Slipknot’s Shawn “Clown” Crahan reflected on the deaths of Paul Gray and Joey Jordison, noting how sometimes it feels “too much.”
With the death of Paul Gray in 2010, Shawn “Clown” Crahan remained the only founding member of Slipknot still in the band (original vocalist Anders Colsefni left in 1997). Eleven years later, the extended Slipknot family suffered another loss, with the untimely death of beloved and esteemed drummer Joey Jordison, who had previously departed the band in 2013. Crahan admits to Vulture in a new interview that he still misses both of his former bandmates, noting how, sometimes, the pain almost feels too much to bear.
The subject arose as he was asked to name the song that reminds him of Gray and Jordison the most, to which he replied:
“I miss them. 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 shit.”
He added:
“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.”
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