FAREWELL TOUR
“I’M USING [A GIBSON DOUBLENECK THAT] ALEX SENT ME, BUT I FOUND OUT HE PUT BRICKS INSIDE OF IT. IT’S TWICE AS HEAVY!”— Larry LaLonde of Primus
Claypool quickly points out, however, that at first the band considered paying tribute to their musical heroes by playing that album’s follow-up, 1978’s Hemispheres, but there was one little hitch: “Hemispheres has ‘Cygnus X-1 Book II’ on it,” he says, “and we couldn’t really go out and play that one without doing the first one — that would be a little strange.” For a second or two, the band even tossed around the idea of covering Rush’s grand sci-fi classic 2112, but Clay-pool thought that such a gesture would be deemed “too obvious.”
“So we decided to play A Farewell to Kings,” he says, “which made sense because it has ‘Cygnus X-1 Book I.’ Plus, that was the first Rush album I ever heard. I remember seeing Cygnus as a kid and watching the Rocinante spaceship flying through the black hole and just ejaculating in my pants and thinking, ‘That’s the greatest thing I had ever seen.’”
“HONESTLY, THIS WHOLE THING STARTED AS A JOKE,” SAYS BASSIST , EXPLAINING HOW HE AND HIS PRIMUS BANDMATES — GUITARIST LARRY “LER” LaLONDE AND DRUMMER — BEGAN COVERING RUSH’S 1977 ALBUM A FAREWELL TO KINGS FROM START TO FINISH. “THEN ONE
