated with some of the stuff that I do: my wine label is Purple Pachyderm. It has some elegance, yet some girth to it!”  

What on earth is Naugahyde, anyway? “There’s a song on that album called Lee Van Cleef, which looks back at my childhood, and one of the lyrics refers to a ‘Studebaker with green Naugahyde’. That was my dad’s pickup truck when I was a kid. 

"Naugahyde was basically fake leather made of vinyl, but they wanted a fancy name for it. There was a company that sold luggage made of this stuff, and if you asked ‘Hey, is that leather?’ they’d say ‘No, it’s Naugahyde!’ and you were supposed to go ‘Whoo, that sounds cool!’ 

"Growing up in a long, lower middle-class line of auto mechanics, a lot of the furniture I saw around was Naugahyde, because people thought ‘Why get leather when you can get Naugahyde?’” 

Green Naugahyde is available on Amazon. 

"He had some serious attitude and it's all there in his bass playing," said Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones when asked about Charles Mingus. "He really thought the bass was important, and the way he worked with a drummer was fantastic."

Beyond his brilliance as a bass player, Mingus was one of the most commanding bandleaders in jazz history. "A lot of people wanted jazz musicians to be reserved and stately,” said saxophonist Branford Marsalis, who recorded Mingus’ Scenes in the City in 1984. "But Mingus was wild. That’s what I love about him."

Mingus died on January 5th, 1979, in Cuernavaca, Mexico, and having penned tributes to his own musical heroes throughout his career (Reincarnation of a Lovebird for Charlie Parker, Jelly Roll for Jelly Roll Morton, Goodbye, Porkpie Hat for Lester Young), his influence has remained evident in the work of musicians as diverse as Keith Richards, Charlie Hunter and, of course, the Mingus Big Band.

Here’s our compilation of the 10 best covers of classic Mingus compositions.

1. Joni Mitchell – Good Bye Pork Pie Hat (1979)

Originally a tribute to tenor sax player Lester Young, Goodbye Pork Pie Hat is also the closing track from the unique collaboration between Mingus and Joni Mitchell. Mitchell’s lyrics were based on John Handy’s original sax solo, as well as the melody. The bass playing is unmistakably that of the great Jaco Pastorius.

“Charles Mingus died in Mexico, January 5, 1979 at the age of 56. He was cremated the next day. That same day 56 sperm whales beached themselves on the Mexican coastline and were removed by fire. These are the coincidences that thrill my imagination.” So read Joni Mitchell’s liner notes on the LP, which was released five months following his death.

2. Maceo Parker – Better Git It In Your Soul (1990)

Better Git It In Your Soul was written as an homage to the church music that Mingus grew up with, and was a perfect fit for Maceo Parker’s own hard-swinging salute to the ‘50s and ‘60s. The alto saxophonist recruited fellow J.B.’s alumni Fred Wesley and Pee Wee Ellis, while Bootsy Collins takes up the bass chair. This is a straight-ahead run through of one of Mingus’ most popular numbers, with Maceo doing most of the soloing. 

3. Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and the Uptown Horns – Oh Lord, Don’t Let Them Drop That Atomic Bomb On Me (1992)

Oh Lord, Don’t Let Them Drop That Atomic Bomb On Me was first recorded by Mingus on November 6, 1961, but this version is taken from Hal Willner’s 1992 tribute album, which Willner called Weird Nightmare: Meditations on Mingus. The album also featured the likes of Elvis Costello, Dr John and Leonard Cohen. “Mingus was the hippest thing to listen to when I was a kid,” says Charlie Watts in the video. “His music was very logical, but he was a sort of an edge player. It was almost a cacophony.”

4. Charlie Hunter Trio – Fables of Faubus  (1993)

Charlie Hunter's solo guitar arrangement of Fables of Faubus was released in 1993 by Prawn Song records, a label owned by Les Claypool, who also produced the subsequent album. For the recording, Hunter manhandled a specially-made 8-string guitar that allowed him to play rhythm and melody simultaneously.

5. Andy Summers – Remember Rockefeller at Attica (1999)

Following the demise of The Police in the late 80s, Andy Summers recorded tributes to Thelonious Monk (Green Chimneys) and Charles Mingus (Peggy’s Blue Skylight), which featured this latin take on Remember Rockefeller at Attica, complete with Alison Wedding’s vocalization of the melody. Listen out for her echo of the Star Trek TV theme.

6. Marcus Miller – Goodbye Pork Pie Hat (2001)

Following his acclaimed solo albums The Sun Don’t Lie and Tales, Marcus Miller released M2 (‘M-Squared’) in 2001 and won his second Grammy for Best Contemporary Jazz Album. One of the album’s highlights is this sensitive reading of Goodbye Porkpie Hat, with Miller out front on his remarkably fluid fretless bass and Herbie Hancock contributing some equally delicate piano work.

7. No BS! Brass – Haitian Fight Song (2001)

This compilation wouldn’t be complete without a contribution from No BS! The Mingus credits in their repertoire range from Boogie Stop Shuffle to Nostalgia in Times Square, and in this clip they stretch out on the 1959 classic, Haitian Fight Song. Written as an ode to the triumph of freedom in the face of persecution, it was originally recorded for The Clown in 1957.

8. Chrissie Hynde – Meditation on a Pair of Wire Cutters (2019)

Inspired by Eric Dolphy and his thoughts on slavery, the original release of Meditation on a Pair of Wire Cutters lasts up to 31 minutes depending on which recording you track down. This clever reinterpretation by Chrissie Hynde is about 3 minutes long and features on her 2019 Valve Bone Woe album. It’s essentially an instrumental, with Hynde humming a few bars deep in the mix.

9. Kyle Eastwood – Boogie Stop Shuffle (2017)

A staple in the book of the Mingus Big Band, Boogie Stop Shuffle is a 12-bar blues that Kyle Eastwood (revered jazz bassist and eldest son of Hollywood star Clint) made the closer on his 2017 album, In Transit. Eastwood’s ultra rhythmic arrangement is ushered in by solo bass before the band hit their collective romping stride.

10. Mingus Big Band – Meditation for Moses (2022)

The most recent of all the recordings in this list, Meditation for Moses appears on The Charles Mingus Centennial Sessions, which was released in celebration of the 100th anniversary of Mingus’ birthday. The album includes new arrangements, as well as narrations by Charles’s son Eric Mingus. Co-leader and bassist Boris Koslov arranged several of the tracks including this one, which features a seriously impressive bowed bass solo at 05:37.

The Charles Mingus Centennial Sessions is available digitally through iTunes and Amazon. For more on Mingus’s legacy, visit charlesmingus.com

Pop superstar-turned-punk rocker Willow Smith has posted a clip of herself jamming to Primus’s 2022 single Conspiranoia, prompting approval from the Primus leader himself, Les Claypool.

The clip – posted to the star’s Instagram page, which boasts over 10.5 million followers – shows Willow playing one of the track’s avant-garde, alternate-picked leads using her out-of-this-world St. Vincent signature model.

“I fucking love Primus,” Willow proclaims in the post’s accompanying caption, adding: “If you haven’t listened to Conspiranoid… that’s a big issue.”

It didn’t take long for the video to catch the attention of the track’s original composer, Les Claypool, who commented: “Fine guitar pickin’ there young fiery lass.” Willow has since changed her Instagram name to ‘Young Fiery Lass’.

Willow Smith’s new album, COPINGMECHANISM, is set for release on October 7. Its three singles released thus far – it’s my fault, hover like a GODDESS and curious/furious – are once again rooted in electric guitar-driven pop-punk, like Willow’s last album, 2021’s lately I feel EVERYTHING. 

The record will feature drumming from veteran punk sticksman Travis Barker, as well as an appearance from guitarist Ayla Tesler-Mabe, who told Guitar World earlier this year that laying down tracks for the album was an “honor”.

Willow Smith is one of several popular artists to have taken their music in a more guitar-driven direction in recent years. The last two albums from Machine Gun Kelly – Tickets to My Downfall and Mainstream Sellout – helped bring pop-punk back into the gaze of the mainstream, while Demi Lovato’s latest LP, Holy Fvck, boasts a far rockier sound than that of their previous material.

Lovato has even recruited six-string shredder Nita Strauss – who until recently served in Alice Cooper’s live band – for her ongoing tour in support of the album.

Primus have been on the road this year, performing Rush's A Farewell to Kings in its entirety. In a recent interview with Bass Player, Les Claypool touched on the challenge of replicating Geddy Lee's bass guitar and vocal parts.

“Well, there’s a big difference between doing my voice and playing bass, and doing Geddy’s voice and playing bass,” he said. 

“For many years, I was never very comfortable with my singing voice, so I always said I was the narrator of the band. But singing Geddy Lee parts and playing bass, or just singing Geddy Lee parts period, is fucking hard, because it’s up in the upper stratosphere.”

In an admission that will surprise precisely zero Primus fans, Les Claypool has revealed that he and guitarist Ler LaLonde took acid ahead of Primus’ landmark 1992 MTV Spring Break show at Daytona Beach.

The bass guitar icon spoke to Revolver recently and recalled the band’s riotous early days and their fast rise to fame amid the heady alternative music boom of the early 90s. 

In the interview, which you can see below, the bassist says he was hassled by his label and management to take the Daytona gig for MTV, despite thinking it was “super cheesy”. 

“We said, ‘No, we don't want to do that,’” says Claypool. “And my manager said, ‘Look, you guys keep passing on all this stuff, the label is gonna stop supporting you…’ So on the way down there, I just got pissed; me and Ler did acid. 

“When you're watching us on that thing, everything I saw was just orange, just bright orange. And I remember talking to [MTV presenter] Pauly Shore – he's like, ‘Hey, buddy…’ And I was like, ‘What the hell's going on here!?’ And we met the Cypress Hill guys, and it ended up being a pretty fun thing.”

According to Claypool, things didn’t get any clearer once they got out of the festival.

“We flew back that night back up to Poughkeepsie, New York, back to the Public Enemy tour. So we were going from Daytona Beach, which was hot and warm, to literally – taking off – the captain said, ‘Well, the airport's closed in Poughkeepsie due to a blizzard, but we think they'll have it open by the time we get there.’ 

“So we're like, ‘What the hell!?’ and we had to do one of those fly arounds, which pilots don't like to do that unless something really bad is happening. The plane got almost completely sideways, and everybody's looking out the window, and it was only just us on the plane. And me and Ler frying out of our minds on acid.”

Claypool also recalls the band’s surprise at their own success at the time and an amusing conversation with Metallica’s Kirk Hammett around the release of 1991 album Sailing The Seas Of Cheese – the band’s first on a major label. 

