During a question and answer event at the Riffe Center in Columbus, Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor shared his feelings and thoughts about Alice In Chains and their late frontman Layne Staley. The frontman praised the late vocalist’s talents and described him as one of the best vocalists in the world.
Alice In Chains’ original frontman and one of the primary songwriters was Layne Staley, but he had to take a break from his career as a musician due to some personal problems. Staley was struggling with drug addiction, which worsened during the band’s hiatus in 1996, ultimately leading to his untimely death. Unfortunately, Staley passed away because of a speedball overdose on April 5, 2002, at the age of 34.
However, neither his bandmates nor other musicians forgot to give credit and honor Layne Staley even years after his death. As one of them, Corey Taylor recently highlighted that Staley is ‘one of the greatest singers that ever lived’ who could sing anything and rocked the world with his talents as a songwriter.
The frontman stated that people can grasp his talent by listening to ‘Nutshell,’ featured in Alice In Chains’ ‘Jar of Flies.’ Taylor knows that the late lead singer suffered a lot because of his demons, but he left the songs that can help people fight theirs. Staley’s approach to music inspired Corey to change the way he writes songs.
After he was asked to choose his number one Seattle grunge band, he responded to the question saying that Alice In Chains is his favorite band of all time, As for his favorite song, he chose ‘Would?’ which was released on both ‘Singles’ and ‘Dirt.’ The Slipknot icon added that it was a great pleasure to spend time with the band members who had a great influence on him.
Taylor said in his interview that:
“It has to be Alice In Chains. Alice In Chains, to me, is one of the greatest rock bands that ever was. I don’t just mean that from a grunge standpoint or metal or anything like that. They revolutionized so much musically and they inspired me to change the way I write music. I mean, full stop, period, the end of the sentence. Layne Staley is still one of the greatest f*cking singers that ever lived. Now, that is not a reflection of the demons that he had to fight, obviously, and that’s everything to do with his talent.
He just made it look so f*cking easy, and he could sing anything, he could write anything, and the shit that he was writing about was killing him, and yet we loved it. To me, that was the greatest baring of the soul that I ever listened to. If you need any more proof of that, all you need to do is listen to ‘Nutshell’. It’s one of the greatest songs ever written. That’s not even my favorite Alice In Chains song. My favorite Alice In Chains song is ‘Would?’ Full stop. That song is f*cking incredible but ‘Nutshell’ is such an outpouring of trying to share with you the darkness that’s in his heart.
Even though you’re hearing it, it’s so light, you’re just, like, ‘F’ck. Where is he?’ We never knew. That’s the great tragedy of people like Layne. It’s not just Layne, obviously; there are so many people that came from that generation of artists. The pain they dealt with — some of them won, some of them didn’t but the great thing is that we can listen to their music and it can help us get past our own pain. There’s probably not a day that goes by that I don’t listen to Alice In Chains. It’s still just that good. The fact that I know those guys now is just icing on the cake. It’s rad to be able to hang out with your favorite band.”
You can check out the video and songs below.
