A GOLDEN TICKET FROM PRIMUS
Trio joins forces with Willy Wonka
The delirious 1971 family film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory isn’t obvious fodder for an experimental-rock reawakening. Unless you’re talking about Primus, in which case, what took them so long?
Asking singer/bassist Les Claypool to explain the decision to put the Chocolate Factory under new ownership is like asking why there are giant rubber ducks in that photo. The short answer is: Why not?
The longer answer: “I tend to have a lot of ideas in my pocket. In my pockets — plural. And every now and again, one of them comes to fruition. This one did. I was planning on taking on some form of sacred cow, and I’d always thought of the Wonka film as something with potential.”
Claypool and his merry band of weirdos first staged their radically reconstructed tribute to the Chocolate Factory soundtrack in 2013, as one of their annual themed New Year’s Eve shows in California’s Bay Area. They journeyed farther down the Everlasting Gobstopper conveyor belt on last year’s album Primus and the Chocolate Factory and have brought the multimedia performance on the road, stopping at Metropolis on Wednesday.
The concert’s first set will cherry-pick from Primus’s catalogue of herky-jerky funk/metal/prog/etc. songs about beavers, fishermen, suicide and the DMV. The second set will feature a complete reading of the new album, with “all the gizmos and the goodies and the visuals and whatnot,” Claypool said.
Claypool remembers being awestruck by Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory’s fanciful universe as a youngster. “Even the credits rolling — I thought, ‘Oh my god, look at all the chocolate.’ You’d never seen anything like that before. There weren’t television shows about how it’s made and all that crap like there is now.”
From there, he went to the source: Roald Dahl’s beloved 1964 children’s book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The original tale of an impoverished boy and four wretched brats touring a possibly insane chocolatier’s playground was more twisted. And while everyone remembers the film’s tangerine-skinned Oompa Loompas and Gene Wilder’s electro-shock hair, Claypool also remembers an inexplicable shot of a chicken beheading that was spliced into the factory visitors’ acid-trip boat ride.
“Obviously, our take on it’s a little more dark and sinister.” Obviously. Claypool underplays his virtuosic tapping and slapping in favour of scrapes and saws from the netherworld, and voices the carefree Candy Man as if his gumdrops are laced with cyanide. Guitarist Larry LaLonde and drummer Tim Alexander match him stride for stride, and the tour includes a cellist and second percussionist to enhance the psychosis.
“It’s much more orchestral for us,” Claypool said, adding to the sense that Wednesday’s madness will be unlike any other Primus show we’ve seen.
Claypool says it was easy to slip into the skin of most characters when reworking the soundtrack, but I Want It Now, the big diva number for entitled monster Veruca Salt, is sung by LaLonde in his first lead vocal on a Primus album.
“It needed a different voice. The original thought was that he was going to put on a dress. We joked: ‘Hey Ler, for New Year’s you should put on a dress and sing this song.’ And he said ‘OK,’ and then he sang the song but he didn’t wear the dress, unfortunately. ... I think he did a great job. He sounds kind of like John Lydon.”
The tour has offered Primus an opportunity to branch out at the merch table, selling custom-made chocolate bars inspired by the band’s songs: the Mr. Krinkle (with crisped rice), the Professor Nutbutter (with peanuts), the Bastard bar (dark chocolate) and the Jerry Was a Race Car Driver bar (dark chocolate with espresso beans).
“My favourite one thus far has been the Pork Soda bar. But I think we only did that one for New Year’s and Halloween shows; it was a limited edition. It was dark chocolate with chocolate-flavoured Pop Rocks and bacon. It was amazing. … People seem to like the Jerry the Race Car Driver bar because it’s just chock full of caffeine.”
Not many ferociously original bands would devote half a show to a reworking of someone else’s music, but Claypool says the trio didn’t entertain doubts as to whether their audience would come along for the boat ride.
“This is sort of what you sign up for when you go to see Primus — or anything I do. You’re gonna get whatever’s floating my boat at the time. At one point it was Pink Floyd’s Animals; you got a whole set of that (with Claypool’s Frog Brigade band). And at one point we did Green Naugahyde (the 2011 release that marked Primus’s first full-length album in 12 years) in its entirety. Most people don’t really want to see the new record in its entirety, but we subjected them to it.
“But my favourite records that we’ve done have a running thread, some form of theme to them. … I taught my kids — my son especially — you don’t listen to part of The Wall.
“You set aside time to listen to the entire thing. You’re driving for a couple hours, you put on The Wall and you listen to it as if you’re watching a film. You don’t watch just a couple scenes from Dr. Strangelove.”
The otherworldly Chocolate Factory show is in keeping with Claypool’s roving vision, in and out of Primus. He has scampered about with a dizzying array of projects, most recently the country-fied Duo de Twang, “my f--k-off vacation band. I can go sit down and have a cocktail and stomp away with an old high school buddy of mine. It’s pretty fun.”
“You’re always looking for new rocks to turn over, and just going out and playing a bunch of tunes and being nostalgic is not really something that’s going to hold my interest for very long. I like to keep moving forward and finding new and interesting things to pursue — otherwise I get bored and I would rather stay home with my family. So doing these things is kind of what A) keeps me playing my instrument and B) keeps me on the planet.”
Two-thirds of Primus’s lineup has remained stable, with Claypool founding the group in 1984 and LaLonde staying on board since the 1989 live debut Suck on This, but the drum chair has rotated over the years. Alexander, the lumbering madman who walloped his way through Primus’s most enduring 1990s albums, rejoined the band for the second time in 2013.
“I think he came to the realization that even though he wanted to do a lot of these other things musically, what the world wanted to see him do was play his drums. And he was one of the better guys on the planet at it. … It’s like with me, too: I write books, I make wine, I made films, I draw these cartoons — I do all this crap, but when all is said and done, people want to see me play my bass.
“I think he got away from it long enough to appreciate it. And we all have to do that every now and again. You have to step away so you can appreciate what you’ve got.”
But my favourite records that we’ve done have a running thread, some form of theme to them.