It’s without a doubt that Joey Jordison’s death was one of the biggest blows to metal music. The drummer, who exited Slipknot, passed away in 2021, aged only 46. His dismissal from the legendary band was a matter of debate until 2016 when Jordison revealed he had a serious neurological disease.
Nonetheless, the band still respects his legacy and the current drummer Jay Weinberg does an incredible job of doing his old songs justice. In a recent interview with Zane Lowe, Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor spoke up on the relationship that he had with Jordison, as well as about things that were left unspoken between the two. He explains (via Ultimate Guitar):
“As you get older, you just start to appreciate what you do have and you lament the losses. You lament the fact that you never had to truly make peace with the people who you lost. And that’s something that I’ve been doing just in my own life, is reaching out to people who I haven’t talked to in a while and really burying hatchets because that shit will just fucking weigh you down.“
“Me and Joey, we had talked over the years every now and then – it would just be random – but we never said to each other what we needed to say to each other. At least I didn’t say it to Joey. But that was the complicated thing about Joey; the fact that he was so many different people in one person, but it was hard to kind of get a beat on what was going on at any given time.“
“He had demons that would’ve killed normal people. He was one of the true musical geniuses I’d ever met. He was just complicated.”
Corey also adds:
“Everybody likes to sugarcoat a lot of shit after the fact, but you don’t realize that what you’re doing is you’re dehumanizing them. And I can’t do that because I fucking lived with these guys.“
“And the goddamn tragedy of it is that we did everything we could to try and be there. Not only for him but for Paul [Gray, late bassist]. I mean, we would rally and we would rally and we would rally, and it’s just a shame, man. The world is less cool without him in it.”
Photo: Rezter (JoeyJordison), Rhys A. (Corey Taylor 2011)
