Must Read: Clown Interviews Corey Taylor About Corey Taylor’s Solo Album Featuring Slipknot’s Corey Taylor
Slipknot percussionist Clown had interviewed Slipknot vocalist Corey Taylor as part of The Electric Theater podcast, the new series hosted by hard-hitting journalistic outpost Knotfest.com. We wonder what it was like for Clown to interview Jesus Himself — we wouldn’t know! — although we do know what it’s like to be in the presence of such extreme greatness.
Naturally the topic turned to Corey’s upcoming solo album, CMFT, and Corey spoke what could be a book-length novel about why he decided to use the material for his own record instead of for Slipknot or Stone Sour:
“This is something that I could have done years ago – I could have done it at any other point, but at the time, it didn’t make sense to do something like that, honestly, because I had Slipknot, I had Stone Sour – for whatever it was worth.
“You know me – the only time I really like to put a focus on myself sometimes is when it’s part of the collective; when it’s working on something as a group and working on something as a band and working on something that we’re gonna be able to hoist up and show to the world.
“For me, I was absolutely content with bouncing back and forth between Slipknot and Stone Sour, but for the last few years, I’ve recognized something in myself that really was just getting more and more important for me to show and share.
“And that was a certain type of music, that kind of all-out rock ‘n’ roll kind of positive… I don’t even wanna say positive ’cause it’s not the right word. There’s no real word for what I’m trying to say, so I’ll just describe it: this major-chord, big-chorus kind of party vibe, for lack of a better term.
“I felt like I didn’t have that in my life. It was a reflection of the music that I’ve been into for many years. It was a reflection of the music that I usually like to do in the cover shows that I do here and there. It was a reflection of the songs that I had been writing over the years that didn’t fit with either Slipknot or Stone Sour.
“It was weird – it was like I was trying to fill in an empty space in that artistic spot in my heart, and I knew that, obviously, there was no way it was gonna fit with Slipknot because it’s just such a different entity.
“We play in different realms, and our world is huge, but these songs just don’t fit – it’s not the same kind of artistic flavor. I may have been able to do it with Stone Sour, but Stone Sour is so different than what it used to be that I had to just kind of create this third thing that, for lack of a better term, had to be a solo thing.
“‘Cause if I’d started a third band, it really wouldn’t have made any sense. It just made more sense for me, especially at this point in my life, to be, like, ‘OK, I’ve written all these songs. I did this.’
“The focus is gonna be on me regardless. Even if I put the band together and I do this thing from a band perspective, the focus is gonna be on me. The production is gonna come from my head.
“Artistically, these are the way the songs, I wanna hear them done.’ And I just knew that all of the work was gonna be on me anyway. So it was just a matter of, ‘OK, if I’m gonna carry the load, then it’s just gonna be my name, it’s just gonna be me.’
“I’ll have friends come in and play with me, but for the most part, it’s my project. It’s me – it’s what I need to do. And the more I was thinking about it, the more I realized that my heart needed it.
“You know how when you and I are working on pieces of music together that may or may not work with the ‘Knot sometimes, and they become other things that we really try to kind of put out into the world to make sure that they see the light of day because we wanna share them with people.
“That’s kind of what these songs were. These songs were parts of me that I really wanted to share the world and kind of show the world this other side of my writing style that I’d never been able to show before.
“So I don’t know if it was necessarily a need for me to kind of go out and be solo, but it was definitely one of those things where it was, like, if I do this, I know I’m gonna do all the work. I’ve already written all the songs.
“I know the focus is all gonna be on me. There’s no reason for me to start another band. At this point, it’s gonna be the Corey Taylor show regardless, so I might as well just kind of take the helm and embrace it.
“It was really as simple as that. It really wasn’t because I necessarily needed to be out front more ’cause I’m out front anyway – with both bands. I’ve got that more. I’ve done the work, just as much as anybody else, and I was fine with it.
“So it really kind of came down to the definition of what the project needed to be, honestly, for it to be taken seriously. And it came down to just me embracing the fact that it was gonna be a solo project.”
There, now don’t you feel enlightened with all that newfound knowledge? J/k j/k… Corey’s new material is solid, and context is important. You can listen to the first two singles from the album, the fun, shout-along anthem “CMFT Must Be Stopped” and the more pensive “Black Eyes Blue,” at those links and pre-order the album here.
[via Ultimate Guitar]
