SLIPKNOT/STONE SOUR frontman Corey Taylor appeared as a guest speaker on June 8, 2011 at the Oxford University.
Taylor addressed the 120 or so students in the grand hall of Oxford Union, Oxford University’s famous debating society.
Corey's message for the crowd was to forget about following their dreams. Identify what you are good at, and pursue that instead, he said, according to The New York Times.
Watch the video below:
Watch the video below:
"Too many people chase dreams that they don't understand," he said. "Too many people try to go for things that they'd like to do but they're not realistic enough to know they don't have the talent."
When asked why when he so espouses authenticity, he belongs to a band (SLIPKNOT) whose members all wear grotesque and identity-obscuring masks on stage, Taylor said it had to do with his chaotic and troubled early years in Iowa.
"When you put that mask on you go places you would never imagine," Taylor said, according to The New York Times. "It comes from a spot that's uncomfortable and really dark." He added: "The mask was a way to visualize everything I was feeling in heart and my gut — all that pain I was holding on to. I didn't have the worst childhood but I didn't have the best, and when you grow up like that you have certain limitations invariably stuck inside you. SLIPKNOT was a way to work it out."
The full lecture is premiering in four parts on Taylor's web site. The first part can now be seen below.
The Oxford Union Society, commonly referred to simply as the Oxford Union, is a debating society in the city of Oxford, Britain, whose membership is drawn primarily but not exclusively from the University of Oxford. Founded in 1823, it is Britain's second oldest University Union (only the Cambridge Union Society is older), and has gained a worldwide reputation for the cut and thrust of its debate, proving a valuable training ground for many future politicians from Britain and other countries.
