Slipknot: Not your average Grammy winners. But did you know that guitarist Mick Thomson (far left in the demented hockey mask) is the son of Jefferson native Gordon Thomson?Gordon Thomson, a 1968 graduate of Jefferson High School, points out the cloudy headlight on his Mercedes last week during a visit to the Jefferson Herald office that he wants his son, world-renowned Slipknot guitarist Mick Thomson, to buff out. His son bought him the car a couple of years ago to replace a 1986 Honda. ANDREW McGINN | JEFFERSON HERALDOne of two guitarists in Slipknot, Mick Thomson (right) is among the longest-serving members of the band that put Des Moines on the world map of metal.

The man behind the man in the mask might surprise you

By ANDREW MCGINN

a.mcginn@beeherald.com

In the 17 years since Slipknot emerged on the global metal scene looking like they’d just been sprung from Arkham Asylum, there have been four platinum albums (one of them double-platinum), a Grammy award (putting them in league with Tony Bennett) and a fan base of millions whose members lovingly identify themselves as maggots (again, in league with Tony Bennett).

The mere concept of the Des Moines band — all masked and jumpsuited, like a cross between “Saw III” and the Legion of Doom from “Challenge of the Super Friends” — has done wonders to improve Iowa’s image nationally as something other than a place where presidential candidates show up every four years to awkwardly eat corn dogs at the state fair.

But throughout it all, no one has ever shared a stage with Slipknot.

Sure, there have been opening acts, like Marilyn Manson on Aug. 5 at Wells Fargo Arena, a date that marked Slipknot’s first hometown show in nearly eight years.

But no one has ever been on stage with Slipknot other than the nine members of Slipknot.

Except for that one night in Kansas City.

That night’s special guest stepped out from the wings wearing what appeared to be the skin of 1968 Jefferson High School grad Gordon Thomson.

Even the maggots weren’t sure what they were seeing.

Right there in the midst of Slipknot’s gallery of horrors was, in fact, Jefferson’s own Gordon Thomson in his very own flesh.

“I could look out and see all these kids, and they were puzzled: ‘Who’s that fat guy up there playing with Mick?’ ” Thomson, now 66, recalled last week.

Of all the crazy connections between our small town and the larger world, the fact that a Jefferson native is the father of Slipknot guitarist Mick Thomson is maybe perhaps the craziest.

Considering that Slipknot released their first album back in 1999, I assumed I was just really late in finding this out a couple of weeks ago.

So I asked two co-workers at the paper, Rob Strabley and Ben Ure, about it. They’re both longtime maggots, although at 48, Rob is now probably more of a tick.

They, too, were in disbelief that a guy who walked the same halls we did in high school went on to father a metal superstar.

In other words, if you named Slipknot your favorite band in your senior interview for The Quill — of which many seniors did beginning in 2000 — consider this: Without a Jefferson guy, there might not be a Slipknot.

“People ask what it’s like being the dad of a metal superstar,” Gordon Thomson said. “I’m very, very proud.”

“There are advantages,” he added. “My son bought me a Mercedes-Benz. My son has two or three of ’em.”

Last Thursday, Thomson drove the Mercedes up to Jefferson from West Des Moines, where he resides, to visit some friends and to stop by the Herald.

Rob and Ben immediately saw the resemblance between Thomson and his guitar-shredding son, not the least of which is the fact that both stand 6-foot-3.

The elder Thomson had just recently seen his umpteenth Slipknot show (the Aug. 5 show at Wells Fargo Arena).

“I thought it was one of their best,” he said.

He was presumably the only person in the house sporting a Grateful Dead shirt.

Thomson is among the rare few bestowed with a laminated “god pass,” as the band calls it, to go wherever he wants backstage.

He loves to bring along a friend who hasn’t yet experienced it.

“A friend said, ‘Don’t you feel weird being back here?’ ” he explained. “I said huh-uh. I feel like I deserve to be here. My son plays guitar in Slipknot. I don’t feel I should have to sit in the crowd.”

It was from his usual perch on the side of the stage that Thomson received the nod to come on stage from Mick that night in Kansas City.

It was during a point in the show where Slipknot frontman  Corey Taylor has the crowd crouch down low as Mick repeats a simple riff.

From behind his hockey mask, Mick motioned for his dad to come out and stand behind him, then motioned to the repetitive movement of his fingers on the fretboard.

Then the unthinkable happened.

“He dropped his hand,” Thomson said.

“We didn’t miss a beat.”

With dad fingering and son strumming, it made Slipknot history if for only a moment, because Taylor was soon to have the crowd jump up en masse and the band would get back to jumping around themselves.

The elder Thomson has his share of guitars at home, but doesn’t necessarily consider himself a guitar player.

After a lifetime of manual labor, Thomson doesn’t feel he has the dexterity needed to play.

Still, “Every time he (Mick) gets a new guitar deal, I get a new guitar,” Thomson said. “I just noodle around, mainly.”

Mick Thomson, who’s now 42, created a signature guitar for Ibanez — the Ibanez MTM — before joining the Jackson Guitars artist roster in July.

