(SLIPKNOT) HERO WORSHIP: Mick Thompson - Slipknot's #7

Total Guitar 
December 2003 - Issue no #117

You know him by his...Fright mask, boiler suit and drop-tuned riffs of doom. 
Greatest moment: Coming to the TG studio and proving that he could shred after all 

Having appeared on the TG cover three times now, it's probably safe to say that Slipknot's lead guitarist Mick Thomson is a 'friend of the magazine'. But it wasn't always this way, oh no.
 Back in October 2001 Mick fell foul of you, dear reader, with his dismissal of grunge ("Teen Spirit basically killed guitar playing") and his decidedly non PC description of 1980s LA rockers who could, "play like motherfuckers, but looked like a bunch of faggots". And his attitude wasn't the only thing that came under your harsh scrutiny. You questioned #7's ability on the fretboard and slated his band's noise masquerading as music. Not so much a storm as a raging hurricane in a teacup.
 But Mick made amends. We invited him to answer some of your questions, address some of your concerns - and prove himself by playing for us on the TG CD (after all, this was the man Zakk Wyld bigged up, telling us "Mick's way into his fuckin' neo-classical shit"). 
 So one day in Spring 2002, Total Guitar met up with Mick Thompson for a second time - unmasked and even a little nervous. It turned out Mick was just a guitar geek like you and us, not some homosexual-hating, beer-swilling redneck. In fact, before he started playing in Slipknot, he was a conscientious guitar teacher in his hometown of Des Moines, Idaho*.
 There, most of the kids wanted to play like Kurt Cobain, but Mick comes from another era of rock guitar where heroes didn't have to be cool to rawk. We're talking 80's, dudes! The era that taste forgot, when podgy Swedish blokes with appalling hairstyles could sweep-pick minor arpeggios in the blink of an eye (without rock fans batting an eyelid). For despite Slipknot's reluctance to solo and reliance on downtuned sludge licks, Mick Thomson can shred up the fretboard like Anthony Worrel-Thompson cuts through lettuce. 
 He's big, he's bad, he's hairy and a bit sweary. And he can wear a daft mask, boiler suit and BC Rich guitar without looking a complete twat. Now that's heroic...

Notes
Idaho: I think they mean Iowa. All the members of Slipknot at this time (aside from Jim Root who was born in Nevada), came from Iowa.  

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