Slipknot: 10 Hidden Song Details You Totally Missed
1. Custer - References Stone Sour Song
“Half alive and stark raving free...”
These are the opening lyrics from which song?
If you’d said Custer by Slipknot, you would be correct.
If you’d said The Pessimist by Stone Sour, you would also be right.
With both bands fronted by Corey Taylor, this surely has to be deliberate, but he has never disclosed the link between these two particular songs.
The most likely explanation being that Taylor was particularly fond of the wording, and wanted to give it better exposure than a fairly obscure non-album track from his "lower-profile" band.
The situation is evocative of the more complicated situation that befell former Creedence Clearwater Revival man John Fogerty in 1993. Fogerty was sued for his solo track, The Old Man Down the Road, too closely resembling CCR’s Run Through the Jungle, which Fogerty had written, but no longer held the rights to.
Thankfully Fogerty would emerge victorious and even forced a US Supreme Court ruling, changing the unbalanced dynamic of court costs between plaintiff and defendant in copyright cases.