SLIPKNOT Percussionist CLOWN: 'We're The Greatest Band In The World'

Ellen Gager of Midwest Excess recently conducted an interview with SLIPKNOT percussionist Shawn "Clown" Crahan. An excerpt from the chat follows:

Midwest Excess: What was it like actually, working with the legendary Rick Rubin? You said that he influenced you quite a bit, what did you take away from your experience with him?

Clown: "Well, the cool thing about Rick is that, I've read a lot of interviews and heard a lot of people talk who have worked with Rick Rubin, and it always is the same story. It's always, 'Boo-hoo me, boo-hoo this,' and a lot of people complain because Rick has kind of been null and void, I guess in a lot of other people's situations, like he just doesn't come around that much. But the thing is, that man is an oracle. He is a Bible of what music is, architecturally. He knows what sound is, and then you can go even deeper. For example, when I worked with him, he asked me what I wanted in an engineer, and I basically summed it up in a couple sentences. He's like, 'I'll call you right back.' And 30 minutes later, he called me up and he had two names for me, and he let me know that, number one, he wouldn't suggest anyone unless they were the best, that he only works with the best, and he gave me two examples. One was the guy who worked on my record, his name was Ed Thacker, and Ed's first job was with Phil Spector back in the day of the take off, and he had basically been in Los Angeles making professional records his whole life, that's what he's done. A couple years ago, he won a Grammy for Engineer of the Year, workin' on the Ray Charles project. So, on one hand he gave me Ed Thacker, and he said, 'Okay, here's an engineer who's been around the board, and has tons of experience, old-school methods, old school thinking, you can get all the love you want, but maybe works a tad slower because it's methodical, it' just crazy old school.' And then he gave me another name of another engineer who was younger, probably younger than me, and was new-school, had new ideas, and probably could keep up with the schedule that I wanted to do. You know, I'm young so I want to work 16-, 17-hour days. And he was like, 'I leave it up to you.' And I knew right then and there that that was Rick Rubin's gift, that he had already decided what he wanted for my own project, and either engineer was gonna be great for him, 'cuz he was producing, and either one of these engineers was gonna be able to bring what he needed out of the project, for our project. He left it up to me, as he should, and I took the older gentleman who had all the experience, so I could learn that. And I made the right decision. And that's basically everything with him, he's an oracle. You tell him you want a certain snare sound, he'll get you that exact same snare on that recording, with that same mic in that same room. His mind is expanded for what it is you're making. It's not like, 'Hey, we can just get together and do this,' he's thinking about the space, the time, the color, the feel, the instrument, the person, and then when you get into song structure, he's an architect. He's got all these songs floating around in his head like The Matrix, and the thing is, is that he's not there to stroke your ego. He's not going to be there every day, 'cuz why would he need to be there every day to tell you to do what you do best, and what you should be doing best is living for the art that you want to create? I never needed him there every single day. That was the last thing I wanted. I wanted to be able to get out what I needed to get out with someone confident enough to receive it, and then drive it up to his house, and have him give me the time to listen to it to tell me if I could be doing it better, or of we should add a little more or subtract a little more, and that's what he did. I used to drive up to his house every night when we'd get done with a song musically, and we'd go up and he would give his suggestions about structure. Make this a double chorus, take this off, put this verse here, and then we would do that, if it felt right, and then when we'd do vocals, same thing. We'd go up, we'd listen to vocals, and I guess he's a real stickler with vocals, and he really didn't change anything on my record, 'cuz I'd been writin' poetry since I was a little kid, so lyrics are very, very important to me, and I just make sure that I stick to what's important, and I try to make sense of it. So, he's a genius, and I love him, and he's a really good friend, and he's done a lot of great things for both of my bands."

Midwest Excess: Well, you had mentioned the Grammys earlier. Tell me what it was like being up against MUDVAYNE, with whom you've done a ton of production work. Was that weird for you; were you proud of them?

Clown: "Number one, they're all personal friends of mine, and number two, I was very proud of them for them to be nominated for a Grammy. I had no worries in my mind. We're the bigger band, we've always been the bigger band, we helped that band get started. We took them on the road for two years and we basically hand fed them our fans. Not all our fans like them, and not all their fans like us. But, we're the bigger band, we always have been and we always will be. We came out around the same time, and we're just different music anyway. Their music and my music — two different things. It was great to see them and I was really proud of them, it was great, but I knew we were gonna win. I kept tellin' the record label all day to get ready, that we're winning.

"I lost my father on the last tour, and my wife got really sick and almost died and I had to miss some shows, and there were other members of SLIPKNOT that had their crash and burnout on some tours because of health issues, and we had the roughest two and a half years of touring that any band could comprehend. I mean, most bands can't even fathom thinkin' leavin' home. I've got four children and a wife, been married 13 years, and here I am out on the road for two and a half freakin' years. And yet, people wanna judge us for what is and what isn't, but most of them don't even know what touring is all about. We worked so hard to rebuild our name after the Iowa cycle, and get the trust of promoters and lawyers and agents, and all these people that we pissed off on the Iowa cycle because of past management and bad deals, and things like this. We only care about the music and the art, we were able to do it, we went out for two and a half years, and we finalized all our debt and all our problems, got to be friends again, made a great record with Rick Rubin, and we end up winning a Grammy to just show ourselves that you work hard, you get paid hard. That's really what it was. We don't buy into all the shit. But, when we won that, it made total sense to me because I just don't know very many bands around us...because we're out in the circuit two-and-a-half years, and I see how long your band tours, and I see what kind of show you're puttin' on, ya know? No one slams harder than the 'KNOT, no one puts on a show like the 'KNOT, so it's like, get out of our way, and stay out of our way, and don't talk shit, because we're the real deal, and you can't take that away from us. It just proves that even in the industry, which is so corrupt, and so political, I mean MUDVAYNE's like a Sony band, or an Epic band, they got all the voters within their own company, and we still won. And it just goes to show that people in this business appreciate hard work and the real deal. We'll get tired of hand feeding all of these bands, not that MUDVAYNE's that band, 'cuz they're not, they're the real deal. They're a great band. But we deserved it and we won it, and I ain't sharin' it, and I ain't apologizing for it because I lost my dad three weeks before our tour was done. I had three weeks to end a two-and-a-half cycle, I could've seen him, and hung out with him. You know, I'll never see him again, so I don't wanna hear from all the naysayers what it takes to be a pro band, 'cuz I know the sacrifice it takes. I've lived it, I've proved it, I've done it, and I'll do it again. It's nothin' new for the 'KNOT. We're the greatest band in the world, and I've always felt that way."

Read the entire interview at MidwestExcess.com.