Auditioning for a band is a lot like interviewing for any other job: you have to prove you’re crazy enough to work there. Sid Wilson joining Slipknot was no exception. He went as far as almost knocking out one of his future coworkers, Shawn “Clown” Crahan, to prove he was the right man for the job.
Wilson shared what it was like when he first started working with Slipknot in a recent interview with Revolver. “I was already practicing with the band and coming up with parts and everything,” he begins. “But before making the commitment, I needed to see the band live. They kept telling me, ‘We’re crazy, we’re crazy. We wear masks, we’re crazy.’ I’m like, Got it. Check. Crazy. I’m like, ‘I’m crazy. Trust me.'”
The perfect opportunity to prove just how crazy he was arose when Wilson saw the band perform “Tattered & Torn” live. Wilson knew what he had to do the moment Crahan started chanting “Kill me,” making his way into the crowd to wreck absolute havok on the audience.
He would go out in the crowd and wrestle with kids, tie them up with microphone cords and drag them across the floor,” he continues. “So he would go into the crowd every show — I didn’t know this, I’d never seen the show before. And I can see him looking at me through the mask, and he starts this ‘Kill me’ [chant], and I see him coming out from behind this drum, and I could just sense it. I was like, ‘He’s coming for me. He wants to prove to me that they’re crazy — and I am fucking nuts’. So I’m like, ‘It’s on’. And I just start running, and I start leap-frogging people, grabbing their shoulders and just jumping over. And then I’m crawling across the top of the crowd. And I get up there, and he was getting ready to take one step off the stage. He looked down to get his placement, and he looks up, and I’m right there.
He then grabbed Crahan, and headbutted him six times, according to Wilson. While Wilson was coming in for the seventh, Crahan pushed him away and fell to the ground. After crawling back to Joey Jordison, Crahan said, “I don’t give a shit what anybody says — that guy’s in the band.” The rest is history.
Slipknot are heading out on tour starting in March. Make sure to get grab your tickets here —who knows, maybe you too could get headbutted by Sid Wilson.
A Photo Timeline of Slipknot’s Turbulent Career
Because it wouldn’t be the ‘Knot without chaos.
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