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Chapter 4

How to Make Sausage

LES CLAYPOOL: I used to roadie for some bands. There was the whole world beat scene that was pretty popular in the Bay Area, with the Freaky Executives, the Looters, Big City, and Zulu Spear. It was this amazingly vibrant scene. But then, all of a sudden, David Rubinson got involved—who managed Herbie Hancock, and ran The Automatt recording studio—and he tried to commercialize it, and totally destroyed the whole scene. The whole thing fell apart. But David Lefkowitz had come from the East Coast to work for him as an intern. So he was working as a roadie, and then he started booking a couple of the bands. And he started booking Primus as an agent. Chris Cuevas was acting as our manager at the time, and he was my best friend. It really wasn’t working out and it was getting awkward, so we said, “Let’s try Lefkowitz.” So he took over. His nickname became Smiley. He worked out of his bedroom in Haight-Ashbury, and he became the guy.

DAVID LEFKOWITZ [Original Primus manager]: I graduated from college in 1986 and moved to San Francisco to be in the music business. I had an opportunity to work in a management company called David Rubinson Management. I don’t remember necessarily the first time I saw Primus for sure, I definitely remember an early show in 1986, where they were on a bill opening for Big City. Curveball was the drummer of Primus at that time, and I remember Curveball wearing underwear on his head, and coming to the front of the stage to sing some a cappella Michael Jackson song. [Laughs] Which sort of foreshadowed his ultimate vocal career—fronting a popular cover band called Curveball.

CHRIS “TROUZ” CUEVAS: When we met Dave, I didn’t really realize that becoming a manager could be pretty lucrative. [Laughs] And so basically, I said, “Hey Dave, I’d rather be on the road. Why don’t you manage the band?” Les thought that was a good idea, so I sort of organically formed with Dave doing that. We all came up together as friends the whole time, and spent all of our time together. Even though we worked together, we were really close.

DAVID LEFKOWITZ: That happened at the end of ’86 or early-’87, when Chris opted out.

CHRIS “TROUZ” CUEVAS: Dave taught me a lot. I hope I taught Dave something too. We were a pretty tight team—it wasn’t like Dave in his office in LA trying to manage the band, and being disconnected. He was on the road. Even though we fucked with him endlessly when he was on the road. For a manager, Dave was never on the bus, in the lobby, or anywhere on time. Ever. Usually, we’re waiting for the drummer or the guitar player. Nope, we’re waiting for the manager. If anyone got so much shit and got fucked with the most, it would probably be Dave Lefkowitz. A lot of it very funny and in good spirits. But man, it was always a Dave roast fest.

DAVID LEFKOWITZ: That first demo that I was involved with, Primus Sucks, I believe that was produced by Matt Wallace. Matt went on to produce Faith No More and many other things.

MIKE WATT [The Minutemen bassist, fIREHOSE bassist, Stooges bassist, solo artist]: When they first came out, he had a slogan, Primus Sucks. Like a self-mocking kind of thing. That was a good thing, because there was some self-deprecating humor about punk, especially in the early days. But maybe it got lost, and he embraced it. To me, he personified some punk ethics, that kind of coincided with the philosophy of me and D. Boon, where punk was more a state of mind. He seemed to be right up that alley.

DAVID LEFKOWITZ: [The Primus Sucks demo] was just a black-and-white cassette cover that Les designed, that had a graphic image on it that he had drawn, which was very similar to the Suck on This cover. I can remember we must have been very engaged in trying to get record companies—large and small—interested in the band. There was a club in LA which was extremely prestigious called Scream. This was a club where Jane’s Addiction came out of—it was just the cool place to play in LA.

Primus was the first of four on the bill, and we knew that Rick Rubin was going to be in attendance that night. I had this bonehead idea that I wanted to try to delay the band’s set for as long as possible, so that I could ensure Rick Rubin would have arrived by the time they played. [Laughs] I didn’t exactly kidnap Curveball, but I convinced him to get in the van with me. I think he needed some sort of throat spray for an ailment he had at the time. So we just took off. The band’s set was almost canceled because Dale Gloria [who ran the venue] was so mad. But they played, and I don’t remember if Rick Rubin got to see them or not.

LES CLAYPOOL: The Curveball thing just wasn’t working. There were some issues, as there just is. So we were once again without a drummer, so I called Jay Lane, because he was sort of a local hero, and said, “Hey, Jayski.” Well, he wasn’t even Jayski then, he was just Jay Lane. We all worshipped Jay Lane. And I said, “Hey Jay, do you know of any drummers? We’re looking for a drummer.” And he’s like, “DUDE, I’M IN! I WANT THE GIG! I’M IN!” And we’re, “Oh my god, this is the drummer from the Freaky Executives.” Because they were huge back then in the Bay. And I called Todd: “Hey, Jay Lane wants to be our drummer.” And he was like, “You’re kidding me!”

CHRIS “TROUZ” CUEVAS: [The Freaky Executives] always blew me away. We went to those shows and had the best time, because it was like going to see Morris Day and the Time. I have a lot of fond memories of Jay back in the early days, and that whole funk/world beat scene was pretty cool.

JAY LANE [Primus drummer 1988–1989 and 2010–present, Sausage drummer, Frog Brigade drummer]: I would have to go back to Proposition 13—and let’s not get right into politics already—but yeah, it was Proposition 13 in 1980 that wiped music and arts out of the public schools in San Francisco. It was a tragedy. And I was fortunate enough right then, I think I was going into high school that year—right at the year that the teachers were fighting for their budgets and to maintain music in the schools. I had a really cool band teacher in junior high school that turned me on to jazz music. And that got me all obsessed with music—listening to Weather Report, Stanley Clarke, and fusion stuff back in the seventies.

I had been taking drum lessons before that, then my mom suggested I go to this place called Cazadero Music Camp in Northern California. I grew up in San Francisco, so I met a bunch of kids that went to Berkeley High School, and kids from East Bay, where they still had their music program thriving. So there were all these talented kids and kids in bands. I came back from that music camp and went back there the next year, kind of bonded with a few of these kids, and ended up joining a band in Berkeley after high school with some of these kids.

From there, I joined another band in Berkeley. The first band was called the Uptones, the second band was called the Freaky Executives. The Freaky Executives rehearsed at a studio in Emeryville, right next to Berkeley, that a bunch of bands rehearsed at. And Les had a room there—he, Todd Huth, and Peter Libby used to play and rehearse there a lot, and they were gigging as Primus. So I knew Peter for a while—we’d go and hang out in his room and work on drum stuff. And I got to know Les. Then Peter was out of the group and they got another drummer called Curveball, and I knew Curveball. Everybody was in this larger music scene. So I ended up joining Primus. That was 1988.

LES CLAYPOOL: We started playing with Jayski, and all of a sudden everything clicked—you could just feel the band come together. It was as if we had this really cool car, but it was only firing on seven cylinders. And then along comes Jayski, and boom!

JAY LANE: The thing was, I was coming from this funk background, so I was coming from playing with a lot of bass players who played that plucking style. So for me, I fit right in. I was like, Oh yeah, I can just go right with that.

LES CLAYPOOL: We had all this material we had written over the years. You have to figure, we’re into the band by this point by about three years, so we had a pretty good collection of material. Because what we would do is Todd and I, we would make a demo. We made that first demo, and then we worked and played these shitty gigs for fifteen people. We were this oddball band. And it wasn’t until Fishbone and the Chili Peppers started touring through the Bay Area that people were like, “Oh, we can stick Primus with these guys.” So we would get these opening slots for both those bands.

