SLIPKNOT, TYPE O NEGATIVE 'In Memoriam' GRAMMY Snubs Explained

February 16, 2011

Even though Ronnie James Dio, SLIPKNOT bassist Paul Gray and TYPE O NEGATIVE's Peter Steele all died last year, only Dio made the list of faces and names showcased during Grammy Awards' "In Memoriam" segment (see video below) last Sunday (February 13).

Neil Portnow, president of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS),addressed the issue of stars being left out backstage at the awards show Sunday (see video below),saying that the "'In Memoriam' segment is a real connundrum, because we keep a list — and it's a sad job — of when we lose people in our industry, actually, starting this past week [for next year's awards show], because if it's very late, it's not something we can factor in. And this past year we had over 300 people in the industry pass, and many of them — all of them — important, so we have to, at the end of the day, make a selection, and you can't get everybody there, and we try to have a broad represenation of different genres and generations and so on. We're never happy with how that exactly turns out, [but] we have the list of everybody [who died] in our program book every year."

Paul Gray was found dead in a hotel room in a Des Moines, Iowa suburb last May at the age of 38 from an overdose of morphine.

Steele passed away on April 14, 2010 from heart failure. He was 48 years old.

Neil Portnow explains "In Memoriam" snub:

2011 "In Memoriam" segment (Ronnie James Dio appears around the one-minute, 42-second mark):

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