Any artist manages his own business along with his manager. Every band should.
As much as I love Slipknot, I don't want that to carry over into what I do for Stone Sour. I want both bands to stand on their own.
I do not want and will not take a royalty on any record I record. I think paying a royalty to a producer or engineer is ethically indefensible. The band write the songs. The band play the music. It's the band's fans who buy the records. The band is responsible for whether it's a great record or a horrible record. Royalties belong to the band. I would like to be paid like a plumber. I do the job and you pay me what it's worth.
It seemed record companies wanted bands to be creative because they didn't know how to manufacture underground music. We could do our own thing and go at our own pace. But that changed when major labels started wanting bands that would sell 7 million records.
There are those people who try to change what you're doing. We don't like that. When we went into the studio for 'City of Evil,' we had 99 percent of the songs finished and ready to record.
A lot of people have ideas and opinions on what Avenged Sevenfold should be or what we should do, and I think our No. 1 rule is to always make sure we never listen to any of that and to always do what we believe.
Not a lot of bands get to go out on their own terms.
The record label used to try and make us do stuff, like dance, and we'd say, nah, not doing that.
