Joey Jordison in 2017.

“To those that knew Joey, understood his quick wit, his gentle personality, giant heart, and his love for all things family and music.

The drummer was playing with a group of Des Moines, Iowa metalheads who called themselves the Pale Ones and later Meld when he suggested they change their name to Slipknot in 1995.

He stayed with the band until 2013, leaving for what he described at the time as “personal reasons.” A few years later, he revealed a neurological disease that caused his departure.

“I got really, really sick with a horrible disease called transverse myelitis; I lost my legs,” he told the audience at the Metal Hammer Golden Gods Awards in 2016 (via NME).

I got myself back up, and I got myself in the gym and I got myself back in fucking therapy to fucking beat this shit.” At the time, he said he was rededicating himself to music with a new band called Vimic.

Repeat., which featured a song called “Slipknot” that the band later refashioned into the Slipknot album’s “(sic).” “The first mask I had was an original pale-white kabuki mask,” Jordison told Revolver.

“I was a night manager at a Sinclair gas station from ’95 to ’97,” Jordison told Rolling Stone in 2001.

I’d get off band practice at about ten, and I’d bring a radio and TV and fucking crank metal.

“When we did Iowa, it was a very dark time for the band,” Jordison told Revolver.

“They got confused about my health issues and obviously even I didn’t know what it was at first,” he told Metal Hammer.

A few years before his death, Jordison revealed that he was holding onto demo tapes of songs he’d written for Slipknot at the time of his dismissal.

They still stay in the Slipknot safe,” he told Metal Hammer

“I don’t think this band can last more than four or five albums,” he told Rolling Stone

Joey Jordison, obit, Obituary, Slipknot