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Slipknot guitarist Jim Root has responded to reports that Sid Wilson was fired from the band, posting to his Instagram Story late Friday night: “Don’t believe every thing you read. Stop. Think. Take a breath. Sit with it for awhile. Maybe. Just maybe even wait until there’s more information.” Root did not mention Wilson, TMZ or the report by name, and he did not deny it. The message was soundtracked by Slipknot’s “‘Til We Die,” the closing track from All Hope Is Gone about the band’s bond lasting to the end. Neither Slipknot nor Wilson has issued a formal statement, and Wilson’s Instagram bio still reads “@slipknot gang since 1997.”

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Twelve hours ago this looked settled. It isn’t.

We covered the initial report that Sid Wilson had been fired last night, and we said then that the whole thing rested on one anonymous source talking to TMZ with no confirmation from anybody. That caution turned out to be worth having.

Because Jim Root just made this a lot less simple.

What Root Actually Said

Late Friday night, Root posted to his Instagram Story:

“Don’t believe every thing you read. Stop. Think. Take a breath. Sit with it for awhile. Maybe. Just maybe even wait until there’s more information.”

That’s it. That’s the whole thing.

He didn’t name Sid. He didn’t name TMZ. He didn’t say the report was wrong. He didn’t say anything about the band’s lineup at all.

And this matters, because half the internet spent this morning reporting it as a denial. It isn’t a denial. Lambgoat put it about as cleanly as anyone: the message doesn’t necessarily refute the news, and it doesn’t give any more insight either.

What Root did was tell people to slow down. Given what’s been happening in Slipknot comment sections for the last eighteen hours — theories about Sid’s personal life, his health, his relationship, his behaviour, essentially all of it invented — that’s a message that makes sense whether the firing is true or not.

You can read it two ways. Either the report is wrong and Root is signalling that. Or the report is right but the reason everyone’s guessing at is wrong, and Root is protecting a friend from a pile-on.

Both readings fit. Neither is confirmed.

The Song Underneath It Is The Real Tell

Here’s the part almost nobody’s mentioning, and it’s the most interesting thing in this whole story.

Root’s Instagram Story was soundtracked by Slipknot’s “‘Til We Die.”

If you don’t know it: that’s the closing track on 2008’s All Hope Is Gone. It’s the one that isn’t a Slipknot song in the usual sense — no masks-and-fury, just acoustic guitar and Corey Taylor singing about nine guys who came out of Iowa together and stayed bonded through everything. It’s become the band’s unofficial statement of brotherhood, and it took on enormous weight after Paul Gray’s death two years later.

Of every song in a catalogue that runs deep into rage and violence, Root picked that one to play under a message about waiting for more information.

That is not an accident. Jim Root has been in this band for 27 years. He knows exactly what that track means to the people who follow it.

Is it proof of anything? No. But it’s the closest thing to a signal anyone in Slipknot has sent since this broke, and it points toward “this isn’t what you think” rather than “our friend is gone.”

If you want the full context on that record, our ranking of every Slipknot album covers where All Hope Is Gone sits and why that closer landed the way it did.

We Also Recommend – Bands That Wear Masks: The 13 Best Masked Rock And Metal Acts, And The Nu-Metal Pioneers Who Beat Slipknot To It

The Other Detail Worth Noting

Sid Wilson’s Instagram bio still reads “@slipknot gang since 1997.”

As of this morning, he hasn’t touched it. He hasn’t posted. He hasn’t archived anything, hasn’t changed his profile, hasn’t said a word.

People generally update that stuff quickly when a chapter closes. It’s not evidence. But it’s a data point, and there aren’t many of those going around right now.

Where This Actually Stands

Let’s be precise about what’s known, because precision is in short supply on this one.

What’s reported: TMZ, citing one unnamed source close to the band with direct knowledge, says Wilson was told Friday afternoon that he’d been permanently removed from Slipknot.

What’s confirmed: nothing. No statement from Slipknot. No statement from Wilson. No reason given by anyone. No replacement named. Slipknot’s official channels and website show no lineup change.

What Root added: a message urging patience, with a song attached, that stops short of denying the report.

That’s the complete picture. Everything else circulating right now is people filling a silence with their own imagination.

For the record, Wilson is #0 — the ninth member to join, which is exactly why he got the zero. A few outlets have that wrong this morning.

Our current Slipknot lineup page is being held at “unconfirmed and disputed” until somebody with a name on it says otherwise.

What Happens Next

The band is in the middle of an album. They’ve reportedly got around 50 song ideas in the works with producer Matt Wallace, and Clown has been busy with side projects on top of the wider release of Look Outside Your Window earlier this year.

