Slipknot singer’s ‘Deadly’ new book

Metro New York
July 18th 2011

Corey Taylor tries to Settle the argument between born bad and damaged good
Yes, it has stories about life on the road, but it also makes you think

Article by Meredith Engel

He's led a wild life as the lead singer of hard rock bands Slipknot and Stone Sour, but Corey Taylor is also surprisingly sensitive. The 37-year-old’s first book, “Seven Deadly Sins’' — dedicated to his children, wife and grandmother — is an in-depth argument for the redefinition of sin, meshed with personal stories from his childhood and career.

How is your book different from other rock-star books?
I wrote it myself— that's probably a huge difference. A lot of people think that just sitting down with someone who's punching letters into a computer counts as writing your own book, but I completely disagree, I felt I had a very relevant thing to say and I could use my own life as examples, so I can only hope that people take a lot of different things away from it than just stories of when I was growing up or stories of being on the road. 

Will you write more books?
I’ve actually been talking about a concept for another book; I'm kind of waiting to see how this book does before I start working on it, but I've pretty much written the first chapter.

What's it about?
I’m gonna keep that under wraps for right now.... Oh, OK, fine I'll tell you. Basically, it’ll be a collection of stories, the difference between believing in the paranormal or the supernatural, versus believing in God and having faith. Like, how can I believe in ghosts when I don't believe in God? It’s like believing in aliens and not God.... It’ll probably be a lot more comedy, and some of the chapters will probably be a little darker than “Seven Deadly Sins," but I’m actually gonna go out and go on different ghost hunts.

What will you tell your kids if they want to read your book?
I guess what I would say to my kids is like, "Look; Don’t miss the point of what this book is supposed to be. It's supposed to be talking about being human, making mistakes and at the end of the day, striving to be a better person. And [it's about] using these 'sins', these mistakes, to whittle away all the clay to get to what's inside, which is the beautiful sculpture, the beautiful piece of art, the human that you wanna be"

Q&A

You dedicated the book to your grandmother. What does she think of all of this? 
My grandmother is very, very proud. She's been one of my staunchest supporters. When I first started to get popular, she was the first to run out and buy CDs for all the family, so I made sure she had gold plaques, and then the platinum plaques, and then it got to the point where she was like, "I have no more room in my house!...Stop giving me plaques!"

NOTES
"Will you write more books?":  As of the time of writing, he has written three more
+ A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Heaven
+ America 51: A Probe into the Realities That Are Hiding Inside 'The Greatest Country in the World'
+ You're Making Me Hate You

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