Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal

by Jon Wiederhorn

  JOEY JORDISON: Doing a Slipknot record is fucking prison. You’re trapped until it’s done. I’m in a band with the best singer, the best percussion players, the best guitar players, bass player, sampler, DJ in the fucking world. I’m so blessed. But at the same time, when we get together—even though we have so much love for each other—we fuckin’ want to kill each other. When we did Iowa, it was a very dark time for the band. We hated each other. We were all on drugs. We were all fucking drunk and it sucked.

  JIM ROOT: With the first album all this stuff was happening and we didn’t have time to think about it. Then all of a sudden here we are recording the second album and I’m seeing the way Ross works. I’m down in it. I’m seeing the band coming together, but not coming together. It was an angry time and the songs reflected that. People expected us to come out with an album of “Wait and Bleed”s or “Spit It Out”s. That would have been the safe thing to do, and I don’t think we’ve ever done anything to be safe. To us it made more sense to come out with all this brutal shit.

  COREY TAYLOR: I was drinking a lot. I was in a relationship that wasn’t good for me and I didn’t want to realize it at the time. We went out to LA and that’s where I really started to get into the booze and the philandering. I was doing anything I could to feel good because everything else felt really bad. But I knew we had a responsibility and that’s why Iowa is so dark.

  MICK THOMSON: I should dig up [our former manager] Steve Richards and beat his fucking corpse. I’m an atheist, but every once in a while I think there may be a God that put a cyst on his brainstem and caused him to be a fuckin’ zombie. The dude stepped into our lives and tried his best to cause rifts. There was a divide-and-conquer attitude that I could see a mile away, but no one wanted to listen. He’d pit one person in the band against another because as long as you’ve got them occupied you can be raping them and stealing from them and they’re not noticing because they’re too caught up in stupid shit to see a bigger picture. I tried to show people in the band his true colors for years and they wouldn’t listen because he would buddy up with them and do special things and treat certain people like they were important. He basically corrupted and pissed on the beautiful thing we had done. He did a lot of fucking damage for his own financial gain.

  COREY TAYLOR: I was at parties with orgies in the room. The last night we were staying at the Oakwoods [corporate housing], we were having “patio furniture Olympics,” throwing shit through the patio doors into the LA River. We threw chairs, all my dishes, we tried to get the bed over there. It culminated with a threesome in somebody’s hotel room. I was so angry and there was so much darkness. I was cutting myself in the studio vocal booth, bleeding everywhere and screaming my fucking head off. I just wanted to feel something. I didn’t care what it was.

  SHAWN CRAHAN: Life was a disaster because outside forces were interfering with our art. Drugs, women, idiots saying, “Whoa, you guys are gonna be huge.” Everybody wants our money. Everyone wants our souls. We’ve got forty-eight fuckin’ employees. No one’s worth a shit. Use, use, use. So I hate Iowa, but it is brutality at its finest. We almost all died. There were chemicals. I was probably the worst, man. Happily married. My wife was very ill [with Crohn’s disease] during those times. I felt really isolated because I couldn’t be with her. We’re being lied to about money by our former manager and we’re still broke.

  PAUL GRAY: The week our record comes out is the same week [pop star] Aaliyah died. We thought we were going to have the number one record. Aaliyah had only sold 20,000 records the week before, but she opened with like 400,000, and Mary J. Blige’s sales went up too because of that, and then we ended up with the number 3 record. We went to start the Pledge of Allegiance tour with System of a Down and the date we were gonna start, that’s when 9/11 happened.

  COREY TAYLOR: It wasn’t a good time for the country, but it wasn’t a good time for us, either. We got banned at a lot of radio stations and MTV wouldn’t touch us. So here we were with our finest work to date and nobody would give us the time of day. We were working our asses off and we weren’t getting paid shit. We were going, “Where’s the fucking money?” and no one could give us a fucking answer. The sunshine from the first album was totally fucking gone. It was a total eclipse for a very fucking long time.

  JIM ROOT: There were always random women hanging around on that tour. At the time I was pretty naïve and I would think, “Oh, this chick really likes me.” But no, she doesn’t really like me. She likes the idea of me. It took me a while to figure that one out. Then I just withdrew and did more drugs.

