“When you first pick up a Tele or a Jazzmaster, you’re not thinking about neoclassical scales or shredding. But the more you play them, it’s like, ‘Wow! They kinda rip!’” Jim Root on upsetting metalheads and Fender purists, and his amp modeling conversion

A portrait of a masked Jim Root with his signature white Charvel S-style.

He was the last man in. When guitarist Jim Root joined Slipknot in the first months of 1999, the band were in the final stages of recording the debut album that would define them as the dominant new force in metal.

Root’s arrival came so late in the day that he played on just one track, Purity. The rest of the Slipknot album had been recorded with guitarists Mick Thomson and Josh Brainard prior the latter’s departure from the band.