COREY TAYLOR: I Care About Making Good Music, Being A Good Person And Taking Care Of My People

Joe Daly of The Nervous Breakdown recently conducted an interview with SLIPKNOT and STONE SOUR frontman Corey Taylor. A few excerpts from the chat follow below.

The Nervous Breakdown: Let's start with the book. What was behind the timing of it? Why now?

Corey: It wasn't anything that was calculated. I mean, the book took a very short time to write but we've been putting this together for awhile, you know, as far back as maybe two years. So it was something that I'd known for a long time that I always wanted to do. I've always wanted to write a book. I'm a huge reader and I've been writing a monthly column for a magazine in England . . . I've been doing that since 2001, so I've been doing that for a long time and the opportunity came up to get a book deal together and the cool thing was that nobody really knew what would happen. Nobody really knew if it would do anything or if I would even be good at it. So I just kind of did my thing, you know? I don't think it was any kind of orchestrated thing. Everything happens for a reason and at the right time. I guess I'm kind of lucky that it came out when it did.

The Nervous Breakdown: Something that's really unique with your book that's unlike other rock biographies and books by musicians is that you actually wrote yours, without assistance from a ghost writer or co-author. What was that experience like?

Corey: It wasn't that hard, you know? (laughs) I wrote it when we were recording [STONE SOUR's 2010 album] "Audio Secrecy". So I would spend all day in the studio and then go back to the house and write all night. It came together really quick. To me it was nothing more than just writing a really really long column, you know? I knew the things that I wanted to say, I knew how I wanted to see the book laid out, and after that you just fill in the blanks, basically. From a literary standpoint, it was just a lot of math. It was very weird, but I never got stuck. If I ever felt like I hit the end of my point, I would walk away from it for awhile. I would only write when I got excited and it seemed like in the core time of writing it, I was always excited.

The Nervous Breakdown: Right on page one you say "I want a revolution in wood pulp." Did you succeed? How are you going to know if that happened?

Corey: Oh I don't know. (laughs) I probably won't see it in my generation, let's put it that way. I'll let the young 'uns pick up on it. I mean, if you're not shaking things up, if you're not throwing stones at the bear, how are you going to know when you get clawed? At the end of the day, I think that too many people are too satisfied with the way things are. They're too ready to accept what is, rather than asking, "Well, what could be? What could we have? What can we do? What should we do?" I think these are questions that not enough people are asking. They're not asking the right questions because when they do ask questions, they tow the party line by going green, or being Republicans, God forbid You know, I ask more questions about how can we be better people towards each other, than worrying about the planet or worrying about this or that There's a bigger issue and it's (the question) why are we so ugly towards each other? Why are we so horrible to each other? Not everyone, but most people. I worry about that. I've seen it coming for a long time. If you go back in history and you look at the way we've been, it hasn't always been this way and that worries me, man. It worries me for my kids, it worries me for the kids of fans that I have, and even the fans that I have now. It worries me and I don't like it. So anything I can do to get people thinking and get people reevaluating why they do the things they do is a responsibility I'm willing to take on.

The Nervous Breakdown: In one of your recent Rock Sound columns you actually challenged the readers by asking them to ask themselves, "What are you doing to make this world better for someone other than yourself?"

Corey: Yeah

The Nervous Breakdown: Are people surprised to hear that kind of challenge from you?

Corey: I'm sure they are. Well, let me rephrase that- my fans are not, but other people are. Let's put it that way, because this is something I've been talking to the fans about for a long time. It's not enough to just get through life, you know. If you're not putting something back, then you're just taking up space. If you're not doing something to not only help yourself but to help other people, then you're in the way. I live by an adage that's very simple, but it's actually quite appropriate in this day and age. The old manager for the Oakland Athletics, Connie Mack, said, "There's room for gentlemen in every profession." Basically, there's room in every profession to be courteous and to be a good person and that's the way I live my life. I don't care about selfish, egotistical histrionics. I don't care about wearing a meat suit to the Grammys and trying to draw attention to myself. I don't care about these things. I care about making good music, being a good person, and taking care of my people. And that's something that's very foreign in my industry. But that's fine. If it makes me kind of the guy on the outside looking in, so be it. But I'm not gonna change who I am just to get a better spot at the awards ceremony. I think if more people thought like that then maybe, just maybe we could be a little better off, you know?

Read the entire interview at The Nervous Breakdown.