Send in the clown

I’m nervous about this interview. I am not a fan. The first time I ever listen to Slipknot’s music is five days before the Belfast show. (It’s exactly how I knew it would be.) However there is something about the band’s knack of upsetting the moral guardians that secretly pleases me. And having never had the chance to witness Kiss or Ozzy or Ziggy, I’m itching for the experience.

So I spend hours browsing fansites, reading interviews, studying lyrics, trying to get a handle on the Slipknot creed. And in the midst of reading a hundred trite times how they came to wear masks and where the nicknames originated, I see a band hinting at some greater depths and schemes. I wonder why in the reams of interviews nobody has really asked them ‘why?’ and waited for an answer beyond the cursory.

“I don’t think everybody is prepared for Slipknot’s message. There are so many layers, it’s not obvious what we’re about. So I think that scares people a bit.”

40 seconds in and Shawn Crahan – AKA Clown – is already steering the conversation down the very route I wish to explore. Co-founder of the band in 1997, he’s also credited with first bringing the idea of distinctive headgear to the group. He takes most of the interviews, was responsible for the ‘Iowa’ artwork and is none too happy when I call him Shawn when first introduced – “It’s Clown.”

We sit in the front seats of the Odyssey arena in Belfast, as the crew around us iron out final niggles before doors open. I comment on the conspicuous absence of any negative interest in the band – a turnaround from the cancellation of a Dublin date three years ago. I expect derision for the folks who swung that decision.

“It’s cool,” he shrugs. “I think it was the parents who turned it over but it’s cool, I understand. Responsibility is responsibility. If you can’t have a parent 100% into what their kid is into – coming to the concert with the child or sitting down listening to the album – then the next best thing is to get politically involved.

“What I can’t tolerate is parents who want to follow some imprint of their life. Like my father telling me that pre-marital sex is bad and me growing up to be a father and automatically preaching that to my kids without exercising the right to be an adult and educate myself and make the right decision.

“I don’t want anybody to get hurt. There doesn’t need to be any senseless violence. There doesn’t need to be any problems conjured for wrong interpretations. Maybe I win cause I’m the rockstar and we get the concert done but there’s a lot of bad energy. I’d rather just drive on and come back. That’s the evolution – you win some, you lose some.”

Not the reaction I was expecting. But then Clown is 32 and married with three kids so maybe age has mellowed him.

“My whole duty now is to be a godfather of a way of life, a culture,” he says. “I’m here to remind everybody of how unoriginal all this is. How we all just fall into place. It’s my job to break this down.”

Since it’s his duty to be godfather of a new way of life, is it not frustrating and pointless that the medium used alienates so many people?

“I love that it alienates everybody. I’m not here to live my life for anybody. I hate human beings. We’re all just filthy disgusting, disease-ridden, hurt people. Here I am, 1 of 16 million tiny little sperm. 15,999,999 died after 24 hours. It would’ve been much easier for someone like me to die right there.”

Why?

“Because I didn’t ask for this. I was chosen for this lotto. I don’t have the grand scheme.”
Nobody ever does.

“Yes. You’re absolutely right.”

You could look at it the other way and believe you got really, really lucky.

“That’s exactly what it is. The bottom line is we are here, what are we doing with it? That’s what I’m trying to say. I’m waking kids up that even though life is down, you still got the only thing.”

Are you saying you don’t want to be here, it would be easier to die? Or are you shouting from the rooftops and the stage about how fortunate we are to be alive?

“I personally am a little negative on it cause I don’t like life too much. I’m not too into it. It’s hard. It’s very, very difficult. And I’m smarter than all of this. I’m way smarter. I’m dangerous. I’m so dangerous.”

Anybody else getting a distinct whiff here? Granted this guy is 240lbs (he told me) and could crush my pathetic female ass into a pulp if he wanted. In that respect, yes, he is dangerous. But there are heavies at the end of my street who could do that for me and they aren’t touring the world in a rock’n’roll side-show.

“I know what the outcome is.” Clown claims grandly.

What, then?

