Shawn Crahan, aka the Clown from Slipknot, has revealed the gory details about his worst onstage injury.
He was speaking to Vulture when conversation turned to the damage he’s sustained over the years due to his, well, vigorous approach to performance. There have been a lot of injuries, he said, though “the one that’s really done me in was when I ripped my bicep in half on stage by hitting a keg with a bat.”
“If you know anything about a bicep, it’s basically two wires, one on each side that holds the muscle in place - kind of like rubber bands that connect up by your shoulder,” he explained. “I ripped both those fuckers. So my bicep was actually on my forearm. Like, it just dropped down and my skin fell down with it. People would vomit when they saw it.”
Lovely.
Not surprisingly, the percussionist had to have surgery, where he reckoned he lost “25% of that arm.”
He’s still living with its effects: “I’ll go to grab something on the top shelf in the fridge, think I’ve got it, and then whatever it is will just fall. It hurts. I have swelling on my right side where this dissolvable screw was. Out of all the injuries, that one really is a daily reminder.
In the same interview Crahan gave an update on the long-promised new ‘old’ album, Look Outside Your Window, which was originally recorded around 2008. Speaking about the band’s tranche of unreleased material, he said: “I don’t even know where to begin. I mean, there’s audio, and then there’s video too. We have tons of incomplete concepts, some just under completion. There’s a lot of Slipknot I wish the culture could have. There is so much I create throughout my career but very, very little is actually put out there.”
As for Look Outside Your Window, he said: “No one believes that it even exists, or that it’s ever going to come out. I’ve always talked very highly of it and I’ve always said that you will never hear Corey Taylor sing like this. It’s just a whole different approach in my mind. Recently, I approved all the art. I’ve also worked really hard to get it mixed and mastered.”
The band have spent much of the year on tour celebrating their twenty fifth anniversary. They play a short UK tour in December and have recently announced a load of European festival and arena dates for next June.
