The Big Mistake That Made Corey Taylor Fire Bassist Jason Christopher
Plenty of bands go through lineup changes, especially if band members have big egos and feel combative towards each other, competitive about receiving credit for work, and so forth. Take Corey Taylor, lead singer and key figure in Slipknot and Stone Sour, as well as other solo and collaborative projects. Slipknot has gone through loads of lineup changes over the decades, particularly in the drummer department. Stone Sour hasn't been without its instabilities, either. And even in Taylor's solo "CMFT" project, there's been hubbub and disharmony, even amongst friends.
Because even a "solo" project still requires other musicians, Taylor reached out to the professional and personal departments to create his "CMFT" band. In 2020 Taylor told Blabbermouth that the project was about him doing the songwriting, and "also me handpicking the band based on talent and lack of drama." That last part wouldn't last long. On the bass front, he handpicked Jason Christopher, hired bassist for loads of bands like Ministry, Stone Sour, Sebastian Bach, Prong, and more. At that point, Taylor and Christopher had been friends for years.
Come August 4, 2021 — aka, peak COVID-19 time — and doctors told Christopher that he had the coronavirus. As Lambgoat cites, CMFT was set to tour in two days and had practiced the day prior. Christopher told Taylor the bad news, Taylor freaked out, got worried for the life of his family, and canned Christopher. From there, things got really ugly, really quickly.
Taylor and Christopher's close friendship
To really understand the depth of what went down between Corey Taylor and Jason Christopher we've got to understand the depth of their relationship. As Christopher tells the tale in an interview on YouTube, he and Taylor met at the Rainbow Bar and Grill, a legendary rock-themed bar in Los Angeles that Taylor visited years prior on the night he got arrested at the notorious Viper Room down the road.
In the interview, Christopher calls himself a "loud drunk," and says that both he and Taylor like to be "the center of attention." They stood side-by-side one fateful night at the Rainbow Bar and Grill being loud in different directions, bumped backs, got into a tussle, and then instantly flipped on a dime and became chums. Not only were Taylor and Christopher chums, but they knew each other's families. They also jammed together at Christopher's place, got along musically as well as personally, and then "it was all downhill from there," Christopher says.
Ironically, Christopher said that as a joke. That interview took place in 2021 before he and Taylor had their falling out. In the interview, Christopher calls Taylor "his brother" and says he's his best friend and that he loves him. With such a strong relationship between the two men — presuming Taylor felt similarly — Taylor's decision to fire Christopher from his CMFT project comes across as all the more substantial. This is especially true because of how truly cataclysmic their falling out was.
A complete, disastrous falling out
Public letters written by Jason Christopher and Corey Taylor's wife, Alicia, (via Lambgoat) detail the falling out and Taylor's reasons for firing Christopher from his CMFT project. To make a long, overly-convoluted story short, Christopher showed up at band practice feeling kind of blah, but because he'd been vaccinated he chalked it up to "allergies and a morning spin class." Later in the day, his symptoms got much worse.
After telling Taylor about having COVID, Christopher said he got an "extremely unnerving text" from Taylor wherein Taylor said that Christopher's "negligence could have killed his daughter, his mother in law, etc." Christopher was totally shut out of the band from that point, and he and Taylor's relationship was in ruins.
In a long statement from Taylor's wife, Alicia replied, "It's not this giant conspiracy when everyone in your closest circle suddenly drops you." She said that Christopher had a history of causing problems and getting dropped by bands for immature behavior and bad decisions. She claimed he was the only one who ignored the directive to have a negative COVID test prior to practices, even after his young son had been sick, who he also refused to test. Alicia said, "The irresponsibility of not doing his part by getting tested in advance so that measures could be taken is why he's no longer here."
Christopher said that getting dropped from Taylor's project left him "blacklisted" from career opportunities just when his career was taking off. He still plays bass for Prong, and is at work on his three-part memoir series, "The Rogue to Nowhere."