“Captain Ego from Planet Douche”: The frontman Corey Taylor said ruined his own band
Being a frontman is a demanding job, where you inadvertently become the face and name of an entire group. The spotlight shines on you and, often, only you, and it’s a role that Slipknot’s Corey Taylor had a lot to say about.
I have little sympathy for those who choose to try their hand in the spotlight, get the attention they ask for, and still have the audacity to complain. Some might deem this opinion unnecessarily bullish, but I can speak from firsthand experience of doing it, albeit for only a few months in my teenage years, and the fact that there’s a huge difference between the eyes of ten people at the local pub and the eyes of millions from all around the world.
One might deal with this pressure with the very human response to hide away, as it’s relatively easier to cower from the hot beam of light projected straight into your eyes. Some bands, like Philadelphia-based shoegaze band They Are Gutting A Body of Water, perform with their back to the audience. Others wear a mask, something that Taylor does to “unleash his animalistic side”, though it’s also handy to squirm away from the attention.
But even from behind the mask, Taylor managed to piss someone off. In 2017, Nickelback frontman Chad Kroeger called Slipknot a “gimmick” and Stone Sour, Taylor’s other band, “Nickelback Lite”.
The comments might have come by way of a Philadelphia radio station, but Taylor’s friends were quick to share the news with him. In retaliation, he was at least able to separate the frontman from his band, as the rest of Nickelback reportedly apologised to Taylor as soon as the comments aired.
“That just tells you the level of ego you’re dealing with,” Taylor said, “and I’ve said this since day one—it’s not the band. As soon as that story hit, the band called and apologised. They were like, ‘It’s not us, we promise. It’s this guy. We don’t…’ And I had hung out with the band before and they’re super-cool dudes.”
Though Taylor separates the frontman from his fellow band musicians, there appears to be no evident rift within Nickelback. Their drummer was fired over a royalty dispute in 2005, but dredging up drama from over two decades ago might go some way in telling what a united front the rock outfit is.
And yet, Taylor painted Kroeger as a sneering, domineering, egotistical maniac, as he continued in his response, “I don’t want people holding it against the band, because it’s not them. It’s Captain Ego from Planet Douche”. It’s a pretty good line, I’ll give him that much.
We’ll never really know just why the pair of frontmen were at each other’s throats, but if we were to fall into the school-ground antics of it all, Kroager accused Taylor of trash-talking first, but Taylor said this was probably false, the keyword being probably.
“I said something maybe, like, 15 years ago, but I was drinking then. Nobody was listening to me then,” he said, “and I haven’t said anything since. I don’t even think about him. For real. This came so far out of left field that I woke up to everyone, like, blowing me up. And I was like, ‘Really?!’”
