Joey Jordison, Founding Slipknot Drummer, Dead at 46 - Rolling Stone

Joey Jordison, Slipknot’s founding drummer and co-writer of many of their biggest hits, died on Monday at the age of 46. A rep for his family said he died peacefully in his sleep but did not specify a cause of death.

“Joey’s death has left us with empty hearts and feelings of indescribable sorrow,” reads a statement from Jordison’s family. “To those that knew Joey, understood his quick wit, his gentle personality, giant heart, and his love for all things family and music. The family of Joey have asked that friends, fans, and media understandably respect our need for privacy and peace at this incredibly difficult time.” The family intends to hold a private funeral service.

Jordison was playing with a group of Des Moines, Iowa metalheads who called themselves the Pale Ones and later Meld when he suggested they change their name to Slipknot in 1995. Within a few years, the band’s lineup expanded to nine members who wore nightmarish masks and fused metal and rap aggression that placed them at the vanguard of the nu-metal explosion. Thanks to steady touring and explosive live shows on Ozzfest, their 1999 self-titled debut went double-platinum, with Jordison’s neck-rattling rhythms and death-metal blastbeats a crucial ingredient to the band’s sudden success.

He stayed with the band until 2013, leaving for what he described at the time as “personal reasons.” A few years later, he revealed a neurological disease that caused his departure. “I got really, really sick with a horrible disease called transverse myelitis; I lost my legs,” he told the audience at the Metal Hammer Golden Gods Awards in 2016 (via NME). “I couldn’t play anymore. It was a form of multiple sclerosis, which I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. I got myself back up, and I got myself in the gym and I got myself back in fucking therapy to fucking beat this shit.” At the time, he said he was rededicating himself to music with a new band called Vimic.

In addition to Slipknot and Vimic, the prolific musician played guitar in the glam-inspired horror-punk group the Murderdolls, drums with the alt-metal group Scar the Martyr and extreme-metal supergroup Sinsaenum, and pre-Slipknot resume stints in Modifidious and the Have Nots. He also made guest appearances on recordings by Otep, Necrophagia, and Rob Zombie. In 2005, he assembled several supergroups for the project Roadrunner United, which commemorated the 25th anniversary of Slipknot’s label, Roadrunner; on five tracks, he played with dream teams that featured members of Type O Negative, Deicide, Life of Agony, and King Diamond’s band.

Nathan Jonas Jordison was born in Des Moines on April 26th, 1975, according to author Jason Arnopp’s book, Inside the Sickness, Behind the Masks. He grew up nearby in the small town of Waukee, where he got bad grades in school and considered himself an introvert. He discovered Kiss and Black Sabbath in the early Eighties and his parents nurtured his interests in music, starting his first band while in elementary school. He played guitar with a friend who wasn’t very good at drums, prompting Jordison to switch instruments. His parents surprised him with his own drum kit when he was in fifth grade and he continued to play with friends. His parents eventually divorced, leaving him to grow up with his mother and two younger sisters. His mother eventually remarried and opened up a funeral parlor with Jordison’s stepfather; preparing bodies for funerals became one of Jordison’s first jobs.

Jordison and the other founding members of Slipknot found each other playing Des Moines’ club circuit, chiefly at a venue called the Runway. By 1996, they had started wearing masks and had put out a demo album called Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat., which featured a song called “Slipknot” that the band later refashioned into the Slipknot album’s “(sic).” “The first mask I had was an original pale-white kabuki mask,” Jordison told Revolver. “One Halloween, when I was about eight years old, I came home from school and my mother popped around the corner with that mask on and a long robe and scared the living fuck out of me. It’s always stuck with me. So I had to use that for my mask.”

This story is developing.

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