(SLIPKNOT) Early First Album Interview
c. May 1999 (?)
I am told this is from the “Welcome To Our Neighborhood” home video.
I am told this is from the “Welcome To Our Neighborhood” home video.
INTRO
COREY: This is Slipknot.
(Intro)
SHAWN: We're just an army
(Concert footage continues)
CHRIS: Hi Mom, look at me...
(Concert footage continues)
SHAWN (to a blonde skinny presenter type): Smack me in the face...harder man...come on...harder...
SID (smacking himself in the head): Like this
SHAWN: Come on dude...
Mick demonstrates by hitting Shawn on the head
SHAWN: Like that
(Concert footage)
COREY: Craziest people live in Des Moines, Iowa. Not a lot of people know that, but they are going to now.
INTERVIEW
SLIPKNOT - THE BAND
SID: My names Sid. I'm the DJ guy, and I'm the filth epitome number zero.
JOEY: Joey. Number one. And I play drums.
PAUL: Paul. Number two, and I play bass.
CHRIS: Chris. Number three. Percussion.
JIM: Jim. Number four, and I play guitar
CRAIG: 133. Number five. Sampling.
SHAWN: Clown. Number six. Percussion.
MICK: Mick. Number seven. Guitar.
COREY: Corey. Number eight. I'm the singer.
Q&A
WHY DO YOU WEAR MASKS?
SHAWN: We wear the masks because we are nobody. We are just a nameless entity.
JOEY: And the best way for us to portray the music is not being about where we came from, it's about being about the music that we want to do
SHAWN: When we perform our art, as a group, as a cult that we would, you know, remain faceless by putting on some things that just changed our entities all together.
COREY: In the beginning it was kind of a cool idea, and after a while it just developed into lets let the music speak for itself, and lets let people see what the music does to us inside
SHAWN: So we thought we would take it to the next level
COREY: One guy showed up, put one on*, and the ideas just got sicker and sicker.
SHAWN: Everybody came up with their own thing, and we just ran with it.
JOEY: The whole band makes it work. It's a family that way.
SID: I kind of get out of my gourd. I don't think very properly when I got it on.
JOEY: It's a different outlook, and it's a different persona for each one of us.
COREY: It just basically represents everything that I hate inside.
JOEY: Maybe it would be a little bit different if we weren't wearing the masks, but we would definitely be able to throw down just as much if we weren't wearing it.
HOW DID THE CONCEPT OF DEFINING YOURSELF BY A NUMBER COME ABOUT?
COREY: We wanted a more unified look, and we wanted to come out and really be a forced to be reckoned with. So, we all started wearing the coveralls with the barcodes.
JOEY: And to be an army together as a band and a family
COREY: Basically making fun of the fact that a lot of today's music is a product. It's bought and sold. And (clicking fingers to emphasize) basically it's here today and gone tomorrow. It's our kind of mockery towards that whole thing.
SHAWN: Everybody fell into a number
COREY: Everybody has their reasons
COREY: The number eight has been in my life since I was a kid
JOEY: Me and balls are piss and shit
COREY: His is a piece of shit
JIM or CHRIS: I am the shit
JOEY: So I'm like the drums you know, that's kind of where it starts you know sometimes. So, that's where the #1 comes in.
(Next to him, Craig moves his fingers. This is the only motion you get out of Craig since the introduction - compared to Chris, who can't stop twitching.)
SHAWN (who starts to get pestered by Sid, who is sitting next to him): It's on the arm, you look at it, you figure it out. Maybe you had your own number, maybe it's in your head somewhere, and maybe you'll display it on your sleeve someday, if you know what's going on you know.
HOW ARE YOU EFFECTED BY THE FACT THAT YOUR BAND HAS NINE MEMBERS?
SHAWN: We don't have nine members. We have nine layers. Nine layers of just music and just orchestrated whatever...madness.
PAUL: When we get together, and without one of the members, it just doesn't work. We need all the nine people.
SHAWN: You will listen to the album, and you will hear all these lyrics that you will fall in love with, and then you will come and you will see the show, and you will understand where all the layers come from by watching everybody on stage, and then you will look at all the other bands and wonder why they don't have nine members as you say.
HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR MUSIC?
JOEY: We are bringing something very fresh, new and inventive to the world of heavy metal
PAUL: Driving
SHAWN: Real
JOEY: Mind rendering, fucking tattered and torn experience. Ferocious insanity.
MICK: Brutal
JOEY: It can be beautiful, it can be sick, it can be disgusting
PAUL: Pissed
CHRIS: Ugly
JOEY: I'm not about being fuckin' responsible in this band, no one fuckin' is. We are responsible to ourselves, and we are responsible to our fans, but we don't want to fuckin' send out a positive message or this is the way you need to fuckin' live your life, or this is the way you need to fuckin' do things, because this is fuckin' heavy aggressive pissed off fuckin' music, and it doesn't need to be responsible...and I'm not gonna be responsible because it's not supposed to be like that.
WHERE DOES THE ANGER IN YOUR MUSIC COME FROM?
COREY: When you are growing up you have to go through a lot of shit, man. You know. I mean childhood is a bitch. Sometimes it goes good, sometimes it doesn't. You know, for a lot of us it didn't. So you draw from that. You draw from having to deal with a lot of ignorant fuckin' people that walk the planet. You have to draw from the ignorant shit that happens to you from people that wanna hold you down and repress you in a way. That's where the anger comes from. That's where the aggression comes from, and that's where the catharsis comes from. When we can take all that and keep it inside ourselves when we play our music (slams a fist into his palm to emphasize) - that's what his you. That's what comes at you at a thousand miles an hour you know...and we are not out doing anything destructive, or blowing up buildings or any shit like that. This is our catharsis. This is our therapy for us, you know. This is our expression. This is our art. This is our life. And we keep it that way, and we keep ourselves sane by the insanity that we put in the music.
