Corey Taylor Interview: Depression, Therapist, & Motivation!

I would rather make less money and be me than make more money and be somebody I'm not. Now, because of the way that a lot of people treat music and approach music, you can almost set your watch to the type of music that you're gonna hear. And it's boring and it's lifeless and it's fucking pathetic. I can remember just looking at the guys before we went on stage and being like, we earned this. Nobody gave this to us.

What's up, Believe Nation? It's Evan. My one word is believe, and I believe in you, and I want to see that great thing that you have inside of have you come out so you can help change the world. So to help you on your journey today, we're going to learn from singer and actor Corey Taylor and my take on his top 10 rules for success. Rule number 5 is my personal favorite, and I'd love to know which one you guys like the best. And as always, guys, as you're watching, if you hear something that really resonates with you, please leave it down in the comments below and put quotes around it so other people can be inspired. And when you write it down, it's much more likely to stick with yourself as well. Enjoy!

You've gotta think outside of your town. You've gotta think worldwide if you wanna do anything, man, you know? And that's what it was all about, you know? We were kinda the guys in our bands who got it. We were the guys in our bands who understood understood what it took, not just to be a famous band in America, but just to be a worldwide band. And, you know, when it came to the work ethic, that's where it came from. And I think that's why we all were attracted to each other. You make a couple jokes in this book several times about people being offended by what you write and maybe like tossing the book away or setting it on fire or something. Are you genuinely worried that maybe some more outlying fans on the right or the left might just be like, I'm done with Corey Taylor and stop coming to shows? No, not even a little bit. No, no, no. Why the hell? The minute that I start worrying about that is the second that I should, that I don't deserve my career. Because then it's not about expression anymore. It's about money. And I can make money at Burger King. And trust me, I have. Well, not Burger King, Hardee's. You know, 9 wonderful months at Hardee's, you know, making some biscuits and gravy. And I would still be okay with that because it's still me being myself. This is me being myself. If you're offended by that, sorry, but it's not going to change— you stopping, you not coming to my shows is not going to change how I think. So why would I do that? I know too many bands that actually do that. They worry about stuff like that. So they come off as like this homogenized, pasteurized version of themselves. And it's like, well, that's weak sauce. At least be yourself. I would rather make less money and be me than make more money and be somebody I'm not. We were such— we were so hungry and so ready to work that we just kind of ducked our heads and plowed through it and really built the foundation for what would come later, knowing that you might not get another chance at this. So it was just do it and then keep doing it. I mean, we were as surprised as anybody else when we blew up the way we did. I mean, to this day I'm like, what? But knowing that it wasn't just a fluke, it wasn't overnight, It took a lot of work, and the fact that we did it the right way, I'm proud of that. I guess what goes into it is just respecting what both bands do and what both bands have done. If you sit down and set out to try and purposefully be different, you're always gonna sound similar. You're gonna set yourself up for failure. What you have to do is you kinda have to go with your gut instinct. You have to go with what feels correct. You have to go with what your instinct instinct is. You have to sit down and go, "Okay, well, I'm writing this. Well, this feels like Slipknot, so this is going to be Slipknot. Well, this feels like Stone South, this is going to be Stone South." And never going back on your musical word. So it's just about sticking to your guns musically and having the courage to be able to go with what your gut thinks and go with what your instincts feel and go with what your heart says. That will keep you from repeating defeating yourself, it will also reestablish the reasons why you do two bands in the first place, which is to do two separate types of music. You know, we've always been a band that has wanted to evolve from album to album. And, you know, I mean, the biggest jump being from Audio Secrecy to the House of Golden Bones albums, you know, really being able to kind of stretch artistically and create something really creative, and really, like, a scope that we had never really tried before. But we've always tried to do that, is really just kind of expand that boundary with every album, and create, I mean, get it to the point, and then kind of bring the audience up with you, where they get to the point where they learn to expect the unexpected. They're ready for something that they're not, they never thought saw coming. That's what a band is supposed to do. That's what bands used to do. There used to be an intense curiosity and an anticipation when a band put an album out. And now, because of the way that a lot of people treat music and approach music, you can almost set your watch to the type of music that you're gonna hear. And it's boring, and it's lifeless, and it's— Fucking pathetic, you know? For us, the best thing that we ever did was establish that— keep the people guessing and keep them coming back, you know? And I think that's one of the reasons why they do keep coming back. The first time I really realized that I wanted to make music was I was raking leaves in my grandmother's lawn, and I'd come back inside and I'd sat down and my grandma was playing Elvis 8-tracks. And for some reason the song "In the Ghetto" came on. And I just— I mean, there was something so profoundly still about that song, because that song is all about peaks and valleys, you know, and it's telling this story. And as a kid, you want stuff to tell you a story, and this was a story I'd never heard before. And I reacted so poignantly to that that I went over to the 8-track machine, and I just kept hitting repeat, repeat, repeat, and you'd get that brilliant 8-track click that only people who listened to 8-tracks could, and you never knew at what point in the song it was gonna come back in, you know, that thing. And I just would, I would just, I would just keep listening to it and listening to it until I had memorized it. And that was the first song that I memorized as a kid, and it was too low for me to sing, so I sang it an octave above, and that's when I realized that I had an ear for it. And ever since then, I've learned everything musically by ear. I taught myself how to play guitar by ear. I learned vocal, I guess riffing is the only thing you can really call it, by ear. Bass, tuba, when I was in school, I learned how to play tuba by ear and just everything else. If you're too overwhelmed, then when you sit down and you try to write something, it feels forced. Yeah. There's nothing worse than forced music. I mean, this world has enough of that right now. Where it's basically, you know, McDonald's making music. It's like, "Everybody needs another hamburger and fries. Here's a piece of crap that nobody's gonna care about in 2 years." Yeah, it's disposable. It's really, it's, I hate that and I don't ever wanna be that guy. So for me, I wanna be able to let the inspiration come to me, you know, because that's when you get the best stuff. That's when you get the best— When you're excited about it, when you care to follow up. It's been a weird musical journey for me, to say the least, going from "Shot a Man in Reno Just to Watch Him Die" fuck it all and fuck no regrets, you know? But my attitude towards music has always been, if you're completely one-sided, then your music's gonna be one-sided. You have to see it on a level playing field and see all the different opportunities or, you know, things that you could do. Because I grew up like that, it made me open to so many different options, and I'm kind of glad it did. Headlining Download in England, with Slipknot in 2009, that was probably, and I mean, we'd played Rock in Rio before, I mean, we'd played for big audiences, but that was huge for us. I mean, you're talking about essentially Donington, a festival that we had all grown up reading about in Hit Parader, Rip, you know, I mean, just in these magazines that really was our only lifeline for hard rock and heavy metal in Iowa, you know. And it was kind of hit or miss on MTV, so you kind of had to get it where you could. So reading about that festival and then, you know, call it 20 years later, stepping on that stage and headlining it was— I still, to this day, I get choked up thinking about it because It was such a statement, you know. It took us 10 years. I mean, we probably could have headlined it anytime, you know, 5 years before that, but it just wasn't the time. And when we stepped on that stage, it was huge. And I can remember just looking at the guys before we went on stage and being like, we earned this. Nobody gave this to us, you know. This is no flash in the pan. This is no, you know, cons— you know, consolation prize. This was every inch of sweat and blood and scar tissue and every show we've ever played and every minute we spent, you know, making these fans happy. That was huge for us. Then on my signal, unleash hell. Joey, let's take these So, man. Open my eyes! Open my eyes! Open my eyes! Come on! I want you to shut me down! I want to give you up! One more time! I want you to knock me down! I want to give you up! Is that there's a mask underneath the mask? Just like that? Uh-huh. So? That is considerably scary.