“It was all so surreal, you know? Getting on MTV, we're like, 'What the hell?’” says Claypool. “I remember Kirk [Hammett] giving me shit, saying, ‘Man, how'd you get on MTV? We can’t even get on MTV!’ We got on with the John The Fisherman video [from their 1990 debut album Frizzle Fry]. It was just all bizarre, being on the radio, that's why we called the [next] album Sailing the Seas of Cheese.”

Sadly, Primus were recently forced to cancel the European leg of their Rush-inspired tour, A Tribute To Kings, due to logistical challenges. For now fans can comfort themselves with this live footage of Primus performing A Farewell To Kings…

Primus have announced they have canceled the European leg of its upcoming A Tribute To Kings tour due to “unavoidable logistical challenges”.

The European dates were originally scheduled to commence on September 9 in Sweden, would have seen Les Claypool and co trek the continent performing Rush’s 1977 album A Farewell To Kings in its entirety, in tribute to their musical icons.

Primus’ performance in Sweden would’ve been followed by dates in Norway, Denmark and Germany, as well as three dates in the UK – Glasgow, London and Manchester – before concluding on October 1 in Dublin, Ireland.

Confirming the news on social media, a statement read, “We are very sorry to announce that due to unavoidable logistical challenges, Primus has canceled the upcoming European tour dates scheduled for the Fall of 2022. 

“We apologize to our fans who were planning to attend and look forward to performing in Europe again soon,” the statement continued. Ticket refunds will be available at the original point of purchase.”

The band recently wrapped up the US leg of their A Tribute To Kings tour on June 25 in Las Vegas, after completing a mammoth three-month, 46-date stint around North America.

Speaking to Guitar World about the daunting undertaking, Primus bass legend Les Claypool said the whole tour originally “started as a joke”, though became a reality when he and Primus bandmates Larry Lalonde and Tim Alexander started taking the idea seriously.

As for the challenges associated with playing Geddy Lee’s bass guitar parts, Claypool told Bass Player, “They’re spectacular. They’re big. They’re hard! That was back in Geddy’s Rickenbacker days, and I love those Ricky tones, although Moving Pictures was on his Fender Jazz bass, and the tones on that record are equally spectacular. 

“But it’s Geddy Lee, you know?” he added. “There weren’t a lot of duds in the Geddy Lee bass-playing world.” No doubt the challenge was made ever-so-slightly easier for Claypool after he received one-to-one bass lessons from Lee himself prior to the tour.

From a Rush perspective, Lee told Bass Player that he was “very complimented” by the gesture, albeit conceding he thought the entire concept was “a little bit nuts”.

“By all accounts it’s quite an impressive performance and a real tribute, performed by an awesome band,” he said. “Les has a unique rhythmic sensibility. I find his playing to be an amalgam of various styles: he can slap, twang, or run up and down the neck like a jazz player. His tone is original, deep, and true, and he’s developed a style that is deliciously eccentric.”

The cancellation of the European leg means the A Tribute To Kings tour has come to a premature end, though Primus will be back in action for a handful of dates this August.

For more info, head over to Primus.

If there was going to be one band on the planet with the desire, the chops and the derring-do to dive headlong into a madcap endeavor such as performing Rush’s 1977 prog landmark A Farewell To Kings live it was Primus.

That’s just the sort of thing that its bassist and frontman Les Claypool would do, right? Rush super-fan, friend of the band, and one of the world’s foremost practitioners of bass guitar. There are few, if any, players more qualified.

But having heard Claypool’s side of the story about how Primus’s A Tribute To Kings Tour, we thought we’d give Geddy Lee a call to see what the Rush bassist made of all this, and indeed, how he looks back on A Farewell To Kings and the changes in his playing since the recording. 

Lee has nothing but love for Claypool and Primus, but does offer a warning – this material is a lot easier to record than it is to perform live.

How does the Geddy Lee who recorded A Farewell To Kings in 1977 compare to the Geddy of today?

“I’d say that as I have gotten older, my playing has become more rhythmic, more nuanced and fluid, as opposed to my slightly more aggressive younger self.

“Since 1977 my tone has evolved from a deep and twangy, strident Ricky tone, to kind of a ‘souped up’ Fender Jazz sound, which gives me a bouncier lower mid and bottom end, with a bit more fuzz on my midrange twang.

“The lower midrange presence I’m getting now might be the biggest difference between my tone then and now.”

How do you think the original bass parts stand up? 

“Damn, you mean I have to listen to them again? Okay... well, I think they stand up pretty well and are very much reflective of the period – which means we were writing with a ‘live’ approach in mind, not too many overdubs, so we could reproduce them accurately onstage. As such there was lots of space in the track for my sound, as well as my fairly busy, prog-rock bass parts.” 

Would you record them differently nowadays, and if so how?

“These days I use my own array of solid-state devices, plus a mic’d speaker cab if I need some room sound on the top, or some extra air movement in the bottom end. It is not unusual for me to use three or four channels on the mixing console, one for each device and each slightly different, and I mix those according to what the song needs, or how indulgent I want to get! 

“In the old days, it was two sets of amps, fed by the pickup split on my Rickenbacker 4001 Rick-O-Sound output. So the bass pickup would go to one set of amps and then an old tube compressor, and the treble pickup would go to its own setup and a different type of compressor, so I could crunch the sound individually… plus a DI in case I needed it during the mix for presence, or to put it in some extra effects.”  

Which are the most challenging bass parts on the album, as you see it? 

“Recording my bass on A Farewell To Kings was not as challenging as playing those same parts live. Cygnus X-I, for example, was big fun to record, but onstage Neil and I had to be feeling all the stops and starts in exactly the same time frame. 

“Singing and playing those parts is always more challenging than simply playing the instrument bits, regardless of their complexity, because when I’m not singing, I can devote my full attention to playing them correctly. 

“If anything, perhaps the most challenging parts to record were the funkier parts of Cinderella Man, where I was pushing myself for the first time into a slightly different style of play.”

What was your reaction when Les expressed his desire to play the album live with Primus?

“I was very complimented, of course, and then I thought he was a little bit nuts, but by all accounts it’s quite an impressive performance and a real tribute, performed by an awesome band.”

What are Les’s strengths as a bassist?

“Les has a unique rhythmic sensibility. I find his playing to be an amalgam of various styles: he can slap, twang, or run up and down the neck like a jazz player. His tone is original, deep, and true, and he’s developed a style that is deliciously eccentric.”

Tell us you’re going to come out and play a guest solo at one of the Primus shows…

“Haha! Now there’s a random suggestion!” 

Les Claypool – bassist, producer, novelist and low-end pioneer – is the frontman of the remarkable funk-rock band Primus, as well as a whole string of amazing side projects.  

Admired for his thumping and plucking and his willingness to experiment with a host of fretted, fretless, whammy-barred, and multi-stringed instruments, the man can do it all. Tapping, clawhammer-style picking and high-register chords all populate his approach, but technique is as important as feel in his philosophy, with the groove of his playing the mainstay of his music. 

You may know the 58-year-old Californian as the voice behind Primus songs such as Jerry Was A Race Car Driver and Tommy The Cat, or for his cameo role in the second Bill And Ted film, or maybe for writing novels, producing movies, running a vineyard and ranting wherever possible about his love of fishing. 

Today, though, BP is interviewing the master about Primus’s [then-] forthcoming tour on which they’ll be playing through the whole of A Farewell To Kings by Rush. Who would undertake such a mad endeavor? And what does Geddy Lee of Rush think of it... and how does Les react when we tell him what Geddy thinks of the Claypool approach to bass?

Why did you choose to play A Farewell To Kings as opposed to any other Rush album?

“Well, any Rush album is an undertaking. You know, we always joked that we should go out and play Hemispheres in its entirety – but then we thought, ‘Well, maybe we actually should do Hemispheres in its entirety’. 

“But one reason why we didn’t is that you can’t do Cygnus II before you do Cygnus I. In looking at all the Rush records, 2112 seemed a little too obvious, and some of the records have a little more keyboards than I’m comfortable with. But A Farewell To Kings was the first Rush record I ever heard in my youth, and it has Cygnus I on it, which is my all-time favorite tune by those guys. 

“It was a pretty easy decision to make, you know. A big factor was the damn keyboards. I play keyboards on this thing, and I have a couple of Moogs that are completely covered with different-colored pieces of tape, so I know where to put my fingers. You know, I’m a bass player!”

How do the bass parts compare to the rest of the Rush catalogue?

“They’re spectacular. They’re big. They’re hard! That was back in Geddy’s Rickenbacker days, and I love those Ricky tones, although Moving Pictures was on his Fender Jazz bass, and the tones on that record are equally spectacular. But it’s Geddy Lee, you know – there weren’t a lot of duds in the Geddy Lee bass-playing world.” 

So you’re playing a Ricky on this on this tour?

“I’m playing a couple of Rickys, a black 4003 that Rickenbacker sent me, and then I have the double neck, which they hadn’t made in 30 years, but they made one for me. It’s pretty spectacular. The funny thing is that when I was a kid and I had no money, my dream bass was a black Rickenbacker like Geddy’s. I didn’t have one all these years, and now I finally have one, so doing this album has fulfilled one of my dreams of my youth.”

What about the backline? Did you guys go fully authentic with the '70s Rush setup?

“We’re keeping it as authentic as possible. The funny thing is, I avoided the vintage Ampeg SVT heads for my entire career. Not because I didn’t like the sound of them, but because they’re too fucking heavy, and I just never wanted to commit to hauling the damn things around. 

“But I would find that I’d go on tour to South America or whatever, and the rentals were always these vintage SVTs and they always sounded amazing, so a handful of years ago, I bought a few of them and I started using them regularly on stage. So coincidentally, I happened to be playing through an old SVT, which Geddy played through back then.”

Any pedals going on?

“Oh, there’s all kinds of shit going on, and buttons to push.”

Do you think the bass parts represent a particular section of Geddy’s career as a bass player? For example, was he in a particularly flamboyant mode when he recorded them?

“Was he ever not in a flamboyant mode? It wasn’t until the '80s, when he focused more on the keyboards, that the bass parts became a little less, I wouldn’t say less prominent, but they weren’t as in your face, I should say. 

“Obviously, when he got to Moving Pictures, and even Hemispheres to an extent, he was being pretty flamboyant with YYZ and La Villa Strangiato and things like that. I think there’s a little more riffage in those records. These parts are alligators that you have to wrestle every night, you know?”

How do you find singing and playing bass at the same time?

