Back in Dec. 2013, Joey Jordison left his post as Slipknot’s drummer, a job he’d held since co-founding the group back in the mid ‘90s. His bandmates cited “personal reasons”; Jordison said he was “shocked and blindsided.” Now he’s diving into detail about those dark days and why the dismissal left him scorned.
“No band meeting? None. Anything from management? No, nothing. All I got was a stupid f-cking email saying I was out of the band that I busted my ass my whole life to f-cking create.”
Jordison addressed the matter as the cover star of the most recent issue of Metal Hammer. Last week (June 13), he revealed that a struggle with a rare disease coincided with his dismissal from Slipknot (while accepting a lifetime achievement prize at the publication’s Golden Gods Awards).
Ex-Slipknot Drummer Reveals Struggle With Rare Disease: ‘I Lost My Legs’
“Towards the end of my career in Slipknot, I got really, really sick with a horrible disease called transverse myelitis,” Jordison announced. “I lost my legs. I couldn’t play anymore. It was a form of multiple sclerosis, which I don’t wish on my worst enemy.”
In the new issue, Jordison says his bandmates mistook the ailment for a drug abuse problem. “They got confused about my health issues and obviously even I didn’t know what it was at first. They thought I was fucked up on drugs, which I wasn’t at all.”
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Jordison called the dismissal “f-cking cowardly” and “f-cked up,” but he’s not about to sever ties with his old friends. In the Metal Hammer interview, he says he enjoyed Slipknot’s first album without him (2014’s .5: The Gray Chapter) and that he’s open to discussing a reunion.
In the meantime, Jordison — who says he overcame the disease with the help of therapy and exercise — is playing in the bands Vimic and Sinsaenum. The former plans to release a debut album though Roadrunner Records (also home to Slipknot); the latter released a self-titled EP on June 6.