'You could hear the crowd stomping through the cement and it was frightening my wife'
Slipknot‘s Clown has talked about how the band’s new movie ‘Day Of The Gusano’ recaptures the raucous rock n’ roll energy of their early days.
The masked metal nine-piece have turned their attention to the big screen for their next project, which documents their first-ever visit to Mexico City in December 2015.
Directed by Slipknot percussionist Shawn ‘Clown’ Crahan, ‘Day of The Gusano ‘features exclusive interviews with members of the band and new behind-the-scenes footage. The film will chronicle Slipknot’s close relationship with their fanbase, particularly with the Mexican chapter – who are affectionately known as ‘gusano’ (translated as ‘maggots’) – as well as showing footage from the band’s live show at the inaugural Knotfest event in Mexico from that year.
NME spoke to Clown about what went into making the movie.
Explaining why the metal vterans chose Mexico to shoot the movie, Clown said: “As a people, they have a unity for sure. The people are very aggressive in their love of music. It really moves them. How they display their affection as one is what’s really moving. If you tell them to sit down or jump, it’s everybody. It’s a power to be reckoned with.
“When I was growing up, there weren’t as many laws as there are now. Most of the laws are built around safety and learning from the past. I’ve not been wild about these huge arena shows because sometimes the extra barriers and walkways can ruin what the crowd could have been. You can be 30ft up in the air and 30 feet away from the crowd and you can still feel it, but you’ve gotta dig dip to get that same feeling of being within an arm’s reach.”
Clown added: “I grew up enjoying the unity of small clubs. You could only get about 400 people in there. The world and the business makes it less rock n’ roll.
Speaking of how the gig recaptured the more ‘rock’n’roll madness of when they first started out, Clown said: “The beautiful thing about the early Slipknot shows is that neither we nor the kids knew what to expect. We make love to this idea of ‘rock n’ roll’, and then after it happens you’re like ‘holy shit I was involved in that’. It’s been so long since I’ve been able to feel that. You can feel that with the Mexican people.
“I remember walking off stage with my wife, I grabbed my hand and we were walking to the van and my wife was like ‘can you feel that?’ You could hear the kids stomping through the cement and it was kind of frightening my wife. It was pretty incredible. It’s nice to be reunited of unity and that large groups of people can agree.”
Clown also spoke to NME about their ambitious plans for their next album, and his thoughts on the tragic passing of Chris Cornell and Chester Bennington.
The post Slipknot’s Clown on how new movie ‘Day Of The Gusano’ recaptures the madness of their early days appeared first on NME.
