Slipknot’s Clown needs to undergo heart surgery.
The 56-year-old percussionist – whose real name is Shawn Crahan – often feels like he is “dying” as a result of the organ “skipping” beats so he is preparing to go under the knife for a “very easy” procedure to correct the issue.
Speaking on Rick Rubin’s Tetragrammaton podcast, Clown – who is the group’s sole remaining founder member – said: “I have a skipping heart and I got to get a surgery. And I found this out after my last tour. I went in, I wasn’t feeling good, and I went in and the nurse was trying to get an EKG thing going on me or whatever and it just wasn’t happening.
“I kind of fell asleep and I woke up. I’m like, ‘Are you going to get this thing?’ And she’s like, ‘Oh, it’s not working.’ They thought I was having a heart attack right there. Anyway, my heart skips and apparently, I’ve taught myself to be like a cross-country runner.”
The Wait and Bleed hitmaker explained he was “overweight” but because his brain is “so strong”, it kept his heart rate at 43bmp during the day.
He added: “It hasn’t happened since I’ve been here with you, which is good, because I’ll go from ‘on,’ to just straight up I feel like I’m dying. So, I got to get a surgery. It’s a very easy surgery. You’re usually out on the same day. It’s not like they rip you open. This is something about the electricity.”
At one point, Clown thought he would need a pacemaker and joked he thought he’d finally found an excuse to give up touring – but his doctors insisted that wouldn’t be the case.
He quipped: “I was like, I can’t get out of this to save my life. I’m like, there is nothing, not even my heart. It’s going to be better because of Slipknot.”
Meanwhile, the musician recently defended the use of AI in music, which he has embraced and views as “a professor in my pocket who only wants to do what I ask it”.
He told gaming magazine The Escapist: “I’ve been using AI my whole life,” and claimed he has “thousands and thousands” of poems that he is adapting through the use of AI.
He explained how he uses the technology, saying: “Here are my words. Don’t change them. Don’t alter them. But show me some different ways to sing it.”
Clown added that he would prefer use AI rather than pay a producer “$150,000” to produce unsatisfactory results.
He said: “What’s the difference between me pulling out my pocket producer… or me trying to get a famous producer that might not even work with me and could potentially cost me $150,000… who will only give me one or two ways – I’m not mentioning any names!”