Slipknot's Clown: "Paul saw something in me even when I didn't..."

Number 6, Clown, the only remaining founding member of Slipknot, film-maker, photographer, band art director and artist, at 46 Michael Shawn Crahan has a lot of responsibilities to shoulder. Metal Hammer caught up with him backstage at Wembley Arena on Slipknot’s last tour to talk art, Paul Gray and why the band’s last album didn’t have the sleeve he wanted.

As he tells Metal Hammer Magazine Show host, Alexander Milas, “My folks recognised something in me early because I grew up on fine art books like Rembrandt and Matisse. I have these early memories that stuff and Dr. Seuss and those were the two things in my world. And my dad didn’t mind the rock and roll thing as long as I was working, he’d bring home these drumsticks, because drumsticks are expensive, and those things are really what started it for me, but it was Seuss and fine art, visually.

“Everybody in my life was always pushing art on me and now it’s who I am and it’s what I live for. Paul [Gray] loved my art for whatever reason. We were young when we met, this was three years before I started Slipknot, he was the only one of the guys at my wedding, and he had all this music. He showed me the stuff he wanted to write and this shit was pissed! I could see colours when he played. And he saw something in me even when I didn’t know where I was going to end up.”

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Want to know what happens when the artist behind The Walking Dead meets the singer of Slipknot and Stone Sour? Of course you do, then click the link below.

When Slipknot Met The Walking Dead

Philip Wilding is a novelist, journalist, scriptwriter, biographer and radio producer. As a young journalist he criss-crossed most of the United States with bands like Motley Crue, Kiss and Poison (think the Almost Famous movie but with more hairspray). More latterly, he’s sat down to chat with bands like the slightly more erudite Manic Street Preachers, Afghan Whigs, Rush and Marillion.