A band mid-record with a lineup question hanging over it will have to address it. The usual shape is a short official statement in the next few days, then the member involved speaking on their own terms later.

Until then: Root’s advice is the right advice. Take a breath. Wait.

We’ll update this page the moment anything official lands.

Check This Out – Slipknot Members 2026: Current Lineup And Who’s In The Band Now

TL;DR

• What happened: Jim Root posted to Instagram Stories late July 31 telling fans not to believe everything they read and to wait for more information
• Did he deny the firing? No. He never mentioned Wilson, TMZ or the report by name, and stopped short of contradicting it
• The detail everyone’s missing: the Story was soundtracked by Slipknot’s “‘Til We Die,” the All Hope Is Gone closer about the band’s bond lasting to the end
• Sid’s status: unchanged publicly — his Instagram bio still reads “@slipknot gang since 1997” and he hasn’t posted
• Official confirmation: none, from anybody, on any part of this
• The original report: TMZ, July 31, one unnamed source close to the band, no reason given
• For the record: Sid Wilson is #0, not #9 — several outlets have that wrong today

FAQ

Jim Root told everyone to stop, think, and wait — and then played the one Slipknot song about never falling apart underneath it. Read into that what you want. What’s your take? Let us know in the comments.

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The post Slipknot’s Jim Root Casts Doubt On The Sid Wilson Firing Report Without Actually Denying It appeared first on Loaded Radio.

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Dutch guitarist Adrian Vandenberg has canceled his “My Whitesnake Years” August 2026 U.S. tour, which was scheduled to launch August 3 in New Bedford, Massachusetts. The trek was set to feature an all-star lineup including guitarist Vinnie Moore and bassist/vocalist Marco Mendoza, celebrating material spanning Whitesnake, Thin Lizzy, UFO, Ted Nugent and beyond. In a statement shared via social media, Vandenberg said: “Amigos, Never in my roughly 50 year long career as a touring guitar player have I had to cancel a show or tour. Not even when in 1987 I had my face totally ripped open in an early morning traffic accident in New York. I still played the show that evening because I didn’t want to miss playing a sold-out show at Madison Square Garden.”

“Needless to say I’m really, really sorry to have to announce that I’m strongly urged by the medical specialists involved to not do this upcoming USA tour at this point. Right now, it would just be too soon after a bacterial infection invaded my body, which needs to get taken care of right away. Those creepy bad boys need to get their treacherous asses kicked out of my body [as soon as possible].”

“I’m in great expert hands in the hospital and things are fortunately moving in the right direction. But, as always, these kind of things will need some time.”

“Our management and USA agency Paramour Group are already working on rescheduling this tour. And of course, you’ll be kept up to date. See you guys soon!”

Vandenberg first rose to prominence in the early 1980s with his eponymous band Vandenberg, earning international success with hits including “Burning Heart” and “Friday Night.” His success led to a longtime collaboration with David Coverdale and Whitesnake, for whom he contributed the guitar solo to the multi-platinum smash “Here I Go Again” and co-wrote material for Slip Of The Tongue and the Restless Heart releases. He was a member of Whitesnake for 13 years at the height of the band’s fame and also appeared on the live albums Starkers In Tokyo and Live At Donington as well as the band’s celebrated Greatest Hits reunion tour.

Beyond Whitesnake, Vandenberg has recorded with supergroup Manic Eden and released multiple albums with Vandenberg’s Moonkings. His namesake band released the comeback album 2020 in May 2020 via Mascot Records and followed it with Sin in August 2023, produced by Bob Marlette (Ozzy Osbourne, Alice Cooper, Rob Zombie). In 2024, Vandenberg co-headlined with Geoff Tate on the “Operation: Mindcrime” tour, followed by performances aboard the 2025 Monsters Of Rock cruise and a successful East Coast headline run.

The post ADRIAN VANDENBERG Cancels “My Whitesnake Years” August U.S. Tour: “Never in My Roughly 50-Year Career Have I Had to Cancel a Show or Tour” appeared first on Sonic Perspectives.

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In 2016 Steve Hillage released 22-disc box set Searching For The Spark 1969-1991. It proved the ideal moment to look back on a career that’s included spells with Gong, Khan and System 7, moving from psychedelic prog to dance and ambient music, and producing albums for Tony Banks, It Bites, Simple Minds and others.

You were only in Gong for a relatively short time in your overall career.

It might have been a short time but it felt like an eternity!

How do you look back on that time and albums like 1973’s Angel’s Egg and 1974’s You?

It was a strange and amazing experience. It was completely exhilarating, sometimes exasperating. The band that made Angel’s Egg and You, I’d say, was the best band I’ve ever been in. Ever. It was seven strong individuals, all good at what they did, making the whole greater than the sum of the parts.

