wasn’t an audition, because I probably wouldn’t have made it.
LES CLAYPOOL: So then Ler’s on board, and like I said, I didn’t know how well he could play. So I said, “Okay, learn these songs, we’re auditioning drummers.” I remember when we were auditioning these guys with Ler, he is fiddling with his amp and he’s kind of playing the song, and we start playing with this one guy, and he was just this super-fuse-o guy, and he was like, “Hey, let’s do a song in thirteen.” And he’s playing all this stuff. We’re like, What the hell? and we’re noodling along with him. Couldn’t even tell where the downbeat was or what the hell was going on. And then after he got done playing, a girl was there to audition, and she’s setting up and says, “I can’t play quite as well as him, but here we go.” And it was the polar opposite—we start playing with her, and she basically couldn’t even hardly play a backbeat. But you’ve got to be polite and at least go through a few songs before you say, “We’ll call ya if we need ya.”
So it was after that day, I looked at Ler and said, “There was this one guy that Todd and I auditioned that was actually really good. I think we should go with him.” Tim Alexander played with this other band called Major Lingo. But he heard the Sausage tape and got very excited about it, so he came down and auditioned for us. We were like, This guy’s pretty good. Kind of a strange guy . . . but he’s pretty damn good! But it was a totally different feel than Jayski. It was this Neil Peart/Bill Bruford style, whereas Jayski is this super crispy, funky guy. Jayski is more of a cross between Stewart Copeland and Dave Garibaldi. But you could feel the energy, you could feel the chemistry was good. And so we’re like, This guy is good, and we auditioned a few more people. Then I get a phone call from Todd, and he says, “I’ve got to quit the band.” So I’m halfway through interviewing drummers, and then the guitar player quits. I’m like, Holy shit.
So I called Tim Alexander and said, “All right, dude, you’ve got the gig. But I’ve got tell you, Todd’s not in the band anymore.” And he says, “What?” I say, “He quit, because he had a couple of babies. But I’ve got this guy Larry, and he’s amazing—it’s going to be really cool.” I remember just the sound of Tim’s voice, like, “Uh . . . okay.” So we got together with Tim and we played. I remember Ler spent most of the time fiddling with his damn amp and he kind of could half-ass play the songs. Some of those songs were pretty damn tough. I remember Tim coming to me after the jam and going, “Is he going to be able to pull this off?” And I was like, “Don’t worry, he’ll get it.”
TIM “HERB” ALEXANDER [Primus drummer 1989–1996, 2003–2010, 2013–present]: As long as I can remember I’ve been banging on things. I have a vague memory of reaching up over my head to hit a snare drum. One year, for Christmas, my mother gave me one of those toy sets made with paper drum heads and I immediately began to hit, hit, hit, which led to rip, rip, rip, and the fun was over. I remember being very disappointed because I knew I needed a real kit but I didn’t know why. There was a very strong feeling toward the drums.
When I was about eight years old, my mom and I lived in an apartment in a small town near Charleston, West Virginia. We had a couch that was very firm and hollow sounding, and I would put in the eight-track recording of Elvis Live at Madison Square Garden, and set up different-sized pillows so that the sound went high to low, like a drum set. I had a pair of drumsticks I got from somewhere, and I would play that concert from beginning to end. The drumming on that was really crazy with a lot of big tom rhythms and very energetic grooves. At the time I didn’t know anything about drums, but I could hear it. The drummer was Ronnie Tutt. I guess he might have been my very first influence.
We then moved to Riverview, Michigan, a few years later. That’s where I started to hit real drums. I listened to Aerosmith, the Cars, Led Zeppelin, Rush, Van Halen . . . all the big radio rock growing up in the seventies. I would air drum to all of those albums. With Rush, I knew every note of every album until the late-’80s. The same with Van Halen. I had pretend concerts in my living room. Sort of visualizing the future.
I had some friends that were also into music, and we would get together at my friend Brian Kirksey’s house, and also at my friend Vance Riley’s place—to drive the neighborhood crazy. Rehearsals were like a concert for us, and no concert would be complete without pyrotechnics, so we would set up flash pots in front of Brian’s garage and we would jam and set these things off like a real concert. The garage would fill with smoke and it felt awesome. We did our school’s version of The Gong Show, which was big at the time. And we played “Takin’ Care of Business” and “Train Kept A-Rollin’.” We took home the prize.
We also got offered to do a show at the Riverview Moose Lodge for some kind of Taco Tuesday or something. Brian, my friend Goob, and myself played our first show as “Oregon.” We were envisioning playing shows at Moose Lodges all over the state and then maybe the country, even the world! There were no limits to our vision. But Oregon didn’t last long, so the nation’s Moose Lodges were shit out of luck. The jamming was moved to our friend John Christy’s basement. His parents were so awesome and encouraged us to play and have a good time. Although sometimes his mom would yell down the stairs, “TURN THAT SHIT DOWN!” That phrase is probably the most used phrase of any young musician’s parents, and I still hear it to this day.
Off to Arizona when I was sixteen. My family moved to Phoenix when my stepfather got laid off in Michigan. After finishing high school, I was working random jobs like at the Foot Locker, pizza places, even digging plumbing ditches in the middle of summer in Phoenix in 105 degrees. I really wasn’t happy with the direction things were heading. I ended up at a navy recruiter testing for the nuclear program. I passed the first test and then I had to do a second test because of the advanced program. Thank god I ended up one point shy of passing—I get seasick! I can’t go into the navy! They said to come back in three months and retest. Sure.
I ended up working in a record store, which I liked but it still didn’t move me much. I was talking to my mom about things and she said the weirdest thing that I don’t think I would have ever thought to do: “Why don’t you look in the Yellow Pages and see if studios need a drummer?” Needless to say, I laughed. If only it was that easy. But after thinking about it, I decided to give it a shot. The second studio I called was auditioning drummers. How crazy. It was in the Yellow Pages all along. This was before the Internet. I did the audition and all I really could do was copy Neil Peart’s solo. Well, needless to say, they weren’t impressed. Not too many requests for Neil Peart wannabes.
But a guy said he knew a band looking for a drummer if I was interested. So I got the number and called the band. I set up an audition, packed my drums in cardboard boxes and pillowcases, and took a Greyhound bus to Flagstaff, where my girlfriend’s father gave me a ride to a ghost town called Jerome. It must have looked like I was moving in when I arrived with boxes and pillows. They let me audition, anyways. I ended up getting the gig. It was Major Lingo—a popular band in Arizona. The music was all original, which helped me learn to create original ideas. It was a mix of world beat, reggae, folk, rock, ska, and the kitchen sink.
After five years in Arizona, we decided to move to San Francisco and build our following. After a good effort, we ended up getting jobs to pay the rent. I worked at a café in Oakland on the late shift. It was then a friend of mine was playing a demo tape of Primus. A local band. I thought it was interesting and at the time I was looking to play. So he said they were looking for a drummer, and I said, “I play drums.” Well, he kind of laughed, and I said, “No, really, I do.” He got a number for me and I set up an audition. That was when I met Les and Todd. We played a bunch of Rush songs and had a good time. Les called me after doing the rest of the auditions and said he had good news and bad news. The good news was they liked me and offered me the gig. The bad news was that Todd had quit. So now what? Les set up our first rehearsal and invited a friend of his, Larry LaLonde. It went great and that became the new Primus.
LARRY LaLONDE: He was dressed really crazy. He had sort of MC Hammer pants on. He looked like he should have been playing with Enya or something—he had flowing, crazy clothes on. But he was the only guy who auditioned that was into the same music as us. We were all into Rush. So he stuck out