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Name: Jonathan Houseman Davis
Born: January 18, 1971
Birthplace: Bakersfield, California
Martial Status: Married
Wife: Renee Davis
Nickname: HIV
Instrument: Vocals / Bagpipes
Jonathan grew up in Bakersfield, California. A suberb of California, which is located 120 miles from Los Angeles. "There isn't much to do in Bakersfield apart from do drugs, fuck and have a kid." States Jonathan. When Jonathan attended Highland High School he was alienated from his peers because of his artistic leanings. Due to this, Jonathan had the words "HIV" tattooed on his upper-right arm. Basically it's a "Fuck you to everybody" who called him a faget. He also sports two more tattoos, the Korn logo, which is located on Jonathan's lower torso (lower back). And a tattoo of a Crazed Bishop, which Jonathan describes as "Showing how crazy and fucked up religion is."
At the age of sixteen Jonathan became a corroner's assistant for the Coroners Department in Kern County. Jonathan then went on to graduate from the San Francisco School of Mortuary Science. Jonathan was also a manager of a Pizza Hut restaurant. "That was fun! I got everybody high on speed. I was rockin', cos I was a manager," says Jonathan. "The worst fucking job I ever did was as a janitor at a county building, in the cafeteria. That was horrible. I had to mop all the fucking floors, clean all the grease outta shit and wash dishes. I hated it." He describes.
Jonathan currently resides in Belmont Shores, California. "I can see Jonathan's house from my backyard," Fieldy chimes.
It was during a local club show in Bakersfield that James and Brian, spotted Jonathan singing for Sex Art. They approached Jonathan to ask him to join the band. "I didn't want to do it, I went to a psychic, she told me I was stupid if I didn't do it." Jonathan admits.
On October 18, 1995, Renee gave birth to Nathan Houseman Davis. He had been expecting a baby girl. "My astrologer told me it was going to be a girl. My little girl has been coming to me in my dreams, and it's breaking my fucking heart."
In November of 1998, Jonathan married his long-time girlfriend, Renee. "Man! I gave her a wedding she will never forget," he enthuses. "I was fully in all armour and wearing a Kings Crown; she's a fairy. There were all kinds of little fairies and sprites jumping in the trees and shit, it was crazy," he describes.
Name: Brian 'Head' Welch
Born: June 19, 1970
Birthplace: Torrance, California
Martial Status: Married
Wife: Rebekkah Welch
Nickname: Head
Instrument: Guitar
During his school years, Brian befriended a young man called James Schaffer. With Brian being a budding guitarist, he and James would have a friendly competition with each other. Brian and James would go back and forth over each other's homes to jam.
Brian left home at the age of 17 and became employed in two jobs. During the day, Brian would deliver furniture, and at night, he would deliver pizzas. He also used to work in the L.A Recording Workshop, amd would learn sound engineering, but he found it boring and left.
As time rolled by, Brian joined Ragtyme, a band which were formed before L.A.P.D. Ragtyme also played host to such luminaries as Fieldy and ex-L.A.P.D frontman, Richard Moral. Ragtyme would later split. Fieldy and Richard Moral would later form L.A.P.D with James Schaffer joining them on guitar. Brian would often hang out with L.A.P.D. "He'd hang around and drink all our beer," James states. L.A.P.D were shortly to go on tour and the band decided that they needed a second guitarist. Enter Brian Welch. Brian and James have been playing together for more than two-thirds of their lives.
Brian currently resides in Redondo Beach, California. Where he lives with his wife, Rebekkah Welch and his daughter, Jennea Marie Welch, who was born on July 6, 1998.
Brian's nickname stems from the size of his cranium. "I got a big head," He says "Go get me any hat, and it won't fit." He adds.
Name: James Christian Shaffer
Born: June 6, 1970
Birthplace: Rosedale, California
Martial Status: Single
Nickname: Munky
Instrument: Guitar
His career started from an accident, in which, the top of his finger was cut off by a biking incident. He was sneaking out to a party one evening and the chain slipped off his bike. To stop any adverse noise, James quickly slapped his hand on the chain, his finger was caught, and the top was cut off.
During the High-School years, James became friends with a guy, who went by the name of Brian Welch. Who wasn't only a friend but also, a fellow guitarist. It seemed envitable that James and Brian were destined to be in a band together and L.A.P.D proved that. With James originally joining the band full-time and Brian joining the fold later for touring duties. L.A.P.D also sported two other Korn members, Reginald "Fieldy" Arvizu (Bass) and David Silveria (Drums). Eventually, L.A.P.D became Creep, and then from Creep to Korn.