NORWOOD FISHER [Fishbone bassist]: It was when Primus opened for us [the first time Fisher heard Primus]. It’s all kind of blurry. [Laughs] I don’t think they had an album out. We had been going into the area, and there was this band, this trio, called Dot 3. When I first saw Primus, I was like, Oh, they’re kind of like Dot 3, because they had a badass bass player—but he was more Geddy Lee–like. But they were doing something different. It was wilder—Primus was way further to the left. And what Les was doing was wilder than Dot 3. In my mind, I’m thinking it was closer to the mid-’80s than the late-’80s when we first did this stuff with Primus. Les’s technique was more unique.

ANGELO MOORE [Fishbone singer and saxophonist]: We were all playing at the same level of clubs. And we were way more in each other’s scene. So before everybody got split up, it was more of a community thing. We’d either be playing in Los Angeles or San Francisco. I know that Primus was more of a San Francisco kind of band. So when we would go up there, I remember them being in the area and in the scene—before everybody took a step up in the industry.

NORWOOD FISHER: Fortunately, for the fans, all the bands that were linked together as a scene, they were all really different. That was the beauty of that time period, when I look back on it. Really, what they did, they were drawing from a whole other energy. The dynamics of the band were really pronounced—really high highs, and really quiet parts. They were really playing with the outside. They were really on the fringes. And it was not a pop band. But it was catchy, nonetheless. And it was funky. But it was funky unlike the funk that came before it. [Primus’s sense of humor] was some of the funkiest parts of it. That’s one of my favorite parts of P-Funk, the sense of humor and the irony. So that part of it was really attractive.

LES CLAYPOOL: When Jayski joined the band, all of a sudden you could just feel it—you could feel the band come together. We reworked all those old songs into Jayski’s style, with his really crispy, intricate hi-hat work.

JAY LANE: It was different [playing with Les and Todd], because it was a real cozy feeling. It was just these two dudes in this room. We would just get together in that room and jam and rehearse. Back in those days, it was before everyone had a home studio, with computers and stuff. You weren’t doing much recording, unless you saved up some money and went to someone’s studio. And that was really rare. But we ended up doing that anyway—we recorded a demo tape. I can only compare it to what I was listening to at the time, so at the time, it reminded me of King Crimson. I was really into that stuff—King Crimson, Peter Gabriel. And playing with Les was kind of like that. But it was also a little fusion-y too, because he has a nice bass-plucking style.

DAVID LEFKOWITZ: The sound with Jay Lane was a different thing. It was still Todd Huth, obviously, but it just coalesced with the groove. The fact that everybody was influenced by this funk-oriented sound and Jay was a funk drummer—it just took it to a new level.

CHRIS “TROUZ” CUEVAS: Early on, I don’t know if I totally identified with it. I thought it was pretty cool, but I think at first when I heard it, I was like, This is Les’s thing, I’m going to support him. It’s interesting. But it really did grow on me—especially when the funk metal scene started forming, and there were other bands playing more hard rock/thrash stuff with funk bass lines. Y’know, Chilis, Fishbone, and some more local peers. Once that melded together, I got a lot more into Primus’s music, and became not only someone who was helping them out or working with them, but I definitely became a fan, as well. All our friends rallied around their shows. It would be a party every time they played.

DAVID LEFKOWITZ: At that time, 1988, this punk/funk scene was really growing. The world beat thing had sputtered out—the Freaky Executives signed to Warner Brothers and spent time recording and rerecording an album that never came out. The Looters signed to Island and put out one record, after one record on Alternative Tentacles. And that did nothing. And Big City broke up. So Brain [Bryan “Brain” Mantia] and Pete Scaturro formed the Limbomaniacs, and there were other bands, like Psychefunkapus, that went on to sign with Atlantic, and Fungo Mungo, who went on to sign with Island. The Limbomaniacs signed with Relativity Records, and had their one album produced by Bill Laswell, and it featured Maceo Parker and Bootsy Collins. And suddenly, this Red Hot Chili Peppers/Fishbone kind of vibe was the most influential thing in the Bay Area.