Thank you guys so much for watching. I made this video because Young Swag asked me to. If there's a famous entrepreneur that you would like me to profile next, check out the link in the description and go and cast your vote. I'd also love to know what did you learn from this video that had the biggest impact on you? What lesson are you going to take and immediately apply it somehow in your life or in your business? Leave it in the comments below. I'm really curious to find out. I also want to give a quick shout out to Devon Trish. Devon, thank you so much for picking up wearing one of my shirts. We're matching today, bro. And taking that picture and posting on Instagram. I really, really appreciate the support and I hope you're enjoying wearing the shirt. Thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love.

I'll see you soon. You know, the thing that I always want to do when I'm writing songs is challenge myself. You know, I don't want to turn myself into the bum-out king. You know, or just be the guy who's constantly trying to be emotive, you know. I wanna try and do new things because that shakes it up and it gets you out of that comfort zone. We've established the fact that we love to play everything, you know. There's not a genre that we'll shrink from. But at the same time, I think we've just gotten very confident as songwriters to the point where If we want to try something, we will. We're not hesitant to try something, even if it sounds a little sweeter. Like, you take a song like "St. Marie" that's on the new album. And it's got a very cool California country vibe to it. 10 years ago, maybe we wouldn't have had the stones to be able to do that. And now we're like, fuck it. Fuck you, we're gonna do whatever we want, you know. So it's, you know, it's the strength of experience and yet still having that refreshing love for music that encourages you to try new things, you know.

You mentioned the House of Golden Bones album, that was a very ambitious double concept album.

Yeah. Do you think the fans actually got what you were trying to put across with that? I think so, and we really went out of our way to paint those different pictures, you know, whether it was with the story that was in the the CD themselves or the comic book, putting that out, and then obviously the videos and whatnot, kind of dipping our toes into that and showing that different side. I think through that and then through the lyrics and just being able to read the story and put the things in context, I think they were able to see what it was. It was about discovery, self-discovery, and evolution, allowing yourself to evolve into the person that you'd always wanted to be, instead of the person that you were expected to settle for, you know? And that's a journey that I think a lot of people are not, they're not, I don't wanna say brave enough to make, but maybe they're a little more reticent to try and embrace that kind of change. You have to be a very strong person to embrace that kind of change. And, you know, some people need that encouragement. So for me, that was me trying to encourage people. To come into their own, to feel comfortable enough in their own skins to be able to change for the better and to be a better person if they wanted to be, instead of settling for whatever was just there, you know? So let me give you the one word secret to happiness. One word. This is all you need to be happy. The most important word ever.

If you had to think of one word that's most important to you or that's sums you up, or that would be kind of like a little beacon. Hey, Believe Nation! If you want to know what the most important one word is for Tony Robbins, Gary Vaynerchuk, Oprah Winfrey, will.i.am, and Howard Schultz, I have a very special secret video for you. Check the description for details.