“Well, there’s a big difference between doing my voice and playing bass, and doing Geddy’s voice and playing bass. For many years, I was never very comfortable with my singing voice, so I always said I was the narrator of the band. But singing Geddy Lee parts and playing bass, or just singing Geddy Lee parts period, is fucking hard, because it’s up in the upper stratosphere. 

“I talked to him about it when we were working on this. I said, ‘When you sang those parts, are they falsetto or are they full voice?’ He told me they were full voice, so that was tough. In fact, at one point my son was listening in on some of the rehearsals, and he said, ‘Dad, you need to quit trying to sing it like Geddy. Just sing it in your style. You’re trying to sound like Geddy and it’s a little cringeworthy’.”

I can see definite parallels in approach between Primus and Rush.

“It’s definitely turned around. When we toured with Rush in Europe in the UK, many years ago, we got so much shit for it, especially from the press. They were like, ‘What are you guys doing playing with these prog-rock dinosaurs? 

“You know, that was when we were the cool alternative band or whatever back in the day, coming up with Soundgarden and all these other bands. We really got shit on by the press, especially in the UK, for doing that tour. It was like admitting you’re a Star Trek fan or something. In hindsight it was a wonderful, wonderful thing, but the press did not like it so much.”

Ah well. Screw the press.

“And you’re from the press, haha! But that’s exactly what I’m saying. It’s interesting how things have turned around. I was watching a documentary from years ago that I was in, and a lot of musicians stepped up and said, ‘Oh, I’ve been a Rush fan forever’. 

“Well, in the early '90s, nobody would have admitted that. They would never admit they were Rush fans. It was like saying, ‘I play Dungeons & Dragons’ – not necessarily the hippest thing to admit in the days of grunge.”

What are the most challenging bass parts on the album?

“Parts of Cygnus are pretty tough, but it’s all relatively tough! Even wrestling the Rickenbacker is a whole different ballgame than playing one of my Pachyderm or Carl Thompson basses. But playing the album has gotten to be very therapeutic. You know, we go out and we do a Primus set, and I’m just like, ‘Okay, let’s get through the Primus set, because I want to play the Rush set’. 

“It’s fun. It’s like a vacation. Not that playing Primus songs isn’t fun, but with the Rush thing, I look forward to it every single night. It’s just feels good to play it. So I don’t know which is more challenging, although ironically, Madrigal is probably the most challenging because it’s the most non-Rush song on the album. I don’t think those guys ever played it.”

Are you adjusting your playing with the Ricky?

“It’s heavier for one thing, especially that double neck. That’s like putting cinder blocks around your neck. The Carl Thompsons and my Pachyderm basses are like Ferraris. They’re designed so you can get around them real easy. 

“Not that the Ricky isn’t, but Rickys aren’t the best for thumping and plucking, not that I do any of that on the Rush stuff. It’s just a different beast. They sound amazing, but it’s a longer scale, so it’s a little more challenging than one of my Ferraris.”

What was Geddy’s reaction when you told him you wanted to play a Rush album live?

“I actually asked him about it quite a while ago. We originally planned on doing this thing a while ago, but then we ended up taking the Slayer tour which postponed it, and then Covid hit and postponed everything. 

“When we originally talked about doing it, Neil Peart was still on the planet. I just texted Geddy and said, ‘Hey, we’re thinking about doing this. What do you think?’ He said, ‘Oh, that would be great’. He was stoked on the idea. 

“And Alex [Lifeson, Rush guitarist] has been very supportive too. Lor [Larry LaLonde, Primus guitarist] will call him and say, ‘What the hell chord are you playing in this one section?’ Alex has been very helpful with that, and he loaned him some guitars as well. So they’ve both been extremely supportive. We’ve yet to play it in front of them, and I’m all nervous about that.”

Is that going to happen?

“I imagine they’ll show up at some show. We’re going to Canada in April.”

Yes – starting off in Toronto.

“We start in Toronto? Holy shit. I didn’t even know that.”

What are Geddy’s strengths as a bassist?

“His phrasing is unbelievable. It’s different than anybody else. It’s almost like Paul McCartney, in that he is very melodic and in the way he phrases it. It’s almost lyrical, the way he phrases his parts, and Geddy has that kind of phrasing. 

“You can sing Geddy Lee bass parts. Remember when he did the Big Beautiful Book Of Bass? Well, I was in that thing, because he wanted to put one of my Italian Eko basses in there. 

"When he came out to my place, I said, ‘Part of the deal of me doing this is that you’ve got to show me the proper way to play YYZ,’ so we hung out and we played some stuff together, and he showed me how to play that song. It turns out I’ve been playing it wrong this whole time. The fingering is just different than I would think of doing it. 

“You know, he has his way of doing it, and it looks so effortless. You watch his fingers. When I play that song, I’m doing all this moving around with my fingers, all over the place, but he’s just barely doing anything, and he’s making all these incredible sounds. So he’s Geddy Lee, you know. Nobody plays like him.”

How are you and he similar as bass players, then? 

“Well, I grew up listening to that guy. It’s me taking my influences from him. He made some comments in the press recently that I inspired him when we first toured together, but you know, I don’t see it. What I’ve always aspired to do is to have that kind of lyrical phrasing in what I play, especially when I’m doing pizzicato stuff. I often think of guys like Geddy or Paul McCartney or Chris Squire as guys that have that lyrical sense.”

Would those be your three main influences on bass?

“Well, Larry Graham is the king, but there’s a lot of them. I started off with Geddy when I was a kid, and then this one kid who was older than me said, ‘You’ve got to listen to Larry Graham and Stanley Clarke’ and I went, ‘Whoa, there’s a whole other world out there’. Eventually I got to people like Tony Levin, who is one of my all-time favorites. Every note he plays is the right note, and he has one of the best tones of anybody.”

If Geddy showed up to a show, would you let him sit in and do a solo?

“Haha! I have a band with Sean Lennon called The Delirium and we played in Toronto. Geddy told me he was going to come to the show, and I said, ‘Hey, you want to sit in?’ but he was like, ‘You know, I’m not really a sitting-in kind of guy, I’m not a jammer’. I said, ‘It’s Tomorrow Never Knows, it’s one note. If you want to do it, come on!’ And he came out and he killed it. It was amazing. It was one of the highlights of my life.”

We asked Geddy for his analysis of you as a bass player, and he told us, ‘Les has a unique rhythmic sensibility. His tone is original, deep, and true. And he’s developed a style that is deliciously eccentric’. Is that a reasonable assessment, as you see it?

“Wow. That makes me blush. I think that’s wonderful.”

We also asked Geddy what he thought of you doing this tour, and he said that it was a great compliment, and also a little bit nuts. 

“Well, I think it is – on all fronts. It’s definitely nuts, and I get to wear a satin robe every night on stage, which is pretty spectacular. That’s another sprinkle on the cupcake of this project. 

“Every now and again I think, ‘Geddy Lee’s a good friend of mine’. If I’d known that when I was 14, I would have ejaculated in my pants to even think of the notion. With my career, I’m most proud that I’ve been able to meet, befriend and oftentimes work with a lot of my heroes – and it’s been a wonderful, wonderful thing.”

• The A Tribute To Kings US tour runs until June 19.

Primus leader and bass guitar legend Les Claypool has joined forces with Eugene Hütz – the Ukrainian-born frontman of American punk rock outfit Gogol Bordello – for a new tribute single dedicated to Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

Dubbed Zelensky: The Man With the Iron Balls, the track also features The Police drummer Stewart Copeland, John Lennon's son Sean on guitar and vocals, Billy Strings on acoustic guitar and Hütz’s bandmate Sergey Ryabtsev on violin.

Stylistically, the song draws equal influence from the avant-garde sounds of both Primus and Gogol Bordello, with an abundance of winding bass and electric guitar lines weaving among acoustic guitar strums and Ryabtsev's masterful violin work. Check it out below.

“As soon as Russian aggression broke out, Les and I connected to address the catastrophe ASAP,” Hütz tells Rolling Stone. “We jumped on creating affirmative music that calls for unity and pays respect to the real doers in Ukrainian defence, such as President Zelensky, who demonstrated previously unheard of stamina and heroism.”

“In that vodka-laced dialogue, we started mutually praising Zelensky for his surprisingly epic display of courage,” Claypool adds. “‘Zelensky has balls of steel!’ we agreed. It was then that we decided that some freaky ‘East meets West’ art needed to be thrown that way.”

Claypool adds that the track “is not intended to be a song of condemnation," but one of unity. “We now have a recording to help rally support for a bullied country, and a David versus Goliath-type man who stood up for their liberty, freedom, and homeland,” he says.

“[We're] giving praise to a man who stepped up for his people beyond anything I've seen in my tenure on this planet. This unlikely fellow has grabbed the reins of leadership and held fast in such a way that the world is now galvanized in support.”

100 percent of the proceeds from the track will go to Nova Ukraine, a non-profit organization that provides humanitarian relief and support to the people of Ukraine.

“It is our way to show that heavyweights like Les, Stewart, Billy and Sean stand with the people of Ukraine and the country's sovereignty from the very start of Russian-led terror,” Hütz adds.

Since Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the music community has been united in its condemnation of the war.

Pedal builders across the industry have initiated projects to help those affected by the conflict, including Caroline Guitar Company, whose FCK PTN fuzz pedal raised $9,500 within 10 minutes of its launch; Death By Audio, which released a limited-edition Fuck War version of its Fuzz War pedal; and Z.Vex, which launched a Ukrainian flag-adorned Fuzz Factory 7, all proceeds of which went to World Central Kitchen.

More recently, Reverb announced it was teaming up with a wealth of pedal brands, including Gamechanger Audio, Eventide and Fender to host a Turn Up For Ukraine fundraiser. 

Since the invasion began, a raft of artists have also shown their support for Ukraine with one-off musical numbers, including Rammstein and Faith No More – who teamed up for a rendition of the Beatles' Come Together in partnership with UNICEF – and Pink Floyd, who reunited for a new single – Hey Hey Rise Up – with Andriy Khlyvnyuk of Ukrainian band BoomBox.

The Man With the Iron Balls is the second of two recently-released tracks from Les Claypool, following Primus's recent 11-minute epic, Conspiranoia, which leads the band's upcoming three-track EP, Conspiranoid.

Primus have announced a new EP, Conspiranoid, and issued its sprawling 11-and-a-half-minute lead single, Conspiranoia.

Set to arrive April 22 via ATO Records, the EP will land shortly after the band commence the second leg of their A Tribute to Kings world tour, which sees them perform Rush's landmark 1977 album A Farewell to Kings in its entirety as part of the set.

The EP will feature three tracks in total including Conspiranoia, though the other two are likely to be shorter.

