The story of Korn

Bakersfield outsiders

Korn's story begins in Bakersfield, California, a hot oil and farming town about two hours north of Los Angeles. James Shaffer was born in 1970 and adopted as a baby. As a teenager he sliced off the tip of a finger in an accident on a three wheeled ATV, and a doctor suggested playing an instrument as therapy. That is how he picked up the guitar. His friends called him Munky, because his spread out toes looked like a monkey's fingers. Brian Welch, born the same year, was a shy kid who got bullied and loved Ozzy Osbourne. He wanted to play drums, but his dad talked him into guitar so there would be no drum kit to haul around. Friends said his head looked too big for his body, so he became Head.[1] [2] [3]

Reginald Arvizu, born in 1969, went through several nicknames. His big cheeks earned him Gopher, which became Gar, then Garfield after the cartoon cat, and finally Fieldy. In the late eighties Munky and Fieldy started a funk metal band with a singer named Richard Morrill. They needed a drummer, so they put an ad in the local paper, and a teenager named David Silveria answered it. The band was called L.A.P.D., after the Los Angeles Police Department, and it chased the dream all the way to Los Angeles. David dropped out of high school to go. Morrill's mother let the whole band, plus two roadies, live in her two bedroom apartment in Burbank. Munky stayed behind in Bakersfield at first, and only rejoined when he broke up with his girlfriend.[1] [2] [3]

L.A.P.D. signed with the small label Triple X Records, a contract Fieldy later called pitiful. They released an EP in 1989 and a full album, Who's Laughing Now, in May 1991, but distribution was poor and nothing happened. Then Morrill quit. The remaining three carried on as Creep, recorded a demo with another singer, and brought in their old Bakersfield friend Brian Welch as a second guitarist. By 1992 they were sharing a house in Huntington Beach. Their obsession at the time was Faith No More. They even drove to San Francisco to watch the band, and discovered Mike Patton's stranger project, Mr. Bungle. A dissonant chord they borrowed from Bungle, which they called the Mr. Bungle chord, became a Korn trademark.[1] [2] [3]

The missing piece was a singer from the same town. Jonathan Davis was born in Bakersfield on the eighteenth of January 1971. His father had played keyboards for Buck Owens and Frank Zappa, and his mother was a dancer and actress. They divorced when he was three, and he ended up with his father and a stepmother he later described as cruel. He was a sickly child with severe asthma, in hospital every month for years. At Highland High School he wore eyeliner, loved Duran Duran and the New Romantics, and was taunted every day with homophobic slurs. He also played bagpipes in the school pipe band. His grandmother had played him pipe records, and a funeral scene in Star Trek Two sealed it.[1] [2] [3]

Jonathan also had one of the strangest day jobs in rock history. As a teenager he started working as an autopsy assistant for the Kern County coroner, through a school job placement program, and he stayed until he joined Korn at twenty two. He later said the things he saw, including dead children, gave him nightmares that took years of therapy to shake. At night he sang in a band called Sexart. Early in 1993 Munky and Head walked out of a Bakersfield club just as Jonathan started wailing on stage, and they were stunned. He was reluctant to leave his own band, until a psychic told him that moving away and joining them would be good for him. He auditioned in Huntington Beach and said later that from the first note he was hooked.[1] [2] [3]

The birth of a sound

Jonathan suggested the name Corn, and the others liked that it sounded creepy, like the horror film Children of the Corn. Munky wanted it spelled with a K, and the R was flipped backwards, a nod to the Toys R Us logo, since several of them had worked at the toy chain. Jonathan drew the logo himself, with his left hand, so it would look like a child had scrawled it. David Silveria admitted it was a dumb name, but said the music would make it cool. The band rehearsed at a studio called Underground Chicken Sound, owned by a man who had once let Jonathan live in his garage. When they played the opening of the song Clown one day, a crowd gathered outside to listen, because it sounded like nothing else.[1] [2] [3]

Within two weeks of forming they had a rough demo of Blind, Predictable and Daddy. Their first show was at a club called California Dreams in Anaheim. In October 1993 they made a proper demo tape with a young producer named Ross Robinson. It had no official title, but fans named it Neidermayer's Mind after the artist who drew the cover. Copies went to record labels and to anyone who filled out a flyer at their shows. Paul Pontius, from the Epic imprint Immortal Records, saw them play in Huntington Beach and made an offer. Other labels were interested too, but Korn chose Immortal because they did not want to sign away their creative freedom. Blind itself had started life in Sexart, a fact that would come back to haunt them.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In May and June 1994 the band recorded their debut with Ross Robinson at Indigo Ranch, a studio on a hill above Malibu. They played together in one room, like a live band. The bagpipes on Shoots and Ladders sound as if they were recorded on a mountain, but Jonathan simply walked past the back door playing while the microphone stayed put. The album ends with Daddy, about abuse Jonathan suffered as a child. He said he sang it alone in the dark, not knowing he was being recorded, and he broke down sobbing at the end. He almost never performed it again. The cover showed a little girl on a swing, facing the shadow of a man. The model was Paul Pontius's niece. Korn came out on the eleventh of October 1994.[1] [2] [3]

