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Jim Root
This man is not only an incredibly talented guitar player - he is gorgeous - i have no idea what he looks like and that doesn't matter to me at all. Jim is every thing
to me and if there was a perfect person it would be my baby jim.
Jim is the bands first guitarist, on rhythm guitar. He plays a Jackson JD-R Pro Dinky
Reverse , with a Mesa Boogie Head and 2 Carvan 4X12 Cabs.
When he plays, he prefers to get weird sounds naturally by scratching on the strings
and stuff instead of using weird techie stuff.
Jim was originally a friend of Coreys and it was through him that he joined the band.
Jim was the last to Join Slipknot. Jim was previously in the bands Dead Front and
Atomic Opera.
Contrary to popular belief, Mick is not the tallest in the band, Jim is.
Jim is 6'6 whilst Mick is only 6'2. Jim likes to slouch a lot to hide his height, but
Mick seems to try to emphasize his.
Jim has had more than one mask. James was forced into wearing a stiffling bondage
hood when he joined the group to tame him."The guys chose this mask to tame me. Joining
this band takes a little getting used to. I was a timid guy before I joined them. Now I'm a freak! Am I
as borderline psychotic as the rest? Ask me in a month!" This same exact type of hood was
worn by the member he replaced, Josh. Onstage, the sweat would block his ears
as there were no holes in it, and so he scrapped it and made his own mask from a
jesters mask to reflect on his Jester- like personality, Jim also wanted to have his
own mask, not someone else's. His jester mask has a zipper for a mouth and a
spike for a chin. It is smelly and disgusting, and he claims that everyone gets
pissed at him because the mask stinks up the whole house. "I've puked through it a
few times. It's got boogers stuck in it and my roommates are pissed at me because it stinks up the
whole house."
Contact jim at 4@Slipknot2.com, james@slipknot1.com ( i can't guarantee he'll
get back to you though - i wrote him a few times asking if hed go to my formal
with me but still ive received no response.
Pics
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INTERVIEW WITH JIMIGN For Men: Does your music give you nightmares or is it a by-product of them?
Jim: Umm the music is definitely a product of nightmares.
IGN For Men: Then it's safe to say that you have pretty vivid and nasty nightmares, right?
Jim: Umm, yeah, for the most part.
IGN For Men: If the music is a by-product of your nightmares, how do you transfer it from
the nightmares into music?
Jim: Depends. I mean it can be a vibe. Sometimes you can have a nightmare about music,
right? You know? I've had all kinds of weird nightmares. I mean everything from you know,
being a World War II fighter pilot to just having a burning head turn around telling me that
I'm going to burn in hell, you know what I mean?
IGN For Men: Do you try and save those visions and bring them with you to practice?
Jim: Yeah. Sometimes those visions are pretty vivid, you know?
IGN For Men: Do you ever share 'em with the other guys?
Jim: Umm, yeah if I do it's usually just with Corey [the lead singer].
IGN For Men: Mick's a lot taller than you, right?
Jim: No. I'm much taller than Mick.
IGN For Men: Really?
Jim: Yeah.
IGN For Men: Well he certainly looks bigger than you, especially on-stage. Plus all the
articles that I've read with the band talk about how big Mick is.
Jim: Yeah, he likes to embellish his size [laughs]. He's about 6' 2" with boots on. I'm
6-foot 6".
IGN For Men: I noticed that you've gotten a new mask. You used to sport a black
bondage mask with this hookey-dook thing on top.
Jim: Yeah that was my hair [laughs].
IGN For Men: Oh, sticking out of a hole on top of the mask?
Jim: Yeah, that little hookey-dook thing.
IGN For Men: I thought it was like one of those duster things, you know those hand
held dust mops?
Jim: No, I had purple hair and I pulled it up through the top of it.
IGN For Men: Ahh, but now you're rockin' more like an S&M whiteface mask.
Jim: Yeah. Well, you know, the bondage hood was really painful. I played one show
in it and it really sucked. It trapped all the sweat around my head and it filled my
ears up with sweat and it pushed into my eye sockets and it was a real pain in the
ass. So it was time for me to develop my own thing.
IGN For Men: Did the sweat in your ears affect your playing at all?
Jim: Yeah it did. It was like playing underwater, you know. It was pretty bad. I was
like 'Screw this.' They were like 'Cut holes in the ears so they can drain and you can
hear everything.' And I was like 'No, $%&* this mask. I'm going to do something new.'
IGN For Men: If you could name one character from literature, TV, comic books,
whatever, who would it be that has most influenced your playing?
Jim: Hmmm, from anything ever? Wow, that's a tough one. I try not to take too
much influence as far as I'm concerned. You know what I mean? But I'd really have
to say that [laughs]... damn! I'm just drawing a blank there. I think it had something
to do with old Warner Bros. cartoons.
IGN For Men: Not the frog?
Jim: No, not the frog.
IGN For Men: Or Pepe Le Pew?
Jim: Not Pepe. Probably Daffy Duck, you know?
IGN For Men: Ahh, okay.
Jim: 'Cause he was always pissed off, you know. He was always screaming and doing
his little arm thing.
IGN For Men: What do you guys bring along with you on the road?
Jim: To listen to?
IGN For Men: Yeah, but also do you stock the bus with video games, movies,
and such?
Jim: Oh yeah. We've got Playstation and we had a Dreamcast and the hot
game right now is Tony Hawks' Pro Skater. Oh yeah. That game rules.
IGN For Men: I haven't played it yet...
Jim: Oh God you gotta play it. I prefer the Playstation.
IGN For Men: Other than Tony Hawks, what's your all time favorite?
Jim: Umm, all time favorite? Wow! Siphon Filter was really good. I just played
a game called Medal of Honor that I really liked a lot. I'm more into the shoot
'em up games, the pretend-you're-a-war-hero-go-kill-a-bunch-of-people
games, you know?
IGN For Men: I'm all about the third person zombie killing games myself.
Jim: Yeah, yeah. I like those too, like Resident Evil and things like that. I'm really
into those. What else have I played that was really cool? I liked Ace Combat 2
was a really cool game.
IGN For Men: Do you guys have tournaments between the nine of you? Or are
you more into single playing?
Jim: [laughs]. Some of us aren't into it. But the tournaments usually happen
with the drummers. And that's when they get out the Twisted Metal. And they'll
do Twisted Metal until 5 in the morning. Yeah, pretty crazy.
IGN For Men: Do you ever get it on that action?
Jim: We usually don't bring enough controllers with us.
IGN For Men: What about on the tune front? Do you have your Gordon
Lightfoot records along while Mick quietly listens to John Denver 8-tracks?
Jim: Uh, you know, everybody kind of listens to little bit different stuff.
My CD collections varies. It's got everything from the Beatles to Entombed in it.
But Joey listens to a lot of Mr. Bungle and stuff like that. Everybody has their
own tastes.
IGN For Men: On your Welcome To Our Neighborhood video I believe it's Corey
who says that there's nothing but skating rinks and graveyards in Des Moines.
Which did you hang out at?
Jim: [laughs] See we would do the all night skates. The parents would drop us
off there and then we would sneak out and go to the graveyards.
IGN For Men: And at the graveyards you were getting drunk and stones, right?
Jim: Uh, you know. Doing whatever kids do. It was either hang out there or McDonalds.
IGN For Men: Naw, I went to High School in a small town, too, so it was either
McDonalds, stay at home, or steal street signs.
Jim: Oh yeah, there was all kinds of that going on. When we got our license a
friend of mine had a '68 Buick LeSabre and we used to drive around and knock
over Stop signs and Yield signs and stupid $%&*.
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