In a recent chat with Kerrang!, Corey Taylor revealed when Slipknot became as big as Metallica.
“I had to make myself take a second and enjoy the moment,” the singer said of their first time headlining Download in 2009. “The first time you headline Download is such an incredible experience – you just find yourself staring out like, ‘Holy f*ck!’ We’d played Download before, and I’d played it with Stone Sour as well, but it’d never even occurred to me that one day we’d f*cking headline.”
Taylor went on to explain, “That was for bands like Maiden, bands like Metallica, like AC/DC… That was my mentality. It wasn’t until we got the offer that I realised we were bigger than we ever imagined.”
“We do a huddle before every show, and I pulled everybody together. I was really f*cking emotional; it’s something I’d dreamed of since I was a kid. I slapped everybody’s face and said, ‘Realise what we’ve done here. This is because of all of the hard work, because of all of our fans screaming for it to happen, and because we’ve earned it. Do not let the show fly by you. Embrace what the f*ck we’re doing,'” the rocker shared.
He added, “And that’s why I said what I said onstage; after the first three or four songs I stopped and said, ‘Welcome to a dream come true,’ because it was the realisation that we had gone past that first and second level to a place where we’d never even dreamed of being. I’m really, really happy that we did it before we lost Paul [Gray, bass, in 2010].”
Last year, Slipknot had their fifth headlining appearance at the Download festival. Download has always been very important to Slipknot. Their first headline performance in 2009 was the last time the original nine played in the UK and is considered one of the best sets in the festival’s history.
