Slipknot members Corey Taylor and Michael Shawn Crahan are the only actual legal members of Slipknot according to the attorney of their business manager Robert Shore’s new motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by former percussionist Chris Fehn. Taylor and Crahan as Slipknot appear to pay the band’s other members ‘fees’ for services, or at the very least Fehn. Alternative Nation transcribed some of Shore’s comments from his lawyer.
3. I routinely interact with RSA clientele as well as others who may be associated with RSA clientele as well as others who may be associated with RSA clientele. These clients are clients of RSA and the interaction is on behalf of RSA. This process applied to the entities conducting the business of the musical band professionally known as Slipknot (“Slipknot”).
4. To the extent I have ever undertaken to act on behalf of Christopher Fehn, it was and would have been in no capacity other than as an RSA employee.
5. Mr. Fehn performed with Slipknot and received a fee for doing so. He is not a shareholder, owner or member of any business entity he named as defendant in this action.
6. I have been involved in the music management business for decades and have operated RSA since 2008. RSA clientele receive optimal business management services whenever and wherever needed, and I am confident in the stating that each of RSA’s clients, including the Slipknot entities, has received precisely such services.
Defendants, Michael Shawn Crahan and Corey Taylor, founding members of the musical band professionally known as “Slipknot” (the “Band”). All remaining defendants are entities through which the Band’s business is or was conducted.
Chris Fehn’s lawyer Joel Rothman recently told Rock Feed, “First of all, the lawsuit came about because in order for Chris to continue to participate in the band and attend recording sessions for the album that the band is working on, he was presented with a very onerous take-it-or-leave-it, you’re-not-an-equal-member-of-the-band-type proposal. And I’m not gonna go into the details of it, but let me put it this way.
If you had spent twenty years of your life devoted to an enterprise like Slipknot, where you had given your heart, your soul, your sweat, your blood, your tears to making the band the best it could be the way that so many of its fans love, and then you were told you were a second-class citizen here, I doubt that anyone who’s listening to this would feel any differently from the way Chris felt, which was that he wasn’t being given the respect that he deserved
And in speaking with his [other] attorneys, what we saw was that Chris, from the beginning of Slipknot, was treated like an equal, and it wasn’t until later, after the band had experienced success, that they began to treat Chris like less than that equal. And we looked at that, and we said, ‘Well, that doesn’t seem fair,’ based on the facts as we understood them that he began as an equal partner in the band in the beginning, and he should continue to be treated in that same fashion.”