COREY TAYLOR Talks Lyrical Inspiration In New Interview

January 14, 2011

Louis Pattison of Guardian.co.uk recently conducted an interview with SLIPKNOT/STONE SOUR frontman Corey Taylor. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

On lyrical inspiration:

Corey: "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. The lyrics for the first SLIPKNOT album were written in the bathroom, while I was working 9 a.m. till 8 p.m. at a porn shop. I would always have my notebook and pen, and for some reason every time I'd go to the bathroom I'd start writing something great."

On how STONE SOUR differs from SLIPKNOT:

Corey: "When I'm writing SLIPKNOT lyrics, there's a certain type of darkness that just opens up for me. 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. It doesn't mean I don't write about melancholy things, but it's a more approachable method — it lets me branch out and do stuff like the Christmas song. I've never wanted to limit myself to one style."

On songs that are misunderstood:

Corey: "I was doing an interview about the song 'Duality' for the book 'Chicken Soup for the Soul', and I was trying to explain the lyric — it's about the push and pull between people, struggling with the dark side and trying to promote the good. The chorus goes, 'I push my fingers into my eyes / It's the only thing that slowly stops the ache,' and it's about that headache you get at times of stress, like a migraine — and by taking your fingers and putting them right by your eyes and pushing, you can make the pain stop. But my wife overheard, and she was like 'Wow, that wasn't where I thought you were going with that'. She thought I was taking my thumbs and pushing them right into my eyes, with blood pouring out. I was like, 'Honey, you're terrifying me.' That's a little brutal."

Read the entire interview from Guardian.co.uk.

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