SLIPKNOT percussionist Shawn Crahan (a.k.a. Clown) spoke to the Des Moines Register about the death of DAMAGEPLAN/ex-PANTERA guitarist Dimebag Darrell Abbott.

Crahan attended a DAMAGEPLAN concert just last week, at Irving Plaza in New York. He called Abbott a friend and “rock ‘n’ roll icon.”

“It’s just upsetting how the world is — the need and the necessity to override the value of life,” Crahan said. “From my whole (SLIPKNOT) family, I would like to tell . . . Vinnie and everyone else how sorry we are.”

SLIPKNOT’s lead singer, Corey Taylor, sang on DAMAGEPLAN’s album released in February, “New Found Glory”.

When asked if Abbott’s death made him anymore fearful about stepping on stage in front of a sea of strange faces, as SLIPKNOT has done 150 times this year alone, Crahan struck a practical tone.

“This type of activity has always gone on and it’s part of our business,” he said. “You can go through decades of information and hear about these kinds of things. It sounds like there were people in place to try to prevent this. It almost doesn’t matter. People get in. It’s just so, so, so unfortunate.”

Corey Taylor on Dimebag:

“He could take a riff that would take somebody a year to master and he could rip it off in seconds. He made everything look like he was playing ‘Smoke on the Water’ with one finger.

He was one of the coolest people I’ve ever met. The guy just loved to laugh and he loved to make you laugh. And he loved to make you do something that you would never do in a million years. He was a guy that lived in the moment. His philosophy was, ‘Let’s do something that is gonna make us remember tonight for the rest of our lives.’ And that’s something I’m gonna fucking miss for the rest of mine.”