Joey Jordison was Number 1
Thoughts on the late drummer, nü-metal, and the passage of time
Joey Jordison, the original and former drummer of Slipknot died in his sleep. I learned this on Twitter at roughly 5pm on July 27th. He was 46.
When I was 13 and he was 28, Jordison was the drummer and arguably most popular member of arguably the most popular metal band in America. As a 13 year old this meant that Jordison was a man of great importance. Slipknot were massive, appealing to the bullied and bullies in equal measure. They were a persistent subject on the internet on forums that talked about rock music. Some things never change. A significant amount of that talk involved Joey Jordison. Drummers online had to take a stance on him one way or another. Like his pop punk equivalent Travis Barker, he attracted cult like worship from the young and impressionable and scornful scoffing from the old and smug.
Many of the old-head and younger aspiring snob’s complaints were focused on Slipknot’s cartoonish presentation. Nine guys in matching jumpsuits each with an individualized mask and number. Taken together with the cacophonous racket of their music, Slipknot’s image made it easy to dismiss them as a circus act. But if you were ever hooked on Slipknot, I’d wager that the masks and jumpsuits were part of the reason why. Getting into Slipknot was like rooting for a sports team from hell or reading a particularly grim stretch of X-Men. You might be inclined to pick from the lineup a mask and member that you liked more than the rest. Joey Jordison was Slipknot’s Steph Curry or Wolverine. Most kids picked him.
Jordison wore a white kabuki mask painted black to accent his eyes and lips and mark his cheeks with jester-esque vertical stripes. Framed by his sweat drenched straight black hair, this mask turned Jordison into the child of WWE star Sting and Ringu’s Sadako. These points of reference would have been readily available to kids in the early 2000s and if they were the type of kid that liked professional wrestling and American remakes of Japanese horror films then there was a good chance that they’d like Slipknot too. By this point pop culture was starting to bend to nü-metal’s will. Movies like Saw and Underworld were built out of the sounds and sights of nü-metal. And in any place that you’d see Jigsaw’s ugly mug staring out at you, you were likely to run into Jordison’s mask, rendered in pixels or faux anime fan art or hanging on the wall of a bedroom as one icon among many to mark its owner as a member of a subculture vast enough to be recognizable on sight but forever split off from the center.
(Personally, my favorite mask was Corey Taylor’s “leather face with dreads” mask from the first two albums. My mom made me a version of this mask when I was 14 that I’ve worn for three different Halloweens. Love you, Mom.)
Joey Jordison was a phenomenally good drummer. One way of looking at it is that Slipknot would simply be unlistenable if Jordison wasn’t great. Keeping two guitars and a bass playing in the low mids, two percussionists, a DJ and a sampler, and a singer alternating between screaming and rapping in time would be a feat by itself. Joey Jordison managed not only to organize the chaos but cut through it and become the lead instrument. His phrasing and Corey Taylor’s vocals moved in sync, filling the space left by the other or driving ahead in unison. Jordison’s ability to play flawless extreme metal techniques alongside snare popping funk rock grooves gave Slipknot the rhythmic flexibility to write some of the heaviest music to ever get close to the mainstream.
By the time I got into Slipknot, Joey Jordison’s profile was big enough for him to be a star beyond the Slipknot umbrella. He played guitar in the band The Murderdolls, a low stakes horror themed hard rock band that wouldn’t be notable without Jordison’s involvement. When Roadrunner Records put together Roadrunner United in 2005 to celebrate their 20th anniversary, Jordison was one of the four “captains” chosen to produce new songs with his pick of players on the label’s roster.
When I was 15 and he was 30, I would religiously watch Joey Jordison’s section of the behind the scenes footage for Roadrunner United. It was the first time I’d seen him outside of his mask and jumpsuit. He looked like some regular dude, almost certainly shorter than I was at the time. Instead of ruining the magic of Slipknot’s image this only magnified it for me by showing the gulf between the icon and the man. More importantly, it revealed the work required to create the icon. The documentary shows Jordison building entire songs from scratch, playing drums bass and guitar and directing a rolling roster of guest musicians. This seemed to 15 y/o me like the best life that anyone could live.
I watched that segment again shortly after learning that Joey Jordison died. I am now 31 years old and still think his job seems pretty great. Since it was roughly 5pm I was still working from the chair that is next to the bed that I sleep in. Considering even for a second how much I would rather have been in the studio put me in a foul mood, even though I was about to go to the studio immediately after “leaving work”. When I arrived at the practice space the metal band next door were already getting busy, their drummer’s high speed double kick drums bleeding into our room. We began our first song of the practice. It’s called “Dead in Tiburon” and it’s about grappling with the death of someone that you cared about as a kid. I kept the time. I did not keep my composure.
Lately a lot of my friends have been talking about the documentary Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage, which from what I gather is basically a feature length version of the finale to Steven Hyden’s “Whatever Happened To Alternative Nation?” series in which the disastrous festival and the entire genre of nü-metal stand in as totems of a growing cultural rot. I haven’t watched the documentary yet, but I’d be pretty surprised if it painted the genre in a more forgiving light. Even if the genre’s best acts are accepted into the metal canon at this point, the style’s reputation in the wider music community will never escape this festival’s shadow. It will forever be the music of cruel lunkheaded bullies and smelly weirdos.
This fact of reputation has made it difficult for me to communicate without distortion how sad I was to hear the news about Jordison. Slipknot’s music doesn’t lend itself to mournful reflection. It is ugly and violent, more than a little juvenile, and rarely vulnerable. This is why it appealed to me as a teen who felt like the world was ugly and violent, who was by definition juvenile, and who rarely felt comfortable being vulnerable unless soundtracked by music like Jordison’s.
When I was 27 and Joey Jordison was 42 I interviewed him over the phone for Invisible Oranges. Jordison had been kicked out of Slipknot back in 2013. Roughly around the same time Jordison developed a case of Transverse Myelitis that left him unable to play drums. By 2017 Jordison had recovered and was promoting his new bands Vimic and Sinsaenum. That he was speaking to me should probably tell you that these bands were not as big as Slipknot. I never got the sense that Jordison worried about that. He was dedicated to making more music and grateful to finally be healthy enough to do so. The guy had been dealt a real bad hand and came out on the other side of it ready to keep working. I left the interview surprised at how star-struck I had been and even more impressed with Jordison himself.
When I learned that Joey Jordison died in his sleep at roughly 5pm on July 27th I felt sadness for the loss of two different figures. We lost Joey Jordison the drumming superhero in a kabuki mask that scored our adolescence, and we lost the Joey Jordison behind the mask, as hard working a musician as I’m likely to ever meet who fought back from illness to continue doing what he loved. He likely would have done it for many more years. I will miss both of these Jordisons. Rest easy.
