Paul Gray — number 2 — was Slipknot's founding bassist and one of its principal songwriters. Born in 1972, he was in the band from its formation in 1995 until his death in 2010. His function was more structural than a common bassist's. In a nine-piece band with two guitars, drums, two percussionists, samples and turntables, the standing risk is that the mass of sound becomes indistinct noise. Gray held the centre: low, simple lines played with weight and without ornament, on which everything else could pile up. That is why Slipknot sounds dense rather than confused. As a writer he took part in the material of the first three albums alongside Joey Jordison, and is acknowledged within the band as one of the two musical heads of that phase. He died on 24 May 2010, aged 38. The findings pointed to accidental intoxication from a combination of morphine and fentanyl, with heart disease as a contributing factor. The next album, .5: The Gray Chapter (2014), was built around his absence and carries his name in the title — four years between one and the other, the time the band needed before it could record again.
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