SLIPKNOT's COREY TAYLOR: 'We Don't Make A Lot Of Money'

During a recent appearance on the FeedbackDef podcast, Corey Taylor spoke about the temptations of being "caught up" in the financial rewards of being in a popular band like SLIPKNOT. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET):  "Honestly, in a weird way, we don't make a lot of money. I mean, we make enough to live, obviously, and we can live comfortably, but we've never been offered massive deals. There's a lot of us in the band, and there's a whole crew that we have to pay. There's the production that we have to pay for. There's all of this shit that we need to pay for. So at the end of the day, we are paid pretty much commensurate with what we are worth. We've never been even close to the big paydays that sports people get, actors — all of that shit. So in a weird way, we're kind of — if you adjust for inflation, we're upper middle class, basically. We're not extravagant. We're not rich by any stretch of the means, but we do okay. I can take care of my family. Their educations are good to go. I have insurance for all of my kids. And really, that's it."

Elaborating on why he thinks SLIPKNOT hasn't been able to rake in massive amounts of money despite being one of the biggest metal bands in the world, Corey said: "Maybe it's because we're so reactionary. Maybe it's because we are not palatable for a mass audience. We appeal to our genre and people kind of on the outskirts of our genre, but that's it. We appeal to a lot of them, so we do okay, but we're never gonna see fucking Taylor Swift money, shit like that. So the misconception that all rock stars are just rolling in it, that's not true. There's a reason why we have to tour as much as we do, because that's the only way we can actually pay our fucking bills."

Taylor previously touched upon the financial arrangement in SLIPKNOT while discussing the band's chemistry in a 2019 interview with Vulture. At the time, he said: "The great thing about the business part of it is that because we're from Iowa, it all makes sense. You do the work, you get paid. That's straight-up it. We split merch equally. We split live equally. We do everything equally. And if we're all working toward the same thing, then it just all makes sense.

"We're always taking care of each other," he added. "Even though we're older now, our reasons for making music and continuing to do this are still the same. It's one of those things that, if our reasoning for doing this had changed, the band probably wouldn't have lasted as long as it did. But — and obviously I can't speak for everybody in the band — I know the OGs that are here are all still trying to just make the best music that we can. So we take care of each other."

SLIPKNOT has spent much of the last year and a half touring in support of its most recent album, "The End, So Far", which was released in September 2022 via Roadrunner Records. The follow-up to "We Are Not Your Kind", it is the band's final record with Roadrunner after first signing with the rock and metal label in 1998.

This past June, SLIPKNOT announced the addition of a new keyboardist, two weeks after Taylor and his bandmates revealed the departure of longtime member Craig Jones.

SLIPKNOT played its first show with its new mystery member on June 7 at the Nova Rock festival in Austria. The concert took place hours after the band announced in a social media post that it had parted ways with Jones.

A short time after SLIPKNOT revealed Jones's exit from the group, the band's original post announcing his departure was deleted and a photo was shared of SLIPKNOT's apparent new member. The same unidentified person appeared onstage behind the keyboards at the Nova Rock show and all subsequent SLIPKNOT tour dates.

No reason was given for Jones's departure from SLIPKNOT.

Jones joined SLIPKNOT in early 1996, shortly after the band had finished the recording of its demo album "Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat." He was initially brought in to replace Donnie Steele, one of the two original guitarists, though he quickly moved on to the role of sampling and keyboards. Following the departure of drummer Joey Jordison in 2013, Jones was the second-longest-serving member in the band.

Image credit: Arin Sarris