JAY LANE: We played these little clubs, and it was super packed. It was really relaxed, I remember it being really loose, because Les would have this little banter with the audience. To me, it really broke the whole thing of . . . All the bands I was in, in the eighties, it was like, We’re up here performing. We’ve got to be really good. There was no talking with the audience. It wasn’t like, “Hey, let’s just break it down. What’s up with this guy? Hey!” That was really cool, and it made it really easy to just relax and play. We didn’t make any money, but it was fun.

CHRIS “TROUZ” CUEVAS: Some of those local gigs were selling out, like Berkeley Square and this place called the Omni. All of a sudden, the energy of the fans changed. There was a line around the block and the intensity inside the show was just so crazy, with people stage-diving and going crazy. Back then, the Omni seemed like this major, huge club. And it probably only would hold five or six hundred people. But back then, that was a big deal.

Berkeley Square was small. Y’know, a black-box rock club, kind of. But fairly eclectic, and all the big bands that later became pretty huge came through and played Berkeley Square—from U2 to the Chili Peppers; the Clash one time came through. It was that small club that everybody played, and Berkeley didn’t really have many live music venues. It only had two, I think—the Keystone Berkeley and the Berkeley Square. So there then was this club in Oakland [the Omni], owned by the guy who started the Nady wireless system—one of the first wireless systems back then. It was a big, open space—high ceiling, not a rock club–looking place at all. And it had a big backstage, where you could roll your equipment. It seemed really professional. You go by that building today and you look at it from the outside, and you’re like, “That’s a piece of shit!” [Laughs] But it was amazing back then.

DAVID LEFKOWITZ: I used to create these bills that would draw enough people to warrant us doing a show headlining at the Omni in Oakland. I would call it the Funk Thrash Festival—just so people thought it was this big thing. Typically, it would be four bands—usually Primus and the Limbomaniacs, and then two other bands. And it did great—we would sell a thousand tickets on a regular basis. We could do that at least every other month—sometimes every six weeks. So we were able to make enough money from those shows to not only live on, but channel funds back into the band.

TODD HUTH: Jay came in, and he started playing and all the songs came together real fast. Then we went down and recorded a tape called Sausage. That kind of kicked off people noticing Primus—that tape.

LES CLAYPOOL: The Sausage demo came about because we were doing some shows locally. I think we were doing a show in the South Bay with Fungo Mungo. It was the first time we played with those guys and we were hanging out with them. They took us into . . . I don’t remember if it was my car or one of their cars, to play us their demo. And we were like, “Holy shit, this thing sounds amazing!” Sonically, it just sounded amazing. Mike, the guitar player, was like, “Dude, you’ve got to hook up with our buddy Matt Winegar. He did this on his little TASCAM.” I’m like, “Hell yeah, let’s hook up with this guy.” So we go to their rehearsal space, which was basically this storage unit down in Fremont, I think. We go in the place, and here’s this kid, Matt Winegar. I don’t know if he was fresh out of high school or still in high school. But he was this kid, and he had this little TASCAM reel-to-reel eight-track in this storage unit, and he set up a few mics—nothing fancy, some 57s and 58s. And me, Todd, and Jay played those songs that are on the Sausage demo. And it just sounded amazing. So then we had that demo and we started spreading it around, and it got very popular. That’s where the relationship started between us and Matt Winegar. I have a buddy that works with a lot of major acts and to this day he still plays that demo for folks, claiming it’s the best Primus recording ever.

