Page 30 - Classic Rock (January 2020)

it were – and the result is, as Lennon says, “definite
CLAYPOOL
LENNON
DELIRIUM
A state of delirium struck again as Les Claypool and Sean Lennon
returned with their prog/psychedelic garage-rock album South Of Reality.
Interview: Richard Bienstock
n 2015, Sean Lennon’s band the Ghost Of
A Saber Tooth Tiger were the openers on
Ia tour co-headlined by Primus and Dinosaur
Jr. Which is how Lennon ended up having an
impromptu jam with Primus bassist and lead
vocalist Les Claypool one night before a show.
“We were playing on acoustics in the back
of Les’s tour bus, ten or fifteen minutes before
one of us was supposed to go on stage,” Lennon
recalls. “And we came up with a bunch of things
really fast. I remember Les being like: ‘Yeah,
I noticed that you were kind of writing a song as
we jammed, as opposed to just noodling.’ I think
he liked that.”
“He was playing things that I wasn’t expecting,
and that always intrigues me when I play with
someone,” Claypool adds. “So I could tell right
away that we had an interesting dynamic together.
And I also liked the fact that Sean sometimes
26 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM
has odd approaches to what he does,” he says,
laughing. “Because, as you may know from my
work, I’m a little off-centre, too.”
‘Off-centre’, of course, doesn’t even begin
to describe the supreme oddness of Claypool
and Lennon’s individual artistic output. As the
frontman and main songwriter for Primus, the
former has spent the past three decades or so
crafting some of the knottiest, most dizzyingly
complex and bizarre bass lines in modern music.
As for Lennon, he’s a multi-instrumentalist
who as well as his solo and band pursuits has
collaborated with artists in pop, rock, metal,
avant-garde, hip-hop, psychedelia, folk and other
genres – and that’s in addition to his work scoring
films, producing records, acting and more. (He
is also, of course, the son of John Lennon and
Yoko Ono.) Put these two off-centre individuals
together in a room – or the back of a tour bus, as
creative chemistry”.
The outcome of that chemistry is the Claypool
Lennon Delirium, a project which serves as
a conduit for the two artists to explore the
outermost reaches of their shared musical
sensibilities. The duo released their debut album
Monolith Of Phobos in 2016, and followed it up in
2017 with the EP Lime And Limpid Green.
In 2019 they returned with a full-length follow-
up, the similarly exploratory South Of Reality, on
which they indulging their shared love of 60s and
70s prog, psych and garage rock and melding it to
jam-band-esque instrumental excursions, sweet-
and-sour vocal harmonies and a lyric approach
that is one part dark ruminations on the human
condition and one part word-salad whimsy.
Claypool and Lennon recently sat down to
talk about their artistic bond, their recording
arrangement, and what it is they like about
working with one another. Central to this last
point, Lennon says, is the fact that “we have
an easy flow together”. Which, Claypool adds,
is an important, if not essential, aspect of the
Delirium. “It has to be easy,” he says. “Because
I don’t like pushing things. If things aren’t coming
easy, then I’ll go do something else — like catch
a fish or something.”
You pull from a lot of different sounds and styles
in the Claypool Lennon Delirium, especially late-
sixties and early-seventies prog. What do you love
about that music?
open-ended, and you can kind of do anything with
Sean Lennon: I think we love prog because it’s
it. It’s expansive. So it suits us, because it doesn’t
seem strange to write a song in three sections
about a rocket scientist [the track Blood And Rockets,
about American rocket engineer Jack Parsons]. It’s
the theatrical version of rock’n’roll. [laughs]
Les Claypool: I like it because it’s a rock that
I haven’t really turned over on my own yet. And
I tend to turn over a lot of rocks. I think Primus
has always been pretty progressive, but in
a different way. Primus is a heavier band. This to
me is more reminiscent of Syd-era Floyd stuff and
things that were going on around that time. And
we come at it from different angles. As a kid I was
a big fan of Rush and Yes and Utopia and Jethro
Tull, whereas I think Sean was coming from
a more psychedelic side of things. We like turning
each other on to different things.
What was the collaborative process like for South
Of Reality? Were you guys coming up with ideas
independent of one another, or were you working
on everything together?
SL: Both. Les has a really good work ethic in
a lot of ways. For example, he has this policy
that everyone show up for rehearsal the first day
knowing all the songs for a tour. Every part! He
wants you to do your homework. It’s kind of like
that for him when making a record, too. He does
his homework before he gets there, and he shows
up with a lot of ideas. But then there are other
things that we came up with just by jamming
together in the studio. Sometimes we would write
a song a day for several days in a row.”