In a recent interview with Vulture, SLIPKNOT co-founder and percussionist M. Shawn Crahan (a.k.a. Clown) was asked to share a song that brings to mind his late bandmates, bassist Paul Gray and drummer Joey Jordison.
“I miss them,” he said. “You know, it’s too much. I feel bad even doing interviews about our 25th anniversary because most of it lives with them. Their contributions to my life are incomprehensible. Yet here I am. It’s really hard for me. I don’t like that they don’t get to talk. They are the two people you should be talking to right now. Now it’s all memory. And, you know, not that many people try to take Paul from me but a lot of people try to take Joey from me because of the circumstances. But none of the band ever talk about that. Why would we? That’s our brother. It’s hard today because so many people have all these opinions on what Joey‘s thoughts might have been of me. A lot of humans like to tell you exactly what they know that I don’t know. All I can tell you is that those are my brothers, and, love me or hate me, it doesn’t matter. We did some s**t.”
“Whenever we play ‘Vermillion’, I think of Paul. I just remember him upstairs in the mansion whittling away at that song for weeks. He was a genius. And Joey, God, it’s just about everything. Right now we’re playing ‘Scissors’ and you can only play that song with his kind of ability, and we haven’t been there for a long, long time. We’re finally back there. It was a song where he’d really just go off. But even a song like ‘Spit It Out’, the way Joey demanded the attention in that song. He was like the conductor — everyone paid attention to him. I miss that.”
During a recent interview with Metal Hammer, Clown revealed that the band’s close-knit bond from their early days has diminished due to the challenges they’ve faced over the years.
“Brother, the band will never be like that again,” Clown said while reflecting band’s history. “I can’t tell you how close we were then: we’re not that close anymore. People are gone. Craig‘s [Jones] out, Chris [Fehn] is out, Joey‘s [Jordison] out, Paul‘s [Gray] out. The band is different. But, back then, there was nine guys that wanted to be in the same place, and we made it work. And we wound up here, which is wonderful.”
In another part of the interview, Crahan delivers a heartfelt speech about the crucial role Gray and Jordison played in SLIPKNOT‘s growth.
“I’m doing these 25-year anniversary interviews, and not a lot of human beings are asking me about them,” he says. “You can’t talk about any of this without talking about them.”
“They’re greatly missed, and every day that I go through this 25-year anniversary, I miss them more, but also appreciate, love, and just acknowledge who they were to all this. It’s very important for me to say that, because these are two gentlemen that should be talking to you, and they can’t.
Gray, the band’s bassist and one of the key songwriters, passed away 14 years ago on May 24, 2010, at the age of 38. Jordison, the band’s drummer, died on July 26, 2021, at the age of 46.
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