Corey Taylor, frontman of multi-platinum Iowan masked metal collective Slipknot, recently reflected on his past fractured relationship with his bandmate, DJ Sid Wilson. Taylor teared up while sharing the story of how the pair trading blows and the eventual reconciliation that followed.
While taking part in a Q&A at the ‘Monster-Mania Con‘ in Oaks, PA this past weekend, Taylor was asked by a fan about the biggest fight he had with a member of his own band. Rocknrollexperience.com were in attendance and documented Taylor‘s response:
“Me and Sid got into a fistfight, and it’s something that I’m not proud of. It was during a tough, tough time. He and I were at such parallel ends — polarized and parallel ends — of the universe for no reason other than we were just in different spots in our life. But for some reason we were just banging heads hard. And it wasn’t good, to the point where when he would come into the room, I would leave, and if I came into the room, he would leave.
This was about six years ago, so it’s… We’re good now, just so everybody knows. But it came to a head in Sweden. And he and I were both on a tear. Luckily, we kept this away from the fans. We had just had a meet-and-greet at the time. And a fan had given me a comic book that I had been looking for for a long time. So I was looking at it, and really appreciating it, and Sid being Sid, [he] came up and not knowing what was going on, he probably thought he was just joking, but came up and he just smacked it right out of my hand hard. He just nailed it.
And in any other context, it would have been funny, like, ‘Oh, you dick,’ you know. But everything was amplified and all of the things you haven’t said come rushing to the front of your mind and it becomes an issue. And that turned into us turning on each other and going at each other hard to the point where the band had to pull us apart. He was saying he was gonna go home and leave the tour. I wasn’t going to apologize. It was bad, man.”
He went on to add:
“When I had my spinal surgery, [Sid] was the first one to call me and [pauses] he just said, he was, like, ‘I’m so sorry,’ and I said, ‘I am so sorry.’ And I said ‘I love you.’ He was, like, ‘Are you okay?’ And I was, like, ‘I’m all right. It’s all good.’ And just like that, nothing mattered other than me and my brother.”
“I’m really proud and I’m really glad that he and I could squash all that shit, because he’s one of my favorite people in the world. Just the way he thinks, the way he creates, he’s one of the best secret weapons that we have in Slipknot, because his musical mind is so creative. And plus, he schools us on every mask that he comes up with. I just look at him and go, ‘You fucker! Goddamn it! Why did you think of that?’
But it’s stuff like that that endears you to the people that you’ve been in the trenches with, that you’ve spent half your life with on the road building this thing. I didn’t expect it, and yet to this day, it means the world to me. So that’s how you carry on. It’s not about the fights; it’s about coming back together. And that’s the most important thing that we’re ever gonna know. It’s that shit; that’s the stuff that you do.”
“It’s kind of difficult to get 9 people in the same place anymore because we’re old and dicks (laughs), but the cool thing is that we all still get excited about good ideas. Jim [Root] & Mick [Thomson] are so good at writing music, me and Clown work really well coming up with stuff together, V-Man is actually really good. So we’ve done so much in our career that at this point we could sit back and just do EP’s or I’ve got a good idea for a double concept record with a whole story line that goes along with it that I would love to do.
But the cool thing is that we’ve kind of established our history, so whatever comes next will naturally be something that we want to do so whether it’s going in and just blast out a couple psycho tunes and just have fun doing that or we go in and do a very elaborate plan like the story line or something, either way it’ll be something we’re totally into and I try to back, I back the group, ya know?
At this point we’ve released so much music and we’re off our label now so the kinda sky’s our limit, we can do whatever we want so whatever we do next will be something we are all on the same page for which is something you can’t always say.”
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