What stands out for you from Angel’s Egg?

There are many good bits. Other Side Of The Sky was all one take and us playing live. It was just, you know, wow! In terms of my own playing I’d say there were two pieces – the solo on I Never Glid Before and the solo track I did, Castle In The Clouds. In particular that one was a launch pad for my whole subsequent development in the world of ambient music. Hats off to Daevid Allen, because he put together the order of the tracks and wove the story around it all.

After Gong, were you surprised at the way your solo career took off with 1976’s L album?

I thought L was going to do alright – although I couldn’t quantify what “alright” meant. Then we got the Hyde Park show, another thing that fell out of the blue. Our first gig in front of thousands of people – fucking hell! That was a real baptism by fire.

It really seriously disturbed me, actually. I felt really weird singing my songs about peace and love and there’s fighting in front of me. I tried to berate them over the mic and in the end I just thought, “Fuck it, let’s just finish the set!”

We managed to get through the set and it seemed to go down pretty well. It was a mad experience, but it was very good in terms of timing for the release of the album and that helped enormously. It took off from there.

There’s always been an uplifting quality within your music. Was that something you consciously worked at?

It’s not something you can necessarily work at with a technique, but obviously the whole aim of the game was to create what we might call an “enhanced experience” for the listener. If that’s what you get then we’re happy. It means it’s working. It’s a bit like the modern equivalent of shamanism. When you attune yourself to a certain energy and channel it through what you do with your music – it’s that. Most artists do it, though not all do it consciously. It’s part of art, really.

If you’re making music and you appreciate that aspect of the musical experience, you try to maximise it if you can. We found certain ways we could achieve that. We’re still very much of that orientation in what we do now, although it’s more instrumental-based and more connected to ambient and dance music. We haven’t lost that hunger to go for that aspect.

Has there always been a connection between your music and heightened, euphoric states, such as what’s often encountered at dance gigs?

Yes. That’s very much what led us into the whole dance thing. To a certain extent the dance thing grew up around us. At the end of the 80s we found that to be our musical home. But we never rejected what we’d done before; it was just part of a chronological progression.

On the tour we did for Green in 1978, and the first year we played at Deeply Vale, we had a very interesting experience at a gig in Plymouth. Before we played there was a disco and the DJ had a pre-release copy of Kraftwerk’s The Man-Machine. The audience loved it – they were dancing away. We were kind of gobsmacked.

We tend to associate German psychedelic music with sitting down cross-legged with a big, conical joint. Sancing to it hadn’t really occurred to us! We said, “My God, it’s the future! This stuff’s going to be massive.” We had a kind of ‘eureka!’ moment; we didn’t know what to do with it, but that’s when we had it.

Were you surprised at the way the dance and ambient chillout scene adopted and adapted Rainbow Dome Musick?

When we did it in 1979, for us it was a special project uniquely for that event. We thought it was good and we were very happy with it – we had no real prediction of how it would be viewed 10 or 20 years later.

Posterity isn’t something you’re thinking about when you’re making an album.

The pressure was on to do anotherproggy album like L. But I wanted to move in more of a funk direction with electronics

Not at all. One of my aphorisms is you’re only as good as your last gig or your last album or track or mix or whatever. You’ve got to focus on what you’re doing at the time.

What would you regard as the really pivotal album for you?

Motivation Radio [1977] because that’s where I did a left turn. All the pressure was on me to do another more obviously proggy album like L but I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to move in more of a funk direction with more electronics. I found Malcolm Cecil the perfect producer for that. It didn’t do at all well in America, but it definitely changed things for me.

Are there any of your releases you feel are underrated or haven’t quite got the attention you think they deserve?

It’s very difficult to answer that. They’re all steps along the way. I met Steven Wilson recently and one of his favourite albums of mine is For To Next [1983]. Maybe the sound is a little harsh, but I’m really pleased with the songs and the lyrics on that one. Some of them are a little darkl but they say the same sort of thing as my earlier records in a much more subtle way.

I was writing this stuff at the time of the Falklands War and that had a bad effect on me – all that patriotism. I thought, “This is the pits!” So I was seeing things in a somewhat darker way, although my idealism was undimmed.

If you could go back and speak to your younger self, about to embark on a career as a professional musician, what would you say?

I’ll answer that with something Daevid Allen told me. Soft Machine had the same management as Jimi Hendrix; and one day, Daevid was in the toilet with him at the Speakeasy club. Jimi looked at Daevid and said, “Hey man, stay with your thing, stay with your thing.” So that’s what I’d say to myself: “Stay with your thing!”