Corey Taylor on Three Therapists, Beer Kegs and the Night He First Saw Slipknot

The format is simple: a guest is served their last meal and talks for as long as they eat. In Corey Taylor's case the meal consisted of what he himself calls "Iowa grossness" — chicken-fried steak, gravy, breakfast food. The result, at over an hour, is one of the longest episodes Mythical Kitchen's "Last Meals" has ever run.

The strongest moment has nothing to do with music. Taylor, now 52, says he has been seeing three therapists at the same time for around three years. The trigger: he woke up one day and realised he was not happy — he had hurt everyone he loved, including people he worked with. He had taken too much for granted and stopped appreciating the people around him. In the end, he says, he hated the person he had become. Today he puts much of it down to insecurity, to the feeling that nothing he achieved was ever enough. Before every show he now says a short prayer — it helps him leave the anger on stage.

Then come the anecdotes you tune in for. Like 4 April 1996, when Taylor first saw Slipknot live — a year before he joined. He knew every one of them from their previous bands, had played Sunday all-ages shows to 20 people alongside them. What he saw that night he describes simply as psychotic. The intro went on for an eternity, he says, and he loved exactly that. The following evening he played with Stone Sour and promptly invited Slipknot along — one night, both bands shared a stage.

And then there are the kegs. Why on earth beer kegs and baseball bats? Entirely mundane, says Taylor: early on, the percussionists played drum parts with Joey Jordison, and bit by bit certain spots got accented with a keg and a bat. He is well aware the internet finds it hilarious — in the song, he says, it still does its job.

The full episode is on YouTube.

Sources: Loudwire, Nu-Metal Agenda.