Slipknot

Wed 30th Nov, 2011 in Features

Slipknot will be in Australia early next year for Soundwave and a pair of Sidewave dates. FL caught up with frontman Corey Taylor to chat about the Soundwave tour, his new autobiography, the death of the band’s bassist Paul Gray and when we will hear new material form the metal giants.

You’re a busy man Corey. In between being the front man for Slipknot and Stone Sour, you’ve managed to fit in the time to write a book, titled Seven Deadly Sins: Settling The Argument Between Born Bad and Damaged Goods, tell me how you’ve managed to find more hours in the day than the rest of us, and put together this project?
You know what, I couldn’t tell you! I’m really surprised that it got done in the first place, to be honest. It was all about maximising my time. I mean, I wrote it when we (*Stone Sour*) were recording Audio Secrecy. So I would work all day in the studio, and then I’d go back into the house that we were renting, and write all night, and did that on repeat. That’s just what I did. It only took me about two months to write it, and it came out great.

Has it been a project that’s been in the back of your mind for a while? Was it a new inspiration of material, or more a rediscovering material that wasn’t conducive for song writing?
I’d always been kind of threatening to write a book for a long time, but I didn’t want to write that tired memoir, you know. I’m 37, so I haven’t really peaked yet, but I knew I wanted to write a book, but it just took some sitting down with a guy I know in the business, and just kind of shooting ideas back and forth.

Originally I was going to write a book about philosophy, and basically take the piss out of that, but he told me that it would turn into a 5,000 page book, and no one wants to read a 5,000 page book you know. And I was like, OK, you got me on that one. So we just sat down and spit-balled some ideas, and he brought up the idea of the Seven Deadly Sins, and I said “You know what, let me write it from a completely different stand point. Let me basically take the wind out of the sails of the people who would say that the Seven Deadly Sins are sins”, and that’s kind of where it started.

I knew that way I would be able to do an essay kind of thing, and balance that out with some weird stories, and give you the stories to make my point; that we all sin. It doesn’t make us bad people, and saying these are deadly sins, is a crock of shit. So it was really something that once I got behind it, it became something I became really passionate about.

Do you think the line has been blurred between what was traditionally defined as a “sin” and what seems to be common practice in today’s sense?
I think it’s become a line that has definitely been pushed, let’s put it that way. I mean, things that were sins a thousand years ago are fairly tame compared to the modern day “sin-scape”, is the only way I can really put it. I think the more we’ve grown as a society, I think we’ve become more accepting of things like that. But I even say it in the book, these are ancient sins, they really have no bearing in today’s society.

When everything is balanced with moderation, there is no reason that you shouldn’t be able to experience all seven of these feelings and be able to lead a healthy life. It all comes down to semantics really, at the end of the day. A modern society needs a modern set of rules and a modern set of sins, and I think something as antiquated as the seven deadly sins doesn’t have any place in it.

How did you find the writing process of the book? How does it compare with writing and producing an album? Were there any similarities or parallels?
It was definitely a challenge. The great thing about writing a song is that you know where the end is. You get in, you tell your story, and you get out. No matter whether it’s a three minute pop song or a fifteen minute opus. You know there’s an end in sight. With me, in writing the book, it was a lot different. I had to naturally find the end of chapters. I kept having to read back and check that I wasn’t tripping over my own words, and maybe getting a little too verbose for my own good I guess. But it was a good challenge you know, if I hadn’t wanted to write the book, I probably wouldn’t have put my all into it, because it was just one more thing that I wanted to see if I could do, and it became a pretty good learning curve for me.

You’ve been extremely forthcoming and honest with your own experiences in writing the book, including drug binges and being raped as a child, area’s of the book did you find easiest to write about, and which the hardest, and why?
The easiest was probably the stories where I kind of make an ass out of myself, because I’m pretty laid back when it comes to my view of myself. I don’t get all huffy and shit if I trip on a red carpet or something like that, I’m not that kind of guy, I couldn’t give a shit about half that stuff.

So it was a lot of fun to be able to be kind of be braggadocios and yet very self deprecating all in the same breath, because that’s really how I am. I love what I do, and I know I’ve got talent, but at the end of the day, I’m just as big a klutz and a loudmouth as anyone else. So poking fun at myself was very easy.

The hardest part was probably the My Waterloo chapter (which focuses on Taylor’s youth and upbringing). It was digging up a lot of stuff that I had either felt I had talked about in songs, or refused to think about for a long time. In writing songs, you don’t really have to be specific, so it becomes very kind of washed out. So it was difficult in a lot of ways. I mean, I had to warn my family that I was talking about this stuff, and it was heavy duty.

There were a good couple of weeks where my family didn’t talk to me. But you know, I’m not the kind of guy who’s going to half-ass anything. If I’m going to do something, I’m going to go for it with everything I’ve got, and that’s why it was very important for me to put that story in the book.

The white elephant in the room is obviously regarding the tragic death of your former bassist, Paul Gray, it’s obviously a difficult subject, but how have you reflected on it, and has it inspired you in any way?
It’s been over a year now, and I’ve been slowly but surely talking a little bit more about it. Obviously it’s still with me, and it’s still hard to talk about it. But I’ve found the more I talk about it, the easier it is to deal with it.

The biggest thing it has taught me, is to not take anything for granted, you know. Paul was one of those guys who really lived it. He lived it right to the hill. He fought his demons, but he didn’t let his demons control his personality. If you had just met him, you wouldn’t have thought that he was fighting those demons. He was such a sweet-heart, and there were times that I forgot that he had issues that he was fighting against, and it really kind of made him almost indestructible in my eyes. So when he passed, it fucked me up to be honest.

It was hard, and it is still hard, but it taught me that you have got to cherish every day and cherish every moment. I don’t mean to be overly sensitive or anything like that, but you just have to take a minute in every day, and just reflect on where you are, and just realise what you’ve got, because you just never know where the next huge change in your life is going to come from. That’s the biggest lesson I’ve taken from it.