Shawn ‘Clown’ Crahan of Slipknot has revealed that he needs heart surgery and has said that sometimes he feels like he’s “dying”.
All a bit worrying for fans of metal icons. Crahan – who is only 56 – talked candidly about his health on an edition of Rick Rubin’s Tetragrammaton podcast.
“I have a skipping heart and I got to get a surgery,” he started. “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.”
He continued: ‘So, I’m overweight and my brain is so strong that it tells this stuff what to do. So, my standing heart rate at night is 43 and during the day I get down to 33. (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.”
The alternative, Crahan explained, was a pacemaker, which he said is an absolute no no. “I was like, ‘Doc, listen, I get a pacemaker. I’m done, right? Touring, Slipknot?’ So he goes, ‘Oh, no. You’re going to feel better.’ And I just I lost it. I was like, ‘I can’t get out of this to save my life’. I’m like, there is nothing... It’s going to be better because of Slipknot.”
Inevitably, this sort of talk led to some reflections about the two Slipknot members who are no longer with us: Joey Jordison and Paul Gray. Crahan explained that after Gray’s death in 2010 he had to be convinced to continue: “He’s the whole reason I’m sitting here.
"He hijacked me from my art career. So many people innately wanted to say, so blindly, well, ‘You know, Paul would want you to go on’, and I wouldn’t say much. And then finally, I had enough. And I’m like, did anyone think that maybe I might not want to go on without my friend?”
