For many years, the Wikipedia page for Iowa’s famous metal band Slipknot misled fans, also known as “maggots,” into believing that their late drummer Joey Jordison was a founding member. This misconception was understandable due to the band’s secrecy about their identities during their rise to fame and the complexity of their early years.
Slipknot‘s first version released Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat. in 1996 as a six-piece band. Three of those members (vocalist Anders Colsefni and guitarists Josh Brainard and Donnie Steele) left by 1999. The remaining members from that album, drummer Joey Jordison, percussionist M. Shawn “Clown” Crahan, and bassist/vocalist Paul Gray, later expanded the band to nine members, forming the classic lineup.
This lineup created the band’s influential 1999 self-titled album, now widely regarded as their debut. In light of Jordison’s controversial departure in 2013 and ongoing legal issues with his estate, Crahan recently claimed that Jordison wasn’t a founding member, which some saw as contentious.
Crahan stated in an interview that he, Anders Colsefni, and Paul Gray were the core members who eventually formed the iconic Slipknot. Guitarist Mick Thomson, who joined the band in 1996, a year after its inception, has also shared his perspective on the band’s origins with Fishman Music, which a recent interview found Thomson saying:
“Before Slipknot, Paul and Andy and I — Andy was our original singer of Slipknot — were in a band called Body Pit, a death metal band. And they just lost their drummer. They got me in the band, and the drummer and other guitar player left, so we were looking for a drummer.
So we were writing songs — me, Paul and Donnie, we were working on stuff, and I actually got some things on a four-track that never really ended up going anywhere. But we’d written them. So we were doing that stuff, and we were looking for a drummer. Well, at the same time, our gear is there where we were practicing, which was our singer’s house, Andy.
So, Clown would come over. He knew Andy. Clown comes over and starts playing with Paul and Andy, jamming stuff in the basement on the Body Pit stuff, really — it was where Body Pit practiced. We didn’t have a drummer, so there was some down time when they started doing that stuff. And then that’s kind of how that started.
Paul and Andy were doing it with Clown. I didn’t know Clown, really; I’d met him before. And Paul and Andy and I were in this thing. So it was them just dicking around with a friend of theirs. It was separate; [they were doing] different music. And then we never really… How are we gonna find a technical death metal drummer in Des Moines? Joey. But Joey didn’t wanna do it.
But Joey did wanna do the Slipknot stuff with Andy and Paul and Clown. So, that’s kind of how that went. Our band died. See, Joey was in a band with our other guitar player on the first record, Josh, and Craig [Jones, now ex-Slipknot sampler/keyboardist, etc.], who did our sampling stuff.
They were both the guitar players in Joey‘s band. So it’s kind of like you took me, Paul, Andy, Joey, Josh and Craig, and threw those bands together and then added Clown. Clown was kind of the — he was the pivotal thing on that, because basically you had two bands that sort of broke up around him, and reformed around that idea.
So I guess, in a way, it’s like two different bands sort of dissolved and turned into the other thing. We never really looked at it like that, because just the chronology and the way it happened and it wasn’t the intent.
What’s funny, though, is we went around and broke up another band — we broke up Corey‘s [Taylor, Slipknot vocalist] band [Stone Sour] by stealing him. And then we eventually needed another guitar player, so we got Jim [Root, Slipknot guitarist] from Corey‘s band to come in.
So, yeah, it was a very incestuous kind of thing. We basically just went around and screwed up people’s bands and shit.”
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