“Because the single Conspiranoia is of such length, I realized that for a B-side of the vinyl, we would need at least two tunes to fill out the real estate of the actual 12-inch disc,” frontman Les Claypool told Consequence in a new interview.

“Because all three songs were bred in an odd time of divide, confusion, angst, frustration and social senility,” he continued, “Conspiranoid seemed like an appropriate moniker for the EP.”

Conspiranoia is exceedingly ambitious, filled to the brim with Claypool's winding, often frantic bass guitar lines, and a pair of outside-the-box solos from guitarist Larry LaLonde, which incorporate everything from high-register staccato stabs to lightning-fast sweeps. Check it out below.

“I'd been itching to record an opus – basically a long, winding bastard of a song, reminiscent of some of the compositions I cut my teeth (or ears) on, in my music-hungry adolescence,” says Claypool. “I said to the fellas, ‘Let's record a 20-minute song.’ The end result was an 11-and-a-half-minute, progressive hunk of sound called Conspiranoia.”

As he explains, the track was conceived from a few lines he had written in his notebook on the “mental state of the contemporary world” a year ago.

“I watched the distrust and divide grow between friends, colleagues, relatives and the general population because of the consumption and digesting of disinformation, misinformation, warped information, and flat-out fairy tales being perpetuated by anyone with a slight hint of web design aptitude,” he continues.

“I was compelled to shed light on the ridiculousness of many of these perspectives and the lack of rational thought that was being applied in the interpretation of many such entities and theories.”

Primus are likely to play some of Conspiranoid's material when they continue their A Tribute to Kings world tour from April 15 in Oklahoma City. The band will hit a host of cities across the US from April through August, before heading to Europe from September 9. For more info, head to Primus's website. 

Check out Conspiranoid's track list below.

1. Conspiranoia
2. Follow the Fool
3. Erin on the Side of Caution

Earlier this week, Primus frontman and bass guitar heavyweight Les Claypool revealed he received a bass lesson from Geddy Lee as the funk-metal outfit geared themselves up for their much-delayed Rush tribute tour, A Tribute To Kings.

Now, the fruits of Claypool’s labor have been revealed, and it seems as though the four-string lesson from Lee has been put to good use as Primus kicked off their two-and-a-half-month trip across the US on August 10 in style.

Performing their first show in Boise, Idaho, the three-piece tackled the entirety of Rush’s A Farewell To Kings from start to finish, making light work of the daunting setlist comprising A Farewell To Kings, Xanadu, Closer To The Heart, Cinderella Man, Madrigal and Cygnus X-1 – Book One – The Voyage.

From Larry LaLonde’s punchy musings on the electric guitar to Tim Alexander’s faithful drumming exhibition, the trio seemingly nailed every aspect of the performance – heck, Claypool even took to the stage wearing a kimono, modeled after Lee himself.

Elsewhere, the set also included the appearance of a Rush-accurate Gibson EDS-1275 for the thumping riffs of Xanadus, which Claypool propped up with a double-neck of his own.

As well as the comprehensive Rush tribute, Primus also performed a number of tracks from their own repertoire on the night, fleshing the setlist out with live renditions of Those Damned Blue-Collar Tweekers, Seas of Cheese and Over The Electric Grapevine. 

Tales From The Punchbowl's Wynona's Big Brown Beaver and Southbound Pachyderm were performed as encores.

Last year, while Primus were hard at work preparing for the 45-show-strong tour – and before his 1-2-1 tuition with the Rush icon – Claypool revealed the band had received Lee’s personal blessing for their proposed A Tribute To Kings concert.

“I talked to Geddy about it,” Claypool told Rolling Stone. “I texted with him just to make sure we weren’t trodding on something weird. So I checked in with him to see what he thought of it, and he was excited about the notion.

“He just got excited,” he continued. “He thought it was a great idea. You know, we go way back with those guys, so I think it made him feel good that it was going to be us that was going to do this thing. But I don’t know, you’d have to ask him. I can’t put words in his mouth, but he seemed excited about it.”

Primus are next slated to take the stage on August 13 at the Riverfront Park in Spokane, Washington.

Head over to Primus's official website to see a full list of tour dates.

Funk metal stalwarts Primus are gearing up for their long-delayed Rush tribute tour – A Tribute To Kings – in which they'll play a whopping 45 shows across the US over a two-and-a-half month period.

And in an effort to dust off the metaphorical cobwebs post-pandemic, frontman Les Claypool has revealed he recently received a bass lesson from legendary Rush bassist Geddy Lee.

In a new photo posted to Claypool's Instagram account, the Primus man is seen next to the prog-rock pioneer – both with bass guitars in hand – alongside the caption: “Learning from the master...”

Originally scheduled for 2020, Primus's A Tribute To Kings tour is set to commence tonight (August 10) in Boise, ID, wrapping up in Phoenix, AZ on October 25. It will see the band perform a set of their own material as well as Rush's platinum-certified 1977 album A Farewell to Kings in its entirety.

“Finally, the clouds are parting, the planets are aligning, the dough is rising... whatever metaphor floats your proverbial boat, Primus is going on tour again,” reads a statement from Claypool.

“We were poised and ready for a massive, bent-rock extravaganza when the gremlins of Covid came and yanked the rug out from under us all. I personally have been climbing the walls like a shit-house rat and, after my first season off in 30-some-odd years, I'm very anxious and excited to stand in front of the microphone with my four-string piece of furniture and belt out some girthy ditties to sweaty throngs of punters.”

In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Claypool detailed conversing with Lee prior to the tour coming to fruition, saying the Rush bassist was “excited about the notion”.

“He thought it was a great idea,” he says. “You know, we go way back with those guys, so I think it made him feel good that it was going to be us that was going to do this thing. But I don't know, you'd have to ask him. I can't put words in his mouth, but he seemed excited about it.”

For tickets to A Tribute To Kings, head to Primus's official website.

Les Claypool has unveiled a short film, Precious Metals, which finds the Primus legend co-starring with Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo in a bass guitar battle for the ages.

The film, directed by Claypool’s son Cage and presented by EMG pickups – which recently unveiled new models for both players – plays on old-timey Western tropes, with Les digging for gold in the hot Northern California sun before being confronted by Trujillo, who brandishes his own precious item: a set of EMG pickups.

The two face off in an old-school shootout, but eventually settle their differences with a friendly, and ridiculously awesome, slap-bass duel. All’s well that ends well!

You can check out Precious Metals above.

“As a veteran music video director and wannabe filmmaker, it swells my chest with puffy pride to see my son Cage delve into the world of cinematography and excel at it,” Claypool said in a statement. 

“He blows me away with his skill set, perspective, work ethic and ease of collaboration. That’s my boy!!”

• Best basses for metal from Warwick, Schecter, Ibanez and more

In recent years, Hollywood star Jason Momoa has traded Game of Thrones for a game of tones as his passion for bass guitar blossoms.

Last year saw the Aquaman star jam with Primus bassist Les Claypool and land himself a Fender Custom Shop P-Bass – and now he can tick another major achievement off the list, as he takes pride of place on the new issue of Bass Player.

In the magazine’s all-encompassing conversation – which marks the actor’s first instrument interview – Momoa expands on his musical background and influences, while citing admiration for Claypool, who he spent time with back in September.

Of the pair’s jams, Momoa says, “That was like a childhood dream. We just hit it off. He was playing the drums and I was playing bass and going ‘Jesus Christ, man’, I was so nervous.

“Les is like fuckin’ God, so it was really hard to relax because he was just playing drums and I was supposed to start filling space and I was like, ‘Oh my God, what’s going on?’ I look forward to the day when I can communicate on the bass on that level.”

As for whether Claypool taught Momoa anything about bass playing, the answer is very much in the affirmative.

“Yeah, I gotta learn a lot of stuff, I taped a bunch that I’ll be learning right now,” Momoa continued.

“I can’t wait to gather more knowledge to be around him and just jam. We had a really great time together, which was a really big relief because you don’t want to meet your heroes and then they’re fuckin’ assholes. We were having fun, just being fathers and family men. It was super-inspiring.

“I asked him a lot of questions. I asked him what his hardest song is to play and if he can still play it. The song DMV is his hardest; he has a very hard time playing it. I got the story behind why he did these really challenging things, and how he’s pissed because now he can’t do it on stage!”

In the magazine, Momoa is faced with questions not only from BP editor Joel McIver but also Claypool himself, Rob Trujillo of Metallica, Megadeth's David Ellefson, former Pantera bassist Rex Brown and Frank Bello of Anthrax.

You can snap up a copy of the latest issue of Bass Player at Magazines Direct.

NAMM 2021 isn't taking place in the physical realm this year, but you'll find all the hottest January gear launches in our guide to the biggest guitar, amp and pedal releases of 2021 so far.

EMG has introduced a new set of 'Pachyderm Gold' Signature bass pickups for Primus player and bass legend Les Claypool, as well as offering three new finishes for Robert Trujillo's existing set of Rip Tide Jazz pickups.

Based off EMG's PA pickups, the 'Pachyderm Gold' set brings a new, modern aesthetic to the tried-and-true tones of Claypool's preferred set of pickups, which utilizes Alnico 5 magnets to ensure warm and rich tones.

"Short, squat coils" are also included, ensuring a noise-free performance from the Pachyderm's, with a solderless design ensuring a seamless integration into bass guitars.

The EMG Les Claypool 'Paychderm Gold' pickups will be available for $149 when they are released later this year.

Elsewhere, Metallica man Rob Trujillo sees his signature Rip Tipe J pickup set updated with three new Metal Works finishes.

Previously available in only Black Chrome, new finishes include Brushed Black Chrome, Chrome and Brushed Chrome.

Despite these new appearances, the Rip Tide set maintains its original, thick tone that Trujillo has been using since before his Metallica days. Designed for a traditional four-string Jazz Bass, they are also said to be suitable for narrow 5-string basses.

Again, a solderless wiring harness features for an easier installation.

The flashy new Rob Trujillo Rip Tide pickups will be available later this year for $219.

Head over to EMG for more info.

A few weeks ago, we reported on Jason Momoa’s new custom Fender Precision bass, which the Aquaman star was received as a 41st birthday gift from Fender Custom Shop Master Builder Vincent Van Trigt – and immediately used to slap the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ version of Higher Ground.

Now Momoa has linked up with Primus bass guitar master Les Claypool for a jam session at the latter’s Claypool Cellars winery in Northern California. Momoa called it the “most amazing week” on his Instagram, and it’s hard to argue, given that he sat face-to-face with Claypool as Les showed him how to play the ridiculous bass line from Primus’ My Name is Mud.

“You got that shit in slow-mo?” Moma can be heard asking a cameraman filming the proceedings. “I need this shit in my life!”