TELL US A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOUR NEW ALBUM
CHRIS: Best fuckin' album I ever heard
COREY: Basically nine people working out every poison that ever infected them in their life, and putting it on tape
JOEY: It's been probably the hardest thing I worked on in my whole fucking life
COREY: One of the biggest labor of loves that we have ever had to do
SHAWN: It's everything to us
COREY: It felt really good, and it sounds really good.
SHAWN: The most we can wish for is that everybody will listen to it, and they will like it, you know.
JOEY: It's going to be something we are all going to be very proud of, whether it sells one copy or a million copies.
HOW DID THE BAND FORM?
COREY: We are basically a bunch of people that were in bands that we felt like we were kind of pulling behind each other, you know, and we all had the same dream.
JOEY: We kind of came together and formed a super group, which we all like to call it, because we were in bands before.
SHAWN: Some people hated the bands they were in. It seemed like everybody was attracted to each other. We all know who we were. When it was time we all branched off from our bullshit. We came together and formed Slipknot.
CHRIS: Definitely the nine best, craziest and most insane musicians in the state of Iowa. Probably in the mid-west*
HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH THE NAME "SLIPKNOT"
SHAWN (while Sid fidgets, and raises himself up on the arms of the chair and swings around): And now the song and the band name are two separate entities
COREY: It's totally different style, but the name "Slipknot" became the band "Slipknot". It just fit.
SHAWN (ignoring SID): There really is no overall meaning that I think people can grasp a hold of, there is for us. And I think as the band goes on, maybe you know, it will develop into their lives that way, like it does for us. If that makes any sense at all.
WHAT EFFECT DOES COMING FROM DES MOINES, IOWA, HAVE ON YOUR MUSIC?
JOEY: Obviously our surroundings have made us, you know, the band that we are. Otherwise we would be another stupid fuckin' Seattle band, wearin' like flannel shirts with our hair in our faces.
COREY: People in Des Moines have *nothing*. Skating rinks and graveyards. You know. You basically have to develop a sense of self early on, and that encourages individuality. That encourages imagination, and it also encourages a severe sense of psychosis that turns into some crazy mutherfuckers, you know.
HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR CREATIVE PROCESS?
JOEY: There are so many great ideas, and that is the great thing about having nine people in this band
COREY: A lot of people bring a lot of different things to the table
SHAWN: Mick here, he will be out maybe eatin' pizza, he has got his guitar in his trunk. He will get a riff, he will get on a payphone and play the riff on the phone and call up the riff later on his answering machine. Bring it to practice. We will listen to it at practice. Maybe come up with a riff.
JOEY: And then you know we will bring the bass in, we will bring like the two extra cannon drums in with the kegs, and the sampling and the scratches will come in, and Corey will be like listening to it this whole time. Getting the vibe on and like you know, searching his soul and the lyrics come out. And then you know after the next few practices it turns sick and its solid.
COREY: Sometimes we will just start jamming on something out of the blue and it will turn into a song.
SHAWN: If someone has got a great idea and it works, and it fits the format under the name Slipknot, then we use it.
PAUL: Everybody gets their input, and then it becomes a Slipknot song
WHAT IS YOUR LIVE SHOW LIKE?
SHAWN (being pestered by SID, who is tugging on his arm and shaking him): It is absolutely everything you need to live
COREY: Just imagine a sonic assault on all your senses
SHAWN (still being pestered by SID): You can expect anything and everything
COREY: It's hard to explain, but its sick to see
SHAWN (still being pestered): There are so many stories
COREY: We are off stage, it was in Minneapolis, and we are going back on to do two more songs like an encore, and we didn't know that Sid was like out in the audience, just kind of doing his thing. He comes back on stage, and out of nowhere proceeds to just head butt one of the kegs, just like violently. He shoved one of the metal eye parts into his eye, cut it all open, and we didn't even know so we were kind of like slapping him around. He's bleeding all over the place, and we thought it was funny.
SHAWN: We've broken each others bones, we've blown sparks over the crowd. Left the first twenty rows on the ground with sparks all over them. We've broken cappuccino machines. Stitches.
JOEY: It's extremely sick and brutal, but its all within the realm of being controlled and having fun and everyone leaves with a positive experience. Getting all the negative stuff out you know. It's a pretty cathartic thing.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE PART OF OZZFEST THIS YEAR?
SHAWN: It's an honor that I can't even ever explain
COREY: You know, it's like our first major tour, and we're goin' out with some of the bands that we grew up listening to
JOEY: Black Sabbath is one of our all time favorite bands
SHAWN: It's big. It's huge.
COREY: It's crazy as.
WHAT DO YOU HOPE PEOPLE GET OUT OF YOUR MUSIC?
SHAWN: When I was growing up I turned to the music, to just help me be free for a little bit, you know. I hope they get that out of it. I hope they get a positive message for them, you know? They don't have to answer to anything or anyone. They can just be themselves, and leave cleansed.
WHERE WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE YOURSELF IN FIVE YEARS?
COREY: One year, two years, world domination...five years, you know, we can be playing Vegas. We don't know.
JOEY: We don't need to sell a million albums to be happy. The only thing we need to do to be happy is to keep making fresh, intense, original music and you keep putting on a live show and have a significant number of fans to keep it to where we can take it to the streets and keep building our fanbase over a long period.
COREY: If it gets to be a chore, man, we will let it go. It's gone. But as long as it excites us, as long as we can stay into it, as long as we can break new ground as far as we are concerned we will do it forever.
NOTES
"One guy showed up, put one on": Some reports indicate this was Shawn
Mid west: An English newspaper article in the early 2000s would describe Corey as a "southern gentleman".
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