  COREY TAYLOR: We didn’t like each other. There was a lot of screaming and animosity, and that’s a big reason the tour only lasted seven or eight months. Jim and I went off and did Stone Sour because we had to get the fuck away from Slipknot. And that was a little better. But at the same time I was not being fulfilled musically anymore because I had too many problems.

  PAUL GRAY: I was pissed at Corey and Jim. I thought, “Fuck, we should be working on Slipknot.” During the downtime I started doing some really heavy drugs. Heavy, heavy, heavy drugs. Heroin. I was shooting speedballs every day. And then pills. I was on everything, man. We were working on the Disasterpieces DVD. That was the only thing that was really happening with Slipknot. In the beginning I kind of had my shit under control, but after a while, no. I became an addict and always will be.

  CHRIS FEHN: I moved to Lake Tahoe with my girlfriend at the time. No one was talking and Corey was doing Stone Sour. I didn’t know if we were ever gonna get back together. I would wait for a call from Slipknot every day and it never came, and that drove me deeper into depression. I’d be driving home up the mountain and I would hear Corey on the radio with Stone Sour. It was a really good song. I’d be bummed out and happy for him. So, what would I do? I’d just go get fucked-up and try to make it through the night. I was going through mental torture. I did a lot of drugs, and there were a couple nights where I’d wake up on the bathroom floor and not know if I was gonna see tomorrow morning.

  The idea that stardom leads to boozing, drugging, and sexual excess is a fallacy. But for those seeking depravity and cheap thrills, the opportunities are there. Some, like Tool and System of a Down, prefer not to talk about it. Others, like Slipknot and Machine Head, reel off both joyous and devastating tales of decadence and debauchery, refusing to be judged for their actions.

  ROBB FLYNN: We like to drink and rage and put on diapers and pee in them. It’s fun. Depends are fucking classic, dude, peeing in your pants when you’re wasted is the fucking best. The last night of our Pantera tour was the biggest Depends-mania scenario. We tried the generic Depends on the bus in the kitchen area. No one wanted to test ’em, so I did and it was like, “Ohh no, these leak. Aww, right into my shoe.” I had a squishy shoe for the rest of the night. I was so wasted I didn’t even think to change my shoe. We had our bus driver pull over at that Walmart. [Ex-guitarist] Logan [Mader] was wearing a red fireman’s hat and red cowboy boots and a diaper. I’m wearing a giant afro and Elvis shades and nipple tape. I go in there and they’re like, “Y’all in a band?” Logan’s like, “Yeah, we’re in a band. Wanna see my cock?” An hour later, we’re championing how we fucking flashed this girl. We drank until eleven the next morning. I passed out in my bunk in the new Depends. Woke up pruned and shriveled and urined. And happy.

  SULLY ERNA: I went from partying heavily to partying like a fuckin’ maniac. I drank so much that I sometimes felt like I would overdose on fuckin’ booze. I was lying in my bunk going through Europe, and I would wake up at seven or eight in the morning and I would have my hand on my pulse. I’d fall asleep listening to my heart beat because I felt like it was going to stop, it was beating so slowly.

  JIM ROOT: There were times I’d be sitting on the bus and I’d done so much coke and my heart was beating so fast I was like, “Oh shit, I’m having a heart attack. I’m freaking out.” Fortunately, I never got into heroin. I think I purposely stayed away from that becaus
e I knew I’d like it if I tried it.

  COREY TAYLOR: When we were doing Vol. 3: The Subliminal Verses, I would keep a bottle of Jack next to my fucking bed every day. I had cab companies in my fucking phone so if I couldn’t get a ride to the bar I was still going to the fucking bar.

  JIM ROOT: I was pretty good at hiding my drug addiction from people. But at one point, I was up for a few days partying and I had a breakdown—I couldn’t handle it, mentally. I was spun out from too much cocaine and drinking and just hanging around generally bad people. All that negative energy built up inside of me and I finally freaked out. I wouldn’t go into the studio for a few days and one of the guys from our management company had to drive me out to Topanga Canyon and put me on a crystal table to try to mellow me out. I’m laying on this table going, “What the fuck am I doing? Is this table gonna do anything for me other than maybe straighten my back out?” I was at the bottom of my hole and was really starting to build a wall up around myself. I’d go into the studio as early as I could so I could get my tracking done and leave before anyone else in the band showed up.

