Slipknot guitarist Jim Root recently sat down with Matt Sweeney, host of Guitar Moves, to offer a behind-the-scenes look at the band’s creative process. Root highlighted the importance of collaboration within the group, explaining how modern technology has made it easier for musicians to create independently but also acknowledging his personal limitations: “You can self-produce at home and do everything in your bedroom now — from vocals to drums, to even recording acoustic drums. A lot of dudes are doing that too, with the technology that's out there today, which is cool. But I'm at a disadvantage 'cause I'm not a lyricist — I can't write vocals; I don't know what I'm doing there — so I feel like half of that world is closed off to me. It's almost like not having all your senses in a way,” Root shared (as transcribed by Blabbermouth).
He further explained that this sometimes leads to him guessing what lead singer Corey Taylor might do vocally on the songs he writes: “When I write an arrangement, I have to kind of guess what Corey or whoever I'm writing the song for or with would do vocally. Or I think, 'This is what he's gonna do. Here's an epic part for him to sing on,' and then he'll write scratch lyrics to it, and he won't even be singing on this part. I'm, like, 'That's the epic part of the song for you to shine on, and you haven't even sang on it.'"
Root described the back-and-forth nature of creating music with the band. “Everybody's approach to things — you and I could be playing the exact same thing, but we're hearing it differently and our approach to it would be totally different, which is the other great thing about not just guitar, but instruments in general,” he explained.
Often, after presenting a fully fleshed-out arrangement, Taylor may interpret the structure differently, creating an evolution in the song: "So if I give Corey something that came out of my head that's like a five-minute arrangement and I've taken the time to layer guitars, put bass on it and program the drums and keyboards to thicken it up, and it sounds like a song to me, he might be hearing something that I have as, let's say, a pre-chorus, he might be hearing that as part of a verse, for the way he thinks about music. But that's how the evolution of our music can go. Then he'll give it back to me, and I'll be, like, 'Okay, wait a minute. You're looking at it that way, so maybe I need to rearrange how I'm thinking about this song.' Nobody wants to get an arrangement from somebody and then be, like, 'Yeah, yeah, that's cool,' and chop it up. But it's hard to communicate that. You hurt people's feelings or whatever. They feel a certain way about a song or whatever. So it's a big deal. Like, 'What? You don't like my arrangement?' or whatever. And it's not about that. You've gotta let that go and see where it can go and let it grow as a collaboration — unless you're doing everything 100 percent by yourself and you're in control of the entire creative process."
He emphasized that collaboration is key, and letting go of personal attachment to his initial vision is a necessary part of the process. “Anything that I write, as soon as I put it into the world of Slipknot, I have to know that by the time that comes back, it may not sound anything like what I gave to them or what we end up working on together, and you have to be okay with that.”
“After a while, you're listening to things and you're hearing them totally different because they're evolving so much from where they began,” Root explained. “If you start with one color red and you just keep throwing every color in the palette on top of it, but then you start taking things away and they start making new colors and then all of a sudden a new idea kind of presents itself out of something that four things make, all of a sudden these four different instruments are making one sound or one melody. It's, like, there's the fucking song right there. Like, holy shit."
When asked if this collaborative mindset was there from the beginning, Root reflected, “No. I think everybody gets there on their own time. I don't think that's something you can teach anybody. I don't think that's anything that you can really… I don't know if you can go to Juilliard and learn that. You can know all the theory in the world and you can be the most fluent musician on the planet, but are you gonna make that song that makes people go, 'Oh, God'? and feel that thing? That's a human emotion”
“And I'm not saying that those learned musicians don't do that — I mean, absolutely, they fucking do — but being a dumb guitar player from Iowa [laughs], you get there naturally when it's time. The universe is, like, 'Okay, it's time for me to be your muse and to give you the inspiration that you need to make this music that doesn't just move you emotionally or make you feel like you've accomplished something, but makes those people out there connect with something in their life that they can relate to and emote with.'"
Trust and patience among the band members are crucial to Slipknot’s songwriting process. Root pointed out that each member’s contribution, no matter how small, can change the direction of a song. "There's a lot of trust with it too. Trust and patience and objective opinions. Cause you don't always know what's best. You may think you know what's best right. 'Well, I wrote this idea. This riff came out of my head, so I know what's best for it.' But that's not always the case. Somebody might come in — Sid might come in and do one thing that all of a sudden makes it go, 'Holy shit. This is where it needs to go.' And the first and second records are full of stuff like that. Hell, even [.5:] The Gray Chapter and other records, it's, like, if Sid wouldn't have done a certain thing, or if Mick wouldn't have had a certain effect on his pedal board, it might have been an entirely different song."