Radio ignored the album, so Korn went everywhere. They toured with Biohazard and House of Pain, Sick of It All, Danzig and Marilyn Manson, and Megadeth, and their tour bus broke down halfway through the first run. Jonathan brought out the bagpipes on stage, and plenty of metal fans hated it. By late 1995 they had played somewhere between two hundred and two hundred and fifty shows, and word of mouth did the rest. The album went gold in January 1996, and they opened arena shows for Ozzy Osbourne alongside Deftones. The Los Angeles Times found Fieldy delighted to hear Blind on the radio in his new Mercedes. Jonathan, now father to a baby son named Nathan, said they were not even middle class yet.[1] [2] [3]

There was a darker engine under all of this. The band has admitted they were using methamphetamine while making the first record, and the song Helmet in the Bush is about that habit. Jonathan described lining up speed for breakfast and spiralling into sleep deprivation and hallucinations. Still, the record's impact was enormous. It is widely seen as the first nu metal album, and it launched Ross Robinson's career. He went on to produce Limp Bizkit's debut, Sepultura's Roots and Slipknot's first two albums, and bands from Coal Chamber to Machine Head took notes. In 2014 Rolling Stone called Korn the most important metal record of the previous twenty years. Shoots and Ladders earned the band its first Grammy nomination.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Life Is Peachy and the road

After fourteen months on the road, Korn took a month off and started writing their second album in a state one account called serious disarray. The drinking and drug use did not stop. Jonathan later admitted he got so drunk that he would bite his bandmates, and on many nights someone, often Head, passed out before he could play. Ross Robinson returned as producer and spent much of his energy trying to get them to focus. They went back to Indigo Ranch in April 1996 and cut the album fast, with sixty to seventy percent of Jonathan's vocals captured on the first take. The whole thing cost about one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Jonathan later called it killer but rushed, made under pressure to get back on the road.[1] [2]

The title came from Fieldy's school folder. He had doodled the words Life Is in front of the brand name of his Pee Chee folder. The band offered the folder company twenty thousand dollars to use its artwork on the cover, and the company said no, so they kept only the title. As on every Korn album, the booklet printed no lyrics, because the band wanted listeners to find their own meaning. Life Is Peachy came out on the fifteenth of October 1996. With almost no radio or television support, it debuted at number three on the Billboard 200, selling one hundred and six thousand copies in its first week. The song Kill You was about Jonathan's former stepmother, and No Place to Hide brought another Grammy nomination.[1] [2]

On the road, Korn helped launch another band. A tattoo artist and singer named Fred Durst had invited them for beers and tattoos when they came through Jacksonville, Florida, and talked Fieldy into hearing his band's demo. Korn put the unsigned Limp Bizkit on two of their tours, and Limp Bizkit opened the Life Is Peachy tour. Korn then supported Metallica, headlined Europe with Incubus, and co headlined Lollapalooza in the summer of 1997 alongside Tool, the Prodigy and Snoop Dogg. Then, on the eighteenth of July, they pulled out. Munky had been diagnosed with viral meningitis. Jonathan said there was no suitable replacement for him. While he recovered, rumors spread on the internet that Munky had died.[1] [2] [3]

Korn's style mattered as much as its sound. Jonathan wore Adidas tracksuits on stage, sometimes custom sequined ones, and fans copied them. Yet when the band asked Adidas for a real deal, the company reportedly replied that it did sports, not music. In 1998 Puma stepped in with a reported five hundred thousand dollar deal, and Jonathan said that was more than Adidas ever did for them. The band also started its own label, Elementree Records, and Jonathan signed the group Orgy. In Zeeland, Michigan, an assistant principal suspended a student for wearing a Korn shirt and called the music obscene. A local rock station handed out hundreds of free Korn shirts outside the school, and police who were called ended up helping pass them out.[1] [2] [3]

Kings of the TRL era

In January 1998 Korn began their third album without Ross Robinson in the producer's chair, though he stayed on as Jonathan's vocal coach. Engineer Toby Wright later said Robinson punched Jonathan in the back in the vocal booth to stir him up. Producer Steve Thompson got the job partly because he turned up with cases of Coors Light, Jonathan joked, but he was fired halfway through and Wright finished the record. The sessions were wild. Jonathan said the band spent sixty thousand dollars on alcohol, and he described recording fuelled by cocaine, speed and gallons of Jack Daniel's. He also said he refused to start tracking his vocals until he was given cocaine. He later called it the last record he made while getting wasted.[1] [2] [3]

