and the growl and the heaviness, and it started to become
this wash. It didn’t sound like
music anymore. I was still in high
school at the time, and I had a
bunch of friends who were into
the Grateful Dead. So I went and
checked them out, and it was a
completely different scene. Then I
got into King Crimson. One day
we went over to this older guy’s
house to check out his new stereo,
and he put on Frank Zappa’s
“You Are What You Is,” and it just
sounded insane. I was, like, “What
is this music?” I went to the mall
and bought the record—which
had Steve Vai on guitar—and that
changed everything.
Les, you and Flea have been
copied a lot over the last 20
years or so. Do you ever feel
frustrated that there doesn’t
seem to be anyone new carrying
that torch of bass originality
into the future?
Claypool: To be honest, I don’t
really pay attention to that. My
favorite bass player of the past 15
years was Mark Sandman [the
late Morphine bassist]. He was
amazing—I loved his playing.
It was so sultry and had such a
huge signature to it, and yet he
played a 2-string bass with both
strings tuned to the same note—
and he played it with a slide. But
the emotion and the soul he had
in everything he did was just, to
me, phenomenal.
Today it’s so easy for young
players to go on You Tube and
learn anything that it seems
harder than ever to be original.
Claypool: But there’s some kid
out there right now who’s bubbling under the surface. The
young players are starting where
we left off, just like Stewart
Copeland started where [John]
Bonham, or whoever he was listening to, left off. There are guys
starting where Stewart left off.
Guys like Tim Alexander and [the
Foo Fighters’] Taylor Hawkins love
Stewart’s playing. I’m watching my
son’s friends, and they’re starting
with guys like me and Flea and
Geddy. We went on this boat trip
the other day, and my son’s friend
was playing a bunch of Muse for
me, and I was like, “Man, this
is great stuff!” So, there’s always
somebody there. It just depends
somewhat on what the trends are.
But there are some young kids
out there that can totally eat my
lunch, no problem [laughs].
It seems a lot harder to differentiate yourself though, because
it’s so easy to hear and learn any
kind of music. It seems like a
path to the cliché, “jack of all
trades, master of none.”
Claypool: Y’know, I haven’t
really listened to bass players in
many years. I don’t go buy records
because of the bass player. But
I did years ago. When I was a
kid, it was every Chris Squire
and Geddy Lee thing I could
find. And then I stumbled across
Stanley Clarke and—oh my god!
You can look at me and look at
Stanley and see where I got a lot
of my stuff. I saw him play fairly
recently, and he’s still just killin’ it.
Is Clarke the one who got you
into slapping and popping?
Claypool: No. It was Louis
Johnson on Don Kirshner’s Rock
Concert. I was like, “Holy shit—
look at that guy!” He used to
stick his thumb out, like, a foot
and a half away from the bass and
smack away. I didn’t really have
any money as a kid—I had like
10 records—but I had buddies
whose entire [bedroom] walls and
ceilings were covered with album
covers, and I would go over and
listen to music. I was sitting there
one day when I was 14 or 15,
going, “Oh man, Geddy Lee—
there’s nobody better than Geddy
Lee!” This guy who was older
than me was, like, “I like Geddy,
but, man, you need to listen to
some Stanley Clarke and some
Larry Graham.” He played me
some Larry Graham and Sly and
the Family Stone, and I was, like,
“Whoa!” Then he played Stanley.
I went by Musicland or one of
those record stores, and there was
I Wanna Play for You, when it first
came out, and there he was on
the cover, smoking a cigar with
his Alembic bass. I bought it and
opened it up, and there’s all the
pictures of his basses . . . man, I
ate that record up.
Did you learn those songs note
for note?
Claypool: I didn’t have an amp,
so I couldn’t hear myself when
I was playing along with the
records. Rhythmically, I could play
a lot of the stuff, but who knew
what the hell key I was in—all I
could hear was the clickity-clickity-
clickity. Maybe that helped me
develop a unique style. But I think
what’s going to keep me relevant
is how I feel the music. If you just
listen to me or Flea, you’re not
going to have a very well-rounded
way of expressing yourself on your
instrument. But if you listen to a
lot of different things—and not
just the bass—you’re going to
develop a unique style . . . if you
have that in you.
LES CLAYPOOL’S GEARBOX
Basses
Claypool Pachyderm 4-strings (maple body, walnut top,
padauk pickguard, graphite-reinforced maple neck, ebony
fretboard) with P-style EMG pickups and Kahler tremolo,
seven Carl Thompson basses in fretted and fretless versions
with various woods, Zeta upright bass, Bayou resonator bass
Amps
Two Mackie FRS2800 power amps, two Ampeg 4x10 cabs
Effects
Korg AX300B, Boomerang Phrase Sampler, MXR Bass
D.I.+, MXR EQ, Line 6 DM4 Distortion Modeler, Line 6
DL4 Delay Modeler, two API 7600 channel strips (used
for EQ and compression before Mackie power amps)
LER LALONDE’S GEARBOX
Guitars
1976 Fender Strat with Fender N3 Noiseless pickups,
’ 69 Fender Thinline Tele, 2010 Fender American
Deluxe Stratocaster
Amps
Fender 60-watt Super-Sonic heads, EVH 5150 III 4x12
cabinets with 25-watt Celestion G12EVH speakers
Effects
Fulltone Ultimate Octave, three MXR Carbon Copys,
Way Huge Swollen Pickle, Way Huge Ring Worm,
Fulltone Mini DejaVibe 2, EBS OctaBass, Strymon
Brigadier, Strymon Ola, Strymon Orbit, Strymon BlueSky
Reverberator, two-voice custom Dunlop wah
Strings and Accessories
