In a recent interview with Metal Hammer , Clown revealed the story behind the cover of Slipknot 's Iowa , which features a picture of a goat. The album was released in 2001 and is now 20 years old.
According to the musician, the goat's name is Eeyore , which is the name of a hidden track on Slipknot's self-titled 1999 album. "Eeyore" is found within the album's closing track, "Scissors".
Stefan Seskis who sparked my interest in photography, photographed the cover of my first album. I presented the concept and really wanted to photograph the cover of the second, but I couldn’t get the job done. One day, I gave him the goat.”
“Later I arrived at the studio and he had taken five or six Polaroid photos,” he continues. “I remember being very frustrated because I couldn’t believe he had taken the damn photo. I said, ‘I took hundreds of photos of this bastard and I couldn’t get the job done.’”
Clown went on to say that the cover offered many “symbolic and metaphorical solutions for everyone in our culture” and that he wasn’t going to piece everything together. “The cover is just as important as the back cover, which is the mirror I created,” he stated. “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 monitoring what your child listens to, you open [the record] and realize that you’re already a part of it. You’re right there. Your own distorted ‘self.’ Right there in that mirror, you’re already part of that space-time called Iowa .”
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