MATT WINEGAR [Suck on This and Frizzle Fry coproducer]: Actually, I had a cassette tape that was a Primate cassette. I wish I still had that thing. It was crazy—I think it was just Les and Todd and a cheap drum machine. It has a version of “Too Many Puppies” that is the polar opposite of the version that ended up on the record. Super lightweight—almost like the B-52s or something. [Laughs] So Les said, “Let’s meet up on Saturday. What would you charge us? We need to do a five-song EP or something.” I was like, “I won’t charge you anything. Just come by and hang out.” I’m just a sixteen-year-old kid, getting to hang out with other musicians like myself, which was fun. And I always thought that Jay Lane was an amazing drummer too. It’s nice to sit and watch a really tasteful and funky drummer like Jay. So they came by on Saturday, and I remember they brought me a six-pack of Miller High Life. [Laughs] That’s what I was paid to do what’s now known as the Sausage demo.

Man, we just set everything up, threw some microphones on things, and it was maybe the easiest recording ever. It was like, set them all up and get them comfy, and they just did their thing, which I think was the big difference—they had been in all these professional studio environments, and it just altered them so much. Just the environment of being in a professional studio is weird to a musician a lot of times. Sometimes you’re separated and you have headphones. I’m pretty sure we did that thing with zero headphones. I think they felt really comfortable, and they got to play together, like they would in a rehearsal space. So we busted that thing out, and we just got along really good. We liked a lot of the same music and had similar interests.

DAVID LEFKOWITZ: The cover [of the Sausage demo] was no longer black and white, it was brown paper and had an interesting drawing by Les. Les was always very active making T-shirts for the band—his drawings or whatever. Sometimes it would be a shirt just for one show. So not only were the sales for the shows picking up, but they started being able to sell these tapes at shows.

LES CLAYPOOL: I didn’t draw that cover. It was the first of many Lance “Link” Montoya collaborations featuring a sketch of a sweaty bald man with a bratwurst clinched between his teeth.

MATT WINEGAR: The Sausage demo, it really wasn’t like a huge event. We did it in one day . . . we did it in one afternoon, it wasn’t even a day. It was probably a four-hour session, where we did the whole thing, mixed it, and that was it. It was a certain kind of chemistry going on with those guys, right around that point. Jay and Les really had a good thing going on with the rhythm section. I just loved the way Jay played the drums. I was a Jay Lane fan—Jay’s style was something that I thought there was a certain feel he had, where you go, Man, that guy’s got feel. He’s got something else going on besides, hey, he’s a really good drummer. Technically, he plays this and that. They had a personality that I thought was really interesting. And Les and him together, they just had this really good thing going on. I got the feeling that Les really enjoyed playing with Jay, a lot, during that time. And that they were sort of on the same page and not fighting each other, because I imagine being a drummer with Les, Les is going to lay down the tempo and feel, and he’s not going to budge.

That’s always been the thing with Les—most bass players are taught to follow the drums. And Les never did that. In fact, he would stay at one tempo and let the drummer drift off of him, and the drummer would have to come back and meet Les—Les just wouldn’t budge. And I know that it bothered Tim [Alexander] a little bit down the road. I remember Tim saying, “It’s so annoying. If the song starts to move a little bit, Les just stays right where he wants to be, and you better fucking match him or else the whole thing is going to fall apart.” Tim wanted Les to follow him, and Les wasn’t having it. [Laughs] But Les, he’d get on the drum set, and he could play the same two drum beats, but he played them really, really well. I remember the first time he was playing a drum set, and I was going, Hey, he’s playing the most simple drum beat in the world, but he’s got an amazing sense of tempo that just feels really spot-on and doesn’t move. And it translated right to his bass. He had a really, really good, even sense of timing and a good sense of rhythm—which has become apparent over time, now.

LES CLAYPOOL: I always attribute that to Kirk Hammett. Besides the golden nugget of the key to success being sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll, Kirk told me when he was first learning that the key was to always tap your foot. I tell my kids that now when they play; that, and Mr. Johnson being a stickler for tempo in high school jazz band.

TODD HUTH: The recording was great and it turned out great. Personally, I still think that’s the best Primus record ever made.

