Tim, who was an oddball kind of person.
TIM “HERB” ALEXANDER: My biggest influences were Neil Peart, John Bonham, Stewart Copeland. There were others over time. Rayford Griffin, Billy Cobham, Bill Bruford, Mark Brzezicki, and just various styles of music had an effect on me as well. Let’s not forget Ron Tutt.
LARRY LaLONDE: Les and Tim are definitely way different. Tim is very mellow, he’s very laid back. He’s a super nice guy. And they’re both guys that have a vision. When they have a vision of how they want things to go, they go down that road 100 percent. Both in different ways. They’re pretty normal dudes, for the most part. I get along with everybody though . . . at least that’s what I tell other people.
ADAM GATES: Les has certainly always driven it. It’s always kind of been his beast. He’s always been very specific about what he wants. For someone I’ve known most of my life, he hasn’t changed at all. His personality, sense of humor, and pretty intense seriousness have always been there. Larry is probably the sweetest guy I’ve ever met in my life. I consider him a best friend. Just the kindest human being on the earth, really. And also a really irreverent sense of humor. Just bizarre sense of humor. Tim was pretty dry. But he didn’t get phased by all of our rampant idiocy. Tim was just a constant there—he never jumped into the idiocy as much as maybe Les and Ler were doing. Which is probably a good thing, because it evened things out in a way.
LES CLAYPOOL: There’s actually some videotape out there of my very last show with Todd and Jay at the Omni. It was after we knew it was ending, and I actually even say, “I hope all you people still come and see me. These guys are leaving, but I’m continuing on, I got a couple of guys. We’re going to keep going.” We continued on, but it was definitely a shift.
DAVID LEFKOWITZ: The very first shows that we did with the new lineup would have been January 1989 at the Berkeley Square. We literally had the old band and the new band together, where I think the old band played a few songs, then the new guys joined, and then all five of the musicians played simultaneously. It was a real passing-of-the-torch kind of thing on stage.
Whereas Todd had a thinner guitar sound and was a little bit more of a one-note-at-a-time kind of guy—linear guitar lines—Larry had a much thicker tone and a chunkier metal sound. Tim obviously was less of a funk guy, and had prog elements. He certainly had this Rush/King Crimson thing going on. He was much more of the double-kick guy, which lent itself to the metal side a little bit. And then the polyrhythms and world music inclinations, and rototoms. He just had his own sound—it was a Tim sound. And suddenly, that was the sound of Primus. It was a whole other thing.
ADAM GATES: Todd’s parts were so beautifully considered in how they weaved in and out and sculpted the melody around Les’s complex bass lines, that when Les called me one day and said, “Well, Todd left the band,” I went, “My god . . . how are you going to replace him?” And the person he told me was Larry. We had both toured with Blind Illusion—Les did the first half of the tour and I did the other half, playing bass. I came to know Larry that way. When he told me Larry was doing it, it was absolutely the most perfect person for it. First of all, he could play Todd’s parts—which aren’t terribly easy to play. Larry’s technically really good. And then he plugged into the aggressive part the band was really headed to. So the transition wasn’t as bumpy as it might have been with another guitarist who couldn’t handle the parts right. When Tim came in, they always had good drummers—Les always played with good people. But I think Tim brought a personality—certainly the larger kit, this sort of even-churning rhythm thing that he does so well. That plugged in and gave it this component of . . . not Rush, but this churningness that locked in with Les’s bass in a way. Jay Lane touched on that churningness a little as well, but Jay was more funky. He would play with the space a little more than Tim would.
TODD HUTH: When Jay and I were playing, I think it was a little more funky/dissonant/note-y. Les handled most of the low end to it, and I did textural stuff within it. It wasn’t as “big band,” I would say. Because Jay was Mr. Funkster—with his hi-hat and all that kind of stuff. When I left, Les asked me if Larry could play my parts, so that they wouldn’t have to start over again. So I taught Larry the parts, and he kind of played it different. I couldn’t even tell you how he played it different—he didn’t play note-for-note what I did. He played it in “Larry’s style.”
LARRY LaLONDE: I think the handful of songs that they had, I tried to pretty much learn his parts from what tapes I could gather. And then over time, I sort of segued into doing it my own way—some of it. But a lot of it was Todd’s parts. It was really kind of bizarre, because I was coming in with this bizarre way of playing, which was a mix of weird Frank Zappa and King Crimson-y guitar. A lot of times, when I would go to play over some of the parts, my style was very similar to Todd’s, so I lucked out big time that way. A lot of times, I would hear what the part was, and I kind of already knew what it was, because it was the same bizarre things I was playing.
KIRK HAMMETT: I really think that Larry LaLonde was the best guitar player for Primus. I had known Larry because he had been in Possessed, and we also had the same guitar teacher, Joe Satriani. Larry and I were coming from very similar backgrounds. When I found out that he was going to join Primus, I just thought, YEAH! That’s the next level. Larry LaLonde had a lot of technique, and he had a lot of musical knowledge. When you compare that to Todd’s playing, it’s very evident that Larry fit better, because his chops were at the same level as Les’s and as Tim’s. And I always thought that Tim was just a fantastic drummer too. Totally polyrhythmic, had a great groove, and when you needed him to play a complex jazz beat, he could. And when you needed to throw down a heavy rock beat, he could. For me, the best lineup of Primus was with Larry, Herb, and Les.
ADAM GATES: They were ramping up the aggression—it was naturally occurring. Certainly, Les was exploring distortion more in his bass approach. Just getting a little bigger. I think he was certainly a big fan of Metallica, and he had a lot of references that I wouldn’t say were metal, but they were more aggressive. So that starts to ramp up. They were getting more popular—kind of the thrash/funk thing was starting to mean something in the Bay Area. So they were naturally going in that direction anyway.
TIM “HERB” ALEXANDER: I guess [the nickname “Herb”] could represent the world’s most powerful and versatile plant known to man, that cures illness, has multiple industrial uses, and is replenished in a few months rather than chopping down 200-year-old trees to wipe our asses on. A plant that is illegal, while [politicians] spend millions of dollars on bombs that are somewhat accurate and blow kids apart, while people lose their homes and jobs and retirement savings, and the executive bonuses skyrocket . . . [It] is not only legal but the American way. Oh yeah—the name Herb I got when I used to carry ginseng with me.
TODD HUTH: I think Herb was more of a rock drummer than Jay. Definitely. And a real big sound. Technically thoughtful, more than Jay. Jay is more finesse. With Jay and I, I think we were a more textural and finesse type band. With Larry and Herb, I’d say it was more of a rock band—a bigger stadium band.
CHRIS “TROUZ” CUEVAS: Tim really brought in that real “big rock” element, with Neil Peart [style drumming]. It eventually took it to the next level. It made them even more interesting to me.
ADAM GATES: That’s when you started noticing, Okay, they’re selling out Berkeley Square two nights in a row, and there’s this natural, organic thing going on, that any band that is successful usually experiences. And then it just started taking off.
MATT WINEGAR: Les would say just ridiculously funny shit on stage. He would talk to the people in the crowd, or get mad at somebody. Sort of like take care of it in a funny way. Back then, there were a lot of stupid motherfuckers jumping up on stage. And Les had a really good way of defusing that, by taking a playful shot at the person. The shows were always crazy and hectic. I did live sound for them a few times, and I just remember it being so stressful and hectic. I just said to Les, “I wasn’t cut out for this.” The guy who runs the house sound is always yelling at you and