Corey Taylor has opened up about the difficulties he experienced as a parent while working as a touring musician, and the strain his job put about his relationship with his son, Griffin.
Noting how his earlier bond with his son was more strained due to the "toxic" complexities of his previous romantic relationship, Taylor muses over how Griffin fronting his own metal band, Vended, has now brought them closer together.
During an appearance on the Battleline podcast, the Slipknot frontman explains (as transcribed by Blabbermouth): "My son, I didn't have to help him with anything, but he's out on the road with his band, and they're killing it. And in a way that's brought he and I even closer, man, 'cause now he really, really gets it and we talk now more than we ever have, which, to me, it's beautiful."
Speculating over what might have added a strain onto his relationship with his son, Taylor continues, "There were definitely a couple of years where it was difficult. And part of that can just be human nature; part of that can be the fact that I was gone for giant chunks of his [early life]. It also didn't help that the relationship I was in before my marriage now was very toxic; it was very hard on him. And in a lot of ways he blamed me, which he has every right to, because at the time I didn't realise how bad it was."
Although he notes how him and Griffin had "always been tight", and that they share a "a very, very special bond", the vocalist reveals how each time he had to leave to embark on a new tour, on returning home, he had to "relearn" who his son was "cause every time I'd come back, he was different".
Speaking of how his relationship with his son changed once he got older, he adds: "There was definitely a push back and forth, because he was starting to kind of come into his own. And between the anger that he had for missing so much and the anger [from] the previous issues and the anxiety that kind of had sprung up in his life, because of my Midwestern way of being a father, which is to raise your voice and, 'It doesn't matter why. I want you to…' — all of that shit. It was tough.
"So we butted heads for a few years, man. And then one year, everything just kind of clicked, man, and we both looked at each other in a very different way and we were able to really kind of reconcile. Not that it was ever really bad, but it was weird enough that I really felt like, I was, like, 'Man, I'm gonna lose him.'"
Of what he has taken away from his experience of parenting, Taylor concludes: "You never give up. It takes being brutally honest with yourself, going, 'I made mistakes.' You love to think that you were the perfect father, you love to think that you were just doing it for their own good, and sometimes, guess what? Those universal ways of parenting didn't always work.
"And for me, realising that maybe I contributed to some of his anxiety hurt. So I had to relearn how to be a parent, man. I had to relearn how to talk to my kid. And then I realized that he's not a baby anymore, man. He's gonna be 21 this year. It's actually been easier for me to talk to him as an adult than it was when he was younger because I had no skillset as a father like that."
Listen to the full podcast episode below:
