Slipknot DJ Sid Wilson has paid tribute to the nu metal nine-piece’s late drummer Joey Jordison, who died in July 2021.
Talking to Get On The Bus, the 49-year-old remembers Jordison as “the best that ever did it” on his instrument and says that the two maintained a friendship even after the drummer was dismissed from Slipknot in 2013.
Looking back on Jordison’s skills, Wilson recalls (via Blabbermouth): “I’ll say this: Joey was the best that ever did it. Hands down. The greatest drummers would come to our shows to watch this guy play. [The Police drummer] Stewart Copeland came and saw us play and said, ‘He’s the one.’ And he was. He was. That dude would hear anybody’s music once and could play it.”
He adds that there was “nothing easy” about Jordison’s passing five years ago. “Life’s tough, man. And you either got nerves of steel or you don’t,” he says. “And sometimes even the guys that got nerves of steel, that shit gets beat down after a while, man.”
He continues: “No one can understand it. You can’t understand anything about anybody. You’re not inside anyone else’s skin. If we could get a skin ticket to anybody’s life, then maybe we would understand, but it's not for me to understand or try to figure it out or whatever. I just have to accept it and know that he was my buddy.”
Jordison co-founded Slipknot in Des Moines, Iowa in 1995. In December 2013, the band issued a statement saying that he’d left the band for personal reasons; he released a counter-statement saying that he “would never abandon” the lineup or the fans.
Three years later, Jordison opened up about the circumstances around his Slipknot departure in a Metal Hammer interview, revealing that he’d been diagnosed with the neurological disease transverse myelitis and that it had greatly affected his ability to play drums. He eventually recovered through physical therapy.
The drummer died in his sleep on July 26, 2021 aged 46, and no cause of death has ever been given. Slipknot members Corey Taylor, Shawn Crahan and Jim Root each posted a blank black tile to their social media accounts in tribute. In 2022, Taylor remembered Jordison as “one of the most gifted people I’ve ever seen in my life”.
Slipknot, now with former Sepultura sticksman Eloy Casagrande on drums, are gearing up to release a new album called Look Outside Your Window, made up of studio recordings that Wilson, Taylor, Root and Crahan made during the sessions for 2008’s All Hope Is Gone. The members have called it a “melodic” project with a “Radiohead vibe”, and one fan who got an early listen has compared it to Pink Floyd. It comes out on Saturday, April 18, for Record Store Day.
Last month, Wilson separated from his partner Kelly Osbourne, with whom he shares three-year-old son Sidney. The couple began dating in early 2022 and got engaged backstage at Kelly’s father Ozzy’s retirement show Back To The Beginning in Birmingham in July 2025.