The two were also filmed jamming together on – what else? – some Red Hot Chili Peppers licks, with Momoa on bass and Claypool on drums.

But it hasn’t been all bass all the time for Momoa. Over the weekend, Momoa also posted photos from a meet-up with Slash, interviewing the Gn’R man about his Slash Collection Gibson guitars.

“My first interview,” Momoa wrote on Instagram. “Fuck i was nervous but it was so epic and chill hanging with this legend SLASH AND ME when it’s hand crafted and made in the USA i’m in. I’m so proud to support Gibson they stepped it up with their tribute to #ambassador Slash  and I got to talk to him about his core collection.”

When it comes to the art of the quarantine video jam, no one has killed it these past few months quite like Two Minutes to Late Night, who have slayed us with insane covers of AC/DC’s Riff Raff and Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill.

But the self-proclaimed “world’s only heavy metal-themed talk show” may have topped themselves with their newest video, a crazy-awesome take on Rush’s Anthem, featuring Tool’s Danny Carey on drums, Primus’s Les Claypool on bass and an electric guitar trio consisting of Mastodon’s Bill Kelliher, Mutoid Man’s Stephen Brodsky and TMTLN co-creator Jordan Olds (a k a “Gwarsenio Hall”).

On vocals, meanwhile, is Coheed and Cambria frontman and avowed Rush fanatic Claudio Sanchez, who handles Geddy Lee’s helium-range vocals with ease.

Needless to say, the jam is awesome. What’s more, all the artists involved are donating their fees for the video to the Cancer Research Institute.

For more on Two Minutes to Late Night, head over to their official YouTube channel.

1. Rick Danko (The Band)

On his band’s debut album, which was titled, er, The Band, in 1969, Rick Danko produced some tastily swirly curves on his fretless bass on tunes such as Up On Cripple Creek.

2. Dan ‘Freebo’ Friedberg (Bonnie Raitt)

You’ve Been In Love Too Long is just one song on Raitt’s 1973 album Takin’ My Time in which the Zappa-esque bassist Freebo excels on the ol’ slippery-neck.

3. Rand Forbes (The United States Of America)

Art-rock made when David Bowie was still a skinny young whippersnapper, The USA’s self-titled album of 1967 contained many a slinky riff from Forbes. Try The Garden Of Earthly Delights for size.

4. Bernard Odum

Get up-ah! James Brown’s funk-laden tunes never sounded as good as when Bernard Odum was ripping it up. Visit Just Plain Funk on 1968’s I Got The Feelin’ for proof.

5. Jack Bruce

His old stuff was great, of course, but let’s do something different and point you to the great Scotsman’s worthy 2003 album, More Jack Than God. World music with a dash of jazz panache.

6. Pino Palladino

Sorry, but Wherever I Lay My Hat is just too good to pass up. The rest of Paul Young’s 1983 album No Parlez may not match up, but that just underlines how amazing that Pino bass part on that song was.

7. Sting

The original Don’t Stand So Close To Me, from 1983’s Synchronicity, may not be a patch on the futuristic 1986 remix, but at least Gordon is playing an interesting bass part. On an upright long-scale fretless Ibanez Z-Bass, no less.

8. Les Claypool

Where to start? It’s difficult to recommend a particular track by Mad Les. But head straight for 1991’s Sailing The Seas Of Cheese and you won’t be disappointed.

9. Mick Karn

Few songs are as atmospheric or as plain scary as Japan’s hit single Ghosts, from 1981’s Tin Drum. Karn’s rubbery noodling is devastating, buried deep in a mix of synth and nasty plucked guitars. Terrifying.

You can call Les Claypool many things, but you can’t call him idle. Between various iterations and re-launches of Primus, Les has fielded a wild variety of side projects, musical and otherwise.

These include freaky projects such as the Claypool Lennon Delirium (with Sean Lennon), Oysterhead (with Phish’s Trey Anastasio and the Police’s Stewart Copeland), Colonel Claypool’s Bucket Of Bernie Brains (with P-Funk’s Bernie Worrell), and mash-up outfits known as the Fearless Flying Frog Brigade, the Holy Mackerel, and Les Claypool’s Fancy Band.

He also helms a winery, Claypool Cellars, and recently launched a soda for queasy-stomached seafarers, SeaPop. He’s made a film and written a novella. He designs his own instruments, known as Pachyderm basses.

Amidst all of that activity, this year he and his Primus bandmates, drummer Tim “Herb” Alexander and guitarist Larry “Ler” LaLonde, returned to Claypool’s backyard studio for a unique project, The Desaturating Seven. It’s an ambitious concept album based on Count Ul de Rico’s beautiful and intense children’s book The Rainbow Goblins.

“When my kids were little, my wife would read to them every night before they went to bed,” Les remembers. “Every now and then I’d get up there and read to them, and they had this book, and I was like, What the hell is this?”

Featuring stunning oil-on-oak illustrations painted by the author himself, the dark story of goblins stealing colors from the land got Les hooked. “I found it very compelling. I thought it would make a great record, and now I’m finally getting around to it. It’s also pretty relevant to what’s going on today—the notion of those in power being gluttonous and using up all of the resources, and the meek banding together to thwart them.”

It’s the first album of original Primus material since 2011’s Green Naugahyde, and the follow-up to 2014’s Primus & the Chocolate Factory With the Fungi Ensemble, an interpretation of the Willy Wonka soundtrack [both on ATO/Prawn Song]. And it’s great.

At times bright and King Crimson-y, other times dark and creepy, Seven is a sharp turn toward thematic progressive rock. Tempos, meters, and dynamics shift throughout, with hard-hitting sections that give way to cavernous spaciness and back again.

Herb’s drumming is textural and painterly, Ler alternates between attacking and layering color, and Les is his characteristic galumphing, sliding, tapping self, only edgier than ever. His Pachyderm 4-string anchors most of the pieces, and he hauls out his old fretless Carl Thompson 6-string for upfront tap-and-slide sections that lead the rhythmic charge, also checking in on his NS Design electric upright. (What’s better than a tense, suspenseful arco theme to open a prog-rock concept album?)

The Desaturating Seven isn’t the typical career move for a 50-something band once considered part of the funk–metal movement—but this is Primus, a band so uncategorizable it once had its own genre category in the metadata of mp3 files.

“We never made hit records,” Les laughs as we sip SeaPops on the patio of his longtime Northern California home-and-studio hideaway, Rancho Relaxo.

“When we first started having brushes with selling records, it was such a shock. But when it happens, it gets in the back of your mind, and record people are getting in your head and you start thinking about that stuff, and it messes you up. Now, when we make records, it’s back to who-gives-a-shit. It’s about just making what we think is cool.”

Like the Willy Wonka record, Seven has been churning in Claypool’s mind for some 20 years. “After a while, you start realizing you’re getting long in the tooth. You’ve got to start knocking these things off the list while you still can.”

Your main, fretted bass tone is nicely consistent throughout the new record. Was that a conscious effort to tie everything together?

That kind of just happened. It’s funny, because I was chasing my tone throughout the recording process, so it’s good to hear that it came out sounding consistent. When I set up for a recording, usually I get excited and I start plugging stuff in, and there’s a buzz here or something is clipping there, and I forget about it—and the next thing you know, I’ve laid down what’s supposed to be a scratch track, but then I love it. I want to keep it, but it’s cracking and buzzing, and I can’t figure out how to get it back.

I’m not a gear guy; I’ll go 15 or 20 years without changing my stuff, and then I’ll say “This sucks—I’ve got to change everything.” In fact, I just did that, right after I made this record: I got a Fractal Audio AX8 Amp Modeler, so that’s what I’m using live now. I think I finally got a tone that I’ve been searching 30 years for [laughs], but that might change next year. I’ll say, Oh shit, I should be playing a Rickenbacker with flatwounds. Who knows—you get bored and you try other things.

Your fretless Carl Thompson 6-string is a common thread throughout your career.

Carl Thompson basses are amazing, but each one is unique, and you tend to tailor your playing to the instrument. Also, I kind of wanted to retire my Carl basses because I didn’t want to bring them on the road anymore. I was starting to worry about them.

I wanted something that was my vision—something that I designed. So my buddy Dan Maloney is making me these Pachyderm basses. I’ve known Dan since high school. He’s a little older, and he drove us to Rush’s Hemispheres show at [San Francisco’s] Cow Palace. I drank three Löwenbräus and threw up in the parking lot.

So the Pachyderm is the only fretted bass you’re using?

That’s the one. I started by designing it on paper, and then I cut the shape in plywood. It’s fun experimenting with all the different woods. I’m a big fan of maple, but if you do all-maple, the tone is really intense. The Pachyderm basses are light as hell, and they balance very well. I’m getting older, and my back is messed up. Actually, I just lost 20 pounds—I stopped eating bread and sugar, so I’m feeling a lot better.

What was the first thing you did to get into writing the album?

I wrote “The Storm”—the lyrics, the whole arrangement—and I recorded it. I listened to it and thought, Is this a little too ’70s art-rock? It’s very hard to write about goblins and rainbows without sounding like you’re in Tenacious D.

Timing-wise, it was time for a Primus project, so I played the song over the phone for Ler. I was like, Is this too Jethro Tull, or Utopia’s Ra? You know, [sings] Hi…roshima, Na…gasaki! But he absolutely loved it; he flipped out. Then I played it for our manager, and by that point Ler was already clicking away on ideas. So, I just started writing the rest of it, and away we went.

And how do you write something like that?

This project is very much just me. I basically sat in that room over there and went through the story, and I broke it up into different sections, like a play. I think “The Seven” might have been the second song I wrote, and I knew the record would have an intro and an outro, like an essay. Primus was out on the road for seven weeks [in the summer], and we played “The Seven.” We started playing that one pretty much right away.

Part of that song is in seven, but you have a way of making songs sound like odd time signatures even when they’re in 4/4.

I usually have no idea what the hell time signature I’m in. I know four. When I did that project with Adrian Belew and Danny Carey [Belew’s Side One and Side Three, 2005–6, Sanctuary], they were rattling off all these time signatures, and I was just trying to find my anchor. I’m not a counter; I’m not good at that. I just feel it. When I have to count, I’m in trouble.

Did you find it more difficult or liberating to work under the constraints of a concept album?

Every time I’ve tried to do some kind of concept album, I stepped away from it and said fuck that, because it is constraining. All of a sudden you’re putting up parameters, whereas most of my stuff goes all over the place; I stumble across some weird thing and say, Oh, there’s a song. You can’t necessarily do that when you’re trying to tell a story.

Do you mean lyrically, or musically, as well?

