Most great journeys begin with a question, and Primus' upcoming album was no exception. When producer Toby Wright (Sevendust, Alice in Chains, Primus' Rhinoplasty EP) proved unavailable due to scheduling conflicts, frontman Les Claypool took matters into his own bass-wrangling hands. "I went to [Primus A&R man] Tom Whalley and asked him 'Who is the George Martin and Brian Eno of today? That's who I'd love to work with.'"

It was a bold, but certainly not over-ambitious request for Claypool. This is a guy, after all, who had his manager call Tom Waits out of the blue back in 1990 to ask if he would record a vocal track on Primus' major label debut, Sailing the Seas of Cheese. To everyone's surprise -- including Claypool's -- Waits said yes, and the two have remained friends. They religiously perform on each other's projects, including this latest one, on which Waits produced and sang (along with Martina of Tricky fame) "Coattails of a Dead Man."

Unfortunately, a single producer in the Eno/Martin mold was unavailable ("That person, as far as I know, doesn't exist," cautioned Whalley) so, Claypool approached the record's production from another angle. "I got the idea to work with some artists that we really respect on a producer level, not just as players," Claypool explains. "We drew up a wish list and approached people like Peter Gabriel, Rogers Waters, David Byrne and Stewart Copeland. A lot of these guys wanted to do it," Claypool says, "but they weren't available when we needed them. But Stewart was ready and willing, and he came up and produced a song called 'Dirty Drowning Man' [a song that keeps Primus' time-honored nautical theme alive]. Tom Morello produced and played on three. He's a great guy and an incredible musician and probably one of the best guitarists I ever played with. Ever."

Also joining the line-up were Metallica guitarists James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett, as well as former Faith No More axeman Jim Martin. "I had this song, 'Eclectic Electric,' which is one of my favorite songs on the record," Claypool says, "a nine-minute epic song, and there's this section in the middle that demanded the heaviest guitars in the world. So I thought, who are the two heaviest guys I know? Jim Martin and James Hetfield, I thought. That would be perfect. So I called both of them and asked them to do it. They both said yes, and it was unbelievable. If you just think about it, those two guys together would melt walls. It amazes me that they have never done anything together before. It's one of the best moments on the record when those two guys are playing together. It's just this huge wall of sound."

As for Hammett, Claypool called up his old high school pal, as well as their mutual friend Mark Osegueda of Death Angel, and the two of them ended up playing on an as-yet-untitled track. Also on the album is bass great and George Clinton cohort Bootsy Collins, as well as uber producer Bill Laswell. Morello's credits include "Electric Uncle Sam" and "Mama Didn't Raise No Fool," while Limp Bizkit's Fred Durst co-produced "Lacquer Head," but did not perform on the song. South Park co-creator Matt Stone produced a track called "Natural Joe."

While the album doesn't have an official title, Claypool confesses to calling it Anti-Pop. "We haven't gotten all our artwork together, or anything on it yet, so we haven't gotten around to titling it yet," Claypool explains. "We might end up calling it 'Anti-Pop' because we have a song called 'The Anti-Pop,' which is becoming the flagship song for the record. It's the only one we're playing live and it seems to be the one everyone is responding to."

Primus, currently on Ozzfest, will be hitting the road in late September to promote their new opus, which should be in stores this August.

JAAN UHELSZKI
(June 3, 1999)