Korn turned the making of the album into an early internet show called KornTV, where fans could phone in and quiz the band. It was one of the first times a band used the web that way. Guests on the record included Ice Cube, Tre Hardson of the Pharcyde, Fred Durst and, on a hidden track, Cheech Marin. Munky said the title Follow the Leader was a sarcastic message to the copycat bands they were seeing. Comic artist Todd McFarlane made the cover, showing children hopscotching toward a cliff. Released on the eighteenth of August 1998, it debuted at number one with two hundred and sixty eight thousand copies. Billboard later called that date the biggest day in nu metal history.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Follow the Leader made Korn giants on MTV's Total Request Live. According to Billboard, fans voted Got the Life onto the countdown for seventy three days, and it became the first video ever retired from the show. Freak on a Leash followed it into retirement. That video mixed McFarlane's animation with a bullet flying through the real world and the band, and it won two MTV awards and a Grammy for best short form music video. That autumn Korn launched the Family Values Tour with Limp Bizkit, Ice Cube, Orgy and Rammstein, keeping most tickets under thirty dollars. Radio contest winners watched from a steel cage on stage called the Korn Kage. On Halloween, police dragged Rammstein offstage and jailed them overnight for indecent exposure.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

On that first Family Values Tour, at twenty eight, Jonathan got off methamphetamine. Sobriety was hard. His anxiety and depression grew, his grandfather died, and for a period around the turn of the century he was on suicide watch. He poured it into the next album. Issues, he said, was his first sober record, a concept album about losing his mind to panic attacks. Producer Brendan O'Brien kept the songs simple and kept the partying down. Fans designed the cover through an MTV contest, and the winner mailed his art in a pizza box. Released on the sixteenth of November 1999, Issues debuted at number one with about five hundred and seventy thousand copies, beating Dr. Dre's 2001 and Céline Dion that week.[1] [2] [3]

The promotion was relentless. In October 1999 Korn starred in a South Park episode, and the show later told them someone had forgotten to press record, so they had to do all their lines again. They gave away Falling Away from Me as a free download against their lawyers' advice, donating a quarter for every fan who signed a guestbook, and raised more than two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for children's charities. They played the album at Harlem's Apollo Theater with the New York police pipes and drums. That July at Woodstock 1999, Jonathan played bagpipes before a crowd of about two hundred and fifty thousand. The festival descended into violence, and a gang rape was reported in the crowd during Korn's set.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Excess and cracks

In 2000 David Silveria hurt his wrist, and Faith No More's drummer Mike Bordin, one of the band's heroes, filled in for nearly one hundred shows. Then came Untouchables, the most extravagant record Korn ever made. With producer Michael Beinhorn, they moved to Scottsdale, Arizona to escape distractions, renting five houses at ten thousand dollars each for months, and then did the same again in Los Angeles. They spent a month just getting drum sounds, with fifty microphones on the kit. Jonathan said his vocals took nearly six months, and Beinhorn would sometimes send him home because his voice was not right. The album cost an estimated three million dollars. Jonathan still calls it his favorite, the heavy metal version of Steely Dan's Aja.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The mood inside the band was tense. Members considered firing Fieldy over his drug use, but decided against it. Then an unfinished version of the album leaked online months before release, with the wrong song titles. When the Opie and Anthony radio show began airing tracks early, Sony sent a cease and desist letter. Untouchables finally arrived on the eleventh of June 2002 and debuted at number two, behind The Eminem Show, with nearly half a million copies in its first week. That was a big number, but less than before, and Jonathan blamed piracy. The single Here to Stay won the Grammy for best metal performance, and its video, by the Hughes Brothers, gave fans their first look at Jonathan's new microphone stand.[1] [2] [3]

That stand was a work of art. Jonathan asked the Swiss surrealist H. R. Giger for something biomechanical and erotic. Giger sculpted a female figure by hand, and only five were cast before the moulds were destroyed. Jonathan's side work was growing too. With composer Richard Gibbs he wrote songs for the vampire film Queen of the Damned, sung in the movie by the character Lestat. Contract clauses stopped his own vocals from appearing on the soundtrack album, so singers including Chester Bennington, David Draiman and Marilyn Manson recorded them instead. The singer Aaliyah, who starred in the film, was meant to record a duet with him, but she died before it could be made.[1] [2]