  DAVID DRAIMAN: Before I settled down, I was absolutely a hedonist in every way. I don’t think it’s a secret to anyone that I am an incredible admirer of the female form. I’m not a big drinker. I do love marijuana, but I would say that if there’s one thing I was truly addicted to it would be women.

  SULLY ERNA: I used to be out of control with women and alcohol—just full-blown. Me and [drummer] Shannon [Larkin] alone would go through two cases of beer a night on our bus and at least a bottle and a half of Crown Royal. For every show, we’d have a case of Pedialyte on our rider because you drink a bottle of that and the hangover’s gone. Then before you go onstage you drink a bottle of wine, the buzz kicks in, and you’re ready to roll. Then after the show I’d drink heavily again, and that was a vehicle to sleeping with two or three women a night. It was a vicious cycle.

  DAVID DRAIMAN: Some of my favorite sexual experiences don’t involve a multitude of women. Those situations are fun, but there isn’t necessarily always the same sort of intensity as there can be with a one-on-one. But I’ve seen everything that you can possibly imagine. I’ve seen girls stick things into parts of their bodies that they do not belong in—things that you would never dream would fit—just for the amusement of people around them. I’ve seen women get on their hands and knees and bark like dogs while attached to a collar and chain. I’ve seen girls take on a team of men. Once, in the back lounge of our bus at Ozzfest, this girl was just such a champ, and literally there was a line of people on our bus—band guys, crew guys—who were just being serviced. It’s wonderful to see that someone can be that free with themselves and actually still enjoy it. But that’s not really, to me, what women and the sensuality and the power and the sexuality that they harness are all about. When you start getting into crazy numbers of women at the same time and crazy numbers of guys on one woman at the same time, then it kind of becomes more foolish, more of a game.

  STEVE “FUZZ” KMAK (ex-Disturbed): The best line that a girl on the bus can ever say is, “I’ve never done this before.” That’s the best.

  DAVID DRAIMAN: Especially because they always seem to know the rules of the bus. They know where everything is, they know you can’t poop in the toilet [or the septic system has to be drained].

  ZAKK WYLDE: Black Label Society’s soundman, Dave, had some fuckin’ chick in the back lounge of the bus. The rest of us are sitting up in the front packed in there. It was like fuckin’ Animal House on fucking crack cocaine and steroids. The majority of guys were all single, so it was like a Caligula fuckfest. There was this one chick that all the guys were fucking. She was riding two guys, trying to fit both of their fat-ass cocks in her fuckin’ mouth and getting pounded by one of the other guys. I grabbed our driver, Mike, and went, “Dude you gotta see this shit!” Then there was the girl in the back that Dave was banging. She only knew him as Soundman Dave. So she’s yelling, “Fuck me, Soundman Dave!” because she didn’t know his last name. And the next thing you know [bassist] John “JD” DeServio is sitting there and he’s, like, five-foot-three. So she goes, “Soundman Dave, I’m done with you. Lemme fuck the little guy.” I’m going, “What the fuck?” The next day at sound check JD’s playing “Riders on the Storm,” Dave’s out front. And in a voice like Jim Morrison, JD goes, “Fuck me, Soundman Dave / Your throbbing cock I crave.” For the next fuckin’ month and a half everyone called him, “Fuck Me Soundman Dave.” We’d be in a bar, and when I’d introduce him to someone I’d go, “This is Fuck Me Soundman Dave. It’s fuckin’ crazy his parents named him that.”

  SULLY ERNA: There were times where there were forty or fifty people jammed on the bus. My bus used to be nicknamed the Combat Zone [after Boston’s Red Light District]. There’s a vision you have when you’re not signed yet about what it’s like to be a rock star. When you jump into it and you start to live it, you’re like, “Cool, this is what I wanted to do.” Then all of a sudden it consumes you and turns into this awful fuckin’ creature and it takes over your life.

  MICK THOMSON: No one knows who they are until they’re in a different situation. People think, “Oh, I’m really grounded. I’m faithful. I would never cheat on my girlfriend or my wife.” Oh, really? Ever had extremely hot pussy dangling in front of your face every fucking night willing to give it up? No. What you’re saying is you don’t go to a bar and chase tail. But when you’re faced with that shit right in front of you and it’s there every single fucking day, those are usually the people that are first to cave.

