Slipknot Show Had Less Arrests Than Country Concert at Iowa Fair

Slipknot's homecoming performance at the Iowa State Fair last Saturday (August 10) resulted in fewer audience arrests than the following night's concert from country artist Zac Brown Band on the site.

The information emerged from the state fair's public safety director, Doug Mollenhauer. He revealed as much when confirming that volunteer student ushers were removed from the area during Slipknot's show over safety concerns. It's a "longstanding tradition that students from the Iowa's chapter of the National FFA Organization come to volunteer throughout the Iowa State Fair," the Des Moines Register noted.

"Really, it was not a bad crowd," Mollenhauer explained. "We had more arrested at the Zac Brown concert than we did at the Slipknot concert."

However, of the decision made to pull the student ushers from the grandstand for the evening, the public safety director added, "I didn't think it was a good idea to have them staying around that late."

The FFA volunteers, mostly high school-aged students, normally work at the Iowa State Fair Grandstand to help direct concertgoers to their seats and offer other assistance and information to attendees.

State FFA executive director Scott Johnson commented, "It is a rare occurrence to do that, but it was done out of safety for the ushers that were working at the grandstand." He added that he didn't want the volunteers' positions to progress "above the role of an usher" during the fair's debut Slipknot performance.

The Iowa-born rockers also broke attendance records at the event. With 17,032 tickets accounted for, Slipknot seized the "most attendance at the newly renovated grandstand, while also pulling in the largest audience in the State Fair Grandstand's modern era," the daily newspaper reported.

Slipknot's new album We Are Not Your Kind came out last week. You can catch the group in concert on the Knotfest Roadshow before they head to Australia with Metallica this fall. Get ticketing info here.

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