The widow of tragic SLIPKNOT bassist Paul Gray has claimed his bandmates refused her pleas to help him just days before he died.
Gray’s body was found in a hotel room in 2010 after he lost his battle against drug addiction. The band have still not fully recovered from the derailment, and only recently started work on their first album since the co-founder’s death.
Brenna Gray, testifying at the trial of her late husband’s doctor, recounted her memories of the days leading up to the tragedy. She told Polk County District Court in Iowa: “I was about three months pregnant. The last month of his life something wasn’t right. I wasn’t sure – he was apparently testing negative at his doctor’s appointments.
“I found a needle floating in a toilet a week before he died. I found a bag of needles the Saturday we staged an intervention.”
Brenna said the intervention involved her family but no members of Slipknot, although she’d advised the band’s manager of Gray’s situation. She later asked the musicians directly for help.
She said: “One was playing golf two minutes away from our house but couldn’t come. Nobody else cared, nobody was involved. They told me it was my problem.”
Dr Daniel Baldi is accused of nine counts of involuntary manslaughter related to the prescription of strong drugs, including that of Gray. If convicted he could face up to 18 years in jail.
Unofficial SLIPKNOT fan site OpiumOfThePeople.net recently commissioned Seb from S7figures to make a completely “new and improved” unofficial figurine of late SLIPKNOT bassist Paul Gray.
A video clip of the new figurine can be seen below. Photos are available at OpiumOfThePeople.net.
A posting on the site reads: “This handmade #2 Paul Gray SLIPKNOT ‘All Hope Is Gone’ figure is just an amazing piece of art! It’s 10 inches tall (26 cm), made from different materials, including polymer clay, Citadel modelling putty, resin. The bass guitar is made from real wood and it includes real guitar strings. The figure is based on the infamous orange/red jumpsuit photo shoot back from 2008. The detail is fucking awesome! And hey, wanna know what the best thing is? The best thing is that it looks much much better in real life. I mean, it’s just totally insane! But the video and photos are still badass.”
“I wasn’t sure how this Paul Gray figure would look like in the orange jumpsuit, because, after all, SLIPKNOT has never performed in those during the ‘All Hope Is Gone’ tour, but man, when I first saw it in front of me, I just knew that it was the shit!”
Gray was found dead at the age of 38 in a hotel room outside Des Moines, surrounded by drug paraphernalia. His death was ruled an accidental overdose of morphine and fentanyl, with his autopsy showing that Gray also suffered from significant heart disease.
Gray‘s widow, Brenna, revealed in an April 2011 interview with Revolver that her husband had agreed to get help for his drug problem just one day before he died on May 24, 2010.
After a lengthy hiatus, SLIPKNOT resumed touring in 2011, with Donnie Steele playing bass live. The band intends to enter a recording studio sometime in 2014 to begin work on its first album without Gray.
If you didn’t watch the pay-per-view stream of Knotfest on August 18, you missed one of the more intense Slipknot performances ever. Here’s a clip that’ll show you what we mean – the band plays “Duality” as a tribute to their late bassist, Paul Gray, and the audience joins in on the chorus to pretty awe-inspiring effect. Watch now.
SLIPKNOT mastermind Clown, aka Shawn Crahan says that late bass player Paul Gray will contribute to the band’s next album. Check out details in the Artisan News report below:
Clown spoke with Jon Wiederhorn at SPIN.com recently who revealed that drummer Joey Jordison has written 30 new songs, vocalist Corey Taylor has penned lyrics, and guitarists Jim Root and Mick Thomson are busy writing riffs.
“That’s how everyone is coping with the loss of Paul,” Crahan surmises, “by writing. Will all of that stuff be used? No. Will some of it be used? Of course. But until we get to that area I can’t tell anybody anything. It’s like asking me who the next bass player is. I’m not gonna give you an answer ’cause I don’t have to think about it right now. I need about a year to grieve get my shit together so I can control my emotions in the studio, which is something I can’t do right now. I want to be able to go in there and realize my brother’s not there. And then when I’m asked to do a part, I can control myself and give Paul, the band and the fans everything that Slipknot needs to be.”
SLIPKNOT has released a statement about the involuntary manslaughter charges brought against a Des Moines, Iowa, doctor yesterday (Wednesday, September 5) in connection with the death of the band’s bassist, Paul Gray (pictured below). Physician Daniel Baldi is accused of prescribing large amounts of narcotic painkillers to patients who later died of overdoses, including Gray.
SLIPKNOT‘s statement in its entirety:
“As the loss of our brother Paul Gray is still very fresh for us in the SLIPKNOT family, this new development has us all in a state of anger and sadness. The fact that this person took advantage of our brother’s illness while he was in a position to help others has outraged everyone in our family. We can only hope that justice will be served so this can NEVER happen to anyone else ever again! Our thoughts go out to the families of the other victims. We plan to cooperate as much as we possibly can to ensure this tragedy is never repeated, and to make sure this man pays for what he has done.”
