Slipknot’s Clown Once Got Maced by a Security Guard as Revenge for Pooping On a Dressing Room Floor
As someone who attended it, let me say that the 2000 Tattoo The Earth tour was the kind of shit that’ll just never happen again. You had Slipknot headlining over Slayer (which we’ve previously said wasn’t a genius idea) on top of a ragtag line-up of bands including Sevendust, Hatebreed, Mudvayne, Nashville Pussy, and Nothingface; fuck, at the Scranton show, Sevendust’s Lajon Witherspoon jumped off stage and literally fought a skinhead. Now, in an excerpt from a new book about the trek, it’s been revealed that at the Wisconsin stop of the show, Slipknot’s Shawn “Clown” Crahan got maced by a security guard because someone in Slipknot had pooped on that venue’s dressing room floor on their previous stop there.
The excerpt, which comes via Loudwire, is from Scott Alderman’s new book Caravan of Pain: The True Story of the Tattoo The Earth Tour. In the book, Alderman, the festival’s founder, recounted a story about the Wisconsin venue of the show. Clown, photographer Fran Stine, and Amen/Snot guitarist Sonny Mayo were driving around in a golf cart, when things got ugly…
…out of nowhere, Clown got clotheslined by a security guard, and the cart flipped on its side. Then the security guard Maced them at close distance while they were still on the ground. Within seconds they were all rolling on the ground, gasping for breath. Fran said it was the closest he ever felt to dying. They got Clown close up, right in the face, and he was vomiting, snot pouring from his nose. He was having serious trouble breathing, so paramedics put him on oxygen and got him back to his bus. We weren’t sure if he would be able to play that night, or whether he should. The head of the venue’s security had Maced the leader of the headline band a few hours before the show, and we weren’t sure if it would be safe for them to play.
Of course, Clown went on to play — and Alderman later found out that the assault was no isolated incident:
… I found out later that Clown’s Macing was retribution for an incident that had occurred when Slipknot played the venue with Ozzfest the previous year. The band had been unhappy with how they were treated, and one of them took a shit on the dressing room floor. The Macing was payback; Tattoo the Earth got sandwiched between the shit and the Mace.
Jesus Christ, what a different time.
Caravan of Pain is available now on Amazon. Check out the cover art below:
