The porn shop that helped start Slipknot: “I’d start writing something great”
Some of the best bands in the world often come together by chance. There may be outliers like U2 and The Beatles, who met as schoolboys and remained intact throughout their entire tenure, but others just see a band as picking up a paycheck before they hear magic strike when they play together. Slipknot may have been brewing out of the Iowa area for a while, but they ended up sealing the deal for their legacy in the middle of a porn shop.
Are we even surprised that a band got started in a sex shop? After all, the mantra “sex, drugs and rock and roll” starts with lust first, so it’s not exactly uncommon for people to try their hand at the adult industry before becoming a major rock star.
When Slipknot first got started, it began in the mind of Shawn ‘Clown’ Crahan when working overtime at a gas station with original drummer Joey Jordison. They had already started to coalesce with other local musicians like Paul Gray, but something was missing when they had their old singer, Anders Colsefini.
Not that Mate Feed Kill Repeat was a bad first attempt, but the results were a lot closer to Mr Bungle than anything that we would expect from the band that would one day write ‘Spit It Out’. That extra ingredient was Corey Taylor, who was already waiting in line to join.
Gray had said that he knew Taylor from his work with his former band Stone Sour, but from the first moment Taylor saw the masked maniacs play live, he was sold, telling Google, “I was at their very first live show as Slipknot. And I remember saying, and I’ve never said this before, was ‘I’m going to sing for this band someday’”.
When he was making ends meet, though, Taylor was daylighting at a porn shop in the middle of Des Moines, Iowa. Although such a place isn’t exactly known for their diplomatic clientele, Clown was among the few members of Slipknot who went into the shop and told Taylor that he would be their new singer.
As Taylor recalled to The Guardian, the very beginnings of Slipknot’s debut began in that shop, saying, “The lyrics for the first Slipknot album were written in the bathroom, while I was working 9am till 8pm at a porn shop. I would always have my notebook and pen, and for some reason, every time I’d go to the bathroom, I’d start writing something great”.
Whereas Stone Sour was more post-grunge adjacent than anything Slipknot was known for, Taylor was looking to tap into something a bit heavier. Taking influences from everyone from Korn to Metallica to Ministry, every note on Slipknot was made to go for the throat right out of the gate.
Compared to its humble beginnings, these songs were anything but sexy. From the manic ramblings in ‘Eyeless’ to the psychological horror story in ‘Wait and Bleed’, Taylor was approaching songwriting the same way that Stephen King approached literature, often crafting pictures intended to be as emotionally disturbing as possible. Taylor may have walked into that porn shop a boy, but by the time he walked out for the final time, the rest of the metal world had no idea what they were in for.
