COREY TAYLOR Is Still 'Not Ready To Write A SLIPKNOT Album Without PAUL GRAY'

Bryan Reesman of The Aquarian Weekly recently conducted an interview with SLIPKNOT and STONE SOUR frontman Corey Taylor. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

On his current solo book reading/acoustic concert tour that recently found him singing the "SpongeBob SquarePants" theme to his children onstage:

Taylor: "I'm one of those people that loves to have one foot in structure and also one foot in spontaneity. I love being extemporaneous, I love breaking it up, I love changing everything. The great thing about this show is that it's different every night. I come out and talk about different things, and even with the set of music that we play, we allow ourselves to be able to get in and out of the songs differently. . . Every night I pull something weird out of my ass, and it's great to just watch people's faces. They're like, 'I think I know this,' and their expression just lights up. For some reason last night I was in a weird mood, so I started playing the J.G. Wentworth song from the commercial [imitates opera singing], and the whole audience started singing along with it. I was like, 'Good luck. That's going to be stuck in your head for the rest of the week, and I take no responsibility for it.'"

On appearing as a guest speaker on June 8, 2011 at the Oxford University:

Taylor: "I did my best, and all the kids were so excited for me to be there that I couldn't help but not have a good time. It is definitely something I'm really glad I did. . I wanted to make eye contact, to walk the room and walk the boards. It was really cool. Everywhere you looked, I saw people nodding their heads and really listening intently to what I was saying. That definitely made me feel like I was on to something. It's funny because from the Oxford speaking engagement I got the idea to do the Q&A [portion] for this tour. I was done talking but everybody was not ready to go, so I did a whole hour of just answering questions."

On how he focused his Oxford talk on getting people to understand how they should pursue what they are good at rather than what they love:

Taylor: "Well, there's a difference between professional rejection and spiritual rejection. There are people who will recognize talent when they see it everywhere, but if you're just hitting a dead-end everywhere you turn, that should be a lesson in futility and you should really start to reimagine things. I'm not saying that if it just hasn't happened yet you should stop. I'm saying flat-out if you're just not good, you shouldn't really do it. I know it's all a matter of opinion at the end of the day, but if you're pursuing a career that you're trying to pay bills with, feed a family, clothe a family, you need to be able to earn to do these things. It's hard enough in this business being able to earn without trying to basically spin your wheels because the talent isn't there. The heart may be, but the talent just isn't there."

On the film production company he is starting with SLIPKNOT bandmate Shawn" Clown" Crahan:

Taylor: "We're not going to limit ourselves to [the horror] genre, but at the same time everything we do is going to feel different, anything we do is going to be outside of the norm. It may seem like a movie that you're familiar with, but it's going to have that SLIPKNOT twist to it. We're really ecstatic. This will be a great way to lead to Clown eventually directing his first full-length feature because that guy has so much talent behind the lens, it is criminal that he hasn't gotten to do it yet. He's done little things here and there, but I think once he really gets to do his first movie it is going to be insane, and I really want to be there with him when he gets to do that."

On the possibility of a new SLIPKNOT studio album, in light of the death of bassist/songwriter Paul Gray last year:

Taylor: "To be honest, I'm not ready to write a SLIPKNOT album without Paul Gray yet, I don't care what anybody says. There are fantastic writers in this band, and we're not at a point right now where we're ready to write as a band, and until that happens I refuse to be a part of it. . . We know the album is going to be about Paul. There's no getting out of it, to be honest. Even if we really try to write around Paul, it would still be about Paul. I mean, we're already halfway there, but until we can make that album righteously and really take ourselves out of it and really make it so much about him, I don't think we're going to be ready do that. And if I continue to be the villain who won't let the band go in, then so be it. I'm not going to let us do something wrong. It's not the right thing to do, and I'm fine with that."

Read the entire interview from The Aquarian Weekly.