Metal Anarchy

During a recent appearance on The Break Down With Nath & Johnny podcast, Slipknot’s M. Shawn “Clown” Crahan opened up about the sacrifices him and his family made during the band’s early years. The percussionist says he “made a decision to take a pretty selfish path.”

Clown said the following:

“It’s hard to talk about the sacrifice like my wife has put in. We had an agreement and the agreement was, ‘Go ahead and do this thing you think you’re gonna do, whatever that is, and as long as it doesn’t go backwards…’ I was married three years before I started SLIPKNOT with Paul [Gray, bass] and Andy [Rouw, a.k.a. Anders Colsefni, vocals].

There’s all these real misunderstandings about who started the band or whatever. And the bottom line is it was Andy Rouw, the original singer, myself and Paul. But Andy ended up leaving really early in the game. And so once we were signed, it was just basically Paul and I… I’m here to tell you my friend Paul Gray was at my wedding three years prior [to] he and I and Andy starting the band. And that’s that. And so I had family. I had two kids at that moment. When Paul came to the wedding, we were eight months pregnant walking down the aisle. He had L.A. County Jail pants on, peroxide hair, pack of Marlboros, totally the realest person at my wedding besides close, close family. But you skip forward and then we start the band and then a year or so after starting the band, we get pregnant and have our third child, and we have that child before we’re signed. So, we have three children and lots of work raising children. And I’ve been married now five, six, seven years — three years before we even started the band, so everybody needs to kind of figure it out about reality of what sacrifice really is.”

He also added:

“First and foremost, I made a decision to take a pretty selfish path. I can say that. We’ve lost a child. When something as horrendous and unexplainable as that is, you look back on your path and you realize the decisions you made, and it’s not too hard to realize the ones that were bad decisions real quick, when you don’t get to say goodbye to someone or hello to someone again. So moving forward through those sorts of thoughts, making agreements, saying goodbye to kids, buses leaving, these sorts of things, and promising my wife we would always make sure it was moving forward. And here 25 years [later], we’re just relevant and it hasn’t stopped. It’s pretty amazing. I’m blessed.”

[via Blabbermouth]