Jonathan had a morbid hobby as well. In the early 2000s he collected serial killer memorabilia, including a Volkswagen driven by Ted Bundy and clown suits worn by John Wayne Gacy, and he displayed items on the 2003 Ozzfest tour. A planned museum deal fell apart, and the collector Arthur Rosenblatt sued him twice. In December 2005 Jonathan began selling the collection, saying he did not want it around his children. Meanwhile, Korn rushed out Take a Look in the Mirror in November 2003, writing partly on the road during Ozzfest and producing it themselves at Jonathan's house. Its single Did My Time, made for the Lara Croft sequel with Angelina Jolie in the video, reached number thirty eight, the band's only top forty hit in America.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Behind the scenes, Head was falling apart. He said 2003 was the year he started using speed every day, and he had to snort lines just to get through a show. He hid methamphetamine for tours in vitamin capsules and deodorant containers. He later described the band as sober only a couple of hours a day. Munky admitted the songs were not flowing and personal dramas were muting everyone's creativity. Jonathan later called the album his least favorite. In October 2004 a Greatest Hits collection wrapped up the band's contract with Immortal and Epic. It led with a cover of Cameo's Word Up, which Jonathan said they had been jamming at soundchecks for years, and it became the only Korn single sent to pop radio.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Head finds God, Korn loses two founders

Late in 2004 a friend invited Head to Valley Bible Fellowship, a church in Bakersfield. He was addicted to methamphetamine, Xanax and sleeping pills, and he told CNN that inside he felt dead. The breaking point came when his little daughter Jennea started singing the sexual lyrics of a Korn song. On the twenty second of February 2005, management announced he had left Korn after almost twelve years, having chosen Jesus Christ as his savior. Head told a church crowd of about ten thousand that he had wanted to die. He said he got clean in a hotel room, in what he called his own personal rehab with God. On the tenth of March he was baptized in the Jordan River, on a church trip to Israel.[1] [2] [3]

The split was not gentle. Head said Fieldy texted him that MTV would laugh at him and call him crazy. In interviews Head accused the band of caring only about money, and Jonathan fired back. When Head wrote his memoir, Save Me from Myself, rumors spread that it trashed the band, and Head said Korn wrote two songs aimed at him on their next album. He later admitted he probably deserved them. Life after Korn was hard. Bad business deals, mismanagement and his own generosity left him broke, and he said he once hunted for loose change around his rental home. His Christian rock album Save Me from Myself reached number sixty three in 2008, and he later led the band Love and Death.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Korn, now a four piece, signed an unusual deal with EMI and Virgin Records in 2005. Virgin paid twenty five million dollars up front in exchange for a share of the next two albums and a thirty percent stake in touring, merchandise and licensing income. Billboard noted it was modeled on a deal EMI had with Robbie Williams. For See You on the Other Side, Korn worked with the pop production team The Matrix, known for Avril Lavigne. The album debuted at number three in December 2005 and went platinum. In the video for Twisted Transistor, rappers Lil Jon, Xzibit, David Banner and Snoop Dogg played the members of Korn. In February 2006 the mayor of Bakersfield declared Korn Day, and a road by the arena became Korn Row.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

In June 2006, on tour in Europe, Jonathan was rushed to hospital with a blood platelet disorder. He told fans his platelets were so low he was at high risk of a fatal haemorrhage. Korn played the Download Festival without him, with guest singers including Corey Taylor of Slipknot and M. Shadows of Avenged Sevenfold, then cancelled the rest of the European dates. In December 2006 David Silveria went on what was called a temporary hiatus, saying he just needed a break. He never came back. That same month Korn taped MTV Unplugged in Times Square for about fifty fans, with saws, a glass harmonica and taiko drums. Amy Lee joined them, and so did the Cure, whose music Jonathan said got him through high school.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Korn's eighth album came out untitled in July 2007, because Jonathan wanted fans to call it whatever they liked. With no drummer, they hired Terry Bozzio, whom Jonathan called the world's greatest drummer, then fell out with him. Munky said Bozzio demanded to become a full member with a quarter share, which the band found offensive. Brooks Wackerman of Bad Religion finished the job, and Jonathan played drums on some songs himself. On tour, Joey Jordison of Slipknot sat in behind the kit. The single Evolution came with a fake documentary campaign about human devolution, which angered Devo's Gerald Casale, who felt his band's concept had been lifted. Jonathan replied that Korn tipped its hat to Devo. The album still debuted at number two.[1] [2] [3] [4]

New drummer, new sounds

Korn found its permanent drummer in Ray Luzier, a farm kid from West Newton, Pennsylvania who had played with David Lee Roth for years. When he was asked to learn five Korn songs for his audition, he learned thirty, and was invited to join on the spot. His first show was in Dublin on the thirteenth of January 2008, and he became an official member in 2009. On guitar, the band used touring players rather than replacing Head. One of them, Shane Gibson, played with Korn from 2007 to 2010 and with Jonathan's solo band. He died on the fifteenth of April 2014, at thirty five, of complications from a blood clotting disorder. After his death, Jonathan said his solo band could not go on.[1] [2] [3]

