Les Claypool was born on September 29, 1963, in Richmond, California. As Primus's founder, bassist and vocalist, he made the bass a vehicle for rhythm, melody and character, with the band's songs often turning on his playing and unusual narrators. “Jerry Was a Race Car Driver,” from the 1991 album Sailing the Seas of Cheese, captures that combination of busy instrumental parts and a story with a grim ending.
His first musical connections included a classmate who would take a different route through heavy music. Claypool told Kerrang! in 2021 that Kirk Hammett sat behind him in algebra and wanted him to sing in a band. Claypool was too embarrassed. After meeting another guitarist, he chose bass partly because it seemed a practical way to find work. Discovering Rush and Chris Squire then expanded his ideas about the instrument. He started the project that became Primus under the name Primate in 1984, initially working with a drum machine. Guitarist Larry LaLonde later joined after the two had played together in another band. Claypool explained that LaLonde's approach left him handling both the bass foundation and rhythmic parts. That division of responsibilities helped shape a style in which the bass could occupy much of the foreground while the guitar supplied texture.
Primus introduced that music on the live album Suck on This in 1989, followed by their first studio album, Frizzle Fry, in 1990. Sailing the Seas of Cheese became their major-label debut the following year, with Claypool, LaLonde and drummer Tim Alexander taking an unusually adventurous approach to their instruments as they entered the studio.
In a 2003 Bass Player interview, later republished by Guitar World, Claypool recalled having a six-string bass built and then asking for its frets to be removed simply to try something different. He began using it in the sessions while Alexander was getting acquainted with a large, newly arrived drum kit. Both were learning what their equipment could do while making the record. Looking back, Claypool described songwriting as the priority behind the technique: “I think in terms of images and songs, not in terms of how groundbreaking a bassline can be.”
The characters mattered as much as the playing. In a 2013 interview with The Quietus, Claypool explained that he had taken over singing because other vocalists were not conveying his lyrics as he intended. Treating himself as a narrator, and stepping into a character, made performing easier. He traced his interest in storytelling to country music and musicals, where a song could follow someone through an entire predicament. The humor could coexist with tragedy, as it did in “Jerry Was a Race Car Driver.” On the same album, “Tommy the Cat” let another distinctive voice inhabit one of those characters. Tom Waits performed the title role, placing his delivery alongside Claypool's bass and the trio's arrangement. The record had room for a guest to become part of its storytelling without changing the musicians at its center.
Claypool later entered a different three-way partnership with Trey Anastasio and Stewart Copeland in Oysterhead. Their performance at New Orleans's Saenger Theatre in May 2000 was intended as a one-off, but the experience prompted Anastasio to invite the others to his Vermont studio, the Barn, in April 2001. Claypool recorded bass and vocals, Anastasio handled guitar and vocals, and Copeland contributed drums, percussion and vocals. The band produced the resulting album, The Grand Pecking Order, which was released on October 2, 2001.