  SULLY ERNA: You go out and play the show. You hit the bottle. You’re drunk. The chicks are back there. The party’s back there. You’re the center of the whole thing. The next thing you know, you wake up in the morning and you got some stranger in your fucking bed that you don’t give a fuck about, and you can’t wait for her to get the fuck out of there. Then there’s a new chick, so you go, “Oh, she’s fucking hot.” And you’re banging her. There’s no satisfaction in it, and it becomes an addiction. You see the next girl and you go, “Whoa, look at her! I haven’t fucked her yet.” So you fuck her and then you’re like, “Eaagh! I don’t really like you. And I’m starting to not really like myself.” You start to feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. In the end I came clean with my old lady and told her about every fucking girl I ever cheated on her with.

  DAVID DRAIMAN: Now I’m very happy and monogamous. But since I’ve been on the road, I’ve had a handful of meaningful relationships, all of which left me fairly badly wounded. I had an ex-fiancée leave me. I lost my unborn child four or five years ago while my ex was in the middle of her second trimester. That’s what “My Child” [on the Asylum CD] is about. I wanted a family so badly, I didn’t see that she and I were not meant to be together. But she had an epiphany when we were in Amsterdam and literally, within twenty-four hours of coming home from Europe, she was gone.

  SULLY ERNA: To be able to tell your girl that you’ve been cheating on her for three fucking years on the road and all the suspicions she had about you were true, that’s heavy. I don’t know any fuckin’ dude that’s done it. Well, I know James Hetfield did it. When he told me I went, “Wow, that’s pretty awesome, but I would never fucking tell.” But eventually I decided I had to. Before I told her, I went to the desert for two weeks and worked with these Native American medicine men—these people I’ve known that do some amazing rituals and ceremonies. It was magical in a sense, and it allowed me to open the door and realize what my problem was, and it was just that I wasn’t being honest and I wasn’t living an honest life.

  MICK THOMSON: Our old manager and everyone around him were invading our fucking shit going, “Hey, dude, try some of this. Hey dude, there’s a chick over here who wants to fuckin’ blow you.” I’m like, “You just smiled and said goodbye to his girlfriend and now you’re trying to get him to fuck somebody else?” That’s who these people are. They’d try that shit with me and I’d go, “You know what, dude.
You don’t need to worry about my dick. My dick will go wherever my dick wants to go. But you don’t need to fuckin’ come over and try to urge me to go into some room and tag some fuckin’ chick.” I almost found it gay. Like, “What, are you gonna sit there and beat off thinking about how I’m just destroying some pussy in there? What the fuck is wrong with you?” To me, if my pants are off, that’s my private life and you don’t need to be involved with it in any way, shape, or form.

  COREY TAYLOR: When we went in to do Vol. 3: The Subliminal Verses, we were in the studio three months and I hadn’t laid down a stitch of vocals. I was gonna quit the band and I was actually on the phone buying a plane ticket home. I was wasted at the time and it took Clown to fuckin’ talk me down. Clown has always been kind of my father figure in a weird way, even though we’re only four years apart. There were a few guys I was close to at that time, but for the most part I pushed everybody away. I was just going through a constant cycle of abuse and it culminated with me at the Hyatt on Sunset almost jumping out of an eight-story window. If my buddy Tommy and my ex-wife hadn’t been there, I’d be dead. The next morning I had my little moment of fucking clarity. I quit drinking for three years until my wife and I split up.

  JAMEY JASTA: The low point for Hatebreed came when we were doing a festival with Kid Rock, Static-X, and Staind in Wisconsin. We made an agreement not to drink. One night we decided to break the whisky out, and that ended up with me, [bassist Chris] Beattie, and ex-guitarist Sean [Martin] all fighting each other individually, cage-match style, outside the bus in front of all the other bands, agents, and managers. It was terrible. We broke the windshield out of the bus, which cost us over $15,000. We missed shows. I woke up in a bathtub filled with blood. And my elbow was cracked open from Sean body-slamming me onto these rocks. It was full-blown—the hardest you can punch, the hardest you can smash someone’s face into the ground. Everybody witnessed this and it was just a disgusting display of drunken idiocy. But it made us all better friends. Fortunately, I cleaned up my act and got sober. But I’ll always have an addictive personality. I have mental illness, depression, alcoholism, and drug addiction in my family for generations going back. So with an addictive personality, anything can be a problem—food, booze, pills, women. All that stuff comes out in the music.