The members spread out into side projects. Munky formed Fear and the Nervous System with Faith No More's Bill Gould. Fieldy, who became a born again Christian after his father's death, published a memoir called Got the Life in 2009. When Deftones bassist Chi Cheng fell into a coma after a car crash in November 2008, Fieldy announced A Song for Chi, a benefit track with members of Slipknot, Sevendust and Machine Head. Head played on it too, the first time he had worked with his old bandmates since leaving. Cheng never fully recovered and later died. In 2009 Munky said Head had asked to come back to Korn, and Head publicly disputed that account.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

For their ninth album, an unsigned Korn paid their own way and went back to Ross Robinson, hoping to recapture 1994. They recorded to analog tape in a tiny eight by eight foot booth nicknamed the catbox, and Jonathan wrote eleven songs in under five days. Robinson's methods were as extreme as ever. Jonathan later said the producer secretly called his wife to the studio so he would have to sing a song about her pill addiction directly to her. Korn Three, Remember Who You Are, came out on Roadrunner Records in July 2010 and debuted at number two. Jonathan later called going backwards the biggest mistake the band ever made, saying Robinson tortured him, though he still loved the man.[1] [2] [3]

Then Korn did the opposite. The Path of Totality, released in December 2011, was made with dubstep and electronic producers including Skrillex, Noisia and Excision. Jonathan called it future metal and said the title came from a solar eclipse, where you must be in exactly the right place at the right time to see it. Reviews were mixed, but the single Get Up became the band's first gold certified single, and Revolver's Golden Gods awards named it album of the year. Jonathan had a new alter ego too, a DJ called JDevil, going back to his teenage years spinning at Bakersfield school dances. In 2012 he dropped off a tour with Rob Zombie and Marilyn Manson, citing exhaustion.[1] [2] [3]

The reunion happened almost by accident. On the fifth of May 2012, Head was at the Carolina Rebellion festival in North Carolina, mainly because his daughter wanted to see some of the bands. He was persuaded to say hello to his old bandmates backstage. Korn's guitar tech quietly set up a spare guitar and amplifier for him, just in case. At the end of Korn's set, Jonathan brought him out, and Head played Blind with Korn for the first time in seven years. Jennea was on the tour bus when her dad and Munky finally sat down together again, and she said it felt like family. Within a year, Head would be back for good.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Reunion, feuds and grief

Head officially rejoined on the second of May 2013, and The Paradigm Shift followed that October. Head said everything had changed, and that now everybody got along. He also recalled how bad things had been before he left, with talk of kicking Fieldy out and fights between band wives. Jonathan was struggling himself. His son had developed diabetes, and he was coming off an anxiety medication he had taken for three years. He checked into a county rehab, then moved into the studio for four months with his sons, writing lyrics he later said he barely remembered. The lead single Never Never became Korn's first number one on the mainstream rock chart, and the band got a place on Hollywood's RockWalk.[1] [2] [3] [4]

One founder never came back. From 2012 David Silveria spoke out on fan forums and Facebook, attacking Jonathan and Fieldy and urging fans to demand a reunion of the original five. Head said David had said some crazy things online and was not somewhere people wanted him around. Jonathan tweeted that he would never play with him again. In 2012 David was also arrested in Huntington Beach on suspicion of driving under the influence, which he denied, blaming a sleeping pill. In February 2015 he sued his former bandmates, arguing his 2006 exit was only a hiatus and that he still owned a share of the band. He later drummed in several smaller bands.[1] [2]

In 2015 Korn played their debut album in full to celebrate its twentieth anniversary, and in 2016 came The Serenity of Suffering, produced by Nick Raskulinecz, with a guest spot from Corey Taylor. Head called it the heaviest thing they had done in years. It debuted at number four. When Fieldy missed a South American tour in 2017, Korn called in a twelve year old stand in, Tye Trujillo, son of Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo. Then 2018 brought heartbreak. Jonathan's mother died in February. His estranged wife Deven, mother of his sons Pirate and Zeppelin, had battled addiction for years, and he had filed for divorce in 2016, later seeking a restraining order that kept her from the children.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Deven Davis died on the seventeenth of August 2018, at thirty nine. Her death was ruled an accident caused by a combination of heroin and several prescription drugs. Jonathan wrote that his wife had been very sick with a serious mental illness, that addiction was a side effect, and that he loved her with all of his being. Head called him straight away. He remembered that when his own wife left and he took custody of Jennea, Jonathan and Deven had been the ones who offered help. The loss pulled the band closer. That same year Jonathan finally released his first solo album, Black Labyrinth, most of it written a decade earlier, and Head released Loud Krazy Love, a documentary about raising his daughter.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Jonathan channelled his grief into The Nothing, released on the thirteenth of September 2019 and named after the villain in The NeverEnding Story. He treated the sessions as therapy. Some of his real breakdowns were left on the record, including him crying at the end of the opening track. He said he usually recorded a Korn album's vocals in about two weeks, but this one took four months. AllMusic called it the band's most authentic statement, and it became Korn's highest rated album on Metacritic. It was also their fourteenth top ten album in America. To promote it, Korn even played a concert inside the online game AdventureQuest 3D, complete with a virtual meet and greet.[1] [2] [3]

