Slipknot’s Clown on how the iconic sleeve of “Iowa” came together

Slipknot‘s second studio album “lowa”, including such signature tracks like “People = Shit“, “Disasterpiece“, “The Heretic Anthem” and “My Plague“, celebrates its 20th anniversary 28 August. Due to the anniversary Metal Hammer Magazine put together a special issue where Clown and Corey Taylor share the definitive story of the album and everything related to the iconic “lowa” artwork. Clown explained how the band’s iconic goat sleeve came together as follows:

“ The cover [of Iowa] has a lot of symbolic, metaphoric solutions in it for everyone in our culture. I haven’t really explained it. It’s for the end times to put the whole picture together, so I’m not going to go into that. The cover is as important as the inside cover, which is the mirror I made. All these people think they know what Slipknot is, everyone wants to judge a book by its cover, but if you’re a good parent and you’re checking out what your child is listening to, you open it up and you realize you’re already a part of it. There you are. Your twisted little self. Right there in that mirror, you’re already a part of this timeframe called Iowa.” 

– Clown

“ That goat’s name is Eeyore. My mentor, who got me going into photography, Stefan Seskis, he shot the first album cover. I came up with the concept I wanted to shoot the second album cover so badly, and I just couldn’t get it done. One day I handed him the goat. I came to the studio later that day and he had taken five or six photos. They were Polaroids. I remember being so frustrated, I couldn’t believe he’d got the damn picture taken. I said – ‘I’ve taken hundreds of pictures of this bastard and I couldn’t get it done.”

– Clown

You can buy the Metal Hammer Magazine’s issue here.