Slipknot/Stone Sour frontman Corey Taylor guests on the second episode of the ‘Someone Who Isn’t Me‘ podcast, hosted by Daniel P. Carter of BBC Radio 1‘s ‘The Rock Show‘ and Krokodil fame. Carter continues to set a good standard for interesting conversation with the episode, which finds Taylor discussing politics, ‘Knotfest‘, Stone Sour, sci-fi, racism in metal/Phil Anselmo and even the possibility of walking away from Slipknot.
I’ve transcribed some excerpts from the chat below, with the whole episode available over at acast and iTunes. Each episode of the podcast comes with a portrait of the guest painted by Carter himself, you can see a bit of Taylor‘s above, with the full painting below.
On the current state of American politics and Donald Trump:
“There’s so many conspiracy theories about that. …Somebody hit me up to the one a couple of days ago where there’s this whole conspiracy theory that Trump signed onto the Republican party so he could talk all this madness just so he could make sure that the Democrats win. Because, for the last 30 years he’s been a member of the Democratic party. I don’t have the facts and figures in front of me, like I don’t know where the shift came or if there was a shift.
But you can’t say that much crazy shit without going ‘hmmm…’ You know? Because between him and Ted Cruz, oh my god. But it’s everybody, it’s everybody who’s running for the GOP. Ben Carson—who at one point I thought was the more level-headed of all of the candidates—the shit he has been saying lately is unbelievable. I am just like ‘what am I seeing here?'”
He later went on to state another potential conspiracy theory about Trump having originally begun to campaign as part of a reality series, before lamenting the state of the U.S. overall:
“It’s really, really weird dark time in my country right now. It’s definitely a global thing, but it seems to be more concentrated in America. Just because there’s really no censor. There’s no… Nobody really holds anything back anymore, whether it’s good or bad, to be honest. I don’t know if that’s the bad end of social media or what not, but now, I was talking about this the other day, if you look at some of the things that some of these candidates, the hopeful nominees, have been saying. The fact they’ve gotten away with it, whereas twenty years ago they’d have been shutdown like nobodies business, it kind of gives you a sense of what’s offensive, now.
I mean because of social media, in my opinion, people are so quick to call offense to something. ‘That’s offensive’, ‘this is offensive.’ When everything is offensive, nothing is, you know? Like the noise is so loud all of this real shit is getting through and nobody is listening because they’re so focused on why the new ‘Star Wars‘ is offensive. I’m like ‘are you fucking kidding me? oh my god.’ So it’s really the case of who’s going to stand up and say something, and even if they do, who’s listening?
Cause apparently it’s fucking scoring points for people. I was honestly shocked at the backlash that Phil [Anselmo] caught because of the seig heiling and the ‘white power’. I was like ‘really?’ Okay, so you’re offended by that, meanwhile you’ve got all these political candidates saying kinder versions of basically the same fucking thing. I mean, it’s pretty unbelievable. So it’s like I was just as offended as everybody else was. But I wasn’t there and I haven’t seen the footage and I just refuse to, ’cause I’m not going to perpetuate it.”
“But it’s almost like people are just picking their spots, ya know? Like they don’t want to say anything until they feel like it’s the right time to say it. It’s like it’s easier to say that about Phil than it is about Trump or Cruz.”
On the internet:
“It should give people a voice who actually have something to say, other than trolls who just chase people down and try to tear them down, ya know? But unfortunately that’s the good and bad side of free speech. I mean, I don’t agree with a lot of the things people say in America. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have the right to say it. It may be offensive, ya know? But sometimes that’s the protection you pay for.”
When asked if he worries about what other people think about his outside appearances from his band, he replied:
“I don’t worry about that all to be honest. Just for the fact that if I did, I wouldn’t do half the stuff that I do. Like if I worried about it I wouldn’t have done the thing with Tech [Tech N9ne] I wouldn’t have done the thing with Richard Cheese—which was a lot of fun, you know? I honestly do the stuff that I want to do and I don’t really worry about what people are going to say about me.”
“…If I had the urge to do something totally different, I totally would. I’ve got various things that I do with some my friends—that hasn’t even been released—that are completely different. Some of it is very funk based, some of it almost like California country style—like Eagles type stuff. So, just getting to record it and write doesn’t neccesarily mean that I need to release it for me to feel OK. So would I worry about releasing it? no.”
“There seems to be a whole group of people just waiting to pounce on anything I do these days, but, who gives a shit, that’s not the reason you make music. And that’s one of the reasons why I’m completely OK with it not being released yet. I’m sure it will see the light of day someday, but for me…”
“There’s at least an album’s worth on both sides. I mean JBKB (Junk Beer Kidnap Band) started out as my disco—how did I call it—disco rock stoner funk, was how I put it. With a pinch of Zappa in there from a lyrical standpoint. And it was all just kind of taking the piss, but the music was really, really cool ya know?
I was playing guitar with another guy, we had a bass player who could funk the shit out of it, really good drummer, we had a whole brass section that was really fuckign cool and then a totally different singer who could sing falsetto like nobody’s business, like it was really cool.
That kind of stuff was really fun to work with. We never went into a studio and recorded anything though, because it eventually just kind of became my solo band that I was doing off-shows with and once it degenerated into that I just kind of lost interest…”
When asked if he would ever consider giving up touring, he replied:
“You know honestly, if you’d have asked me a year ago I would have said no. But just now, I’m just kind of starting to… I’m 42, I’m not young anymore and as willing as my will is, I’m just beat up man. I mean I might as well be 60 in Slipknot years for christ sake. I don’t know if I would retire, I might step away from Slipknot at some point, just because the way the music is, that sense of energy, I don’t know if I could be able to do that into my 50’s. And I would never want the band to feel like I was holding them back because I just couldn’t physically do it. So that means I wouldn’t completely quit music, I would probably just step away from Slipknot.”
“It’s something me and Clown have talked about, me and Clown have talked about that a bit… Where the band is going to go. Because we’ve done it. We’ve done the crazy shit, we’ve done… At some point we’ll have to evolve again. We’ve evolved with every album. At some point it has to mean something other than just the fucking insanity. And I think in a lot of ways it does not, but we’re all still young enough that we can pull it off physically.
It’ll be interesting to see cause I think that in the future we’ll make it less about the angst and the insanity and more about the creativity, because there’s so many creative people in the band, that… I mean fuck man, we could make like twelve albums of crazy, gnarly shit that it wouldn’t have to just be balls out war every time. So it’s definitely something we’re thinking about, but at the same time you just never know.”
He also mentions that the ‘Knotfest‘ will also return in four territories this year, including the U.S., Mexico (October) and Japan (in November,) with the other territory yet to be revealed. As for the next Stone Sour covers EP, which thus far include “Meanwhile In Burbank…” and “Straight Outta Burbank…“, it looks like the series will no longer be a trilogy, Taylor said:
“Originally we were going to do three and now it sounds like we’re just going to do the two and just keep the other stuff we recorded as extra content for when we make the next album.”
Speaking on where Stone Sour are on their next album though, he mentioned that the group have around fourteen songs in the early demo stages for the effort.
Episode 2 of @SWIMpodcast with @CoreyTaylorRock is online on @acast now: https://t.co/AOVMc60Bcy pic.twitter.com/TAHpmJUemo
— Daniel P Carter (@DanielPCarter) February 24, 2016