Requiem and the long run

The pandemic wiped out Korn's plans to tour The Nothing, including a run with Faith No More. In 2020 they released a cover of The Devil Went Down to Georgia with the rapper Yelawolf, after Charlie Daniels died, donating the proceeds to a youth charity. Then, on the twenty first of June 2021, Fieldy announced he would sit out the upcoming tour. He wrote that for six years personal issues had made him fall back on bad habits and caused tension around him, and that he had been advised to take time to heal. Ra Díaz of Suicidal Tendencies took over on bass. Munky later said Fieldy needed time at home, and wasn't ready when the others were eager to get back on the road.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The 2021 tour was a battle. Jonathan tested positive for COVID in August, and six shows were moved. When he came back, at Tinley Park, Illinois, he performed from a custom throne, moving slowly and at times using an oxygen tank. Head posted a video asking fans for prayers, saying Jonathan was physically weak and fighting a mental battle. Weeks later Munky caught the virus and sat out shows, replaced by JR Bareis of Head's band Love and Death. Then Ray Luzier tested positive too. By the end of the year, Jonathan told Kerrang he had a partner who lifted him up, and that for the first time he did not know how to react to being happy.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Requiem, their fourteenth album, arrived on the fourth of February 2022. It was written during lockdown, recorded partly to analog tape, and at nine songs and about thirty two minutes it is their shortest album. Producer Chris Collier had a sharp ear for anything that sounded borrowed, and Head admitted that over the years they had thrown away five or six songs for sounding too much like Deftones. Fieldy's bass parts were used, though he was missing from the band photo. It debuted at number fourteen, their first album since the debut to miss the top ten. Since then the band has spoken often about a fifteenth album, and as of 2026 fans are still waiting for it.[1] [2] [3]

Korn's line up as of 2026 is Jonathan Davis, Munky, Head and Ray Luzier, with Ra Díaz on bass for live shows, and Fieldy has not returned. Their numbers are huge, with more than forty million records sold, two Grammys from eight nominations, and fourteen top ten albums, level with Van Halen for the most by a rock or metal act. Jonathan resisted the nu metal label for years, calling Korn a funk band, before admitting it was pretty cool to have helped start a movement. Their fingerprints are on Slipknot, Limp Bizkit, Evanescence and a new wave of younger artists reviving the sound. Jonathan has said that if Korn ever gets into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, he will party like crazy.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The people around Korn

Brian Welch and James Shaffer. The two guitarists have known each other since they were kids in Bakersfield, and Head sold Munky his first electric guitar. Their twin guitar sound defined early Korn. When Head left in 2005, Munky said he felt like a three legged dog carrying all the guitar work, and in 2009 they disagreed publicly about who wanted a reunion. By 2013 they were side by side again, and Head calls Munky a brother.[1] [2] [3]

Jonathan Davis and Brian Welch. After Head quit in 2005, he said the band cared only about money, and Jonathan hit back in the press. Head believed two songs on the next Korn album were aimed at him. The rift healed. In 2012 Jonathan brought him on stage at Carolina Rebellion, and when Jonathan's estranged wife Deven died in 2018, Head called him at once, remembering how Jonathan and Deven had helped him as a single father.[1] [2] [3]

Korn and Ross Robinson. Ross Robinson produced Korn's first demo and first two albums, and their success made him the so called godfather of nu metal, leading to work with Limp Bizkit, Sepultura and Slipknot. His methods were brutal. He reportedly punched Jonathan in the back to provoke him and secretly brought Jonathan's wife to the studio for Korn III. Jonathan says he loves him, but found the second round too much.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Korn and Fred Durst. Fred Durst tattooed members of Korn in Florida and talked Fieldy into hearing his band's demo. Korn took the unsigned Limp Bizkit on tour, and the two bands became close, sharing management and the first Family Values Tour. Durst guested on Follow the Leader and directed the video for Falling Away from Me. Jonathan defended Limp Bizkit after Woodstock 1999, and the bands toured together again in 2016.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Jonathan Davis and Deven Davis. Jonathan married Deven in Hawaii in 2004, and they had two sons, Pirate and Zeppelin. She struggled with addiction for many years. He filed for divorce in 2016 and in 2018 sought a restraining order that kept her from the children. She died in August 2018, at thirty nine, from an accidental mix of drugs. He said he loved her with all his being, and The Nothing was his way of grieving.[1] [2] [3]

