Farewell Tour

As Primus prime movers Les Claypool and Larry Lalonde prepare to set off on a tour that pays tribute to Rush’s iconic 1977 album, A farewell to kings, they check in with GW and — of course — Rush’s Alex Lifeson.

- By Joe Bosso

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 Claypool 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.’”

Ever since Primus opened for Rush in 1992, the members of both bands have remained tight. Recalling his reaction when he was told that Primus planned to tackle