“Well it’s death. That’s the simple thing. Knowing it and really accepting it, knowing it and being close to it, riding it, smelling it, fucking it, killing it, like I do every day… I’m not scared of anything. I am so upfront, I am so straight I can almost conjure anything. I’m not afraid to communicate. I could spend the next week with you and be your closest friend if I chose. Cause I could get inside your head and fucking just break it apart like no other fucking human has ever done with you.”

Are you implying that no one besides yourself has ever sat down and thought about life? You think you’ve got the monopoly on philosophical discourse?

“Oh there’s plenty of people who have, there’s tons. I’m not the only one.”

Sure didn’t sound that way to me. But I let it go. ’Cause he’s big and I’m not. And I’m enjoying listening to him talk himself in circles.

So this taking people’s heads apart business. Is that the idea behind the Slipknot machine? Is that what all this riot is in aid of?

“Yeah, yeah. Cause we do ride the different lightning, we do ride a different path. It could be a lot easier – our journey. But cause we’ve chosen the hardest journey of all we’ve gotten the success, I think. We play some fucking heavy music but we’re double platinum. We’re onstage at Reading and I’m letting my DJ piss on me in front of 40,000 people.”

And the point in that is?

“It feels good. I like it. I like the way it smells, I like the way it tastes.”

Well if you enjoy it so much it mustn’t be as difficult as you’ve just claimed.

“I like it too much.”

Give me a break.

“Maybe I just want to go get him (he’s pointing to a security guard) and let him piss all over me.”

So what? This is getting tedious and I’m no closer to an answer, a reason, a plan to all this. I want to understand the point. I feel like I’m trapped in a bad American daytime talk-show or a self-help instructional video. Where all we use are buzzwords and never engage our brain. Where if we talk non-stop we’ll never have time to think.

“We’ve given kids who have nothing something,” Clown is saying. “And we don’t preach hate – we preach to thine own self be true. And it’s through anger. I don’t get pushed around no more – I don’t get fucked with. I’m not a cow. Those kids outside are all cows – they’ve got their noses up each others asses. They’re gonna open the doors and they’re gonna file right in like a slaughter house, find their places of death and take part in something they think is so original. It’s all bullshit.”

That’s a pretty harsh opinion of your fans – the people who pay your bills.

“They’re fucking filthy rotten humans.”

We’ve moved from the seats now cause the venue doors have opened. Clown wants to stand side stage to watch the kids run in. This isn’t affection – this is scorn. I ask if any will recognise him unmasked. Some might, he says, “if they’re clever.”

I’m piqued at this attitude, this disdain. For sure I personally don’t hold the average Slipknot fan in particularly high regard. I’d watched outside as scores of mummies dropped them off in their shiny Volvos. I laughed at their forced petulance after kissing daddy goodbye in the 4WD. I want to kick their spoiled middle-class asses and demand they stop wallowing. I’m allowed to indulge these feelings ’cause they don’t pay my rent. But I don’t appreciate Clown’s contempt – I feel duped for the kids.

“If you want me to talk like some good poster child then I’ll be like, ‘Yeah! My Maggots!’” he says, using the band’s pet name for the fans. “But I’m beyond that. I’m not a poster child no more. Take my picture off Rolling Stone ’cause I don’t give a fuck. Take me out of the video – I don’t care. I don’t give a fuck about any of these lies. I’m a bigger thing.”

Then give me something to justify this ego, this posturing. Give me some answers…

“This world is fucked. That’s cause one day you and me decided we had to talk. One day we decided, ‘I’m thirsty’, ‘I’m hungry’. And I’m like, ‘I wanna go that way’ and you’re like, ‘I wanna go that way’. Fuck you. Fuck you. We started talking and ruined ourselves. We’re all ‘I, I, I, me, me, me’. The minute we started talking it was over.”

You’re talking shit.

“It’s the truth.”

So we’ve established that the world is a mess and we’re all filthy selfish scum. Where’s the positive side to that? What can we do?

