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Slipknot’s Clown Says He Needs Heart Surgery After Last Tour, Admits He Sometimes Feels Like He’s Dying
Slipknot’s Shawn “Clown” Crahan says he needs heart surgery after his last tour and sometimes feels like he’s dying.
Shawn “Clown” Crahan has said he needs heart surgery, a stark update from one of Slipknot’s most recognisable figures and the band’s only remaining founding member. In a recent appearance on Rick Rubin’s Tetragrammaton podcast, the 56-year-old percussionist said he discovered the issue after his last tour and has since been dealing with a heart that, in his words, skips.
Via ThePRP, Crahan explained: “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.”
He described a moment of confusion that turned serious fast. “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.”
Crahan said he had been overweight, but also insisted his mind has been strong enough to keep 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.”
At one point, he said he thought he might need a pacemaker, joking that it could have been a convenient way to stop touring with Slipknot. Instead, doctors told him it would actually make life easier. “I was like, I can’t get out of this to save my life,” he said. “I’m like, there is nothing, not even my heart. It’s going to be better because of Slipknot.”
Slipknot’s unfinished business keeps circling back
The health update lands not long after Slipknot finally issued Look Outside Your Window for Record Store Day 2026, a long-rumoured release that had lingered in fan lore for years. The album, teased since 2019 as a set of “experimental, psychedelic” outtakes, was recorded around 2008 and has spent most of its life as a subject of speculation rather than an actual record on shelves.
Crahan had already spoken to NME about it in 2024, sounding relieved more than nostalgic. “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.”
NME later gave the album four stars, writing that “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.”
Elsewhere, former drummer Jay Weinberg recently said his exit from the band “remains confusing,” adding that his “world bottomed out from under him” as a result.