At first I was a little concerned about the music, because it was all, [sings] Dun de dun, de dee de dee—very Dungeons-and-Dragonsy. But Ler’s and Herb’s playing add a lot of contrast, which helps.

Herb seems like the perfect drummer for the project, because he’s so atmospheric.

He’s also a very melodic player, and he’s good at playing in odd time signatures without it sounding swimmy or washy. He knows how to play in odd times but keep a strong anchor; there’s still a sense of a pulse.

When Primus did Green Naugahyde with Jayski [Jay Lane], it was more of a groove record, because Jayski is more of a groove drummer. We were in a groove frame of mind—whereas with this album, we said, “We’re going to make an old ’70s art-prog-rock record.” We were going back to those roots, which we all had very common ground on.

When we first auditioned Herb many years ago, what did we do? We played Rush tunes. Whereas when we sat down with Jayski, we were playing Isley Brothers tunes or Prince or whatever. So this record was definitely in Herb’s wheelhouse, that Bill Bruford/Neil Peart feel.

Do you find yourself changing your approach when you go from one drummer to another, or does it just happen?

I imagine I think about it, but not terribly. It’s like having a conversation: You don’t necessarily think about it when you’re talking to someone different, depending on how different their perspectives are.

I always go back to that conversation metaphor with music. You get to a point with your instrument where it’s like talking. Yes, it’s wonderful to improve your vocabulary so that you can complete your [pause] sentences [laughs]. But your playing just naturally changes when playing with different people, the way a conversation would change if I was talking to you versus my dad.

I loved playing with Paulo Baldi on that Delirium stuff; he has this feel and this way to his drumming, but it’s very different from Herb or Jayski or Stewart [Copeland] or any of these guys I play with.

What does it require to learn an album of complex material for an upcoming tour?

I just have to go through and figure out what I did. It shouldn’t be that hard. It’s more about trying to lay it all out so that it trunk-and-tails together, and also getting all of my loops happening, because there are a lot of loops and sound effects to get together. As for rehearsing the show with the band, I’m hoping we can pull it off in four or five days.

Are you still using your original Boomerang Phrase Sampler?

Yeah, I like the old one. When I did the Oyster-head project, Trey [Anastasio] had one, and I was like, Oh, that’s cool—and I’ve been using it ever since. I can’t find anything to replace it. The original version has a lo-fi quality that’s cool. And, I’m used to it; it’s easy to deal with. The newer version confuses me.

You mixed and engineered the new record yourself?

I did. I’d have my tech come in and kind of clean up and straighten up cords and whatnot, but engineering-wise, there was nobody else. I bought this old API console, which is phenomenal, but I recorded in Pro Tools, so I only use the board for color. I have a two-inch 16-track tape machine, but it’s too much work getting the tape and keeping the machine aligned and everything.

I do use a lot of outboard gear, like Mercury compressors, which are unbelievable replicas of old Fairchild compressors. I use them on vocals and bass. My pedals usually go right under the console, and Herb sets up in my son’s man cave, and we run a snake.

With all of your production experience, do you go back and listen to old recordings and say, 'Oh my God'?

For sure. It’s funny, when you’re recording something, you’re like, “This is the greatest tone I’ve ever gotten in my life.” And then you listen three or four or ten years later, and you’re like, What the hell was I thinking? But then you give it another few years, and you’re like, Wow, that actually sounds amazing.

The label is re-releasing a bunch of the Primus records for vinyl box sets, and it’s funny to hear the contrast in the records. We were always experimenting because we’re kind of dumb. Like, for the Brown Album [1997, Interscope], we used the tape machine and we hit it way too hard, and the tones are all farty—but it has this certain quality.

The record industry is a whole new ballgame now; records have become almost promotional items so you can sell concert tickets and T-shirts. We’re lucky because people have always wanted to come see us waggle our fingers and stuff. Our record sales are still a fraction of what they used to be, but we put everything on vinyl now, because that’s one way to get people to buy something physical.

Do you find it harder to get fresh ideas as you get older?

I actually find in some ways it’s easier. You go through periods when you don’t feel like doing anything, and you just feel like going to catch a fish or whatever. If I did only Primus all the time, I would dry up. But I get to do all of these other things, which is phenomenal. Doing the project with Sean opened huge doors for me. I got keyboard credits on that record—who would have ever thought that? Also, I learned to approach vocals differently, because Sean knows what he’s doing vocally.

So playing with other people is the key to staying musically fresh?

It’s the key for me. I remember, toward the end of the 1990s with Primus, feeling that the well had dried up, on all levels—personally, creatively, enthusiastically. Getting away from the band and doing other things was the smartest thing I did for my creativity.

I learned how to become confident in my voice, I got more confident with my writing, and more confident about playing with anybody. It’s a smart business move to nurture your brand and stick to it and build your brand, but for me, it wouldn’t have been a smart move creatively. When Ler and Herb and I get together, there are certain things that come naturally—but if we did nothing else, we’d be spinning in circles.

Tell us about your adventures in the wine business.

It’s just about starting to break even. This region is the Mecca of California pinot, and I’ve been spending my children’s inheritance getting the business going, but my wife loves it, and it’s been a great transition thing for her.

She had always said that once the kids move out, she’s coming on the road with me, and she did on this most recent tour—I bought an old tour bus, and she was out on the road with me doing wine events. We had a great time. This is the first tour I’ve ever done where I wasn’t excited to come home.

Our winemaker is one of the most sought-after pinot makers in the area, and the only reason I got him is he’s a bass player. He was a fan, and we've become very good friends. We make great juice, but there’s an old saying: If you want to make a small fortune in the wine business, start with a large fortune.

Where did you get the idea for the SeaPop soda?

I did that for myself. I love being on the ocean, but I hate motion sickness, and there was nothing that would help me. So I looked into natural remedies that sailors have been using for centuries, and came up with this. It also helped some friends of mine who were going through chemo—they loved it. It helps with acid reflux, and it has anti-inflammatory properties, too.

What’s in your future?

I’m going to New York to start writing the next Delirium record with Sean. So hopefully he’ll come out here by the end of the year, and we’ll record it.

Are there any new directions that you want your bass playing to go in?

Nah, it’s back to the conversation thing. You just want to hone your conversational skills. And, different things turn your crank at different times. On this last Primus tour, we were playing more aggressively and heavier, so that’s exciting. Also, this new record is very proggy, and it’s been a long time since we went heavily down that path. A big part of turning over new stones is flipping over old ones.

Goblin gear

Long known for his Carl Thompson basses, in recent years Les Claypool has manned Pachyderm basses for fretted 4-string duties. Designed by Les and built by his old friend Dan Maloney, Claypool’s latest Pachyderm (strung with light-gauge Dunlops) has the EMG pickup moved a bit closer to the fingerboard compared to previous iterations.

The bass is incredibly lightweight and zingy, with perfect balance. It has one knob for volume (“I like simple,” says Les), and a switch for the fingerboard side markers. Not only are the dots LED-illuminated, they’re also slightly raised—giving tactile cues that help Les navigate the neck without having to look.

Fewer than a dozen Pachyderms have been built, with several being sold to collectors for charity. For more information, go to pachydermbasses.com. He still brings his fretless Carl Thompson 6-string and NS Design electric upright on the road.

According to tech Ryan Becker, for live shows these days, Claypool’s basses feed a Shure UR4D wireless system; after a switcher, his signal encounters a Line 6 DM4 Distortion Modeler, Line 6 DL4 Delay Modeler, and first-generation Boomerang Phrase Sampler. These go in the effect loop of a Fractal Audio Systems AX8 Amp Modeler + Multi FX, which sends a signal to the house.

To record The Desaturating Seven, Claypool’s signal chain was even simpler: just his old MXR 10-band graphic EQ and MXR M80 Bass D.I.+, which also provided distortion.

You can have a rock-solid drummer, a perfectly capable guitarist, and a show-stopping frontperson, but when it comes down to it, many would argue that a bassist could make or break a band. After all, would Give It Away be the same without Flea's bombastic bass? What would YYZ sound like without the genius of Geddy Lee? Our guess is not nearly as good. 

So it begs the question: if you could have any (any!) bassist join your dream band, who would that be? Here is our list of low-end juggernauts that could take your band from bars to the big leagues.

Dave Ellefson

Speed is the name of the game with Dave Ellefson, and he can help crank your band’s intensity all the way up to eleven. The Megadeth bassist’s playing is the foundation of the band’s sound, delivering driving bass lines at breakneck speeds that are certain to blow away your audience. Ellefson is a perfect fit for any band looking to push BPMs to the limit, while also starting a few mosh pits here and there.

Geddy Lee

You have to go big or go home when it comes to selecting the right bassist, and nobody embodies this better than Geddy Lee. His pronounced playing style immediately makes itself known; he takes charge while delivering some of rock's most complex and proggy bass lines. Lee is definitely not a bassist who will hide in the shadows - he thrives in the limelight and will make sure you never forget his playing.

Carol Kaye

If you somehow land Carol Kaye in your lineup, you've struck gold. The L.A. studio ace has played on over 10,000 recordings, including timeless works by the Beach Boys, Stevie Wonder, Frank Sinatra and more. Plus, having Kaye as a bandmate could serve a dual purpose - she began her career as a jazz guitarist, so just in case your guitar player isn't cutting it, you're probably covered there, too. Watch Brian Wilson, the musical genius behind the Beach Boys, gush over Kaye in this video.

Victor Wooten 

When it comes to technically precise bass parts overflowing with musical vocabulary, Victor Wooten is your guy. As a member of the genre-blurring supergroup Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, Wooten has proven his virtuosic chops and innovative take on the bass - and having five Grammy awards under his belt wouldn't hurt your band's cred, either.

Les Claypool

We hope your guitarist doesn't mind taking the back seat, because that's likely to happen if Les Claypool joins your band. The propulsive bassist and frontman of Primus is credited for furthering slap bass technique and helping introduce it to hard rock, earning him a rightful place as one of the most respected figures in low-end lore.

Flea

Granted you're ok with a little bit of on-stage nudity, enlisting Flea to your lineup would be no-brainer. A founding member of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Flea's first entry into music was playing jazz trumpet. He later picked up bass, fusing hard funk and punk with his own melodic adventurousness to approach the instrument in an entirely new way.

Geezer Butler

The word “legend” gets thrown around a lot, but Geezer Butler is more than worthy of the title. On top of writing some of metal’s most iconic bass lines, Butler was one of the first in the genre to use a wah pedal and implement down-tuning. Plus, he’s responsible for nearly all of Black Sabbath’s Ozzy-era lyrics, so get ready for your band’s songwriting to receive a serious upgrade.

