RULE BREAKERS: THE ROCKSTAR WITHOUT A FACE - COREY TAYLOR

FHM - OCTOBER 2015

Dressed in jumpsuits, growling dark lyrics and wearing masks, Corey Taylor and his Slipknot bandmates are a physical antidote to music’s infatuation with image. 

The mainstream is so mediocre, someone has to balance the scales. Even so, we never thought Slipknot would be such a pinprick to the Zeitgeist. It’s cool - obviously we revel in it as much as possible. But at the same time you’ve kinda got to break the rules.
I’ve got three kids. I do their laundry, I cook their dinner and yet I’m still one of the biggest people in the music business. It’s weird: you have to have that yin and yang.
We wore masks because all people seemed to care about then was what you looked like. They’d come on to what you sounded like later. For us it worked on both fronts.
Screw the face, screw the fashion - here are my overalls, here’s my mask... here’s the goddamn music.
The real trouble came when various organisations tried to pigeonhole us to try to understand us. Whether it was religious groups thinking we were satanic, or political groups thinking we were subversive, we confused the mainstream. At the time it was like: screw you, this is America - we can say whatever the hell we want.
Not everybody is going to love you, but that’s just how life is. People who chase that kind of universal love drive themselves mad. Because just when you think everybody loves you, that’s when they’ll turn on you. You’re never going to change someone’s mind once they’ve already decided what they think, so why bother? That shit will keep you awake at night.
I was never a social drinker; I drank to get fucked up. So I would binge-drink, for the most part, and it was exponential - one would be two, two would be four, four would be eight. I was the guy who’d order two Jack and Cokes at last call, just so I was smashed for the ride home.
The first time I quit drinking was 2003. 1 was sober for about three years and then I fell off for about four. Finally, I just said, “I’m done. I’m not getting anything out of this and I’m feeling worse and worse every morning.” That was six years ago and counting.
Music is the only outlet that lets me deal with my demons. I know I’ve still got it in me. To think that everything’s really white and soft would be insane. I still have really bad anger issues, and issues from when I was growing up, but the music - thank God - lets me work that out. Or at least let it off the leash a little.
Make music or art for your reasons. No one is ever going to truly understand why you do it, but fuck everybody else. If you get over that barrier, and you get people’s attention, keep it by just being yourself. That will throw the world a loop for the rest of your life.
I plan on writing my autobiography when I’m 80. By then I would have lived a life that I can tell a story about. It’s when people write an autobiography at 20 that I’m like, “What do you expect to do for the next 40 years - what the hell are you doing?”

Corey is author of You’re Making Me Hate You (£12.99, Da Capo Press), out now