At the conclusion of its headlining set at this past Saturday's (September 25) Knotfest Iowa, SLIPKNOT paid tribute to two of its founding members, Joey Jordison and Paul Gray, both of whom are no longer with us. After performing the song "Surfacing", a song written by Gray, Jordison and SLIPKNOT frontman Corey Taylor, pictures of Joey and Paul emerged on the large video screens on the stage along with the numbers each one of them was assigned at the band's formation as well as their birth and death years. Fan-filmed video footage of the tribute can be seen below. Jordinson died "peacefully in his sleep" on July 26 of an unspecified cause. He was 46 years old. 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. 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." Gray was found dead on May 24, 2010 after overdosing on drugs in a hotel room in a suburb of Des Moines, Iowa, where he and SLIPKNOT were based. His family blamed the death on a Des Moines pain doctor, Daniel Baldi, who had treated Gray for years, and sued the doctor and his former employers. Paul's wife, Brenna Gray, testified during Baldi's trial that she tried reaching out to some of Paul's bandmates in SLIPKNOT just days prior to the bassist's death but that none of them wanted to get involved. She revealed, "One was playing golf two minutes away from our house but couldn't come. Nobody else cared, nobody was involved. They told me it was my problem." Brenna said in a 2011 interview with Revolver that her husband had agreed to get help for his drug problem just one day before he died. After a lengthy hiatus, SLIPKNOT resumed touring in 2011, with Donnie Steele playing bass live. The band in 2014 secured the services of British musician Alessandro "Vman" Venturella to play bass on tour. Paul was 38 years old at the time of his death.
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