NASHVILLE |Greatest Hits Vol. 1 Biography
By John Pecorelli
Jonathan Davis: vocals, bagpipes
Fieldy: bass
David Silveria: drums, percussion
James "Munky" Shaffer: guitars
Brian "Head" Welch: guitars
“Everything has been done. Nothing is new.”
Thus proclaimed a prominent MTV veejay in 1992. And who could blame her? The indie-rock scene was stagnating, and the third-generation punk bands that inherited it seemed almost as anachronistic as the multitude of goofy surf/rockabilly revivalists. Nothing was new all right, and as the music industry turned its hungry gaze away from rock and toward hip hop, more than a few music pundits predicted the death of rock.
But rock was about to get grisly new life via five kids from a parched, dead-end town called Bakersfield, California. They’d come of age “standing around in dirt fields, drinking beer and watching people fight,” and the bleak landscape was reflected in their sound–as big and unwelcoming as nearby Death Valley. With the heaviest guitar sound ever recorded and a singer with a penchant for onstage catharsis, the band would come to strike fear in the hearts of high school administrators, stump even the most adjective-crazed critics, and become willing advocates for millions of alienated, pissed-off youth.
Now, ten years, six albums, and more than twenty million records deep into a career that spawned an epidemic of imitators, KORN remains as creatively vibrant and culturally relevant as ever. But holding onto their massive fan-base and staying true to the spirit of innovation hasn’t exactly been a cakewalk…
In the beginning, KORN scared the bejesus out of radio, MTV, and the music business in general. Genre-defying music makes record executives nervous, and this stuff had no real precedent: James “Munky” Shaffer and Brian “Head” Welch tuned their 7-string guitars lower than a standard bass–and the result was an alarmingly sinister growl that made so-called “heavy metal” bands sound downright quaint in comparison. But in lieu of guitar solos, power chords, and palm muting between the riffs, Head and Munky wove darkly textured soundscapes undercut by Fieldy’s subsonic, hip-hop-informed bass riffs. Drummer David Silveria anchored everything with a heady blend of power and precision.
All in all, it was a perfectly eerie musical backdrop for the volatile Jonathan Davis, a former coroner’s assistant who was unlike any singer in rock. Davis crooned, screamed, scatted, whispered, and literally wailed without a trace of macho metal posturing or hipper-than-thou indie-rock detachment. Davis raged about what he knew–schoolyard dicks, meth freaks, his own abusive home life–and he was far too involved to care about looking cool.
And when they finally did score a record deal, the result was KORN, a 66-minute blast of grooving hostility that torched hard rock’s rulebook and took the “metal” right out of heavy. When Davis screamed “Are you ready?” in the opening moments of “Blind,” he probably knew that radio and music television clearly weren’t. But the kids sure were, and by the time KORN released its follow-up, 1996’s Life is Peachy, enough fans had amassed to debut it at No. 3 on Billboard’s Top 200. The album intensified KORN’s sonic assault while betraying a twisted sense of humor amid the rubble, exemplified by the use of bagpipes. Tunes like the scatologically minded “@#%!” cemented Davis’ rep as one of rock’s foulest mouths, to the point where a Michigan high school kid was suspended for wearing a shirt that merely said “KORN.” KORN hammered the school with a cease-and-desist order and got the kid reinstated–an early example of the band’s intensely personal relationship with their fans.
Meanwhile, a glut of KORN-influenced bands had been infiltrating the rock circuit. Flattering, to be sure, but dangerous: with enough market saturation from inferior imitators, KORN knew that even the original could fade. So back to the studio they went, keeping fans abreast of their musical progress (and personal debauchery) through a weekly Internet video broadcast called “KORN’s After School Special.” But KORN stayed focused on their musical ambition, which was simple: to put as much distance between themselves and their pretenders as possible.
The culmination was 1998’s aptly titled Follow the Leader, an unqualified success beyond anyone’s prediction. Debuting at No. 1 on Billboard, the record forced radio to acknowledge the band with the breakaway singles “Got the Life” and “Freak on a Leash,” the latter of which earned a Grammy for Best Short Form Video. Rolling Stone would christen it one of the “essential alternative albums of the ‘90s,” and fans seemed to agree–Follow the Leader went quintuple platinum.
