COREY TAYLOR: What I Would Have Brought To VELVET REVOLVER

STONE SOUR and SLIPKNOT frontman Corey Taylor, who recorded an album's worth of material with VELVET REVOLVER in late 2010 and early 2011, spoke to Roger Lotring of ESPN.com about what could have been had he been chosen to front VR as the permanent replacement for Scott Weiland.

VELVET REVOLVER has still not found a new singer following its April 2008 split with Weiland and is more or less on hiatus, although it will reunite with the current STONE TEMPLE PILOTS frontman for a short one-off performance at "Love You Madly: A Concert For John O'Brien" on Thursday, January 12 at the House Of Blues in West Hollywood, California.

While the team-up of Taylor with VELVET REVOLVER never officially took off, VELVET guitarist Slash did confirm that the band got together with Taylor to jam and even record some new material.

When asked what would he have brought to the VELVET REVOLVER team, had he quarterbacked it, Taylor told ESPN.com, "What I would have brought to VELVET REVOLVER would have been more of the attitude that I think they wanted from Scott, but they got the negative side of it, you know what I'm saying? Scott, to me, has always been the guy who — he's much more interesting when he's being a dick to other people than he is onstage, to be honest. I mean, he does the lizard weird-thing-dance and everything, but that gets old after a while. When you need that strong frontman, he just really didn't do it because he was too busy just being into himself instead of engaging the audience."

Corey added, "So I would have tried to basically build a bridge between what [the members of VELVET REVOLVER] had with Axl [Rose during their time with GUNS N' ROSES] and what they had with Scott, but with a little more good time feel to it — 'cause I can have an attitude and still smile, all fucking day. I think, in a lot of ways, they could have relaxed a little bit, knowing that they wouldn't have to worry about, What's the singer going to do? Are we going to be able to go onstage on time? Are we going to be able to play our show without a fit being thrown? Are we going to be able to play the songs the way they were written?

"I am a firm believer in, give the fans what they want. Do what you do, but give the fans what they want. They're the whole reason that you are where you are, and they deserve every fucking bit that you can give them."

The Pulse Of Radio asked Taylor what he and VELVET REVOLVER worked on at those rehearsal and recording sessions a year ago. "We did a bunch of stuff, you know," he said. "We did a bunch of stuff from the first album, we did a bunch of stuff that we had been kind of demoing back and forth and whatnot, seeing if it would work, you know, just like that, and it was a lot of fun, man. You know, we ended up writing a bunch of stuff as well and just kind of seeing what would happen in that creative sense, you know."

Slash admitted in a recent interview that he was the main reason why Taylor didn't get the frontman job, explaining, "It just didn't seem to fit right to me. And he's great, and I love Corey, but it didn't seem like the answer to the VELVET REVOLVER problem."

Taylor told a Canadian radio station after hearing of Slash's comments, "I guess it just wasn't working for him, which . . . He's Slash and he's entitled to have that, and I'm not gonna argue with him. But it was cool to just be able to get together and jam with those guys and I made some really cool friends."