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Claypool’s frankly magnificent legwork here may or may not be a homage to Keep On Truckin’, an oft-imitated cartoon by ‘60s counterculture legend Robert Crumb. There is definitely a reasonable crossover in the Venn diagram of Primus fans and Robert Crumb fans, and that Venn diagram smells like weeeeeeeeeeeed.
Talking of weed, Claypool once bought some off Metallica’s Kirk Hammett, who he went to high school with. He once described his relationship with the ol’ wacky backy to Louder: “Larry (Lalonde, Primus guitarist) and I were pretty much stoned during the writing of our first three records, but there are stoners and then there are stoooooooners! Our old drummer Jay Lane was a real stoner, I mean the kind of consumption he could get through was unreal. I’d just pick it up and put it down throughout the day – I’ve never been one for overindulgence, because, well you can see it in my songs, there is a lot of substance abuse in my family. My cousin is in and out of prison all the time with a speed problem and I lost my uncle at fifty. He was a tweaker, he was on speed, so I’ve always known to keep an eye on it and knew that this behaviour was in my DNA… That being said, yes, I did enjoy marijuana and I still do to this day. I have my vaporiser and I like to visit it now and again.”
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'Steal us some wine', sings Claypool. Claypool, like Tool’s Maynard James Keenan, has his own vineyard, swapping his long love of weed for a pinot noir habit. “Having traded my smoking vice with a thirst for pinot,” he says, “a couple of buddies and I decided to make some vino from a ton of fruit that became available to us just so we could fill our cellars with juice.“