Shawn ‘Clown’ Crahan from Slipknot has revealed he needs heart surgery, saying he sometimes “feels like” he is “dying”.
The percussionist, 56, is the Iowa metal band’s sole remaining founding member, and in a recent appearance on Rick Rubin’s Tetragrammaton podcast, he opened up about his need for cardio surgery in the near future.
He explained (via ThePRP): “I have a skipping heart and I got to get a surgery. 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 went on to explain that he was “overweight” but his brain is “so strong” that it keeps his heart rate at 43 during the day. “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. This is something about the electricity.”
He said he thought at one stage he would require a pacemaker, which he quipped might be an excuse to stop touring with the band, but in fact doctors told him it would make life easier. “I was like, I can’t get out of this to save my life,” he joked. “I’m like, there is nothing, not even my heart. It’s going to be better because of Slipknot.”
Last month, Slipknot finally released their forgotten album ‘Look Outside Your Window’ as part of Record Store Day 2026. Teased as a record of “experimental, psychedelic” outtakes since 2019, the music was recorded around 2008 and had been a subject of fascination for fans of the band for years.
In 2024, Clown spoke to NME about the album: “I’m really pleased about it and happy to finally be rid of it! What’s nice though is that it isn’t a hype thing, it’s just something we did while we were doing other Slipknot albums. It was a very honest action to make music that wasn’t Slipknot, but utilised the skills of guys with no rules. I don’t know if it’s ‘good’, but I know that I love it. I make music for myself, but I hope that the people who waited and waited and waited think it was worth it too.”
Reviewing the album, NME awarded it four stars and noted: “We always knew ‘Look Outside Your Window’ was going to be experimental. It’s Taylor’s desolate voice, over the knee-jerk intersection of heaviness and atmosphere, that fills it with the Slipknot fear factor, something normally summoned through masks and unrelenting brutality. ‘Look Outside Your Window’ wouldn’t exist without The Nine, and its unanswered mystery can finally be resolved, confirmed in their story as a seriously impressive cult classic.”
In other news, former drummer Jay Weinberg recently said his departure from the band “remains confusing”, admitting that his “world bottomed out from under him” as a result.