Oz is a trippy guy. He came in and started burning this special incense he makes himself, and he set up these paintings of somber-looking faces in different parts of the room to give him energy. He floats in an isolation tank for an hour every day, but when you meet him he isn't wearing a dashiki or anything. He travels around the world with Bill Laswell and records sound effects—a lot of the stuff we used on the record, like the "Sacred Cow" intro, is from that. He has hours and hours of that stuff.

Producers
[Longtime Primus A&R man] Tom Whalley liked the demo we did with Oz, but he still thought we should work with a producer. So I asked him, "Who's the George Martin or Brian Eno of today? Show me those people, and I'll work with them." We had worked with the Dust Brothers and Rick Rubin on the South Park project, testing out the waters and seeing where we wanted to go next. That's when I got the idea to work with some artists we respect, as producers instead of musicians. We sent stuff to Roger Waters, Peter Gabriel, David Byrne, and Stewart Copeland—Stewart jumped right on it.

We basically tracked everything here, except for the tunes we did with Matt Stone and Tom Morello, which we went to L.A. for. I remember thinking, when we were first talking about working with the different artists, that it was either a great idea or would end up being a huge disaster. Everyone had a completely different perception of us and what they wanted to do with us.

Tom Morello was the first person we worked with; we recorded the tracks for his three songs in three days, and then we did the vocals up here. He co-wrote those songs; all three started with his riffs. He is the only person who's ever come into the Primus world and caused me to just hand over the reins and sit back. He definitely called the shots the whole way, like it was his band all three days. And it was awesome. At no point did I go, "I don't know, dude"—I felt so comfortable.

On Geezer & Bill
We played two months of the Ozzfest tour, maybe 30 shows. [Black Sabbath's] Geezer Butler was unbelieveable. We played with Sabbath earlier in the year, but Bill Ward wasn't drumming then. Nobody plays like Bill Ward. Most drummers tend to speed up when they fill; it's a natural thing. But Bill slows down when he fills: tun, tun, tun, tun, tun ... bam! He's this big guy who looks like Norm from Cheers, and his drums are just wide-open, with no muffling. He doesn't hit real hard—kind of like John Bonham. If you watch Bonham in the old videos you'll see he kind of whips the drums with his wrists. It's almost a lethargic way to play; every hit is deliberate, with a lot of emphasis on one cymbal hit or tom fill without beating you through the head. Most younger players beat the shit out of their drums, but Bill kind of finesses them. I watched the first show from out front, and I got a little teary-eyed watching them.

"Eclectic Electric"
When we were recording that middle section, I wanted it to be the biggest guitars ever. I've been hanging out with Jim Martin [ex-Faith No More] and James Hetfield [Metallica], so I asked them to come play on it. Hetfield alone is just this montrous wall of guitar, and Jim Martin ... when they replaced Jim Martin in Faith No More, they were never able to get that guitar sound again. He's just one of these guys, like [Black Sabbath's] Tommy Iommi—nobody can replicate that sound. And those two guys are such good friends, I just figured it would be awesome if they played together. And it was!

When we recorded, both Jim and James set up in my pool-table room, and their amps were so incredibly loud they couldn't hear what was in the headphones. So Hetfield was standing out on the deck with his leather jacket on, playing his guitar. There was a rainstorm going on, so he's standing there playing with the wind and rain blowing on him. It was one of the most awesome things I've ever seen—but unfortunately I never thought to videotape it.

I told Toby, "When we mix this song, we've got to take mushrooms." And he was like, "Okay." So when the day came to mix this song, I went into the other room to do some samples in Pro Tools. I was getting these samples of my kids off a videotape, and I'm listening to these samples over and over, and I started kind of freaking out. I brought them in to Toby, gave him the samples, and told him I had to get out of there.

"Ballad of Bodacious"
There actually is a bull named Bodacious. In fact there's this whole subculture that's into him. He was retired at the age of seven because he almost killed a couple guys. I saw a TV show about him, and I thought it was fascinating, so I went online and found out all about him. Later we were in this Western store, and in a glass case I saw a belt buckle that said BODACIOUS on it, so I bought it. We're trying to get the song pushed onto country radio.