The 60-year-old musician and performer Les Claypool is considered to be one of the greatest bass players ever. Off-kilter and quirky, the frontman for bands like Primus and Colonel Les Claypool’s Fearless Flying Frog Brigade is beloved by many for his songs, playing, and contribution to the South Park theme song.
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But with so much life in his hands, so much experience as an artist and with so much success, one might wonder what Claypool has to say about the world around him, but life and love, his craft, bands and much more.
[RELATED: The 5 Best Les Claypool Songs]
Well, that is the very subject of today’s inquiry. Without further ado, here below are the 20 best Les Claypool quotes.
1. “More than anything, I think the best thing you can do as an artist is just stay as true to yourself as possible and hope that your fan base will appreciate that.”
2. “I had one guy pretend to be me, go to a hotel room, and tell the people at the front desk that it was me, and then he went in and stole all of our luggage. There’s always that eager beaver that wants to be a part of the team and comes off as a sticky fly.”
3. “Play as much as you can as often as you can with as many people as you can. That’s how you learn and grow.”
4. “I never think about rhythm versus melody; I’ve always just played to what’s in my head.”
5. “My favorite venues are the 2,000-seat theaters, like the Warfield [in San Francisco]. If there was a Warfield in every city, I would play it. That’s all I would do. I love venues like that.”
6. “We’ve all had our thing. I listened to the Monkees when I was little kid.”
7. “I’ve had fish come up on stage, and it’s pretty disgusting. I try and discourage that. I discourage anything flying up on stage, actually.”
8. “The end of the Nineties was an unhappy Primus camp. I hit a creative stagnation that wasn’t helping us forward, and the personal elements, it just was time to stop.”
9. “As I’ve moved through life, I’ve found that I like things to be as casual and as spontaneous as possible when writing.”
10. “You know, there are times when you play a song over and over and over and you get a little tired of it and you let it sit for a while. It’s like, you may love eating sushi, but if you eat it every single day, you’re going to get a little tired of it.”
11. “My heroes are guys like [film directors] Frank Capra and Elia Kazan and Coen brothers and Terry Gilliam, more so than a lot of bass players at this point in my life. So I’ve always been an old-film nut and have very much enjoyed doing videos over the years.”
12. “I’ve always said the bass just happens to be the crayon I picked out of the box. I’d still be drawing the same pictures … should I have picked trumpet or accordion or guitar, whatever it may be. The sounds in my head are still the same.”
13. “If I’m home and I come up with something, I’ll try to record it, but a lot of the time I’ll forget to. A lot of things go off into space and never come back ’cause I just don’t remember them.”
14. “I have a very difficult time describing my music.”
15. “Because nobody wanted to play bass, I was instantly in a band.”
16. “Comedians get jokes offered to them, rock stars get women and underwear thrown onstage, and I get guys that want to take me fishing.”
17. “You don’t go see Primus to see what kind of new clothing I’m wearing or what my new hairdo is. You come to see Primus for the musical experience and the visual experience. I think, anyways. Maybe I’m wrong!”
18. “I like to open new doors and blaze new trails through the jungle and all that whatnot. What keeps me goin’ all these years is changin’ it up.”
19. “To me, if you’re going to talk about funk, you have to go back to George Clinton and Bernie Worrell. Those guys are the giants. I’ve played with Bernie, and it was unreal. He’s the master.”
20. “I don’t really listen to bassists—not anymore. When I was younger, I listened to those guys and was trying to figure out everything they did. Nowadays, I draw inspiration from everybody.”
Photo by Paul Haggard / Courtesy Prospect PR
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