Inside the ’99: See Slipknot’s 25th Anniversary MSG Victory Lap
Pulse of the Maggots
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The communion Slipknot share with their fans, whom they call “maggots,” makes touring worth it for Crahan. “You have all these people struggling with their cultural, social themes, transgender issues, divorce, death, poverty, money, the workforce, you name it,” he says. “Everything that’s going on, we help everyone get back to work tomorrow.”
He’s espcially excited to see several generations of maggots on this tour. “There’s a lot of people that have been with us for 25 years that are all grown up now, have kids, and they’re still there in the front,” he says. “Our fan base is the best. They are just incredible. They don’t go for their cars when we play the last song. They stay there. They soak the ‘Knot up. Looking out there, there’s so many happy people hearing songs like ‘No Life,’ ‘Only One,’ ‘Scissors.’ I mean, these are things people thought they would never see. Maybe these are some things we thought we would never see or do. So to see people’s surprise faces is special.”
Knocked Loose Win Over the Maggots
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Before Slipknot drives the Madison Square Garden audience into a frenzy, the crowd must first survive an athletic set by hardcore punks Knocked Loose. Luckily, Knocked Loose’s members know Slipknot has one of the most dedicated fan bases and are up for the task.
“We’ve noticed that this is one of the harder crowds to win over,” frontman Bryan Garris tells Rolling Stone the day after the concert. “The shows have been overwhelmingly positive, but it’s, like, an older crowd. They’re definitely there for Slipknot. So a couple of them are really making us fight for it. But it’s cool to watch people change their minds in real time during the set and come back around to the idea of a younger band opening the bill.”
Nevertheless, opening for the Nine has been a dream come true for the band. “For me, personally, I’m a massive fan of Slipknot, so the full-circle aspect of it was crazy,” Garris says. “On top of that, they’re playing such a niche set. So to be able to like witness that is really, really exciting every day.”
Return to the Masque
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In flashing back at their beginnings, Slipknot’s members decided to pay tribute to their original look, wearing masks and red coveralls, but with a twist. He said the band’s “OGs” met before the tour to figure out the look and decided that the way they numbered their coveralls in the past wouldn’t work since four musicians have joined the band after Slipknot came out.
“They’re in Slipknot, but I’m not interested in giving numbers,” Crahan says. “That was 25 years ago. So yes, these coveralls are different, different company. They’re tailored. Back in ’98, those were just bought off the shelf and then silk-screened or screen printed. The old coveralls had a barcode on the back, barcode over the heart, number on the left shoulder, tribal ‘S’ on the right side, and that’s where we were. It was real simple. It was all uniform and everybody was in it. This time, we did armbands that say ’25’ for 25 years,” he continues. “On my coveralls, I reinvented another tribal S.”
Next they discussed what to do about the masks. “We agreed that we would do takeoffs on our masks because I refuse to be what I was 25 years ago because that’s a fucking lie,” Crahan says. “I’m not interested in reliving something I absolutely cannot be. So we agreed, ‘Let’s all take our own artistic expressions to evolve the coveralls in a manner that suits you and then do a spin on your mask.
“I just did a version of O.G. look,” he continues. “I’m not into orange hair anymore. The orange hair was fake to begin with, and I could roll like that in ’98. I had that mentality, but I’m not rolling anything fake. It’s got to be as authentic to me at this age and what I do.”
Sidney, Kelly Osbourne, and Sid Wilson
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Kelly Osbourne first met Slipknot turntablist and keyboardist Sid Wilson when the band performed on the Ozzfest ’99 tour, where they opened for her dad, Ozzy Osbourne. But she and Wilson didn’t start dating until January 2022. She gave birth to their baby, Sidney, that November. Now the baby, dressed in his own bespoke Slipknot coveralls, gets to see his dad at work just like Kelly was able to with hers.
“To play Madison Square Garden is such a huge achievement,” Osbourne tells Rolling Stone. “I can speak from experience and say that it is a very proud moment for me when I would see my dad in a [performing] situation. So that I get to provide a similar life for my son, there’s no greater gift. I love the way that I was raised. I loved growing up on the road, and I love being on tour with my dad. And we hope that he feels the same way when he gets older.”
In addition to bringing baby Sidney on the road, Osbourne has appreciated seeing Sid on this tour playing the music he did when she first saw Slipknot. “It’s so full circle, because they’re touring the album that introduced me to them, now,” she says. “And it’s, like, the same set as 1999 all over again. It is so much fun to see them play all their old stuff again. It’s been really nostalgic, if I’m honest.
