Slipknot's Corey Taylor isn't the first person to ask his fans to put their phones away (see Clutch's Neil Fallon) but he sure has an interesting way to go about it.
Taylor was interviewed by WRIF recently and asked about his opinions of social networks. He's not too fond of Facebook but doesn't mind him some Twitter:
"I enjoy Twitter, because there's no pressure like [there is on] Facebook. I don't even run my own Facebook — somebody else does, and mainly just to kind of retype what I put up on Twitter, to be honest. But I have a lot of fun with Twitter, because you've got a maximum of 140 characters, and I can kind of get in and get out, and everybody just kind of retweets now anyway; hardly anybody puts anything out there. So it's easy; I don't have to sit on it all day, like most of these zombies do."
Eventually, that morphed into a question about people using their cellphones at a Slipknot gig and how Taylor feels about that, and he's not exactly happy:
"I see it every once in a while. People don't do it so much at our shows, and if they do, they do it from quite a ways back, because I empty whole water bottles into people as soon as I see them staring at their phone or tweeting or whatever."
He continued: "There was this one poor girl, and god bless her, she was a fan, but at the same time, she wasn't being very covert about it. So I emptied four bottles into her, and oh my God, it had to have broken her phone. And then she was just bummed for the rest of the night, and I just kept shrugging at her, going, 'Hey, it's a live show. Pay attention, or don't be here.'
"So, yeah, I don't see it as much anymore, because I think I've made the statement that I will ruin your phone if you do that in front of my show."
A follow-up was asked about fans taping Slipknot with their phones:
"You're gonna come down there and film it, but you're not gonna enjoy it?" he said. "I mean, get outta here! Are you serious?"
He added: "People need to unplug and realize that they're missing their lives, dude. It's sad. And that may be me just being an old jerk, but I don't care. I don't care. Truth is truth; it doesn't matter what age you're at."
Ultimately, I have to agree with the last part. You paid all that money for a ticket and you're just going to spend it taping a low quality video that you will probably never watch again? Just enjoy the show and maybe take a few photos. But, I cannot condone Taylor ruining people's phones with water. That's just cruel. Sure, it seems hilarious to a dude who can easily replace their phone without it impacting their financials, but I just feel bad for that girl who, for all we know, could've been tweeting about how excited she was to be front row at a Slipknot gig.
How do you feel about Corey's comments?
[via]
