The live shows that defined Slipknot, as told by Corey and Clown

The Slipknot live experience is the stuff of legend. From the unhinged chaos of the late ‘90s to the well-oiled carnival of horrors that now demolishes arenas around the world, the 18-legged killing machine still strikes fear into the hearts of those who dare to watch it.

Over the years we’ve seen it all from The Nine: stagediving, fire, vomiting, fighting, flaming baseball bats, beer kegs, rotating drum kits, and even more fire. As the band’s sound and image has evolved, so has the accompanying live show. What started as a nightmarish freakshow in the darkest, dingiest bars of Des Moines has morphed into a Technicolor terror operation capable of running roughshod over any festival on the planet.

“It’s come with its benefits and its sacrifices, it’s come with its love and its hate, it’s come with its true sorrow that is unexplainable and horrific,” says Slipknot’s maniacal mastermind Clown of the band’s story thus far. “At this point, the culture and the band are finally one, and it’s one big family reunion everywhere we go.”

It’s taken over two decades of toiling away onstage – giving literal blood, sweat and tears for their art – to reach this point. But how have this rabble of pain enthusiasts managed to not only survive, but also succeed up to this point? We sit down with Clown and Corey Taylor to trace Slipknot’s story through the most important shows of their lives…

Corey Taylor: “This show took place a month after I officially left Stone Sour. I didn’t have a lot of time; I was jumping headfirst into a band where I only really knew a couple of people, but I believed in what it was so much that I didn’t care. It was really like embracing a whole different culture. This was before the coveralls; Clown wore them, but it was before we started working on a uniform look. I dressed like a priest, thinking, ‘If I’m really gonna fucking go out there, I’m gonna go out there!’ We didn’t have masks – I had latex ‘X’s over my eyes and shit!

“It was the hottest day of the year, and we were playing inside a club that was already packed with people. I’d never experienced heat like that before. During the show I started taking shit off, because that’s what I did in other bands, and that’s what a normal human being would do in oppressive heat. But [the guys] fucking ripped me to shreds after that show – and that’s how I learned that there was a certain way to do shit with Slipknot. There was a certain way that you just handle doing it. Don’t show weakness, don’t show fear, because that’s the only way you’re gonna fucking make it when all of those chips are stacked against you.

“It was a hell of a learning curve. I really started to dig the mentality; I started to love it. Turn that pain back on the audience – don’t show it, embrace it. A lot of other singers might have quit because of that kind of criticism, especially for a newcomer coming in with no track record for working with those guys. I was coming from a different world, but at the same time I knew that this was what I wanted to do.”

Clown: “We were green, we were definitely a lot younger, and we were physically more aggressive than we are now, because our bodies are pretty much broken at this point (laughs). I remember arriving on that tour, and we decided to see who was the fastest in the band – we’d do sprints in the parking lot. I remember running against Joey [Jordison, drums], Chris [Fehn, vocals/percussion], Sid [Wilson, DJ]… we were like security dogs that needed to be taken out on laps! Even before it started, we were doing sprints, just to get the aggression out. But it was the entrance of the dream. We had to know that what we were trying to do was gonna work, so we were very disciplined, and there were a lot of rules we made for ourselves in order to keep that discipline. But that didn’t translate to the rest of the community; the community was pretty difficult to navigate around, and a lot of it had to do with being new. And then there was the whole ruckus of what we were. We don’t just play shows, we start wars.

“[At one show] I jumped off the stage and into a blue barrel. In the old days, playing bars before we were signed, I’d always sing the song Tattered & Torn inside a garbage can. I’d find myself in the middle of the floor with people jumping on the garbage can and kicking it – I used to do it without the can, but then I’d get kicked and punched, so I thought I’d get myself some armour! So at Ozzfest, I thought this thing was a garbage can and that I’d jump in it… but it was full of water. I couldn’t move or get out; I was upside down, my ears and nose filled with water. I was trapped and thought to myself, ‘You stupid fuck, you finally did it – you just went with your emotions and now you’re fucking dead.’ Then, all of a sudden, one of our techs pulled me out, and I got back onstage. After the show I gave him a hug, like, ‘You saved my life!’ There were little things like that: electrocutions, stitches, all the normal shit. What’s sad is that people may have heard things that happened, but they didn’t see the weeks of healing and what really went on. It’s bad, man. There are a lot of bruises, but fuck it all.”

