Primus bass maestro Les Claypool talked about being the composer of the “South Park” theme, saying on Lars Ulrich’s “It’s Electric“ show (transcribed by UG):
“The greatest thing about ‘South Park’ and being a part of ‘South Park’ is – as you know, you’re a guy who has to cross the border a lot, go through customs.
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“And you get that guy – well, I get that guy, I don’t think you get that guy – but I get that guy that looks at me like, ‘So, you’re a musician. What band?’
“I go, ‘Primus,’ and they just glaze over, they have no idea…
“And I say, ‘I’m the guy at the beginning of ‘South Park.’ And they go, ”South Park!’ and stand me right through.
“It’s unbelievable. They have helped me get through customs more often than I could… and I owe them quite a lot just for that.”
During the rest of the chat, Les talked about auditioning for Metallica back in ’86 when Jason Newsted got the gig, saying:
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“I got invited down, it was an honorable thing to play with my old buddy Kirk and the Metallica guys.
“I learned a couple of tunes and I brought my bass banjo ’cause I thought, ‘This will work great with Metallica!’
“So we all get in this control room and there’s a glass and Lars is on the other side of it.
“And he’s like, ‘I can’t hear James. I can’t hear James! I can’t see James!’ They’re like, ‘Well, we don’t know what to do, we can’t put you in the room…’
“‘Take the glass out!’ And we all kinda chuckle, haha… ‘Take the glass out.’
“Guys came in and removed the glass from the studio. Brain [Bryan Mantia, drummer] was playing in Primus at that point. I said, ‘Lars couldn’t see James, so he had the glass removed.’
“He was like, ‘Dude! You gotta be kidding me! That’s so heavy! That’s unbelievable! He removed the glass, oh my God!’ He just thought that was the greatest thing he’d ever heard in his life.”