[Music] Slipknot has a serious band lineup problem
Once a so-called "brotherhood," the heavy metal band has been bleeding members like it's going out of fashion.
In a weird kind of way, I guess it was appropriate for heavy metal/nü metal band Slipknot to let everyone know on Nov. 5 — Guy Fawkes Day — that one of their many masked men was out. Jay Weinberg, an excellent drummer, was let go with the note “the band has decided to make a creative decision, and to part ways with Jay.” OK, that tells us almost nothing.
Almost. It does tell us that it wasn’t entirely Jay’s decision, which seems to be par the course for this hodge-podge band. Slipknot also lost founding member Craig Jones earlier this year, whose only real responsibilities were pressing the “play [X] sample” buttons and playing the odd piano riff.
Just to tally it up, that means Slipknot, which prides itself in having nine members, is now down their #1 (Joey Jordison — RIP), #2 (Paul Gray — RIP), #3 (Chris Fehn), and #5 (Craig Jones). But don’t worry! So far they’ve replaced every member they’ve lost. Which … actually might be the bigger mistake.
You see, Slipknot strikes me as one of those bands that simply didn’t know how to let people go early on. (Now, of course, they’re all too happy to fire anyone!) Do a little reading and you’ll find that Craig was actually a guitarist before their debut album, for instance. Oh, and Shawn “Clown” Crahan was the OG drummer, but Joey was an absolute god on the drum kit, so Clown got clowned on and was sidelined to percussion … alongside the existing percussionist.
It’s enough to make your head spin, so let’s do a quick rundown of how their lineup works — and I hate that I actually have this memorized:
1 Vocalist — 2 Guitarists — 1 Bassist — 1 Drummer — 2 Percussionists — 1 Keyboardist — 1 DJ
If you haven’t heard their music, you might be thinking, “wow, Slipknot must be a total cacophony.” Well, not really… a lot of these members just stand around and headbang when they have nothing to do, which is often. So basically, there’s no reason they couldn’t function just as well with 6-7 members with a little optimization.
Honestly, just axe the keyboardist and both percussionists and let DJ Sid Wilson handle all of those duties, because he’s surprisingly super creative and I’m sure he’d find a way. As is, his talents are largely wasted on Slipknot.
“OK, cool theory-crafting, but why not let Slipknot enjoy their nine members? After all, it’s a huge part of their identity!”
Yeah, about that … paying nine musicians their share is a royal(ty) pain in the ass, and lead singer Corey Taylor recently stated that “we don’t make a lot of money. There’s a lot of us in the band, and there’s a whole crew that we have to pay. There’s the production that we have to pay for. There’s all of this shit we need to pay for.”
I mention this because people who jump to Slipknot’s defense for their band-member-firing spree often say “it’s just business.” And look, I’d consider that a valid excuse if it weren’t for the fact they literally built their brand around being a nine-member band, how “the nine” is everything and that “we’re a brotherhood.”
You can’t just throw around the term “brotherhood” and then unceremoniously fire founding member Joey Jordison — allegedly because of a medical condition that made his playing suffer. Then there’s the firing of Chris Fehn, who was with the band before their 1999 debut album. Now to be fair, he sued the band for unpaid royalties. Yeah, turns out only Clown and Corey earn any money from Slipknot merchandise.
Chris lost the suit, because what Clown and Corey did in the early days of the band was, like many things in life, legal but incredibly shitty. And of course, the band issued a statement about how Chris should’ve taken the high road and utilized respectful avenues, yada yada … But I guarantee the well-mannered gent was inquiring about the issue for years before he got fed up and sued.
The defense of this, of course, is that Clown and Corey must be the only two true members of the band, while the other seven are simply hired guns. But that seems like a pretty dishonest setup when Corey wasn’t even a member for their debut album.
In summary, Slipknot is disappointing. The saying goes that one should never meet their heroes, and it’s apt here. There was a time when I was actually a massive Slipknot fan — around 2011-13 — and I’ve come to like them less and less as money has gradually become the driving force of the band.
They call themselves a “brotherhood” but treat each other like garbage, and that’s hard to stomach even from the outside looking in. It’s baffling to realize that even one of the most iconic rock bands of all time is just another toxic workplace.
The older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve realized that nearly every job is toxic to some degree, and to be honest, Slipknot has been a small part of my disillusion with the world and the duplicitous, self-serving people who inhabit it. The band may want to take a look in the mirror before declaring “We Are Not Your Kind.”
The photo of you with the ukulele is truly a throwback.
I loved the photo of the Wikipedia timeline. Yes, comparing it to an Excel spreadsheet was brilliant!