“It’s also special seeing how excited Baby Sidney gets to see his dad onstage,” she continues. “He headbangs and rocks out. He loves it. It’s almost as fun as watching the show.”
It’s a Gas(mask)
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Where some of the musicians created versions of their 1999 masks that were degraded, to show the 25 years that have passed since then, turntablist and keyboardist Sid Wilson made his look fresher. “For a very long time, Sid was the outcast,” Crahan says. “Sid’s number is Zero, so it’s just total chaos. So he’s off on his trip. I thought it was interesting that he took a mold of his first mask, which was a gas mask from some conflict. It could have been Vietnam; it could have been Korea. I don’t know. But he had that.
“His new mask is 24-karat gold, and it’s really clean,” Crahan continues. “It’s like baby shoes, he bronzed it. It’s really heavy, it’s beautiful, and I think it’s cool. That’s how he wants to express the 25 years.”
Pre-Concert Hugs
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“I avoid everyone like a fucking disease backstage,” Crahan says. “We say everything we have to say in the huddle. Corey [Taylor] summarizes the day, reminds us of the past, if we had been here before, gives us a couple things to focus on. And then basically it’s like, ‘Fuck you,’ and then we come out.
Asked if it’s true the band all said “Fuck New York” before going onstage at Madison Square Garden, Crahan didn’t hold back. “It’s ‘Fuck New York,’ it’s, ‘Fuck Madison Square Garden,’ because if we give in to [a moment], it will take from us in a way that we will not be able to provide what you need, and that’s unacceptable to us. So we can’t think about the pressure of where we are, and I’m certainly not going to compare the New York kids to the Indianapolis kids. They’re all our kids. They’re all of our culture. They’re all of our fans. Just because it’s Madison Square Garden doesn’t mean it gets a bigger, badder show than Indianapolis or Des Moines, Iowa. That’s just not what we do.”
He continues, “So it is, ‘Fuck Des Moines,’ ‘Fuck Indianapolis,’ ‘Fuck New York,’ ‘Fuck Tokyo,’ ‘Fuck Amsterdam,’ whatever, and that’s the last thing said to cleanse your palette, like ginger, and just say, ‘I’m here to play. I’m here to have God art. I’m not here to think about New York or Madison Square Garden or that it sold out. I’m here to have salvation and why I chose to play music and why I choose to perform, so it’s just what we do.’ It’s just one way of taking some pressure off.”
Taking Risks
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Crahan acknowledges how unusual it is for a band that put out a new album two years ago to play music from 25 years ago onstage with musicians like the still-anonymous multi-instrumentalist pictured here. “When you don’t play the songs that people think are hits, like ‘Psychosocial,’ ‘Duality,’ ‘Before I Forget,’ it changes the whole economy of the whole venue,” Crahan says. “When a band like Slipknot takes away its normal routine, that could jeopardize everything. I feel we have a real culture. We have a real life behind our 25 years, and it comes out every night.”
Bringing the Pain
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“There’s just not too many bands that can do what we do,” Crahan says of the tour. “It’s just been great going down memory lane and it’s been very, very emotional, honestly to present it to a lot of new-worlders [younger fans]. There’s a lot of new Slipknot out there, might not even understand what we’re doing, but it’s just going great.”
(sic) (sic) (sic)
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For more than a decade, it was Slipknot tradition to open their concerts with “(sic),” the first real song on the Slipknot album. For this tour, they’ve gone back to their roots and after “742617000027,” the intro track, plays, things get real “(sic).”
“One of the first things we ever wrote was ‘(sic),’” Crahan says. “Paul [Gray] and I wrote pieces of the song. We were together in ’95, ’96, playing around and wrote the song’s main beat, the bump, bump, bump, bump, bump. That’s something I brought to the table.
“So when we get into ‘(sic)’ [on this tour], that’s where my head is at with those guys,” Crahan continues. “[Paul and Joey] are right there with me and I’m doing my best as a 54-year-old man to just lose the ego, lose the selfishness, lose it all, and just be proud and take time to remember how this is, why this is, the dedication to work. When the words come in at the end, ‘You can’t kill me ’cause I’m already inside you,’ that’s everything, man. That’s the whole thing, and it’s the first song. I think a lot about those guys with that and ‘Surfacing.’”
The Power of Guitar
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Slipknot are playing several songs they haven’t played in years. During a recent performance of Slipknot’s final track, “Scissors,” Crahan felt like he could see a special appreciation of the guitar work of Jim Root (pictured) and Mick Thomson.