According to charging documents released at the doctor’s court hearing yesterday, Baldi is believed to have unintentionally caused the death of Paul Gray by writing “high-dose prescription narcotics to a known drug addict” starting on December 27, 2005.
The doctor’s lawyer, Guy Cook, told DesMoinesRegister.com his client plans to vigorously fight the charges.
“It is unprecedented to turn unfortunate deaths or medical results into a crime against a doctor,” the lawyer said. “Unexpected deaths can occur in severe, chronic pain patients, unrelated to medical treatment. This is especially true with patients who are drug addicts or drug abusers.”
Gray passed away more than two years ago from an accidental overdose of drugs, leaving behind his wife Brenna and daughter October.
Brenna Gray revealed in a 2011 interview with Revolver that her husband had agreed to get help for his drug problem just one day before he died on May 24, 2010. Brenna, who said she had dealt with Paul‘s drug issues several times over the years, explained, “I realized what was going on when I found things at home — then he passed away that Sunday. So I really had no time to make a move. On the Saturday I said, ‘Hey, we need to do something. We need to fix this.’ He agreed. He was getting ready to go out on tour with (side project) HAIL! and he said, ‘I’ll go get help after this tour.’ But I said, ‘You’re not going.’ I called his manager and told him to cancel. But I think it was a little too late.”
Paul was found dead in a hotel room in a suburb of Des Moines, Iowa, where he and SLIPKNOT were based. He was 38 years old.
Brenna said she didn’t know what led her husband to drugs, but thinks it had something to do with his childhood. She revealed that his father, who committed suicide, was also a drug addict, adding, “I never pushed him to talk about it because it was such a burden to him..”
The young widow also said she was shocked by some of the public reaction to Paul‘s death, saying, “If he could have controlled (his addiction), he would have. He wanted to be done with it. But it’s a life-long disease — even if he stayed clean for the rest of his life he’d still have had the disease.”
According to DesMoinesRegister.com, a Des Moines physician has been charged with eight counts of involuntary manslaughter for allegedly prescribing large amounts of narcotic painkillers to patients who later died of overdoses, including SLIPKNOT bassist Paul Gray (pictured below).
Daniel Baldi, who helped run an Iowa Health System pain clinic, is accused of unintentionally causing the death of Paul Gray by writing “high-dose prescription narcotics to a known drug addict” starting on December 27, 2005, according to charging documents released at the doctor’s court hearing today.
The doctor’s lawyer, Guy Cook, told DesMoinesRegister.com his client plans to vigorously fight the charges.
“It is unprecedented to turn unfortunate deaths or medical results into a crime against a doctor,” the lawyer said. “Unexpected deaths can occur in severe, chronic pain patients, unrelated to medical treatment. This is especially true with patients who are drug addicts or drug abusers.”
Gray passed away more than two years ago from an accidental overdose of drugs, leaving behind his wife Brenna and daughter October
Brenna Gray revealed in a 2011 interview with Revolver that her husband had agreed to get help for his drug problem just one day before he died on May 24, 2010. Brenna, who said she had dealt with Paul‘s drug issues several times over the years, explained, “I realized what was going on when I found things at home — then he passed away that Sunday. So I really had no time to make a move. On the Saturday I said, ‘Hey, we need to do something. We need to fix this.’ He agreed. He was getting ready to go out on tour with (side project) HAIL! and he said, ‘I’ll go get help after this tour.’ But I said, ‘You’re not going.’ I called his manager and told him to cancel. But I think it was a little too late.”
Paul was found dead in a hotel room in a suburb of Des Moines, Iowa, where he and SLIPKNOT were based. He was 38 years old.
Brenna said she didn’t know what led her husband to drugs, but thinks it had something to do with his childhood. She revealed that his father, who committed suicide, was also a drug addict, adding, “I never pushed him to talk about it because it was such a burden to him..”
The young widow also said she was shocked by some of the public reaction to Paul‘s death, saying, “If he could have controlled (his addiction), he would have. He wanted to be done with it. But it’s a life-long disease — even if he stayed clean for the rest of his life he’d still have had the disease.”
SLIPKNOT co-founder/conceptualist/percussionist Shawn M. Crahan (a.k.a. Clown) told The Pulse Of Radio he tuned out the negative comments people made after his bandmate’s death. “I had to finally release myself of any of it, you know. I had to void myself of what people were saying,” he said. “I mean, anything that was said negative doesn’t even register, because anybody that wants to spend any time on the negative, you know, they’re just going to have to deal with it with their own life, when their own father or mother or aunt or brother or sister dies. You’re going to have to deal with the negative because it just comes along with death.”
Paul and Brenna‘s daughter, October, was born three months after her father’s death. Brenna said, “She went through a phase where she looked just like him . . . She has his smile: she has these huge dimples and when she smiles, that’s Paul right there.”
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