Slipknot co-founder and percussionist Shawn “Clown” Crahan has identified the specific childhood moment that defined his professional trajectory, which was discovering the theatricality and visceral nature of the band Kiss. Speaking on a recent episode of the “Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin” podcast, the musician described how an encounter with album artwork while shopping with his mother served as the catalyst for his own career in masked performance.
The transition began when a young Shawn Crahan spotted the 1979 Kiss album Dynasty displayed in a store window. The cover, featuring the painted faces of Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons, Ace Frehley, and Peter Criss, immediately resonated with his imagination.
“There was like a Walgreens in a mall and my mom was walking me in the mall, and they put the vinyl in the window, big long window,” Crahan told Rick Rubin (via Metal Hammer). “It had to be 30 foot long, and you just see all the new releases out in the front. And Kiss, Dynasty, the silver got me and the black got me, and I just stopped. I was just staring at Gene Simmons and my mom goes, ‘You like that?’ And I go, ‘Yeah. I don’t know. What is it?’ And she’s like, ‘Let’s go look.’
The interaction continued as his mother encouraged his interest in the group’s visual identity. “And she goes, ‘What do you like about it? I’m like, ‘Look at this guy!’ I go, ‘I want to look like that. That’s me!’ And she goes, ‘What do you mean it’s you?’ I go, ‘I don’t know…is this a band?’ And she’s like, ‘Yeah, it’s a band and this is what they wear.’ And I was like, ‘If I was wearing makeup, I’d be this guy,'” he recalled.
After his mother purchased the record, Shawn Crahan began studying the band’s catalog and imagery with growing intensity. As an only child, he spent significant time focused on the stereo, eventually moving from Dynasty to the 1976 classic Destroyer. However, it was the live album Kiss Alive II that shifted his perception from mere costume to the raw reality of performance.
“So my mom’s like, ‘I’ll get it for you if you want it.’ I was like, ‘That’d be cool!'” Crahan continued. “So, we got it, went right home, and I’d already been taught how to work vinyl, was listening to my mom’s records. But I can remember sitting in front of my mom’s stereo, just checking [Dynasty] out. And I’m an only child, so my imagination is where I live. So I can just sit there and I’m already playing things in my mind. So then [my parents] started buying me all the records. I remember they got me Destroyer next.”
The percussionist noted that a specific image of Gene Simmons provided the final piece of inspiration for what would eventually become the high-intensity live show of Slipknot.
“And then my dad went on a trip and he came back with Kiss Alive II, and when I saw the picture of Gene on the back with the sweat and the blood, I was like, ‘Okay, this isn’t a bunch of guys just wearing makeup,'” he explained.
This foundational influence eventually manifested in Shawn Crahan‘s role in Slipknot, where he adopted the persona of Clown. By merging the theatrical makeup of Kiss with the gritty, physical reality he saw in those early photos, he helped establish one of the most recognizable and aggressive visual identities in modern heavy metal.
