COREY TAYLOR On RICK RUBIN: 'He Is Overrated, Overpaid, And I Will Never Work With Him Again'

STONE SOUR and SLIPKNOT frontman Corey Taylor played the fourth show of his solo tour this past Friday night (November 18) at Trees in Dallas, Texas. Called "An Evening With Corey Taylor", the concerts feature Taylor doing both spoken-word and acoustic performances, along with question-and-answer sessions with the audience.

When asked by an audience member about his experience working with legendary producer Rick Rubin (RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS, SLAYER, AUDIOSLAVE, SYSTEM OF A DOWN, METALLICA) on SLIPKNOT's 2004 album, "Vol. 3 (The Subliminal Verses)", Corey said (see video below), "That's a dangerous, dangerous question. . . Now, there are some people who would love for me to just be [politically correct] and toe the party line, which is, basically, [to say] 'You know, working with Rick Rubin was a very enriching experience. He is truly a great mind. . .' Let me give you the fucking truth of it. Rick Rubin showed up for 45 minutes a week. Yeah. Rick Rubin would then, during that 45 minutes, lay on a couch, have a mic brought in next to his face so he wouldn't have to fucking move. I swear to God. And then he would be, like, 'Play it for me.' The engineer would play it. And he had shades on the whole time. Never mind the fact that there is no sun in the room it's all dark. You just look like an asshole at that point. And he would just stroke his huge beard and try and get as much food out of it as he could. And he would go, 'Play it again.' And then he'd be, like, 'Stop! Do that over.' And he had an assistant who was seven feet tall. He had that disease where you can't grow hair on your body, so he was just bald. He looked like Mr. Clean's neurotic cousin. But he basically ran Rick Rubin's life like, he was just fucking on it, on it, on it, on it. About half way through our precious 45 minutes, he would bring in this plate of shit. I assume it was food. It was bluish green. It smelled like someone had just plunged a fucking toilet somewhere. And he would eat it as fast as he could just get it in there, all over himself. Which is, when you're working, so wonderful to look at . . . I will say this: I respect what Rick Rubin has done, I respect the work that he has done in the past to get to where he is now. But this is a huge but this is a J.Lo-sized 'but...' I will say this: The Rick Rubin of today is a thin, thin, thin shadow of the Rick Rubin that he was. He is overrated, he is overpaid, and I will never work with him again as long as I fucking live."

In a 2008 interview with Revolver magazine, SLIPKNOT percussionist Shawn Crahan stated about working with Rick Rubin, "'Vol. 3' was all about rebuilding friendships and since we were rebuilding, it was reall easy to rebuild the innovation of our music. Listen to that fucking record. It's spiritual. Rick Rubin's the oracle. He sat us down with each other. I heard things from the other members I don't care to repeat. I gained a couple of friends. I might have created a couple of enemies. We all agreed we were going to get on a plateau of communication and that's what we did."

In the same article, SLIPKNOT guitarist Jim Root was quoted as saying about Rubin, "Rick was really attentive to what we needed as a band. He knew I was going through major anxiety. I got a knock on my bedroom door one day, and his assistant came up and he had this herbal drop that you put on your tongue to mellow out. A lot of the guys in the band say Rick was unavailable. And yeah, he takes on a lot of projects at one time, but he also does things that are beneficial. He would listen to what we'd done, then have us retrack things that needed work. He's kind of like Big Brother up on the hill. Even though he wasn't there physically every day, he was. That's my favorite record we've done."

Also speaking to Revolver, Corey said, "I wouldn't know what it's like to work with Rick Rubin. I only saw him about four times. Rick Rubin is a nice man. He's done a lot of good for a lot of people. He didn't do anything for me. I'm not happy with the vocals on that record. There were a lot of takes that I thought were much better than the ones they fuckin' used and I wasn't asked about a lot of shit. It sounds amazing; the songs are great. But we were being charged horrendous amounts of money. And for me, if you're going to produce something, you're fucking there. I don't care who you are."


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