“Give me a pedestal and a microphone and the time to talk about it and I’ll start picking all of them out and make them follow me. We’ll get a little cult, a little commune. We’ll start changing. Everybody would have to be willing to get rid of the words ‘I’ and ‘me’. That would be the prerequisite of being with The Clown. Then can you join the army and we will do anything we want all the time. That’s what I’m trying to do – it’s a little…um, whatever.

How, in his opinion, do Slipknot fans – who are for the most part in their teens – relate to him, a married man with kids?

“That’s a good question. I’ve asked myself a million times. The only answer I have is responsibility. I don’t do anything up on stage unless I know it feels right.

“No, I’m 32 and we got a 14-year-old coming in today. There’s no way he can possibly – not even the remotest chance – understand how I feel. So it’s embarrassing for me more than it is for him. I have to have responsibility cause I’m 32 and I don’t give a fuck.”

Here we go again.

“I’ll piss on that kid and that will put him in a whirlwind of not even understanding where he can go with his life at the age of 14.”

Are you saying you can help him by pissing on him?

“No, it won’t help him. I have to be responsible but sometimes my feelings, my experience overrides the responsibility of everyone else. Cause tomorrow could be my day – I could be out.”

Sounds all very ‘I, I, I, me, me, me…’ from where I’m standing. Sounds like you’re not following your own advice Mr Clown.

“I am very guilty. I haven’t been able to cut it out. It’s fucking hard – the hardest thing to do ever. I’m getting better though. I started with the important things. Like I gave my platinum disc to my parents. I’m like – you’ll die, I’ll get it, I don’t give a fuck. It’s a piece of shit.”

Yep readers, I’m shaking my head in disbelief too.

Have you changed as a person since Slipknot began?

“I’m a lot more dangerous.”

What does that mean?

“I dunno. It’s just a word. I’m a lot more organised than I was and I’m gonna get a lot more organised. Then some real shit’s gonna happen.”

Like what?

“Depends.”

What are you gonna do? What do you want to be remembered for?

“I dunno if I know that yet. That’s the hardest thing for me right now to figure out the next step. Maybe love. Maybe just straight love.”

That’s what you want your legacy to be? Love?

“Maybe. Maybe. Cause right now that’s the hardest thing for me ever is love. It almost hurts too much to love for me. I don’t like it. It fucks with me. It’s an emotion I’m not very good at.”

Then if love is the answer (I can’t believe this conclusion either, folks) then why continue with a lifestyle you appear to despise that keeps you away from the ones you love?

“I dunno. I know I don’t want to talk shit no more. I don’t want to preach. I don’t find very many people who even remotely want to think like me. People who work for me – they just disregard me as whatever. They’re like, ‘Clown’s talking shit’. Even my own band members – they’re like, ‘Whatever, dude!’.”

So do you feel trapped in Slipknot?

“I am so bored, so trapped. I’m so glad you asked that cause I’m so bored and trapped in this world. It’s the same painting. I’m ready to get it on with something else. I’m just about done with all this surrealism and I’m about to get it on with some little landscape.”

That reminds me, I’ve read that Clown loves the work of Picasso and Cézanne. Does he consider his day job to be art?

“Fuck! Ours is the highest of art there is in the industry today.”

There is an extended silence. I ask is he taking the piss.

“There’s nothing close to Slipknot as far as art comes. We are art. Pure liquid art. It’s like blood from our veins…”

It’s becoming clear that maybe Slipknot is all and only about the spectacle and the hype. It’s just loud, brash, mindless fun. It’s entertainment. It’s a trip for the senses. And to look for and expect more from it is not only pointless but missing the point. And actually insulting towards the band – because they do the theatre and the fantasy of it so well. You pay your money, you take your place and for an hour they’ll scream and dance, bombard your eyes and ears, spit on you and piss on each other. You couldn’t be disappointed – provided you looked for no more.

And now I feel sorry for Shawn. 32 years old, wife and three kids at home. Stuck peddling a circus around the world. Entertaining spoiled brats and talking to pedant journos. Trying to defend himself and provide rationales and reasons. When really he just fell into this, like he could have fallen into any other job. Nobody expects train drivers to offer the meaning of life.