Korn and David Silveria. David joined L.A.P.D. as a teenager and drummed on Korn's first seven albums. He left on a so called hiatus in 2006 and never returned. From 2012 he criticized Jonathan and Fieldy online, and Jonathan said he would never play with him again. In 2015 David sued the other founders for money he said he was owed. He has said he holds no grudge against Munky.[1] [2]

Korn and Reginald Arvizu. Fieldy co founded the band and gave it its clanking, percussive bass sound. The others considered firing him over drugs in the early 2000s, and in 2005 he warned Head that MTV would laugh at his conversion. He took an indefinite hiatus in 2021. He has since said he loves the guys, has known them since seventh grade and has no beef, but as of 2026 he has not come back.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Jonathan Davis and Richard Gibbs. The former Oingo Boingo keyboardist Richard Gibbs met Jonathan through their music publisher, and together they wrote the songs and score for Queen of the Damned. Gibbs also conducted the police pipe and drum band at Korn's 1999 Apollo Theater show, and in 2006 he arranged Korn's MTV Unplugged, adding cellos, a saw, a glass harmonica and taiko drummers.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Korn and Rob Zombie. Rob Zombie was meant to be on the first Family Values Tour in 1998, but was dropped. Korn's management claimed he did not want to tour with a hip hop act, while his manager said Zombie had never even spoken to Korn and blamed production costs. The row was patched up quickly, and in 1999 Korn and Zombie co headlined the successful Rock Is Dead tour.[1] [2]

Brian Welch and Jennea Welch. Head's daughter Jennea was born in 1998, and after his divorce he won full custody. Hearing her sing a Korn song as a toddler pushed him to quit drugs and the band. The years after were rough, with bankruptcy and her own struggles as a teenager, told in the 2018 documentary Loud Krazy Love. She was there when Head reconnected with Munky, and she has said it felt like family.[1] [2]

Korn and Deftones. Korn and Deftones came up together in the California club scene and shared tours, including Ozzy Osbourne's in 1996 and Family Values in 2006. Deftones singer Chino Moreno rejected the nu metal tag and criticized Korn, prompting a public exchange with Jonathan. Still, when bassist Chi Cheng was left in a coma in 2008, Korn members recorded A Song for Chi to help his family.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Rare facts about Korn

