Corey Taylor: Get off your phones and pay attention

Corey Taylor says he tries to pour water on anyone who uses their mobile phones at Slipknot gigs.

The singer hates seeing fans filming gigs on their phones – and he’ll do whatever it takes to stop it from happening.

Taylor tells 101 WRIF: “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 way back, because I empty whole water bottles into people as soon as I see them staring at their phone or tweeting or whatever.

“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 on to her, and 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.’

“People need to unplug and realise they’re missing their lives. It’s sad. And that may be me just being an old jerk, but I don’t care.”

Taylor adds that he goes out of his way to laugh at people who trip when looking at their phones on the street.

He says: “So many people have their faces glued to their phones and they’re not paying attention. I point and laugh any time I see somebody trip walking down the street, and I’m brutal — I mean, I’m brutal. It’s loud, it’s obnoxious, there’s a lot of pointing, I’m asking people, ‘Did you see that?’ I love it. I think it’s funny.

“Get off your phones and pay attention to what they hell you’re doing.”

Taylor is not the only musician to hit out at the use of phones at gigs. In August, Kate Bush asked fans not to ruin her shows by filming on their camera phones. In the same month, Peter Frampton grabbed a fan’s phone and threw it towards the back of the stage.

Stef wrote close to 5,000 stories during his time as assistant online news editor and later as online news editor between 2014-2016. An accomplished reporter and journalist, Stef has written extensively for a number of UK newspapers and also played bass with UK rock favourites Logan. His favourite bands are Pixies and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Stef left the world of rock'n'roll news behind when he moved to his beloved Canada in 2016, but he started on his next 5000 stories in 2022.