What better guest for this 50th episode of The Art of Longevity than metal’s renaissance man Corey Taylor? A modern legend of the heavy metal genre, Corey has no less than three successful music projects. We find out what makes him tick at thrice the speed of most musical pros!
Corey Taylor is probably best known as Slipknot #9 (lead vocals) but before he joined Slipknot, Taylor already had another established hard rock band, Stone Sour. I met Corey as he was about to release his second solo record CMF2.
This multiple persona artist is a sort-of blueprint for music creators in this day & age. After all, to put all your creative eggs in one basket is not enough to succeed in today’s hyper-fragmented, super-saturated, ultra-competitive music market. No problem at all for Corey. The man has too many ideas and too much restless energy to fit into just one band, even if that happens to be one of the world’s biggest and most successful metal bands. So how does he do it?
“I’m able to prioritise and focus to get the best out of me creatively. My appetite for art and creating is insatiable though - I’ve got so many things I want to do, it keeps me sane and grounded. I’m hyper-focused but I do things bit by bit. But maybe I’m also just a psycho”.
One thing that struck me about Corey too, is his advocacy for metal - which comes within the broader context for his advocacy for music itself. Known in the past for “not being stingy with his opinions”, Taylor is deeply knowledgeable about his genre, as well as the wider industry in which metal is sometimes treated like Cinderella.
“Some people would love to keep us [metal musicians] in boxes, and yet, if you are a pop star, you’re encouraged to hop from genre to genre like fuckin’ hopscotch. You can’t keep us back while pushing people into places we have every right to go as well. But we scare people too, the movers and shakers are intimidated by the level of talent in our genre. Metal musicians could wipe the floor with a lot of today’s pop stars”.
I grew up on the British New Wave of British Heavy Metal and then the 80s wave of LA glam metal bands, but since metal’s glory days of sharing the Top 40 with the pop stars of the time, metal got pushed into music’s hinterlands - splintered into sub-genres ‘nu’, ‘death’, ‘black’, ‘speed’, ‘doom’ and so on. As such, the genre needs characters and artists like Taylor, who have crossed-over, or at least walked brazenly right across the borders of music territories. Leading out for Slipknot - a crossover band in many ways despite never compromising, Taylor has also collaborated way outside the metal genre.
It brings us back to CMF2, an album as eclectic (and also excellent) as you’ll find. Across its 13 tracks Corey traverses country, radio-friendly rock, brooding Bowie-esque ballads and hardcore punk throwback. And yes, some pretty exemplary songs from his metal heartland. The thread that runs through the eclectic collection is simple enough:
“I wanted to honour the songwriters who made me what I am”.
Like many other artists I’ve spoken with on the show, he is nothing if not articulate and knows about where the streaming era has placed metal artists.
“Streaming has made metal easier to find. But it has also made it easier to take that livelihood away. It’s damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Things haven’t changed that much about the way bands are treated”.
When I suggest the likes of Duff McKagan and his generation of heavy rock legends have invited Taylor to take on the ‘legends’ baton, he immediately shifts the spotlight on to the next generation, “because (being a career musician) is a dying art”.
Not if Corey Taylor has anything to do about it.
Duff McKagan wrote: “Like Vol. 3 (The Subliminal Verses) did for me, I have no doubt this new album of Corey’s will reach through to some of you and guide you through what you need at this damn time”.
I had to look up what CMF stood for and it isn’t ‘Content Management Framework’ or ‘Colour, Material, Finish’.
If you are UK-based you might want to check out his recent Takeover of the BBC Radio One Rock Show.