Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor has opened up on the difficult relationship he had with former bandmate Joey Jordison in the years leading up to the drummer's death. Jordison left Slipknot under acrimonious circumstances in December 2013, going on to perform in metal bands Scar The Martyr, Vimic and Sinsaenum before becoming less active in the music scene in more recent years. He passed away in July 2021 aged 46.
Speaking to Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1 (as transcribed by Blabbermouth), Taylor notes: "As you get older, you just start to appreciate what you do have and you lament the losses. You lament the fact that you never had to truly make peace with the people who you lost. And that's something that I've been doing just in my own life, is reaching out to people who I haven't talked to in a while and really burying hatchets because that shit will just fucking weigh you down.
"Me and Joey, we had talked over the years every now and then — it would just be random — but we never said to each other what we needed to say to each other," he continues. "At least I didn't say it to Joe. But that was the complicated thing about Joey, was the fact that he was so many different people in one person, but it was hard to kind of get a beat on what was going on at any given time. He had demons that would've killed normal people. He was one of the true musical geniuses I'd ever met. He was just complicated.
"Everybody likes to sugarcoat a lot of shit after the fact, but you don't realise that what you're doing is you're dehumanising them. And I can't do that because I fucking lived with these guys. And the goddamn tragedy of it is that we did everything we could to try and be there. Not only for him, but for Paul [Gray]. I mean, we would rally and we would rally and we would rally, and it's just a shame, man. The world is less cool without him in it."
Listen to the full interview via Apple Music.
Slipknot's new studio album, The End, So Far, lands this Friday, September 30, via Roadrunner Records. You can read more from Corey Taylor discussing the new record in the latest issue of Metal Hammer magazine, out now.
