COREY TAYLOR Wants To Record 'Dark Jazz' Album, Including 'Jazzy' Versions Of SLIPKNOT Songs

During last month’s appearance on RadioVegas.Rocks‘s “Chaotic Radio”, SLIPKNOT and STONE SOUR frontman Corey Taylor was asked if he would ever consider trying to cross over to country music, like other rockers have done in recent years. “No,” he responded (hear audio below). “Even coming from Iowa — fuck no! Absolutely not. And it’s not to say that I couldn’t write stuff like that. My interest would be more singer-songwriter kind of vibe, like SQUEEZE or something like that. Or — and I’ve actually been thinking about doing something like this — putting together a quartet or a quintet and doing a jazz album, like a dark jazz album, [and] recording it live in a room. It won’t sell shit. It would really just be for my own fucking personal collection… ‘Cause I love jazz. A lot of people don’t realize that — I listen to a lot of ’40s and ’50s jazz. And there is this… the haunting stuff that [Billie] Holiday would do, the older stuff that Charlie Parker would do, when he was really fucked up — that would be the stuff that I would be closer to. And I’ve got, actually, jazzy versions of some of my own songs that I would love to try. Probably something like ‘Prosthetics’ [by SLIPKNOT], I think would be really, really cool. And then ‘Bother’ — I’ve got a really cool jazzy version of ‘Bother’ that could be really cool.”

Taylor went on to say that he does occasionally come up with music that could legitimately fall into the country genre. “Honestly, I write stuff like that all the time,” he said. “‘St. Marie’, on the new ‘Hydrograd’ album [from STONE SOUR], was a leftover from some stuff that I’d written that had a very country vibe to it. But it was more California country that the twangy. So it was cool. It was more like the six- or seven-chord vibe.”

Taylor said in a 2016 interview that it would be “super greedy” of him to launch a solo career — at least for now. Speaking with RockSverige.se, Taylor explained: “I’ve been getting questions about solo stuff forever. But it’s a good problem to have. But, at the same time, I’m in two fantastic bands. Why would I ever?”

He added: “Unless I wanted to get super greedy, why would I try to split off and do something else. I’m very fulfilled by the music that I get to make with both bands. Is there a solo album in me? Yes. But it’s not gonna be for a few more years.”

Taylor spoke a while back about what he thought a solo album from him might sound like. “For me, the stuff that I write is, it would be like a cross between the [FOO FIGHTERS], SOCIAL [DISTORTION] and THE REPLACEMENTS, you know,” he told The Pulse Of Radio. “I mean, real Midwestern rock. Real, just open chords, good time rock, you know. And damn the critics, basically. That’s the stuff I write and that’s the stuff I’ve always tried to write.”

Interview (audio):