The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is a joke – the fact that Madonna is in before Rush and Kiss. Those two bands have influenced so many groups and people other than in metal. – Corey Taylor
I’m the guy that gets up at three in the morning to jot down an entire sheet of lyrics for something that won’t be recorded for six months. You have to get it down when you can, because thoughts are fluid. – Corey Taylor
The first year I was sober was probably the worst year of my life. My immune system was screwed. I completely isolated myself. I was weak all the time. I didn’t know who I was. – Corey Taylor
Too many people chase dreams that they don’t understand. Too many people try to go for things that they’d like to do, but they’re not realistic enough to know they don’t have the talent. – Corey Taylor
So many people in the world would rather stay in a situation that’s painful but familiar because they’re comfortable with it. Not a lot of people have the strength or heart to realize when something’s not good for them and to turn around and be alone. – Corey Taylor
People such as Hunter S. Thompson and the Beats were a huge influence on me, not just in what they were saying, but how they said it. – Corey Taylor
People can talk about punk all they want, but after new wave put that down, metal is the voice of the disenfranchised and that need to become unhinged. That’s why it appeals to so many people when they are younger and carries over when those people, at 40, don’t want to grow up. – Corey Taylor
If you are too overwhelmed, then when you sit down and try to write something, it feels forced. There’s nothing worse than forced music. I mean, this world has enough of that right now, where it’s basically McDonald’s making music. ‘Everybody needs another hamburger and fries.’ Here’s a piece of crap that nobody’s gonna care about it two years. – Corey Taylor
I didn’t have the worst childhood, but I didn’t have the best, and when you grow up like that, you have certain limitations invariably stuck inside you. Slipknot was a way to work it out. – Corey Taylor
I don’t feel guilty about the music I love. If you feel guilty about something you dig, then you should stop feeling guilty about it. One of my favorite albums to this day is the 10th anniversary ensemble cast of ‘Les Miserables,’ the ultimate cast recording, and it is still something I love listening to top to bottom. – Corey Taylor
When I’m working on a Slipknot song, it’s like a switch flips in my head. I can go there easily – it doesn’t take a lot of soul searching – and it’s a dark, almost sinister place. Stone Sour is more the way I’ve always written. It’s a different tone. – Corey Taylor
I have several books I can read over and over. With fiction, it’s ‘The Stand’ by Stephen King, which is my favorite all time. I read that at least once a year, the version which has 100,000 extra words, which is like the director’s cut and unabridged. I love the story. I love the social connotation to it. – Corey Taylor
I’m not gonna do the same, tired, standard ‘I was born in a log cabin…’ kind of book. There’s so much more I want to do. – Corey Taylor
I was a Marvel kid, and I would have to say that Spiderman is my all-time favorite character. As I got older, my tastes developed a little bit more, and I would follow certain writers; like, I really got into Grant Morrison. From the time I was 5, I was into comic books. From the time I learned how to read, it was all about comic books. – Corey Taylor
I don’t mean to be overly sensitive or anything like that, but you just have to take a minute in every day, and just reflect on where you are, and just realise what you’ve got, because you just never know where the next huge change in your life is going to come from. – Corey Taylor
I write almost all my songs on an acoustic guitar, even if they turn into rock songs, hard rock songs, metal songs, heavy metal songs, really heavy songs… I love writing on an acoustic because I can hear what every string is doing; the vibrations haven’t been combined in a collision of distortion or effects yet. – Corey Taylor
The weird thing about metal fans is we’re all so maladjusted in a lot of ways. We’re individualistic and opinionated and severe in our personalities – sometimes we really turn each other off. A little bit of a metal fan goes a long way. – Corey Taylor
There’s such a huge difference between a great arrangement of riffs and a song. Sometimes the two can be the same. But the difference is a song doesn’t necessarily need a riff, whereas a riff doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve got a good song on your hands. – Corey Taylor
