JIM ROOT Says SLIPKNOT Songwriting Process Involves A Lot Of 'Open-Mindedness And Trust'

In a new interview with Matt Sweeney, host of Guitar Moves, SLIPKNOT guitarist Jim Root spoke about the importance of the collaborative aspect of the band's songwriting process. He said in part (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "You can self-produce at home and do everything in your bedroom now — from vocals to drums, to even recording acoustic drums. A lot of dudes are doing that too, with the technology that's out there today, which is cool. But I'm at a disadvantage 'cause I'm not a lyricist — I can't write vocals; I don't know what I'm doing there — so I feel like half of that world is closed off to me. It's almost like not having all your senses in a way. So when I write an arrangement, I have to kind of guess what Corey [Taylor, SLIPKNOT singer] or whoever I'm writing the song for or with would do vocally. Or I think, 'This is what he's gonna do. Here's an epic part for him to sing on,' and then he'll write scratch lyrics to it, and he won't even be singing on this part. I'm, like, 'That's the epic part of the song for you to shine on, and you haven't even sang on it.'"

Root went on to say that he and Corey "go back and forth" on music once he has presented the initial song idea to the vocalist. "Everybody's approach to things — you and I could be playing the exact same thing, but we're hearing it differently and our approach to it would be totally different, which is the other great thing about not just guitar, but instruments in general," Root explained. "So if I give Corey something that came out of my head that's like a five-minute arrangement and I've taken the time to layer guitars, put bass on it and program the drums and keyboards to thicken it up, and it sounds like a song to me, he might be hearing something that I have as, let's say, a pre-chorus, he might be hearing that as part of a verse, for the way he thinks about music. But that's how the evolution of our music can go. Then he'll give it back to me, and I'll be, like, 'Okay, wait a minute. You're looking at it that way, so maybe I need to rearrange how I'm thinking about this song.' Nobody wants to get an arrangement from somebody and then be, like, 'Yeah, yeah, that's cool,' and chop it up. But it's hard to communicate that. You hurt people's feelings or whatever. They feel a certain way about a song or whatever. So it's a big deal. Like, 'What? You don't like my arrangement?' or whatever. And it's not about that. You've gotta let that go and see where it can go and let it grow as a collaboration — unless you're doing everything 100 percent by yourself and you're in control of the entire creative process."

Elaborating on why checking his ego at the door when collaborating with his bandmates is an important part of the process, Jim said: "Anything that I write, as soon as I put it into the world of SLIPKNOT, I have to know that by the time that comes back, it may not sound anything like what I gave to them or what we end up working on together, and you have to be okay with that. After a while, you're listening to things and you're hearing them totally different, because they're evolving so much from where they began. If you start with one color red and you just keep throwing every color in the palette on top of it, but then you start taking things away and they start making new colors and then all of a sudden a new idea kind of presents itself out of something that four things make, all of a sudden these four different instruments are making one sound or one melody. It's, like, there's the fucking song right there. Like, holy shit."

Asked when he and his bandmates got to that place where they can collaborate with each other like that, or if it's something that was there from the very beginning, Root said: "No. I think everybody gets there in their own time. I don't think that's something you can teach anybody. I don't think that's anything that you can really… I don't know if you can go to Juilliard and learn that. You can know all the theory in the world and you can be the most fluent musician on the planet, but are you gonna make that song that makes people go, 'Oh, God'? and feel that thing. That's a human emotion. And I'm not saying that those learned musicians don't do that — I mean, absolutely, they fucking do — but being a dumb guitar player from Iowa [laughs], you get there naturally when it's time. The universe is, like, 'Okay, it's time for me to be your muse and to give you the inspiration that you need to make this music that doesn't just move you emotionally or make you feel like you've accomplished something, but makes those people out there connect with something in their life that they can relate to and emote with.'"

Jim added that "open-mindedness and trust" in his bandmates play a big role in the process. "There's a lot of trust with it too. Trust and patience and objective opinions," he said. "'Cause you don't always know what's best. You may think you know what's best right. 'Well, I wrote this idea. This riff came out of my head, so I know what's best for it.' But that's not always the case. Somebody might come in — Sid [Wilson, SLIPKNOT DJ] might come in and do one thing that all of a sudden makes it go, 'Holy shit. This is where it needs to go.' And the first and second record are full of stuff like that. Hell, even '[.5:] The Gray Chapter' and other records, it's, like, if Sid wouldn't have done a certain thing, or if Mick [Thomson, SLIPKNOT guitarist] wouldn't have had a certain effect on his pedal board, it might have been an entirely different song."

The first time Root was invited to join SLIPKNOT, the guitarist said no. He was already in a group, the Des Moines, Iowa metal band DEADFRONT. SLIPKNOT was in California recording its 1999 self-titled debut, and guitarist Josh Brainard had just left the group.

In a 2019 interview with WMMR, Root explained that he was first approached by SLIPKNOT's original singer Anders Colsefni about replacing the band's original guitarist Donnie Steele back in 1996. "I said no at that time because I hadn't been playing guitar and I knew that those guys were players," he told WMMR. "My chops were bad. I [hadn't] even touched a guitar in years, so I was just kind of, like, 'Nah, I'm just going to be a regular dildo, work and do all that.'"

In 1996, Root joined Taylor's STONE SOUR, only for Taylor to replace Colsefni in SLIPKNOT in 1997.

SLIPKNOT has since put out seven albums, including its latest, "The End, So Far". The band has won a Grammy, toured the world and put on its own festival, Knotfest. There have also been a number of low points and several lineup changes, most notably the death of founding member and bassist Paul Gray in 2010 of a drug overdose. Founding drummer Joey Jordison was fired in 2013.