He turned up to rehearsal with a right-handed bass borrowed from his brother’s friend, Frankenstein’d into a left-handed one, and played the regular guitar parts on it. There was one problem: he’d never played bass. Paul didn’t know anyone in Iowa, so six months in, when he overheard some guys in a local record store talking about needing a bass player for Metallica and Slayer covers, he volunteered his services. But life was still difficult, so he contacted his mum, who by this time had managed to secure a house in Iowa. By age 16 he was in his own apartment, and by 17 he was jamming Danzig covers in the living room with his band, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Eventually, he managed to procure a replacement. He entrusted his prized guitar to a friend for safekeeping – only to later discover it’d been sold for an 8-ball of speed. Growing up with little money, his family were “living in shitty roach- infested apartments”, and by age 14 Paul was out on his own, struggling with homelessness, bouncing between friends and locations. I never took lessons or anything, I was always self-taught, listening to albums and just trying to figure stuff off of that.” It was actually a badass guitar, it was a Gibson Flying V and it was left-handed, and it ruled. So I begged my mum for a guitar, and she finally got me one. “I was just, ‘I gotta get a real guitar and actually do it.’ Seeing them up there and the red lights and the smoke and it was all evil, I thought it was the coolest thing ever. “That changed my world,” he recounted in Paul Gray: Behind The Player. But it was seeing a nascent Slayer touring the merciless Hell Awaits that made the biggest impact on the young Paul Gray. In sixth grade, aged 11, he got Suicidal Tendencies’ self-titled debut, which fuelled a desire to learn the guitar. It was his older brother, Jay, who introduced him to the music that would change his life – Black Sabbath, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Led Zeppelin, The Doors, The Stones, The Beatles, Alice Cooper and Kiss. He had a difficult and itinerant childhood, and his father died by suicide. Paul Dedrick Gray was born in LA on April 8, 1972. The 40 best nu metal songs of all time (opens in new tab).The definitive history of every Slipknot mask (opens in new tab).Repeat: the secret debut album that launched the legend (opens in new tab) Every Slipknot album ranked from worst to best (opens in new tab).And none of us would be on the path that we’re on right now in life, or have the sorts of lives that we have, without him.” “Paul was there from the very, very beginning. “It’s very important that everybody on the outside of us understands that Paul Gray was the essence of the band Slipknot,” he said.
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