BLABBERMOUTH.NET
SLIPKNOT frontman
Corey Taylor has called the recent passing of
Joey Jordison "a damn tragedy."
The founding
SLIPKNOT drummer's family confirmed that
Jordinson died "peacefully in his sleep" on July 26 of an unspecified cause. He was 46 years old.
Taylor addressed
Jordison's death publicly for the first time during an appearance this past Tuesday (September 21) on
SiriusXM's
"Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk". Asked how he has dealt with the loss of his longtime bandmate,
Corey said (as transcribed by
BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "It's been tough, man. Our first concern was obviously his family, so we reached out immediately to make sure that they were okay, to let them know if they needed anything from us, they could absolutely ask.
"It's a damn tragedy,"
Taylor continued. "He was way too young, and he was way too talented to lose him like this.
"I know a lot of people wonder about the circumstances that led to him not being in the band anymore, and it's, like, we're not gonna talk about that, because I'd rather talk about his legacy, which is that he helped create this band that we all have fought to keep out there and keep going.
"Just the fact that he's not here now, it's still — I still can't believe it,"
Corey added.
SLIPKNOT announced its split with
Jordison in December 2013 but did not disclose the reasons for his exit. The drummer subsequently issued a statement saying that he did not quit the group.
Several years ago,
Jordison overcame the neurological condition acute transverse myelitis, an inflammation of the spinal cord which damages nerve fibers, which ultimately led to the drummer temporarily losing the use of his legs.
Jordison and the members of
SLIPKNOT had been silent and evasive about the reasons for his dismissal from the band, but
Joey finally spoke about it in 2016 while accepting an award at the
Metal Hammer Golden Gods Awards in London, England.
At the time,
Joey claimed that he was fired from
SLIPKNOT without a band meeting or "anything from management." He said: "All I got was a stupid fucking e-mail saying I was out of the band that I busted my ass my whole life to fucking create. That's exactly what happened and it was hurtful. I didn't deserve that shit after what I'd done and everything I'd been through.
"They got confused about my health issues and obviously even I didn't know what it was at first," he continued. "They thought I was fucked up on drugs, which I wasn't at all.
"I've been through so many things with those guys and I love them very much. What's hurtful is the way it went down was not fucking right. That's all I want to say. The way they did it was fucking cowardly. It was fucked up."
Back in 2014,
Taylor told
Metal Hammer that firing
Jordison after 18 years was "one of the hardest decisions" the group ever made, adding that
Joey is "in a place in his life" which is "not where we are."
Taylor said he could not get into specifics for legal reasons, but admitted, "It's when a relationship hits that T-section and one person's going one way and you're going the other. And try as you might to either get them to go your way or try and go their way, at some point you've got to go in the direction that works for you. This is me speaking in the broadest terms, with respect to
Joey. I guess to sum it up, it was one of the hardest decisions we ever made."
Taylor said that the band is "happy right now and we hope that he is . . . he's just in a place in his life, right now, that's not where we are."
The singer would not answer whether drug use played a role in
Jordison's dismissal, and confessed that he had not been in touch with his former bandmate.
Taylor said, "I haven't talked to
Joey in a while, to be honest. That's how different we are. It's not because I don't love him and I don't miss him. And it is painful; we talk about him all the time, but at the same time, do we miss him or do we miss the old him? That's what it really comes down to."
Three years ago,
Joey revealed that he was working on his first-ever book.
In 2018,
Jordison completed a European tour with the international death metal supergroup
SINSAENUM.
Two months ago,
Joey's
SINSAENUM bandmate
Frédéric Leclercq blasted
TMZ for sharing the audio of the 911 call placed by the former
SLIPKNOT drummer's ex-girlfriend after she found him dead. On July 29, the tabloid site posted the two-and-a-half-minute phone call in which the ex-girlfriend — who continued taking care of
Joey's bills and maintaining his house in Iowa even after their split — could be heard getting very emotional when she went to his home to check on him after he hadn't returned her messages. During the call, she indicated that
Joey was "a really bad alcoholic" with "health issues," and she revealed that the motion sensors on the house hadn't detected any activity in days.
The same year that he exited
SLIPKNOT,
Jordison launched the band
SCAR THE MARTYR and later,
VIMIC.