Tommy The Cat

Like many Primus songs, this one features a pretty outrageous character, in this case, Tommy The Cat. It's unclear if Tommy is a real cat or a man (a "Tomcat" is a male cat), but he certainly gets a lot of pussy. The lyrics sound like the clever dialogue of an old movie as we hear Tommy's story over the intricate bassline Primus is known for.

This song is "somewhat based" on Tommy Crank, namesake of the Tommy Crank Band, which Claypool was part of in the early '80s. "He was just this smooth character," Claypool said in the book Primus, Over the Electric Grapevine. He always wore a fedora - long before anybody was wearing fedoras. Actually a wide brim, more of a Panama. Just a real smooth guy, a cool guy. It's kind of based on him. But it's purely fictional. It's my 'Mickey Mouse,' basically."

A live favorite, this song was released in 1990 on Suck On This, which was Primus' first album - a collection of their live performances. In 1991, they recorded a studio version with Tom Waits on vocals that appeared on their album Sailing the Seas of Cheese. Waits would later gain widespread acclaim, but at the time he was a relatively obscure artist. Les Claypool of Primus was a big fan from the jump. He told Songfacts: "When I first started talking about Tom Waits to friends of mine, they all thought I was nuts, because they thought I was saying John Waite. I'm like, 'Yeah, let's listen to some Tom Waits.' They're like, 'What the hell are you talking about?' So it's pretty amazing to see his evolution just as far as his status in the world of music."