Corey Taylor Tears Up Recalling Past Fist Fight + Reconciliation With Sid Wilson
There may be a brotherly bond with the members of Slipknot, but as brothers may eventually butt heads and fight, they often reconcile and strengthen that bond in the long run. While appearing at Philadelphia's Monster Mania Con over the weekend, singer Corey Taylor addressed a fan question about previous tensions with turntablist Sid Wilson, sharing a story of them coming to blows during a heated moment, but then he later got emotional speaking of their reconciliation.
Video shared by Rock N Roll Experience below shows Taylor recalling the incident that eventually led to their blow up. "Me and Sid [Wilson] got into a fistfight, and it's something that I'm not proud of," recalls Taylor (as transcribed by Blabbermouth and Rock N Roll Experience). "It was during a tough, tough time. He and I were at such parallel ends — polarized and parallel ends — of the universe for no reason other than we were just in different spots in our life. But for some reason we were just banging heads hard. And it wasn't good, to the point where when he would come into the room, I would leave, and if I came into the room, he would leave."
Taylor clarifies, "This was about six years ago, so it's... We're good now, just so everybody knows. But it came to a head in Sweden. And he and I were both on a tear. Luckily, we kept this away from the fans. We had just had a meet-and-greet at the time. And a fan had given me a comic book that I had been looking for for a long time. So I was looking at it, and really appreciating it, and Sid being Sid, [he] came up and not knowing what was going on, he probably thought he was just joking, but came up and he just smacked it right out of my hand hard. He just nailed it. And in any other context, it would have been funny, like, 'Oh, you dick,' you know. But everything was amplified and all of the things you haven't said come rushing to the front of your mind and it becomes an issue. And that turned into us turning on each other and going at each other hard to the point where the band had to pull us apart. He was saying he was gonna go home and leave the tour. I wasn't going to apologize. It was bad, man."
Turning the conversation to their eventual reconciliation, Taylor started to get emotional and tear up while recalling, "When I had my spinal surgery, [Sid] was the first one to call me and [pauses] he just said, he was, like, 'I'm so sorry,' and I said, 'I am so sorry.' And I said 'I love you.' He was, like, 'Are you okay?' And I was, like, 'I'm all right. It's all good.' And just like that, nothing mattered other than me and my brother."
Taylor continues, "I'm really proud and I'm really glad that he and I could squash all that shit, because he's one of my favorite people in the world. Just the way he thinks, the way he creates, he's one of the best secret weapons that we have in Slipknot, because his musical mind is so creative. And plus, he schools us on every mask that he comes up with. I just look at him and go, 'You fucker! Goddamn it! Why did you think of that?'"
"But it's stuff like that that endears you to the people that you've been in the trenches with, that you've spent half your life with on the road building this thing. I didn't expect it, and yet to this day, it means the world to me," says Taylor. "So that's how you carry on. It's not about the fights; it's about coming back together. And that's the most important thing that we're ever gonna know. It's that shit; that's the stuff that you do."
Things are back on track with the pair, with Wilson revealing back in August that his animatronic mask actually mimics Corey Taylor during their performancers.