Corey Taylor Says Legendary Producer Rick Rubin “Wasn’t There” for Work on Vol. 3
When it comes to music producers, there are few in the business with as much name recognition as Rick Rubin. With credits in some big name metal albums like Slayer‘s South of Heaven and Reign in Blood, Metallica‘s Death Magnetic, and System of a Down‘s Toxicity, it’s shouldn’t be a surprise that Slipknot also employed his services.
But for frontman Corey Taylor, Rubin’s involvement in the band’s album Vol. 3 (The Subliminal Verses) left a lot to be desired. And while that’s not a new sentiment, he reiterated his feelings during a recent interview with Revolver, where he said he felt the album’s engineer Greg Fidelman deserves the credit.
“Oh God, that was such a pivotal time in my life. I was in such a bad place, I don’t really have a lot of memory of the first half of making that album, because I was so fucked up all the time. The thing that sticks out is that there was such a sense of trepidation before the album even came out. We weren’t sure if anybody was even gonna dig it, you know? It wasn’t until people got a load of ‘Duality’ that everything changed.
“We weren’t sure if people were gonna be ready for an album like that; we weren’t sure if we were ready for an album like that. And the recording of it left such a bad taste in my mouth that to this day I have a hard time listening to it. Obviously, a lot of it stems from how I feel about [producer] Rick Rubin; to me, Greg Fidelman produced that album, because Rubin wasn’t there. He just fucking wasn’t. And when he was, it’s like he couldn’t be bothered.”
In previous interviews, Taylor said Rubin only showed up to the recording studio a handful of times, stating that while he’s a nice man, “he didn’t do anything for me.”
“There were a lot of takes that I thought were much better than the ones they fuckin’ used and I wasn’t asked about a lot of shit. It sounds amazing; the songs are great. But we were being charged horrendous amounts of money. And for me, if you’re going to produce something, you’re fucking there. I don’t care who you are.”
