Metal Hammer recently caught up with Slipknot / Stone Sour frontman Corey Taylor for a look back on his formative years, and the best and worst times in Slipknot. An excerpt is available below.

Q: How did you feel when you were offered the Slipknot gig?

Taylor: “I was at the very first Slipknot show. And then the next day, Slipknot and Stone Sour actually played a show together, which was crazy, you know? But I can always remember thinking to myself, ‘I want to sing for this band’. And then two years later, they came to me and asked me. Slipknot wanted the best people in the scene and at the time I was the best singer in Des Moines. I was like, ‘this is fucking huge’. Cos at the time it was still very experimental and very eclectic, and I loved that. It wasn’t until we got signed that it became very narrow, and just all about the heavy all the time. And it really kinda choked a lot of the love out of it for me.”

Q: Can you pinpoint where you crossed the line, when things started getting dark?

Taylor: “For me it really hit a wall recording the Volume 3 album. There were other things going on in my life that were making me abysmal, basically, as a person. I always had a bottle of Jack next to my dresser. I was the guy at last call that would order four drinks so I could drink right up until I went out the door. I’d wake up in different places, and not know how I got there. With different people. It was just really getting bad. My whole appearance was fucked, you know? I was swollen. When I would sweat I smelled like whiskey.”

Q: How are you feeling about yourself now?

Taylor: “I’ll tell you what, man. I’m actually at a really good point in my life. I have accomplished a lot with my life and that makes me want to do even more. I want to fucking go above and beyond and really do it all. All these new dreams are coming out for me. I want to write a book. I want to fucking work on a screenplay and a comic, you know? I want to do a spoken word thing. I want to do an acoustic album. I want to a country album! I’m probably going to end up opening a club in Des Moines. I’m still doing Great Big Mouth records. I want to be a total dick and use my notoriety to be in a movie! I want to write songs for other people that are so outside of my genre that people who know anything about me are like ‘Wha...?!’ I actually wrote a song for Robbie Williams. I just love Robbie Williams. He’s fucking amazing. He cracks me up, he’s a great entertainer, he’s an amazing singer. And, I just love the energy that he’s got. I know that I’ll probably fucking lose cool points with a few people for that, but I just fucking love him, I think he’s great.”

Go to this location for the complete interview.

Corey Taylor interviewed Metallica for a 90-minute radio special, to begin airing on select radio stations this Friday, November 18th. The special, focusing on the making of Metallica’s new album, Hardwired…To Self Destruct, was recorded earlier this month at Metallica’s headquarters in San Rafael, California. Check out the interview below: