Above: Korn
He laughs a coaxed, “G’day,” in a decent Australian accent, as I try to get softly spoken Jonathan Davis, lead singer of Korn, broken in and feeling comfortable for a candid interview. But the man needed no taming. For Davis, the days of conforming to rock god status expectations are gone and we are left with little banter and sad truths without masks or games.
“We were just this band having fun before we got so big, playing shows for beer tabs, stuff like that,” recalls Davis fondly of the early days with the band. But things changed and Davis admits that he has been in the business so long that he’s watched others go through the same cycle – the rise, the explosion of fame and the pouring money. “It changes people and makes them different. But, if you stay in it long enough you become grounded again and stop that crazy shit,” he says. A strange insight from the mouth of one of the worlds highest rated metal vocalists, into the music industry many mortals crave so badly.
Having done the full rotation, Korn steered their lyrical ship in sights of that virginal state of when they first started out by, “going back to the music we want to make and not falling into outside influences,” says Davis, who also stated that Korn’s recent record release, Korn 3 – Remember Who You Are is, “100 percent truly real from the heart.”
Surprisingly in making the change, Davis doesn’t feel caged by the image that the band has created for themselves. “I just sing whatever I feel. So if I want to try something different, I do it. There’s a rule when I’m making music, if it makes me scared, or I don’t know if what I’m doing is good, that’s a good feeling, because I’m letting go.” Says Davis who doesn’t like staying in his comfort zone.
Korn 3 is the third record that the band has worked on, with close friend and mad genius producer, Ross Robinson, who produced Korn’s first two records Korn and Life is Peachy. Since then, Robinson has also worked with rock god greats such as Slipknot, Limp Biscuit, Machine Head and The Cure and most recently has taken The Klaxons, under his ‘God Father of Nu Metal’ wing. “He is definitely different.” Davis says of Robinson. “He’s kind of maddening and hard but I love him. He is a great producer,” adds Davis, who also stated that to work with Robinson is an experience you would never forget as he has an amazing way of pulling things out of people that no one else can do.
Davis describes Korn 3 as, “something minimalist and in your face raw.” The band locked themselves in a little room and wrote and recorded the music together on a two-inch tape without the use of computer programs like Click Track, or Pro Tools. “By doing that we remembered how much better music flows. It has a soul of its own,” he says.
In the peak of his Rock God state, Davis credits his boys for saving his life, when he decided to bin the drugs and alcohol in 1998 and remains sober to this day. “If I could do drugs every once in a little while, I’d do the fuck out of them,” he laughs, admitting that in his unconventional work setting he craves them every single day. “But I know if I did, I would be dead and I want to be with my children. It’s a deterrent,” he says. Giving them up was the hardest thing Davis has even done, detoxing for over a year. “Drug detox is a couple of months and alcohol detox is a couple of months, but mentally, to get all the chemicals back together it took almost a year. It was fucked up,” he admits. Davis did do drugs and alcohol before he was a part of Korn to help him deal with his life and believes that in moderation they are fine, but becomes a problem when a person comes to rely on them, or uses them to be a better person like Davis did. “I got going with this rock star life and I thought it was something I had to do to be a rock star. That’s what really started me and then it became a problem… I needed them to keep going. I needed to write good songs and once I got on them, I was ten times better.” Davis is aware that many people who come to their shows do drugs and alcohol because “they don’t think they can have a good time without them.”
The bands lyrics have been highly criticised in the past for their dark themes and negativity and Davis reads all the reviews, taking the good and leaving the bad. “Life is too short to be walking around paranoid all the fucken time,” he says. But all one must do is flick the contrast switch and the dark becomes light. Davis is a role model and pioneer of Nu Metal. “A lot of people come up to me and thank me for the records and say with out it, they would be dead. It feels really good that my music can affect them positively like that,” he says. As a father role model, david wants to pass on two core values to his children, the first being respect, the second being to work hard. “Respect people, respect yourself, respect everything. If you treat everything in life with respect, it will be given back to you. That’s a big thing with me and my boys,” he says, accentuating ‘my boys.’ The other thing is that nothing will ever be handed to his children. “No matter what they get, they are going to work for it in some kind of way,” both values are what makes someone a ‘good’ person in Davis’ eyes.
In 1999, the year Issues was released, Davis was in detox mode, he would perform shows then lock himself away in his room. Following on from then, it became clear that he could in fact write decent songs without drugs or alcohol and over the next 10 years the band experimented heavily with their records with each one of them receiving Platinum certification. It appears now that the band is much more grounded, realising they have nothing more to prove. They don’t need to conform to what they think we as fans, or others in the music industry expect them to be. But as far rock god status goes, Davis doesn’t see himself that way. “Its weird, I just write music and perform it live.”
Korn will be touring Australia in December this year, performing some shows each with Guns and Roses, Shihad and Sydonia. For more information on the upcoming tour, or Korn 3 - Remember who you are, visit their website at, http://modlife.com/korn
No comments:
Post a Comment