Slipknot, Henry Rollins


Slipknot recently celebrated a decade of mayhem, masks and music. When frontman Corey Taylor looks back on the band's eponymous 1999 album, he hears a very young band. "It's kind of cool to kind of listen back and remember where I was at, how frenetic I was, how young I was, cause we all sound like babies on that album," he tells Noisecreep.

For Taylor, hearing the album is like looking at an old diary. "I remember what I was going through, but because I was able to really get it out on that album and subsequent tours I let that s--- go," he says. "So now I listen to it and there's that echo in the back of your head or your chest where you're like, 'Oh yeah, I remember where I was at when that happened.' But it's not overwhelming. Listening to that first album I can feel the catharsis. If anything it reinforces just how good a head space I'm in, and I'm really proud of where I'm at and all the s--- I've gone through."

When he looks back on this past decade, is there anyone he really credits with helping him get to that space? "Henry Rollins ... he straightened my head out a lot," Taylor says without hesitation. "When I first met him, I was in a really wicked place and honestly we haven't hung out in a while, but I never forgot what he told me. He told me, 'Do what you're doing. Do everything you're gonna do, and do it at 10. Do everything like it's the absolute greatest thing you can ever do.'"

As one would expect, some words of wisdom from Rollins, one of music's great orators, was pretty mind-blowing, so much so that Taylor is still trying to figure it all out. "The cat taught me so much that to this day I'm still processing a lot of what he said to me," he says. "And I will always be grateful to him for taking the time to really say those things. I owe him a lot, not only musically and professionally, but just for being that guy that took the time to offer a little douchebag from Iowa a bit of advice."

We're happy to pass along the message, Corey, cause we're pretty sure that's one 'thank you' card Hallmark doesn't make.

More From Noisecreep