MATT WINEGAR: It certainly wasn’t production in the sense of what you think of production now, where you tear the songs down and rebuild the structure. I guess in the sense that it was judging performance, which is more what record production was back in the day. It was more like judging performance and, “You can get a better vocal there,” or, “You guys can play that better.” Now, it’s like record production has gone into this insane thing, where you’re responsible for every note of everything, and you’re changing everybody’s shit. [Laughs] I think the sign of the times was that the band didn’t really have any problems that needed to be addressed. They were what they were. It’s not like they were trying to be a pop band and you had to restructure everything to fit a pop format. They were almost like a jazz band or something, where you let them do their thing—it didn’t have to be edited down to a three-minute-and-fifteen-second radio length, because we never thought it was going to get played on the radio. So we obviously didn’t give a shit.

I don’t even know if there was a credit on the Sausage demo. But they were always really kind, and usually they’d give me more credit than was due to me because we were friends, and we were there to help each other out. It wasn’t some business agreement. Still to this day, I don’t like to make contracts. It’s just like, “Hey, man, if we can’t see eye-to-eye as human beings, then why are we working together? Let’s just try to be cool to each other, and help each other out.” So as far as I’m concerned, those guys threw me a bone. It was just icing on top of the cake, being able to hang out and help those guys out.

I remember Les had said, “Man, you have to meet my friend Adam Gates. You guys would totally be great playing music together.” That’s how I met Adam Gates. And then Adam and I ended up making a band called the Spent Poets eventually, that was on Geffen. Adam and I actually met through Les, which was interesting. And we’ve been lifetime friends from then on. Les obviously had a good gauge of what musician personalities were going to work well together. So yeah, they came in and did that, and that tape was just instantly popular.

LES CLAYPOOL: When we did the Sausage demo, people were actually buying it, and people wanted it. So we knew there was a good buzz about it. But unfortunately, not that long after that is when Jay Lane left the band, and then subsequently, Todd Huth left the band, and left me high and dry, to go find some new guys. [Laughs] And at that point we really started taking off—we were selling out Berkeley Square easy, started selling out the Omni, we were doing shows with Limbomaniacs and whatnot. And all of a sudden, this scene was forming, with Mr. Bungle, Fungo Mungo, and Psychefunkapus. There was this really vibrant scene going on in the Bay Area.

Todd Huth had a baby. And Todd is a family guy—he’s a very family-oriented guy. So when he had a baby, it became really difficult for him. He wasn’t around as much. I found even making T-shirts, me and Jayski were doing a lot of that stuff, and Todd wasn’t even around. It finally got to where Jayski was in this other band, the Freaky Executives, and they had a deal with Warner Brothers, so he was starting to get a little more distracted. And I was like, “Jay, you really need to commit to either us or them,” because he was getting really flaky and it was getting to be a drag. Since they had the deal with Warner Brothers, he decided to go with them.

JAY LANE: I was committed to the Freaky Executives. We had a Warner Brothers record deal, I was a cowriter in the band. Even though the band was kind of on its last legs, we still had this deal with Warner Brothers—a big-shit record deal. Had I seen that it was going to fall apart and that Primus was going to blow up, of course I would have chosen a different route. But I’m really happy about the way everything turned out, regardless. It was just a commitment thing. Les wanted me to basically quit that band, and I couldn’t.

TODD HUTH: We were getting to a point where I had a kid, Elmo, and Primus was playing a lot. We started playing out of town a little bit more. At one point, I think we had eight shows in seven days, and I was working—I had a job. I was exhausted, for one thing. So I came home and saw Elmo lying there, and he was a different kid. And I was kind of out of control—I didn’t have it under control of what was going on with Primus at that point. You know how things get out of control when you’re playing and people want you to do shows and go on tour and stuff. I thought, I’m not going to not see my kid grow up. This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. So I decided to leave because I wanted to be around for my kid. And I just knew Primus was going to take off. And much to Les’s dismay, I didn’t have a choice really.