Munky sees a different persona of himself the second he steps on stage. This reflects in the clothes he wears in the live set. Munky sports old overalls, which are "Kinda, trashy, dirty...". He continues "Really what it is, it's like that person I don't like in me, all the things I hate about myself, that's who I am up there".
His nickname stems from his feet. In which, when they are spread out, they look like monkey hands.
Name: David Silveria
Born: September 21, 1972
Birthplace: Bakersfield, California
Martial Status: Married
Wife: Shannon Bellino
Instrument: Drums/Percussion
After jamming with various local garage bands. At the age of thirteen, David contacted Fieldy and enquired about the vacant drummer's position. "We called him back, he came down and tried out and he was good man." Fieldy says.
David's favourite all-time drummers are Motley Crue's Tommy Lee and Faith No More's Mike Bordin. "I was a huge Motley Crue fan and I really liked Tommy Lee's playing." David says.
"My father offered to pay my whole way to college." David says "But I told him I wanted to try this first," he adds. "My father didn't put me down for this, but he thought I was wasting my time. But my mother was super supportive. She knew it was my dream, and she listened enough to know I was serious about it." David concludes.
As a side job, David models for skate-punk clothing company 26 Red. David has proved to be such a success that, 26 Red's rivals, Grind, are interested in signing David up for a series of commercials.
In April 1997, David married Shannon Bellino, they have one son, David Jnr, who was born on August 22, 1997. On 27th July, 1999. Shannon gave birth to Sofia Aurora, the couple's second child, who was born in Hungtington Beach, California and weighed in at 7lbs and 2oz.
David also has Shannon's name tattooed across his back. He also has various other tattoos which include, a cheshire cat, the Korn logo and a guy sticking out his tongue that has a drumstick stabbed through it.
Name: Reginald "Fieldy" Arvizu
Born: November 2, 1969
Birthplace: Bakersfield, California
Martial Status: Married
Wife: Shela Arvizu
Nickname: Fieldy
Instrument: Bass
Fieldy was already acqainted with the guitar from a very early age. His father used to play in a band with Rick Davis, Jonathan's father. So Fieldy and Jonathan were quite familiar with each other. Fieldy also used to bully Jonathan, "I'd run him down with my three-wheeler," Fieldy adds.
Fieldy's worst job included being employed as a door to door Plant Salesman. "I did good the first day, I was like 'Yeah! I got this down'. I went to my Mom's house and everybody we knew, and sold to them. The next day, I didn't sell shit. It sucked. I got fired".
Fieldy currently resides in Belmont Shores, California. A Californian suberb which is located 60 miles west of LA.
Fieldy is also the mastermind behind each and every piece of Korn merchandise "All the merchandise you see, that's all me". He states. "I think everybody could do it. I think everybody's just lazy. So I end up being the one that does it all. I come up with a bunch of designs, show them to the band. They either approve or disapprove".
May 1998, Fieldy married his girlfriend, Shela. They have two daughters, Serena, who was born on September 30 1997 and in December 98' Shela gave birth to Olivia.
Fieldy's namesake stems from his cheeks! "When I was younger, I had these fucking chipmunk cheeks, right... so they called me 'Gopher', and then it became 'Garf'. Then they started callin' me 'Garfield'. Then it became 'Fieldy'."
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Band Biography
Jonathan Davis : vocals, bagpipes
Fieldy : bass
David Silveria : drums, percussion
James "Munky" Shaffer : guitars
Brian "Head" Welch : guitars
Musical revolutions can foment in the oddest places: Athens, Georgia. Aberdeen, Washington. Bakersfield, California.
That's right, Bakersfield; a bleak, arid little town just west of Death Valley that could double as a David Lynch movie set-if there were anything going on, that is. As a kid Fieldy spent much of his adolescence "standing around in dirt fields, drinking beer, watching other kids fight." At some point, Fieldy and some friends decided their time would be better spent taking out their frustrations on musical instruments instead.
And rock music would never be the same.
So Fieldy, James "Munky" Shaffer, David Silveria, Brian "Head" Welch, and eventually, an assistant coroner with a troubled past named Jonathan Davis left Bakersfield for Los Angeles and collectively became known as KORN. It helped that they all had common influences-the angry, urban stylings of hip-hop, the heavy, riff-driven angst of death metal. But the sounds emanating from this band's Huntington Beach rehearsal space would soon set an entirely fresh musical precedent-and set off a wave of imitators that eventually threatened to engulf the band itself.
