Slipknot percussionist Shawn ‘Clown’ Crahan has spoken about the goat featured on the cover of the band’s 2001 album ‘Iowa‘.

The drummer said in a new interview that the goat is linked to a hidden track on the metal legends’ first album, 1999’s ‘Slipknot’.

“That goat’s name is Eeyore,” Clown told Metal Hammer in a reflective piece on the 20th anniversary of ‘Iowa’. ‘Eeyore’ is the name of a hidden track inside their debut album’s closing track, ‘Scissors’.

“My mentor who got me going into photography, Stefan Seskis, he shot the first album cover, I came up with the concept and I so badly wanted to shoot the second album cover, and I just couldn’t get it done. One day I handed him the goat,” Clown said.

Seskis went on to take several Polaroid photos of the goat, which eventually formed the ‘Iowa’ cover art, meaning that Clown missed his chance to secure the final shot.

New issue of @MetalHammer is out now celebrating 20 years of #IOWA: https://t.co/WjU5FKF8go pic.twitter.com/RS7pOFlq79

— Slipknot (@slipknot) June 25, 2021

Clown continued: “The cover has a lot of symbolic, metaphoric solutions in it for everyone in our culture. I haven’t really explained it. It’s for the end times to put the whole picture together, so I’m not going to go into that.

“The cover is as important as the inside cover, which is the mirror I made. All these people think they know what Slipknot is, everyone wants to judge a book by its cover,” he continued. “But if you’re a good parent, and you’re checking out what your child is listening to, you open it up and you realise you’re already part of it. There you are. Your twisted little fucking self. Right there in that mirror, you’re already part of this timeframe called ‘Iowa’.”

In other news, Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor recently gave a young, terminally ill fan a one-hour video chat in which they discussed music, monster trucks and skydiving.

Meanwhile, last month Clown shared more solo music under the moniker, Brainwash Love. Crahan began sharing solo tracks on YouTube on June 11, and released his latest two songs on June 19.

Earlier that month he said that he and his Slipknot bandmates were ready to share their previously unreleased tribute song to the band’s original bassist Paul Gray.