Clown Sees Slipknot's Future, Predicts Still Being Onstage at 70

The future of Slipknot is all the talk of alt-metal right now, seeing as how the band recently parted ways with longtime drummer Jay Weinberg and keyboardist Craig Jones over the past year, before that completing their contract with Roadrunner Records and becoming record label free agents.

So what does the future hold for Slipknot?

Founding Slipknot percussionist Shawn “clown” Crahan has an idea, and it could very much involve him still being onstage at 70 years old and “slamming” the classic 1999 Slipknot track “(sic).”

After all, next year, the band will celebrate the 25th anniversary of that debut effort, so to Kerrang! this week, Crahan discussed Slipknot’s current status, shared some of his thoughts on aging, talked future Slipknot shows and subtly remarked on the group’s shifting lineup. All in his signature hyperbolic way.

“I don’t want this to sound like a cop-out, but honestly, we’re special,” Crahan says of Slipknot. “We are a very, very unique thing. And I can say that now. We’ve always boasted about that, but now, living it my whole life and being around the world and being around many, many, many peers and artists of all different forms, we’re just unique in the sense that I don’t think we’re ever going to know any other way.”

He continues, “Sometimes I’m scared to think that I’ll be 70, pretending to myself that I’m going to slam while playing the song (sic). But the crazy thing is, you and I both know that it’s possible.”

However, “I don’t know exactly what it looks like,” Crahan muses, “but if I get there, I will have worked it out in my own self and I will work out what it means to the unit, as will everybody else — however it is and whoever it is. But the point is, that’s the gift. We just have this thing that I’m really blessed to be a part of.”

2020 Royal Arena in Copenhagen

Nikolaj Bransholm, Getty Images

He may not know who will be a part of it, but Slipknot already have the first dates of that anniversary tour coming up in 2024. And there will be more.

“We’ve got shows, brother,” Crahan explains. “And I doubt you know when my first show is. I doubt I know when my first show is. What I am going to say is that we love our fans, we love our band, we love what we’ve done. We are in a very special place. We’ve never been happier because we’ve just been working on ourselves for a long time.”

He adds, “And I’m not trying to sound crazy or whatever, but there is still a very deep thing between the OGs, and there’s five of us. And we have some pride in that and we have deep things we still work on fixing and we’re doing a lot better at that, and because of that, things are a lot easier.”

Crahan concludes, “We’re really happy.”

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