It's easy to get a good amp that might not be the right amp for you. When you go to a music store, really turn the amps on and turn 'em up - hopefully they'll let you - and work through the sounds. This is an important decision, so take your time and be methodical.

I think rock 'n' roll, in a way, has been dead for a long time.

I was awkward in school. I didn't really fit in with any kind of crowd in school. I didn't have a lot of friends. But the friends I had were very close friends.

You always have to be on top of your game, because you never know what is going to happen.

As a person, I think you're always kind of searching for something or going through a hardship, whether it's your parents splitting up or anything like that. I mean, my parents stuck together, for whatever reason, until I was about 23, and then they decided to call it quits.

I'll never be able to listen to anything we've done like someone who's just picked it up for the first time.

I'm always living at least a year ahead of where I'm really at, and that can really lead you to some negative thoughts and some bad vibes.

Yes, it is extremely lucky to be doing what I'm doing, and I wouldn't change any of it for the world.

With 'Iowa,' if you ask me, we really passed up a lot of things that we could have done with the two auxiliary drummers. I mean they hardly touched their drums on that album.

One of the downfalls of not being in Stone Sour was I sat at home for two and a half years, and I hadn't ever done that since we started touring in 1999. I was really nervous and freaked out.

To have a No. 1 with 130,000 copies sold is, you know, I remember when we first started selling records, in order to have a No. 1, you'd have to sell at least a half a million if not more, for the rock side of things.

Slipknot's the kind of band you need to step away from and kind of take a break from and let it heal, so to speak.

I'm extremely lucky to be doing what I'm doing right now and I work very hard at maintaining this career and living this dream that I'm living, but there's also a price to pay. I mean, we give a lot of ourselves and every day.

Some of the guys in Stone Sour, I think they just want to be a radio band and write strictly for radio and try to be more of a poppy rock band. And that's not really what I'm into.

You don't even know are we going to have a career? Are we going to be able to sell records? Are we going to have a label?

Finding the right amp can be a process, especially when you're young and just starting out. When I was a kid, I had to rely on whatever I got for Christmas. Then my mom got me a Peavey VTM 120. I used that for a few years.

All my racks are the same between Slipknot and Stone Sour. The only thing I'll do is switch out pedals in the GCX system. But it's the same heads, same wireless, same GCX.

It's important to evolve without ever straying too far from your roots and what established you.

We're closer friends in Stone Sour than I am with the guys in Slipknot and that makes life a lot easier. I'm not trying to take anything away from Slipknot.

Rick Rubin was able to do things that Dave Fortman could never do. I'm not trying to take anything away from Dave Fortman as a producer. He's extremely talented. He wasn't able to get nine people together on the same page and, to me, that's the most important thing in making a Slipknot record.

Sometimes I can be a little bit I don't know, stubborn or something. Maybe to a fault.

Dave Fortman really helped me appreciate Rick Rubin as a producer.

The culture of buying an album on CD or vinyl has gone out of the window. A lot of kids don't really understand that, they just hop onto Limewire, or find a BitTorrent, or even just go onto iTunes if they're going to pay for something. It's just right there, there's no searching about.

When you've got a mask on, you're kind of invincible. It's almost like nobody can see you, and you can do what you want to do without consequences.