<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor has said that his band acted as &amp;quot;father figures&amp;quot; to many of their fans. The group formed in Iowa in 1995 and achieved fame and notoriety with their self-titled debut album in 1999. Asked how their audience had changed over the years, Taylor told Metro: &amp;quot;Our original fans have grown up and done pretty well. &amp;quot;We were father figures to a lot of them and helped guide them, which is a huge thing to say. So now we have families coming to our gigs but we haven&amp;#039;t dumbed anything down.&amp;quot; On whether music gave him catharsis after his own troubled childhood, he added: &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m the poster boy for that. Music was my salvation. If music hadn&amp;#039;t come into my life, I&amp;#039;d be talking to you from a penitentiary. &amp;quot;I found I had a talent for music, which pulled me up from pretty dire circumstances. I was lucky I had a guiding light in music to keep me focused and from falling into the easy traps that surround you when you grow up poor and fall into trouble.&amp;quot; Taylor recently paid tribute to fans who kept a two-minute silence during their headline Sonisphere set to mark the death of the band&amp;#039;s bassist Paul Gray. Gray died in May 2010 and has been replaced in the group&amp;#039;s touring lineup by their former guitarist Donnie Steele. &amp;gt; Slipknot announce 10th anniversary release of &amp;#039;Iowa&amp;#039; album Watch the Slipknot &amp;#039;Wait and Bleed&amp;#039; music video below:      "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/music/news/a348809/slipknots-corey-taylor-we-were-father-figures-to-our-fans/>