Doug Wimbish

Want a player who will add a little versatility to your sound? Look no further than Doug Wimbish, a bassist with some serious studio experience under his belt. In addition to his time with Living Colour, he’s recorded with everyone from the Rolling Stones and Joe Satriani to Madonna and Billy Idol. No matter what sound your band is shooting for, you just can’t go wrong with having Wimbish on your side.

Robert Trujillo

If you’re looking for heaviness with a hint of funk, give Robert Trujillo a call. His jazz fusion background and love of slap bass shine bright in his work with Suicidal Tendencies and Infectious Grooves. Plus, his preference to tackle Metallica’s catalog without a pick is no small feat, solidifying his place as a thrash titan.

Paul McCartney

As far as rock bassists go, you can't do much better than Paul McCartney. His bass lines stand alone as masterworks, lending brilliant melodicism and counterpoint to any song he graces. And it wouldn't hurt to have a Beatle around to help out in the songwriting department, either.

The Claypool Lennon Delirium is the ongoing musical collaboration between Primus bass legend Les Claypool and multi-instrumentalist Sean Lennon, who also frequently records and tours with his partner, Charlotte Kemp Muhl, as the Ghost of a Sabre Toothed Tiger.

The Delirium’s music is often as otherworldly as their latest press photo (see above) and album cover art for South of Reality, their first full-length studio album in three years. With strong elements of prog rock and psychedelia and a streak of Frank Zappa-meets-Captain-Beefheart humor running through a lot of the songs, there’s so much going on that it takes a couple of plays to really get into the duo’s headspace. Of course, it’s a given that Claypool always brings his killer bass chops to the table, but what’s probably less well known is that Lennon is a very strong guitarist in his own right.

I recently spoke to Lennon about the new disc and, of course, that famous last name.

How did you guys prep for South of Reality?

We’d both bring in about three or four ideas, but not completed ideas. We like to leave things open. And then we’d jam quite a bit. By the time we got into the studio, we had a solid set of about 10 songs to work on. We played everything between us, except drums on a few tracks.

Does working with someone like Les make you really step up the practice regime in anticipation?

Yeah, he really pushes me a lot on all instruments, even keyboards. But I definitely did do some practice. It’s almost like an athletic gig! I found myself doing scales, you know? It’s a whole other level with Les, but I definitely pushed my playing further than it’s ever been.

When did you start playing?

When I was about 12. I’d been into the Stones and the Beatles and a lot of classic rock. Hearing Jimi Hendrix for the first time was a major turning point. I bought a cassette with Are You Experienced on one side and Axis: Bold as Love on the other. I listened to those albums for about a year non-stop and learned all the songs. I’d say he was the main influence that’s underpinned all my playing.

“Easily Charmed by Fools” is the album’s obvious single — at least in my opinion. There’s a great sense of humor in that song.

Yeah, that was one that Les brought. I suppose I have no idea what a single would be these days. There’s no real obvious radio station that we’d fit into, but it definitely could be a single — though I’m not sure in what universe!

It must be difficult to follow your own musical path when inevitably people will always compare the work you do to that of a famous parent — or parents in your case [Sean is the only child of John Lennon and Yoko Ono]. Does it ever get frustrating?

It’s a difficult question because people seem to have so many preconceptions about me. Also, you think maybe someone’s interested in you because of your parents or even sometimes the opposite kind of reverse thing, where people will be deliberately resistant to what you’re doing because they think you’re “privileged.” This is the only reality I know; I don’t have anything to compare it to. I do think there’s often a built-in cynicism about me, but I’m happy to admit the music I make isn’t the most commercial in the world. You either like it or you don’t! I’m sure I’ve had opportunities because of who I am, but at some point there has to be something I’m offering that’s more than just my family connections to have taken me this far.

The Claypool Lennon Delirium, the collaborative effort between Primus bassist Les Claypool and multi-instrumentalist Sean Lennon, have shared a new track, "Easily Charmed by Fools." The song comes off the band's forthcoming second full-length album, South of Reality. 

Lennon and Claypool co-produced South of Reality, which was engineered and mixed at Claypool’s Rancho Relaxo studios in Sonoma County, California. The album, out February 22 via ATO Records, is available for pre-order here. 

You can check out "Easily Charmed by Fools" above.

The Claypool Lennon Delirium, the collaborative effort between Primus bassist Les Claypool and multi-instrumentalist Sean Lennon, have announced the release of their sophomore album, South of Reality, which will be out February 22, 2019 via ATO Records.

Ahead of the record’s release they’ve shared a new song, the psych-rock epic “Blood and Rockets.”

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Lennon explained that the song’s lyrics are about “the lascivious exploits of famed JPL rocket scientist Jack Parsons, the man who not only helped America get to the moon with liquid fuel technology, but was also a Magister Templi in Aleister Crowley’s cult, the Ordo Templi Orientis.”

Lennon and Claypool co-produced South of Reality, which was engineered and mixed at Claypool’s Rancho Relaxo studios in Sonoma County, California. The album is available for pre-order here.

Les Claypool, Larry LaLonde and Jay Lane, collectively known as Primus, started doing a run of "Primus 3D" tour dates last year, and they've extended it into another tour leg for 2013.

The show promised to augment Primus’ music with 3D visuals and Surround Sound for an entire evening with no opening act. The Fox Theater in Pomona, California, played host to one such show on May 19, and the place became Primusville for the evening.

The giant horde of Primus fans flocked to enter the gates of the Fox, the merch lines were long, and the specially made event posters, priced at a hefty $30, were selling like hot cakes. Everyone picked up their free 3D glasses upon entering, and the backdrop screen displayed this warning:

“Images presented here may cause symptoms of vertigo or motion sickness to those with sensitive constitutions. If feelings of dizziness or nausea become apparent, remove glasses, look away from the screen and try not to vomit on your neighbor.”

This turned out to be merely a statutory warning, more like a disclaimer than anything else, because none of the 3D visuals were of the kind that would cause motion sickness. In fact, my biggest concern going into the show was whether the visuals would distract from Primus' inherent goodness.

I know they’ve put in a lot of time, effort and money into making this a 3D show, but I wasn’t blown away by it. It didn’t add much, and I'd be totally fine seeing Primus play the music with regular 2D visuals. In fact, the floating layer of 3D visuals even overshadowed the wonderful stage presence of Les, Lar and Jay, as we could barely see them with the 3D in the forefront.

That said, the visuals did provide us with a few powerful moments, like during "Southbound Pachyderm," when we witnessed an effect that made us feel we were entering a spatial cave or something of that sort. It was psychedelic and one of the many highlights of the show. I enjoyed the Surround Sound, and I often simply closed my eyes to absorb the music.

Claypool is obviously the center of attention at a Primus show. Not to be outdone, however, LaLonde delighted the guitar lovers in the audience with his brilliant work throughout the set, especially on "Golden Boy" and "Over the Falls." He even dusted off a thrash metal riff when Claypool openly teased him about his stint with Possessed, but he followed it up with the bluesiest licks you'll ever hear. Meanwhile, Jay played his part on drums, keeping the crowd going even as Les and Lar changed and/or tuned their instruments.

The first set ended with crowd favorites "My Name Is Mud" and "Jerry Was a Race Car Driver." As is customary in this "evening with Primus" format, there was a 25-minute half-time break at around 9:10 p.m., during which Popeye cartoons were shown on the screen.

This second set focused more on the music as Les talked much less frequently than he did in the first. It was a true musical display, with longer songs, plenty of rocking moments, tempo changes, a variety of bass instruments, pig masks and delightful guitar play by Lar on songs like "The Toys Go Winding Down" and "Harold of the Rocks." The encore began with an even more entertaining medley by him, consisting of Deep Purple and Slayer riffs. The show ended with "Wynona's Big Brown Beaver."

These 20 songs didn't leave any Primus fan disappointed, and in response to the genius show put on by Claypool & Co., the raucous crowd gave back plenty of energy to spur on the band. Every song was greeted with loud cheers, and people from the front row to the back indulged in jumping and dancing. "Jump pits" replaced the usual mosh pits at this show.

As for the 3D glasses, I’d say it helps taking them off in between songs just to give your eyes a breather. Besides the music and visuals, Claypool’s banter was brilliant, and his taking the mickey out of a certain fan from Liverpool was beyond hilarious. Owing to his goofy and eccentric personality, he had the crowd’s complete and undivided attention at all times.

Primus’ new show is well worth your money and then some.

Set List:

• Set 1:
• 01. Those Damned Blue-Collar Tweekers
• 02. Last Salmon Man
• 03. Golden Boy
• 04. Southbound Pachyderm
• 05. Over the Falls
• 06. Lee Van Cleef
• 07. John the Fisherman
• 08. My Name Is Mud
• 09. Jerry Was a Race Car Driver

Set 2:
10. Extinction Burst
11. Dirty Drowning Man
12. The Heckler
13. American Life
14. Seas of Cheese
15. Jilly's on Smack
16. The Toys Go Winding Down
17. Moron TV
18. Harold of the Rocks
Encore:
19. HOINFODAMAN
20. Wynona's Big Brown Beaver

Remaining Tour Dates:

05.31 Winnipeg, MB—Burton Cummings Theatre
06.01 Maplewood, MN—Myth
06.02 Chicago, IL—Riviera Theater
06.05 Charlottesville, VA-nTelos Wireless Pavilion**
06.06 Hunter, NY—Mountain Jam Festival*
06.07 Toronto, ON—Danforth Music Hall
06.08 Toronto, ON—Danforth Music Hall
06.09 North Tonawanda, NY—Niagara River Rocks*
*Not a 3D show
**Co-headline with Gov’t Mule

Andrew Bansal is a writer who has been running his own website, Metal Assault, since early 2010, and has been prolific in covering the hard rock and heavy metal scene by posting interviews, news, reviews and pictures on his website — with the help of a small group of people. He briefly moved away from the Los Angeles scene and explored metal in India, but he is now back in LA continuing from where he left off.

Primus have announced a spring tour in support of their 2011 album, Green Naugahyde. The tour, which will feature two full sets, begins May 3 in Columbia, Missouri, and wraps up June 24 in Modesto, California.

Primus will release a limited-edition 10-inch single featuring live versions of "Jilly's On Smack" and "Eyes of the Squirrel." The vinyl, which will be wrapped in a green naugahyde sleeve, will be available at indie record stores in late April. For more details, check out ATORecords.com.

Primus recently performed "Lee Van Cleef" and "Jerry Was A Racecar Driver" on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. The band also released a music video for "Tragedy's a' Comin'," which premiered on IFC.com in a three-part series.

