Corey Taylor’s favourite music books: “It’s fucking brilliant”
As nu-metal exploded in the early 2000s before petering out into music’s biggest joke by the end of the decade, albeit currently riding a nostalgia wave for many a misty-eyed millennial reminiscing on the simpler time of Kerrang TV channel, Iowa metal ensemble Slipknot grew from strength to strength, winning Grammys and cementing themselves as one of contemporary metal’s biggest names.
Their longevity was helped by the fact they actually had little to do with the likes of Limp Bizkit’s or Linkin Park’s chart-friendly polish, Slipknot comprising of nine Des Moine metalheads in boiler suits and horror masks blasting a serious racket coupled with eye-popping, pyrotechnic performances. Having recently sold out London’s O2 with their ‘Here Comes the Pain’ 25th anniversary set, Slipknot is still a force to be reckoned with.
With such a motley crew of animated characters, from Clown‘s shifting percussions to the gimp-spiked misfit abusing samplers and electronics for their sonic pummel, you’re gonna need a frontman with serious charismatic hops to hold the hellish theatre together. Thankfully, frontman and ‘member #8’ Corey Taylor has more than met the challenge since 1999’s debut Welcome to Our Neighbourhood, cutting a fierce figure of Leatherface-come shaman mask and a commanding voice that can omit blistering growls or soulful croon.
He’s also a bookworm, speaking to Radical Reads last year Taylor collated some of his favourite books. There’s naturally a heavy horror presence, works from Stephen King, Hannibal Lector author Thomas Harris, and an entry from Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles all feature, plus his unabashed love for The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. A sizeable chunk of his literary list is firmly planted in the world of punk and hard rock, however.
While also recommending England’s Dreaming and We Got the Neutron Bomb, Taylor expresses particular fondness for Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain’s 1997 ‘oral history’: “I love how Please Kill Me is the nucleus of the American punk movement, and it starts right where the bomb went off before that scene even moved over to CBGBs. It talks about Iggy seeing The Doors for the first time and then moves all the way up to Nico dying and stuff like that. It’s such a great oral history, and I love the fact that it comes from interviews and stuff like that, so it really feels like you’re listening to somebody tell you that story.”
Up next is DC hardcore legend turned raconteur Henry Rollins. Relating to his 1994 Get in the Van memoir, Taylor revealed how the book prepared him for a life on the road: “I love that blend of isolation and yet solidarity, because that’s really what touring is. It’s coming together when you need to come together, but then you’ve got all those fucking hours just stuck in your own shitty head, to where you almost lose your mind. It’s hard to relate to certain people, and certainly to ‘normal’ life.”
Taylor expressed how important a drill Rollins’ prep turned out to be: “For me, that was my taste of getting a glimpse of what touring life was like, and the psychology of what it takes to be able to tour.”
Lastly, there’s some sage counsel from Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan. Penning a column for many years for Seattle Weekly offering tongue-in-cheek advice on how to navigate the fraught terrain of the rock world, from ‘How to Say No to Drugs (Even When You’re Unzipped)’ to ‘Keeping Humble as a Musician’, McKagan’s How to Be a Man struck a chord with the Slipknot frontman for its characterful irreverence: “It’s fucking brilliant! Duff’s writing style is really good; he’s one of the smartest dudes on the planet, but he’s so unashamed of showing his quirks. It’s genius!… It’s really smart and funny, and his self-deprecation is one of the reasons he and I are such good friends; he doesn’t give a shit!”
For music fans who want to gain more insights about their favourite artists, these books are definitely essential reading.