Corey: “I’d been waiting my whole life to come to the UK. I knew we had a chance to really capture something amazing, to set the tone. We weren’t getting the same kind of excitement in America – something was happening, but it was not even close to the level of excitement in the UK. Your mind starts thinking about that moment, what it’s going to feel like, how that show will stack up against those iconic shows that you used to hear about… So we roll into this show, but there’s no way to prepare for the amount of insanity that really was fucking unleashed. To this day, I have aches that I’ve named after the Astoria show. I remember walking on that stage thinking it was the first time we’d played in front of an audience that gets what we are. The roar that we got from that audience was deafening. It’s amazing, the amount of people that claim to have been at that show – the capacity was maybe 1,000, but I’ve had at least 20,000 people tell me they were there (laughs).

“I remember looking out from the stage and it being just smoke and bodies. People were throwing people in the fucking air. It was like that in every show we played in the UK during the first year-and-a-half. Every time we came, we saw something new. There was a show we did in Wolverhampton where people started to create this really weird human pyramid, then they were tearing the fucking seats out!

“I don’t think they could have got another person in the Astoria that night. I was trying so hard to find myself in a moment onstage because sometimes those things can blow right by you, but the only real memory I have is just standing out and watching. It looked like people were being murdered in the audience. I was stunned, like, ‘Good God! What have we done? We’re all going to jail!’”

Clown: “Looking back at interviews [back then], you see how much people were setting up the ‘Knot for possible failure. There was that pressure of the press, and everyone was waiting for us to fizzle out like a fuckin’ balloon. Then there was the pressure of the corporate world, with in-stores and all the stuff we had to do to keep on top of our success, with nobody guiding us through it. It was just do, do, do, do, and a lot of people patted their pockets. They know who they are. What did it do for a show like Docklands? It made it violent. It made it real. It made it Slipknot, and it made it our culture. Only our people come to the shows. It’s been our culture from day one.

“[To film] the DVD, we had these lipstick cams, which was the same philosophy as a Go-Pro, but about nine inches long, and it had to be hooked on mechanically to a guitar, reinforced with gaffer tape – and then you wear the recorder! Imagine going up to Mick [Thomson, guitar], like, ‘Hey, we’ve got these steady cams to put on your guitar to get this surreal footage of you.’ Of course he did it, and some of most aggressive footage is him with that cam, but that was the stress.

“Shows like that are legendary because they could have been the last show. We played ’em like they were gonna be our last show. It was always very dangerous, and very scary.”

Clown: “I’ve got nothing but respect for bands we play with, but when I’m playing with you, it’s ‘Get this or die.’ I don’t care what you did; I don’t give two shits what your fans think – I’m there to live my life, our life as Slipknot, and live it with our fans. That’s all I remember about any time opening for any band. I remember that being a glorious time, though. There were a lot of guys in the band [who grew up with Slayer], and to play with them was a dream, but it was also about learning. I have nothing but respect for anybody that ever gave us a chance or played with us, but I have more respect for bands that went on after us (laughs). Slayer are one of the greatest bands, and we learned a lot. When you’re playing with legendary status, you’ve gotta bring legendary status.”

Corey: “I had to make myself take a second and enjoy the moment. The first time you headline Download is such an incredible experience – you just find yourself staring out like, ‘Holy fuck!’ We’d played Download before, and I’d played it with Stone Sour as well, but it’d never even occurred to me that one day we’d fucking headline. That was for bands like Maiden, bands like Metallica, like AC/DC… That was my mentality. It wasn’t until we got the offer that I realised we were bigger than we ever imagined.

“We do a huddle before every show, and I pulled everybody together. I was really fucking emotional; it’s something I’d dreamed of since I was a kid. I slapped everybody’s face and said, ‘Realise what we’ve done here. This is because of all of the hard work, because of all of our fans screaming for it to happen, and because we’ve earned it. Do not let the show fly by you. Embrace what the fuck we’re doing.’ And that’s why I said what I said onstage; after the first three or four songs I stopped and said, ‘Welcome to a dream come true,’ because it was the realisation that we had gone past that first and second level to a place where we’d never even dreamed of being. I’m really, really happy that we did it before we lost Paul [Gray, bass, in 2010].”

Clown: “We land in Greece, we go to a hotel, and there’s a revolution going on outside the hotel. The people have camped out in what looks like a refugee camp outside the government building, which is right across the street from our hotel. I almost got killed going out and trying to take pictures of culture, because I have two security guards with me and people think I’m police. I’m just trying to protect my fucking camera, so they think I’m a cop! I almost got rolled, but then Sid – the man of many peoples – popped up out of nowhere and was able to explain to all these people who I was, and I was able to escape. I later went back to check on Sid to make sure things were cool, and he was hanging out with all these people!

“We played the show, went to bed, woke up the next morning, and they’d boarded up the window. We took off and I looked on the news a day later, and they almost destroyed that hotel we were in. They stole art, smashed in the doors… It was very intense and very scary. We were going to a lot of scary places that year – we took in a lot of different territories that we’d never played. It was a wonderful experience, but I remember being very sad without Paul. Remember we only had eight people onstage at that time – Donnie [Steele, original guitarist, who returned as touring bassist] was playing in the back, offstage. It was weird having an even number [of people] onstage. That fucked with me a lot.

“We played Ecuador for the first time [in 2020], and that’s when I got to really think about Paul. I thought, ‘Man, he would really have loved to have been here, in a new location, with new people. That would have really made him happy.’ It’s still very hard without him. When we’re in Las Vegas doing pre-production crap, I don’t even go to the hotel that his last show was in. I won’t stay anywhere near there. I won’t even let people visiting Des Moines stay in a hotel on the same block to where he passed away.”

Clown: “Getting back out [onstage] together was beautiful, because what else is there? It’s fucking Slipknot at this point. It was then, it is now. As we look at all of it – Jay [Weinberg, drums], V-Man [bass] and [Tortilla Man] – I had the hardest time with Paul’s position, because it’s just Paul. It’s got nothing to do with the instruments or the band; it’s to do with my brother that I used to raise hell with. When I look over and he’s not there, it’s got nothing to do with V-Man, it’s got nothing to do with bass, it’s to do with my friend.

“I’m never gonna be over Paul’s death. I’m three years older than him, so I’m scared to death all the time, like, ‘Shit, my best friend died before me, I’m older than him, so what does that mean for me?’ I lost three really close friends within The Nine. Now there’s 12 fucking people in The Nine. It’s been really hard and people have expectations, but I just don’t care. I just feel like everyone has wanted us to fail. It’s never been love, it’s always been, ‘Who are the new guys? Can they handle it? And when we find out who they are, we’re going to destroy you and your life.’

“I love the band as the band is now, and I love the band the way it was then. They are obviously different bands. Do I like that? I don’t know. I just know that I live in the day, and I don’t concentrate on the past – it’s lost potential; it’s nothing. The past is nothing but a memory, and a memory can fuck with you.”

Clown: “It took us so long to get to playing a show there because we got into the standard touring practices of doing festivals in Europe, then doing America, then back again. We fell into what was needed to keep this band alive, and we had to go where we could go. It wasn’t always good business – it was hard business. We had to make the right decisions in order to grow, and on top of that there was alcohol, drugs, excess, isolation and all that alongside. Finally, we put our foot down and said, ‘Let’s make time,’ and we did.

“The people there are so passionate and together and unified. They worked months for a ticket; they sold their cars for tickets. The first time we played I walked offstage, my wife met me and she fell into my arms almost in pure panic because the ground was moving for 10 minutes. People thought it was an earthquake, but it was the kids in front of the stage jumping – you could feel it from the front to the back. My wife said that we should leave, but I said, ‘That’s nothing but love.’ She said, ‘Yeah, it’s love – but it’s power. And the power is overwhelming.’ When I looked at it like that, I thought ‘Whoa, this is real.’”

Corey: “When you go as long as we did without really playing a show [following the end of the .5: The Gray Chapter era], it’s like, ‘Er, how the fuck is this going to go?’ Then the adrenalin kicks in, and you stop caring about the unknown. You stop caring about, ‘What if this happens? What if that happens?’ You stop caring and just embrace that feeling, you embrace the madness, and you run onto that stage and do what you can. This band was built to overcome everything that was put in front of it, especially in the wake of tragedies and having to part ways with people you’ve spent years with. This band is built to be bigger than that – it was built to be for the fans. When you realise that and go charging out onto that stage, it’s like, ‘Alright, now we just have to hold on for dear life!’

“Clown said it best – he said, ‘The beginning of a Slipknot show is like jumping out of on an airplane, and you don’t know if the parachute’s going to open.’ He’s fucking correct. When we open every show, it has to be with a punch, because it’s all about getting everyone on the same page as us. If you’re not there, we’re going to slap the piss out of you. I feel that every show – when I’m exhausted or my voice isn’t working the best, when I’ve just had enough or when we’re at each other’s throats, the one thing that always snaps us back in is that first note kicking in to another show. Fuck, dude, it’s galvanising.”

Get your tickets to see Slipknot in the UK this month

Read this next:

• Corey Taylor: “You either take advantage of what you’ve got going on now, embrace it and live in that moment, or you watch it fade away”
• Slipknot: “After all these years, we’re still fans of each other”
• Sid Wilson: “I have this energy that’s a combination of patience, strength and wisdom… when it’s directed in the right place, I’m unstoppable”