“I was watching a guy last night, and obviously I’m on stage and this dude’s about 12th row on the floor,” the percussionist says. “We start ‘Scissors’ and I’m watching this kid. He can’t believe we’re playing that song. In my brain, I took him as a guitar player because it felt to me the way he was reacting was just like he couldn’t believe that was the tone. The guitar tone he’s fallen in love with is now being zapped out of fucking big speakers. And he was in awe by the sound of it, in my opinion, and it just gave me goosebumps.
“We wrote that song so long ago and haven’t played it for five years basically because it’s the end of a show kind of thing,” Crahan continues. “We always used it in clubs because we didn’t have a second album. So we had to play a lot of stuff when we were asked to headline on our first album. The kids have been coming out in hordes and they sing all the words.”
Spit It Out
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“Corey [Taylor] set what we did with our masks in motion,” Crahan says of the band’s vocalist. “He got a really great mask to symbolize the first album, and that really set a bar.”
Closer to God
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“For me, performing is like a recokoning for being born,” Crahan says. “Slipknot has given me purpose that carries over into my family, my children, and the way I buy groceries, and it’s all slipped into that. So that hour and a half of God that I have, that’s all I have. The rest of [touring] sucks, man.
“It’s so important to me that I came up with masks, because you don’t get to see my tears,” he continues. “You don’t get to see my pain. You don’t get to have any of it. Everyone has taken everything from us. You give so much. I need that hour and a half. So it’s not really explainable what’s happening there, but when you know that that’s all you’ve got, and you rely on that to get through the other 22 and a half hours of every day, of every week, of every month, of every year, I mean it’s as close to God as I come is up there.”
Asked to describe the feeling, Crahan says it’s a form of elevation. “You are levitating,” he says. “You’re with your muse, you’re with your brothers. The impression of vibration is surrounding you, and it’s all I got, man, and I let it out. And when it’s over, I take that mask off and I look in the mirror and I say, ‘You gave everything you could have possibly done, even pushed yourself to do things you probably shouldn’t do health-wise, but you did it anyway to prove to yourself how far you can go in this reality.’ So it’s unspeakable words because it’s pure heaven, ecstasy. It’s purely what I need.”
Pit Boss
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Crahan says he thinks a lot about his fans, the maggots, and hopes they’re having as much fun in the audience as he is onstage during Slipknot concerts. “I hope everyone’s safe,” he says. “I want everyone looking after each other, help pick one another up. I understand it’s crazy, but we got each other.”
The Positive One
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“We’re having a blast,” Crahan says. “The 25-year anniversary has been great, and we haven’t had this much fun as a band in a long time. I’ll be honest with you. I haven’t been this happy in a very, very long time, and I’m not saying there’s any one reason for that other than us coming together to figure out what it is we want, and that’s what we did. We came together and we decided what we want and we’re doing what we want. So not going to let anybody get in the way of that or interfere with pure love.”
Eyes on the Prize
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When Slipknot wrap the North American leg of their Here Comes the Pain Tour, they’re going worldwide. “We’ve got a sold-out tour in Europe, going to South America,” Crahan says. “Brazil is going insane because of resilience in the band. We have some spotty shows in 2025, and some guys that haven’t taken a long break are going to take some breaks, but it doesn’t matter if we’re playing or not: All the time we’ll be off will be time writing. So we’ll probably start writing here pretty soon and jamming.”
The End, So Far
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For as ecstatic as Crahan feels onstage during the band’s 90-minute set (and this picture was taken before the band’s concert at Madison Square Garden), he feels the exact opposite way as soon as the concert ends. “It’s one of the worst feelings of all time because I’m being rushed off, told I got to get into a van and drive an hour in wet clothes in front of people and we got to get out and beat traffic,” he explains. “So it’s really important to understand that that 90 minutes onstage is important because then reality sets in. Man, they’re pulling my in-ears out of my ears before anyone even says, ‘Good show.’ I’m being dead serious. We very rarely get to go into a dressing room, talk, and do these things.”
This tour has been different, though. “We’ve been able to have a 2 o’clock bus call on this tour, which means you can take time to hang and talk about the show,” Crahan says.
“But honestly, I try to give everything I need during the show,” he concludes. “I try to get everything I need to obtain during the show because I know the minute the show’s done, I’m going to be led. So I only got that 90. That 90 is my best friend, and 91 can just be just too much, man.”