“One of metal’s most revered players joins the Jackson fold,” the company’s website is heralding this summer.

“It amazes me my son is world-wide known,” Gordon Thomson said.

Seemingly just yesterday, he was hoisting Mick onto his shoulders at a Willie Nelson concert in Davenport — Mick’s first show.

Gordon Thomson remembers well the day Mick got his first instrument — a viola, of all things.

Mick was 12.

“I told my wife, ‘I bet you within a week and a half, he’ll have it in his lap, playing it like a guitar. And the week after that, he’ll be hitting tennis balls with it,’ ” Thomson said.

“Both things came true.”

Then came the guitar, with Mick spending endless hours in his room mastering it.

All the while, the sounds of Gordon Thomson’s record collection filled the house.

At any given moment, the platter on the turntable could go from the blissfully stoned country-rock of New Riders of the Purple Sage to the jazz-fusion of Chick Corea and Return to Forever.

To Mick, the fledgling metalhead, his dad was a “damn hippie.”

“I hate hippies,” Mick would say.

“I said, ‘You only know one,’ ” Gordon Thomson would poke back.

Funny enough, Mick Thomson has come to give credit in magazine interviews, his dad is quick to note, to the likes of the Grateful Dead and Jimi Hendrix.

“I was always really into music,” Gordon Thomson said.

He knew right away that Slipknot was destined for something big.

“I was going to their shows when they were just playing at small, local bars,” Thomson said. “At the time, it’s not my kind of music, but I could tell they were doing something different.”

The masks — dismissed by some as a gimmick — made perfect sense to him.

“It gives him a way to hide,” Thomson said of his son, who was noticeably shy in those early days. “You don’t see Mick. You see this persona.

“It gave them more confidence than they might have.”

Growing up on West Reed Street in Jefferson, Gordon Thomson graduated from high school undoubtedly bound for Vietnam.

“I knew from growing up in Jefferson, the poor people’s kids get drafted,” he observed.

So deciding he at least wanted some control over how he served, he enlisted in the Navy, figuring he’d be on a ship out at sea.

In reality, they made him a hospital corpsman attached to a Marine unit. Two years in Vietnam was all but guaranteed, he was told.

Somehow, though, he never left San Diego.

There, he caught concerts by Hendrix, Janis Joplin and the Doors.

“All these dead people,” he said.

Farther down on the unending list of rock stars gone before their time is Slipknot’s own Paul Gray, who was found dead of an overdose of fentanyl and morphine in May 2010 in a room at the TownePlace Suites in Urbandale.

He was 38.

Gray had just asked Gordon Thomson to fix some of his legendary barbecue ribs the next time the band was back home.

“I never saw him again,” Thomson said.

Thomson said he’s never worried about his own son being tempted into the darker corners of the music business.

“I know my son,” Thomson said. “He’s never even held a lit cigarette in his hand.”

“He’s pretty much the same guy,” Thomson added, “except he doesn’t have to worry about paying his bills.”

On the contrary, it would seem Mick is more worried about his dad.

“I’m obviously on the downside of life,” Gordon Thomson wryly explained, noting that he has COPD and congestive heart failure, not to mention hepatitis C in remission.

“I tell him if you want to have good memories of your dad, get busy.”

That’s easier said than done, though, as Slipknot travels the world and builds its brand, which includes a clothing line and, since 2012, the Knotfest music festival.

“Knotfest Mexico” is set for Oct. 15-16, while “Knotfest Japan” is scheduled for Nov. 5-6.

Adding to Slipknot’s mystique early on was the fact that the nine masked members opted to be identified only by numbers zero through eight.

It suddenly becomes a lot less spooky, though, when one of their dads reveals how his son ended up as “Seven.”

“Mickey Mantle was my favorite baseball player,” Thomson said.

In fact, Mick Thomson’s given name, Mickael, is itself a tribute to The Mick, the Yankees Hall of Famer who wore No. 7 on his back.

“I didn’t want people to call him Mike. I wanted him to be Mick,” Gordon Thomson said.

Thomson at times is surprised Slipknot has lasted this long, observing that the band’s fan base is so heavily comprised of young people ages 13 to 20.

“It’s amazing they let someone who’s 40-something represent them,” Thomson said. 

“Then again,” he added, “look at the Rolling Stones.”

One thing is for certain — Slipknot has turned the tables on the notion that being a multiplatinum rock band means abandoning a place like Des Moines, Iowa.

Slipknot even recorded their fourth album, 2008’s “All Hope is Gone,” at Sound Farm Studio in Jamaica.

As in Jamaica, Iowa, the little town right down the road from us here in Greene County.

The album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard chart.

“He knows you can’t get the same quality of life as you can get in Iowa,” Thomson said of his son.

Plus, Gordon Thomson needs to be close to his eldest son, if for no other reason than the Mercedes has a cloudy headlight lens right now — and Mick has a big buffer that can take care of it.

“He’s my son. He’s not Mick Thomson, rock star,” Gordon Thomson said. “I give him a dose of reality when he’s around.”

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