Slipknot have long been known to stick up for their audience and put fan safety first.
In the wake of November’s tragic Astroworld Travis Scott festival, Taylor was quick to pay tribute to the victims:
“I’m not gonna bring everything down but I feel like it needs to be said,” said Taylor, as transcribed by MetalSucks. “One of the wonderful things about this genre, about this audience, about this family is that we look out for one another. This is supposed to be a place of celebration, of love and about looking out for one another. And everybody that’s ever been in a fucking mosh pit knows: if somebody goes down, you get ’em right the fuck back up. So I want you all to hold on to the memory of those eight souls that we lost. But I also want you to remember this: no matter what show you go to, if you’ve got eyes, you keep ’em open, you keep ’em focused and you look out for one another.”
Now in a recent interview, the subject came up again, and Taylor has elaborated further on the matter:
“It’s one of the things that scares you as a performer. The last thing you want is for anything to happen to your audience. We as a band, as an organization, we’ve always gone above and beyond to try and make sure that our fans are OK. Even back in the day when we were crazy and kind of doing insane stuff, if anything ever happened to our fans, we immediately stopped the show and made sure they were OK. We never carried on. We always made sure that security was the priority. Number one. That hasn’t changed to this day. It’s the one thing we try to focus on…
The issue that arose at Knotfest Mexico 2019 was because there was an unsafe situation in the audience. We and our security did not feel comfortable going back out there knowing that people might get injured. There was a broken barricade that we couldn’t fix. We physically couldn’t fix it. So we had to shut down. And because we did that, most people left. There was a riot, but nobody got hurt. They were taking it out on the instruments and the grounds and whatnot. But that’s the difference between us and a lot of other bands. We wouldn’t have felt good carrying on, knowing that our fans might be in danger. It really comes down to what your priorities are.
Obviously, I don’t know any of the people involved [in Astroworld]. And I don’t know anything more than what I’ve read in the news online. So I can’t make any judgments. All I can talk about is where we are [as a band] and where I am. And I can just say that I hope that something like this never happens at any one of our concerts.”
***
Words by: The Pit staff
Read next:
10 Times Metal Musicians Stopped Shows to Help Their Fans
