One of my brother’s friends had a weird right-handed bass, which I strung left-handed, and a practice amp. “So, not knowing anybody and wanting to meet people, I told them I could play bass – even though I had never played one in my life. I went into the local music store and heard some guys talking about needing a bass player for their band, they did covers of Slayer and Metallica songs… “When I moved to Iowa, I didn’t have any friends or know anybody. “There’s a funny story about how I got playing bass,” he explained in his Behind The Player instructional DVD. It would prove to be a life-changing decision, as was his switch from guitar to bass… But the novelty of freedom at such a young age soon wore off and he called his mum, now living in Des Moines, to see if he would able to sleep on her couch and start a new life in Iowa – where, while playing in death metal bands Anal Blast and Body Pit, he would eventually meet the other original members of Slipknot.
I thought it was the coolest thing ever.”īy the age of 16, Paul was living in an apartment with his friends Frank and Chris, jamming Danzig songs in the living room under the moniker Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Just seeing them up there with the red lights and smoke… it was all evil.
“I saw Slayer on the Hell Awaits album and that changed my world,” he once said.
Before his teenage years had even begun, his two greatest musical revelations had arrived in the form of Suicidal Tendencies’ 1983 debut and, not long after, experiencing Slayer live in the flesh. He took up an interest in music early on thanks to some guidance from his older brother William ‘Jay’ Matthews, who introduced him to bands like Black Sabbath, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Led Zeppelin, Alice Cooper and KISS. “I will miss him with every fibre of my heart, as will everybody at this table and everyone who knew him… he was the best of us.”īorn in Los Angeles on April 8, 1972, Paul Dedrick Gray was in many ways the beating heart of Slipknot. “The only way I can sum up Paul Gray is love,” said Corey Taylor in a tearful emergency conference held the day after his bandmate has passed.
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