Green Naugahyde was produced and engineered by Les Claypool and features Claypool, Larry LaLonde and Jay Lane. For more about Primus, visit their official website.

Primus 2012 Tour Dates:

• 5/03 - Blue Note - Columbia, MO %
• 5/05 - Sugar Mill - New Orleans, LA %
• 5/06 - Beale Street - Memphis, TN %
• 5/19 - Paramount - Huntington, NY %
• 5/20 - Landmark Theater - Syracuse, NY %
• 5/22 - AE Pavilion - Pittsburgh, PA ^
• 5/23 - LC Pavilion - Columbus, OH ^
• 5/25 - Summer Camp Festival - Chillicothe, IL %
• 5/26 - Harmony Park - Geneva, MN %
• 5/27 - Eagles Ballroom - Milwaukee, WI %
• 5/29 - Ryman Theater - Nashville, TN %
• 5/30 - Brady Theater - Tulsa, OK %
• 6/01 - Gilloiz Theater - Springfield, MO %
• 6/02 - Wakarusa Festival - Ozark, AR %
• 6/03 - Houston Press Festival - Houston, TX %
• 6/05 - Kiva Auditorium - Albuquerque, NM %
• 6/06 - Pepsi Amphitheater at Fort Tuthill Park - Flagstaff, AZ %
• 6/08 - The Greek - Los Angeles, CA #
• 6/11 - Brit Pavilion - Jacksonville, OR %
• 6/12 - Cuthbert Amp - Eugene, OR %
• 6/14 - Marymoor Park - Redmond, WA %
• 6/15 - Orpheum Theater - Vancouver, BC %
• 6/16 - Fox Theater - Spokane, WA %
• 6/17 - Big Sky Brewery - Missoula, MT %
• 6/22 - The Joint - Las Vegas, NV #
• 6/23 - Santa Cruz Auditorium - Santa Cruz, CA #
• 6/24 - Civic Center Plaza - Modesto, CA %

% An Evening With Primus
^ with Gogol Bordello
# with Fishbone

“I’m from Transylvania!”

“Where do you work?”

“I don’t!”

“How do you pay for your apartment?”

“Savings!”

“You don’t work?”

“The time to spend is now, my friend. Like Les says, Tragedy’s A Comin’!”

At this point, the second guy stopped listening and began talking to someone else. I heard the first guy repeat his statement followed by “2012!”

“Holy crap,” I thought to myself. “This guy is spending his life savings because he thinks the world is going to end next year.”

And so began my first experience at a Primus show.

When my good friend, Zack, asked if I wanted to go see Primus at the Roseland Ballroom last Friday, I couldn’t say “yes” fast enough. Only a few weeks prior, the two of us aurally devoured Green Naugahyde, the band’s first full-length studio effort since 1999’s Antipop. Finally, the day had come where we had the good fortune to see this incredible group live. And already I was way out of my element (I’m the '80s guy, remember?). Nonetheless, I was pumped.

After finding out, much to my and Zack’s delight, that there would be no opening act, the lights went down. On stage, an ominous face was projected onto the helmets of two enormous balloon astronauts standing on either side of the stage. On stage walked bassist Les Claypool, guitarist Larry LaLonde and drummer Jay Lane.

Without saying a word to the audience, the band kicked in to “Those Damned Blue-Collar Tweekers” off of 1991’s Sailing the Seas of Cheese. When the intro had passed and they dug into the main riff everyone on the floor with us, as my friends would like to say, “went buckwild." Zack and I pushed our way forward as close as we could, and there, before us, was a group of musicians who deserve eternal respect. It was truly inspiring.

After a slew of older Primus hits ("Wynona’s Big Brown Beaver," "The Pressman," "Jerry Was A Racecar Driver," etc.), the band retired offstage for a mid-show rest, during which time the audience was played four "Popeye" cartoons. If anyone at that show can’t tell you the exact formula for every "Popeye" episode ever, then they must have been unconscious. Or buying another beer. Either way, I’ve never seen so many grown men excited by a television character eating spinach.

The band soon returned for a second set; one consisting of Green Naugahyde from start to finish (half the audience hadn’t a clue how to pronounce the title until hearing it from Claypool himself). Songs like “Last Salmon Man,” “Tragedy’s A Comin’,” and “Jilly’s on Smack” were all audience favorites (the last one featuring Les Claypool on an electric stand-up bass, just in case you weren’t already aware of what a monster of a musician he is). However, the highlight during the Naugahyde set for me was without a doubt “Eternal Consumption Engine.” Claypool uses his voice generally as another rhythm instrument, but during the B section of this particular song he sang his heart out. And it was awesome.

After the second set was over, the band allowed the outro to their album to play them out as they walked offstage. But there had to be an encore. This audience wasn’t leaving without one. After a few minutes, the band rushed back on stage and without warning slammed into Frizzle Fry’s “Mr. Knowitall,” followed by “Harold of the Rocks.” I’m not sure who was more tired, the audience or the band, but by the time the set was over everyone was leaving fully satisfied.

If you read this, and you’re toying with the idea of going to catch this band live, please do it. You’ll have yourself a buckwild evening. I can promise you that.

Primus are now streaming the first track off their new album, Green Naugahyde, at Spin.com. You can listen to the track, titled "Tragedy's A-Comin'," over here. You can also check out some live footage of the track below.

"Lyrically, this is me focusing on eventual demise or at least the notion that big rain is coming and at some point I'm going to get pretty fucking wet," Claypool told SPIN of the track in question. "Who says lemmings can't dance as they go over the cliff?"

Green Naugahyde, the follow-up to 1999's Antipop and the band's first album in over 11 years, will be release don September 13.

As to the reason behind the long wait between albums, Claypool commented: "Primus had hit the creative wall by the end of the '90s and Primus needed to sit. Like a good compost, we needed to ferment and turn the manure and garbage into fine, nitrogen rich dirt."

Keep an eye out for GuitarWorld.com's upcoming interview with Primus guitarist Larry LaLonde.

Members of Rush, the Police, Primus and Tool have joined forces in what could loosely be called a "super group," though would probably be more accurately described as one amazing jam session caught on film.

The mostly all-drums, all-star lineup of Neil Peart, Stewart Copeland, Danny Carey and Les Claypool got together at Copeland's home studio last April to jam and were gracious enough to post a video online

You can check out a video of the group jamming on a tune they call "Count Drumula" below.

The group, who bill themselves as CCCP, have no immediate plans to tour.

Primus have announced the dates for a run of shows in the US this fall. You can check out the tour dates below.

As previously reported, Primus will released their new album, Green Naugahyde, on September 13. The album is the band's first since 1999's Antipop.

Green Naugahyde was produced and engineered by Les Claypool in his personal studio, Rancho Relaxo, in Northern California and features Claypool, long-time guitarist Larry LaLonde and drummer Jay Lane.

Primus Fall 2011 Tour Dates

• 9/23 – Boston, MA @ The Orpheum
• 9/26 – Richmond, VA @ The National
• 9/27 – Albany, NY @ Palace, Theatre
• 9/30 – New York, NY @ Roseland Ballroom
• 10/1 – Upper Darby, PA @ Tower Theatre
• 10/2 – Portland, ME @ State Theatre
• 10/4 – Montreal, QE @ Metropolis
• 10/5 – Toronto, ON @ Massey Hall
• 10/7 – Pittsburg, PA @ Stage AE
• 10/8 – Rochester, NY @ Main Street Armory
• 10/10 – Louisville, KY @ Louisville Palace
• 10/13 – Madison, WI @ Orpheum Theater
• 10/14 – Chicago, IL @ The Congress
• 10/15 – Des Moines, IA @ Val Air Ballroom
• 10/17 – Denver, CO @ Ogden
• 10/18 – Denver, CO @ Ogden
• 10/20 – Mesa, AZ @ Mesa Amphitheater
• 10/22 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Wiltern

Funk metal band Primus have announced the release of their new album, Green Naugahyde, for Sept. 13. The record will be Primus' first album since 1999's Antipop.

Green Naugahyde was produced and engineered by Les Claypool in his personal studio, Rancho Relaxo, in Northern California and features Claypool, long-time guitarist Larry LaLonde and drummer Jay Lane.

Lane was in an early lineup of the band and also was in Sausage, a 1994 reunion of the 1988 Primus lineup.

"If I were to look at all of our records, it seems like this is reminiscent of the early stuff," says Claypool of the new album. "Obviously, with Jay there's a newness to it, but because he left the band right before we recorded our first record, his approach has an eerie harkening to the old Frizzle Fry days."

Claypool made clear there was no reason for recording a new album other than the desire for the three musicians to get together and experiment. "There wasn't a lot of pre-thought to this as much as, 'Oh, here we are, we should make a record,'" Claypool says.

"I've been playing with Jay quite a lot over the past 10 years and we have an intuitive bond, so for me he was a natural choice to be back in the mix," Claypool continues when asked how Lane came about rejoining the band after nearly two decades apart.

Green Naugahyde is out on ATO Records and Prawn Songs on Sept. 13.

Originally published in Guitar World, July 2010

The Primus bassist chats with Guitar World about his early days.

What first inspired you to pick up a bass?

I opted not to pick up the guitar because, when I was in junior high, there was a talent show. Two guitarists and a drummer had a band, and they played “Ramblin’ Man” by the Allman Brothers. The lead guitarist, who went on to become the first guitarist for Primus—Todd Huth—was soloing, and it sounded so horrible through the tiny little amps they were using. I didn’t know the difference between the bass and the guitar; I just knew that one had four strings and one had six strings. I thought, I want to play whatever is the opposite of that.

What was your first bass?

It was a Memphis P-Bass copy. I pulled lots of weeds and mowed lawns. Shoveled dog shit and raked leaves.

What was the first song you learned?

Because nobody wanted to play bass, I was instantly in a band. We played only original tunes, so the first music I learned was the music of our guitarist. It was sorta like Rush–meets–Judas Priest–meets–Jethro Tull.

What do you recall about your first gig?

It was in the cafeteria at school. I was so petrified that I stood sideways to the audience the whole time.

Ever had a nightmare gig?

Nothing too terrible. I’ve had dreams that were worse, where I get onstage and nothing’s working and I’m trying to play a song I can’t remember. I remember once in Holland, [guitarist] Larry Lalonde almost got electrocuted every time he touched the mic. We just thought he was doin’ some fancy stage tricks because he was floppin’ around on the ground.

What is your favorite piece of gear?

I enjoy my John Deere tractor quite a lot. It’s a tool that I must use to keep Mother Nature at bay. I have all kinds of things encroaching on my property.

Do you have any advice for young players?

Play as much as you can as often as you can with as many people as you can. That’s how you learn and grow.