• The backwards R in Korn's logo is a nod to Toys R Us, where several members had worked. Jonathan drew the logo himself, using his left hand so it looked like a child's scrawl. The band wanted a distorted, childlike look to match their dark songs about childhood.[1] [2] [3]
• Jonathan Davis took up the bagpipes because of a funeral scene in Star Trek Two. When Scotty played Amazing Grace on the pipes at Spock's funeral in The Wrath of Khan, Jonathan decided he had to learn. His grandmother had already played him pipe band records, and his high school had a pipe band.[1] [2]
• The faraway bagpipes on Shoots and Ladders were recorded by Jonathan simply walking past the studio's back door. The microphone stayed still while he played and walked away, so the sound faded naturally. Many listeners assumed it was recorded on a mountaintop.[1] [2]
• Munky became a guitarist because a doctor prescribed it as therapy. As a teenager he cut off the tip of a finger in a three wheeled ATV accident. His doctor suggested playing an instrument to help, and he picked up the guitar.[1]
• Head sold Munky his first electric guitar. Head's own first guitar was a Peavey Mystic, which he called maybe the most metal looking guitar ever. He later sold it, along with a practice amp, to his future bandmate.[1] [2]
• Fieldy's nickname started as Gopher. His bandmates first called him Gopher because of his big cheeks. That became Gar, then Garfield after the cartoon cat, and finally Fieldy.[1]
• Jonathan Davis worked as an autopsy assistant for the county coroner before joining Korn. He got the job through a school placement program and kept it until he was twenty two. His supervisor told the Los Angeles Times they had lost a good autopsy assistant when he left.[1] [2]
• The girl on the cover of Korn's debut album was the niece of the man who signed them. The cover shows a girl on a swing looking at a man's shadow. She was the niece of Paul Pontius, the Immortal Records scout who discovered the band.[1]
• A strange banging sound near the end of Ball Tongue was just a guitar cord hitting a music stand. The debut was recorded mostly live at Indigo Ranch above Malibu, with the band sometimes playing outdoors, which gave the record its unusual sound.[1]
• Korn offered twenty thousand dollars to put the Pee Chee school folder on the cover of Life Is Peachy, and were turned down. The title came from Fieldy's habit of writing Life Is in front of the folder's brand name. The company declined, so only the title survived.[1]
• Korn albums do not print their lyrics in the booklet. The band has said printed lyrics limit the listener. Jonathan told MTV he wanted every fan to decide for themselves what he was saying.[1]
• Jonathan says Korn spent about sixty thousand dollars on alcohol making Follow the Leader. He also joked that producer Steve Thompson won the job by turning up with cases of Coors Light. Thompson was fired partway through, and engineer Toby Wright finished the album.[1] [2]
• The first minute of Follow the Leader is silence. The album has twenty five tracks, and twelve of them are five seconds of silence, so the music only starts after a minute.[1]
• Got the Life originally opened with a sample of Dom DeLuise from Blazing Saddles. Warner Brothers refused permission to use the dialogue, so it was cut before release.[1]
• A top director told Korn their idea for the Got the Life video was the stupidest he had ever heard. The band had wanted Joseph Kahn, but after his reply they hired McG, who had made their early videos, instead.[1]
• Got the Life was voted onto MTV's Total Request Live for seventy three days and became the first video retired from the show. Billboard later recalled the run as proof of how completely Korn had crossed into the mainstream in 1998.[1] [2]
• The winning fan design for the Issues cover was mailed in a pizza box. The cover came from an MTV contest, won by Alfredo Carlos. Other fan designs were used on alternate covers.[1]
• Korn's free Falling Away from Me download raised over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for children's charities. The band donated twenty five cents for every fan who signed its online guestbook, and released the song against its lawyers' advice.[1]
• When Korn recorded their South Park episode, someone forgot to press record. Jonathan told Kerrang that days later the show asked them to do all their lines again, in the middle of a tour.[1]
• Untouchables was the first album recorded in ninety six kilohertz digital sound. It was also enormously expensive, costing an estimated three million dollars, with fifty microphones on the drum kit alone.[1]
• Only five copies of Jonathan's H. R. Giger microphone stand were ever cast. Giger sculpted the figure by hand, and the moulds were destroyed after casting in Zurich. Jonathan received three, and Giger kept two.[1]
• Chester Bennington, David Draiman and Marilyn Manson sang Jonathan's Queen of the Damned songs on the soundtrack. Contract obligations stopped Jonathan's own vocals appearing on the album, though his voice is heard in the film itself.[1] [2]
• Did My Time is Korn's only top forty hit on the American Hot 100. It peaked at number thirty eight in 2003. It was made for the Lara Croft sequel, and Angelina Jolie appears in the video.[1]
• Korn turned down Adidas, or rather, Adidas turned down Korn. Despite Jonathan's famous tracksuits, Adidas reportedly said it did sports, not music. Puma then signed the band to a reported half million dollar deal.[1] [2]
• Snoop Dogg once played Munky in a Korn video. In the Twisted Transistor video, Lil Jon, Xzibit, David Banner and Snoop Dogg play the band, while the real Korn appear as record executives.[1]
• Bakersfield declared the twenty fourth of February 2006 Korn Day. The mayor made the proclamation as the band launched a tour in its hometown, and a road by the arena was named Korn Row.[1] [2]
• Ray Luzier learned thirty Korn songs when he was asked to learn five for his audition. He was invited to join immediately. Before Korn he had spent years drumming for David Lee Roth.[1]
• A twelve year old filled in for Fieldy on a 2017 tour. Tye Trujillo, son of Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo, played bass with Korn in South America.[1] [2]
• Korn III was recorded in a tiny booth the band called the catbox. Ross Robinson insisted they record in an eight by eight foot room meant for guitars, despite having a large studio available.[1]
• Jonathan once owned Ted Bundy's Volkswagen. His serial killer collection also included clown suits worn by John Wayne Gacy. He sold it off from 2005, saying he did not want it around his kids.[1]
• Barack Obama mentioned Jonathan Davis at a Medal of Honor ceremony. Jonathan had visited wounded soldier Florent Groberg in Germany. Obama joked that he was not the lead singer of Korn, and Jonathan, a critic of Obama, said he was shocked by the praise.[1]
• Rammstein were arrested on Korn's first Family Values Tour. At the Halloween show in 1998 the band performed mostly in their underwear, and police took them offstage. They spent the night in jail for indecent exposure.[1]
• Jonathan's half brother Mark Chavez fronted the band Adema. Adema also came from Bakersfield. Jonathan's father, Rick Davis, had played keyboards for Buck Owens and Frank Zappa.[1] [2]
• A hidden track on Take a Look in the Mirror is a live cover of Metallica's One. It plays after a long silence at the end of the closing song. Korn had also performed One at MTV's tribute to Metallica earlier in 2003.[1] [2]

Disputed stories

These stories are told often but the accounts don't agree. Here are the versions and who says what.