KORN’s newfound glory gave them the clout to put together a hugely successful traveling rock festival–The Family Values Tour, which produced a gold-certified comp CD of its own. They also launched a label (Elementree) and went platinum with their first signee’s debut (Orgy’s Candyass). And then it was time to give their own fans a little payback.
First came the KORN Kampaign, which had the band holding “fan conferences” all over America via a chartered jet, political-campaign style. They made time to hang out with a terminally ill fan through the Make-A-Wish Foundation–and ended up so touched by the teenager that they named a song for him (the haunting “Justin”). And in possibly their greatest fan-appreciation coup, KORN put out word that they wanted fans to create their next album’s cover art. But more than 25,000 submissions later, KORN was left with the daunting task of choosing just one. So they didn’t; when Issues was released in 1999, it came out in four different, equally compelling fan created covers.
Musically, Issues set KORN in a new direction, incorporating lush vocal melodies and exploring an “astonishingly broad range of energy levels and textures,” as writer J.D. Considine put it. It debuted at No 1, with a high-charting single in the soaring “Falling Away from Me,” and the band landed an unprecedented guest appearance on Comedy Central’s South Park. When KORN premiered the album at Harlem’s historic Apollo Theater–the first rock band to ever play there – even Newsweek’s eyebrows raised. “For one blistering, bizarre hour at the Apollo,” they wrote, “rock and roll ruled the roost.” KORN’s fan-base had characteristically embraced the musical change, sending Issues to triple platinum status; and the band repaid them by allowing fans to put together the next tour’s entire set list via Internet vote.
KORN’s next opus, 2002’s platinum Untouchables, took the updated sound even further, adding synthesizers, strings, and assorted electronics to the traditional KORN caterwaul–a “purgatorial symphony” according to USA Today. Mainstream press like People Magazine and the Wall Street Journal chimed in positive praise as well, and the New York Times wrote, “Now that it has accepted melody as central, KORN reveals new skills and ideas in every song.” KORN got filmmakers the Hughes Brothers to direct the video for “Here to Stay,” which upheld KORN’s tradition of illuminating how kids in America have inherited a punishing array of societal ills. The song garnered KORN yet another Grammy (Best Metal Performance); the album debuted at No. 2; and true to form, KORN discounted tickets $10 for all fans under 20 throughout the tour.
Afterward, Fieldy found time to write and produce a solo album, while Davis co-scored the film Queen of the Damned. By the time KORN hit the studio in 2003, it was with a renewed passion for their early sound. The platinum TAKE A LOOK IN THE MIRROR was just that–lean, crushingly heavy, uncompromisingly vitriolic. The album was rush released to stores–four days ahead of its planned release–when it was discovered that an inferior copy of the music had been leaked to the Internet by an unknown source. (An unmixed version KORN’s UNTOUCHABLES album also mysteriously made its way onto the Internet, months before it arrived in stores). While the album’s “Did My Time” and “Right Now” charted as singles, it was an “anti-hit” called “Ya’ll Want a Single” that made the record’s biggest impact. Penned as a blunt slam on the record industry’s cookie-cutter mentality, the video flashed disturbing statistics as the band completely obliterated a record store. The anti-corporate message hit a chord with music fans everywhere–including the FCC-plagued Howard Stern. “It’s probably the most inspirational, the most spectacular understanding of what’s going on in this country right now,” he said. “I believe that young people… are freaking out right now because of what is going on with the religious right. They are angry. They are angry about the corporations running the music business. They are angry with the radio business… What Jonathan Davis is able to do is tap into the mood of young people.”
Of course, that’s only one ingredient in this band’s lasting appeal. They pioneered the sound of a generation, and built a massive fan-base before they had the benefit of radio or video play. They stayed in touch with that audience through a remarkable record of personal contact with the fans. And through an extraordinary series of consistent (and consistently unique) releases, KORN has continually enhanced their legend as innovators.
What uncharted sonic territories will KORN traverse in their second decade as a band? Time will tell. But one thing’s certain: this group is never content to rest on its laurels. Expect big things.
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