Interviews

 

KORN

 

Words: Rod Yates

 

Twelve months ago, Korn looked finished. Nu metal, the genre they kickstarted with their 1994 debut, had died a slow and ugly death; Head, the guitarist who co-founded the band, had become a born-again Christian and quit; and for the first time in more than a decade, Korn were without a record deal, having left Sony when their contract expired and entered the neither-here-nor-there purgatory of being “in between labels”. From the outside, it looked like it was time to pull the sheet over the band’s collective eyes and record their time of death. Only it didn’t quite work out that way.

 

“Quitting was never an option for us,” says a laidback Jonathan Davis from his LA home. “I mean, when Head bounced we all were freaked out. But it wasn’t like, should we stop the band? No one ever thought about that.”

 

Of all the predicaments facing Korn, it was the guitarist’s departure that caused the most anxiety amongst longtime fans. Business and label problems are one thing, but when a member leaves, the band ceases to be the unit people fell in love with in the first place. For Davis, however, Korn had stopped being that five-strong outfit many years ago.

 

“It got to the point on the road where I would never see Head on tour. He’d hide on is bus, or he’d hide in his hotel room. The only time I saw him was two minutes before we’d walk onstage and he’d run from his tour bus, go up on stage, play the show and run back. We’d been dealing with this for three or four years. I miss that guy, I miss his friendship, but for a long time he wasn’t really feeling the band. The four of us are in it cos we love it, and he wasn’t.”

 

Though a mini war of words broke out between Davis and the guitarist in the press following his departure, these days the singer seems more at peace with his ex-bandmate’s decision, discussing it without the faintest hint of anger. You can’t help but feel, though, that if Head had left the band for any reason other than finding God it would have been easier for the vocalist to accept.

 

“His spiritual awakening came from the sobering up experience,” sighs Davis. “At the rehab program they push the higher power religious stuff on you to make you sober, and then you fall into that. That’s when Christians grab you, when you’re at your weakest. I really can’t fucking stand Christians. And he went totally extremist, and he still is extremist. But I’m not going to be like those people and judge anyone. I just want him to be happy, and if that’s what he needs…”

 

 

 

Davis’s acceptance of these events may have something to do with the fact that, after all this turmoil, Korn appear to be in the best place they’ve been for years. Notorious party-fiend bassist Fieldy has joined Davis in sobriety, professing for the first time in his career that his love for making music is greater than his love for simply being a rock star. Their new deal with EMI is more a groundbreaking partnership, with the band and label sharing a 70-30 split in everything Korn earn, from album sales to touring and merchandise (“Now I don’t feel like I’m working for a fucking record company and making them rich,” says Davis). And then there’s the band’s new album, their seventh, See You On The Other Side, which debuted at number three in the US and sold a massive 220,000 copies in its first week. In the past if you’d mentioned to Davis that some are calling this the comeback of the year, you’d probably have been met with an arrogant response in the affirmative. In keeping with the band’s more down-to-earth approach these days, though, his comeback is instead cautious but quietly confident.

 

“It’s not like a Green Day comeback, but it’s definitely a fucking start,” says the frontman. “I’ll know more when the album’s been out longer and we’re touring, but I think our job is doing a record, and I think we’ve really jumped up a couple of steps on this record. I’m not holding my breath, but we’re still relevant, and that’s all I care about.”

 

 

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