Chris Jericho: You had a great little tribute, kind of broke down at the end, were you friends with Chris? Did you know him?
Corey Taylor: I met him. I mean we weren’t friends, but we were acquaintances.
Chris: See him around at festivals, and stuff.
Corey: He was such a fucking nice guy, like just a sweet guy, just a shy guy, soft spoken, an amazing singer. I feel fucking horrible about this, it wasn’t until he passed that I realized what a big impact he had had on me as a songwriter. He wrote whatever the fuck he wanted man. I mean whether it was the heavy shit from Soundgarden, from Badmotorfinger, like “Slaves and Bulldozers,” or the really amazingly beautiful shit from the Singles soundtrack, like “Seasons,” which is such a gorgeous song.
Chris: Or the dancey stuff he had on his solo record [Scream] he got shit for.
Corey: Yeah, you know what, fuck you, he did that because he wanted to. I didn’t realize what an influence that was on me until I really put it in perspective, and I was like holy shit, he was the dude I looked up to, because he didn’t give a fuck man. He wrote what he wanted to fucking write. I never got to tell him that, and that is going to be a regret for me for a long fucking time. It’s a god damn shame.
Chris: When Grunge, whatever that even means nowadays, when it became popular I was such a metal guy. Maiden, Priest, Metallica, Scorpions, Ozzy, I was so reticent and so hesitating to get into Grunge, didn’t want to have anything to do with it except for Soundgarden, because his voice was so powerful. He still looked like a rocker, he looked metal, so I always had that little kindred-ship with Soundgarden. Then the fact that he was also Andrew Wood’s roommate, and I’m a huge Mother Love Bone fan as well. We talked about this, Andrew Wood, Chris Cornell, Kurt Cobain, Scott Weiland, and Layne Staley, all those guys, gone.
Corey: Even in a way, Shannon Hoon.
Chris: What a dark world they must have lived in for all of those guys to suffer basically the same fate.
Corey: It makes your heart hurt, because you’re such a fan, you just wish there could have been something you could have done. With Chris man, it’s a god damn shame because you could tell that he was fighting those demons, and he fought them as hard as he could. God, I just wish I could have done something, that somebody could have done something. You just never know.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGFR2hc8kgM
