Corey Taylor says Slipknot are only “upper middle class”

Corey Taylor has said that Slipknot are only “upper middle class” while speaking about the band members’ financial statuses.

During a recent appearance on the FeedbackDef podcast, the frontman of the masked metal group was asked how “tempting” it was to get caught up in the money side of his profession.

“Honestly, in a weird way, we don’t make a lot of money,” Taylor responded. “I mean, we make enough to live, obviously, and we can live comfortably. But we’ve never been offered massive deals.

“There’s a lot of us in the band, and there’s a whole crew that we have to pay. There’s the production that we have to pay for. There’s all of this shit that we need to pay for. So at the end of the day, we are paid pretty much commensurate with what we are worth.”

Taylor continued: “We’ve never been even close to the big paydays that sports people get, actors… all of that shit. So in a weird way, we’re kind of… if you adjust for inflation, we’re upper middle class, basically.

“We’re not extravagant. We’re not rich by any stretch of the means, but we do OK. I can take care of my family. Their educations are good to go. I have insurance for all of my kids. And really, that’s it.”

He added: “Maybe it’s because we’re so reactionary. Maybe it’s because we are not palatable for a mass audience. We appeal to our genre and people kind of on the outskirts of our genre, but that’s it.

“We appeal to a lot of them, so we do OK, but we’re never gonna see fucking Taylor Swift money, shit like that. So the misconception that all rock stars are just rolling in it, that’s not true. There’s a reason why we have to tour as much as we do, because that’s the only way we can actually pay our fucking bills.”

In other news, Slipknot were recently announced as one of the headliners for the second edition of Sick New World festival in Las Vegas, Nevada. The event is due to take place on April 27, 2024.

The band released their seventh and latest studio album, ‘The End, So Far’, in September 2022. Taylor’s second solo record, ‘CMF2’, came out last month. He’ll tour the UK and Europe in support of the project in November – find any remaining tickets here.