After touring for nearly two years, KORN was signed by Immortal and released their now-classic eponymous 1994 debut. KORN opened with the prophetic, gravel-throated challenge "Are you ready?!" before kicking into the heaviest guitar sound yet heard in rock thanks to the team of Shaffer and Welch, who tuned their already-low 7-string guitars even lower and played with no regard for traditional harmonic consonance. The sound was metallic sludge, but tempered oddly by bassist Fieldy and drummer Silveria, who added a mix of porn-soundtrack funk and hip-hop rhythms that was puzzlingly aggressive and chill. Next, nursery-rhyme-like melodies were woven into the dark mix, helping make KORN the creepiest, heaviest debut since Black Sabbath. But Davis had no desire to sing about devils and witches; he was busy exorcising real-life demons. Songs such as "Faget" and "Shoots and Ladders" were discomfortingly personal confessionals of shattered childhood, and by album's end Davis was literally in tears in the harrowing "Daddy."
"Are you ready?!" Well, commercial radio sure wasn't. And neither was MTV. Not yet, anyway. So KORN took their grisly show on the road someplace they knew it'd get noticed: back to the tour circuit, and a stint on Ozzfest. The band's unique sound may have been unfamiliar, but the kids knew it rocked mightily-and many of them could directly relate to Davis' grim lyrical obsessions. At that point in time, there was quite simply no band on earth like KORN.
And so they began to amass a following that would send their next album, 1996's brutal yet cheekily titled Life is Peachy, into platinum sales. And this time at least the press was ready. "...Perverts, psychopaths and paranoiacs" gushed the Chicago Tribune. "An ingeniously twisted piece of personal hell" raved Cleveland's Plain Dealer. And while Peachy served more to reinforce the band's core sound rather than innovate in the manner of the debut, it did introduce to the world to a side of the band no one ever suspected existed: humor. The bagpipe-driven cover version of War's "Lowrider" was just one example. An A-Z dictionary of vulgarity called "K@#%!" was another-though some critics and self-appointed moral guardians were put off by the language. One Zeeland, Michigan high school administrator told the press that KORN was "indecent, vulgar, and obscene" shortly after suspending a student for wearing a T-shirt that merely said "KORN." After the band filed a cease-and-desist order against the school on behalf of the student, he was reinstated. But the episode marks yet another milestone for the band: it was the first of many times the band would go to bat for its fans.
Years of touring followed again as the band fortified its fan-base to the degree that their next album, 1998's Follow the Leader, would debut at No. 1 on Billboard's Top 200. The band charted two bona fide singles with "Got the Life" and "Freak on a Leash," while the album's actual "rap-metal" tracks ("Children of the KORN" with guest rapper Ice Cube, and "All in the Family" with guest abuser Fred Durst) were some of the band's hardest-hitting to date, and reaffirmed their status as the band by which others would be judged in this genre. Others seemed to agree. Rolling Stone christened Follow the Leader one of the best alternative albums of the '90s, praising KORN's ability to channel "their disgust with the state of the nation-and the generation doomed to inherit it-into booming, articulate violence."
Booming, articulate violence aside, Follow the Leader exposed yet another side of KORN. When a 14-year-old boy suffering from terminal intestinal cancer requested to meet the band for a few minutes through the Make-A-Wish foundation, the band was stunned. And nervous. But they hit it off, and the few minutes turned into a day, and that turned into a few more days, and then a song-"Justin."
Reaffirming KORN's populist roots were their weekly live Internet video broadcasts from the studio during the album's making. These "after school specials" kept fans up on the progress of the record, offered them live, call-in Q&A sessions with the band themselves, and introduced them to guests running the gamut from members of 311, the Deftones, and Limp Bizkit to porn stars like Ron Jeremy and Randi Rage.
In yet another populist move, the band launched "KORN Kampaign '98," a political campaign-style American tour to promote their album that featured "fan conferences" in major cities throughout the country. KORN also put together a heavy-rock-and-rap arena circus, mockingly called the Family Values Tour, which featured everyone from Ice Cube to Limp Bizkit to Rammstein, and proved to be one of 1998's most successful tours. A live compilation CD, The Family Values Tour '98, was certified gold the following summer, when KORN performed an explosive set at Woodstock '99.
Meanwhile, KORN's record label Elementree was up and running just fine as its first signed act, Orgy, scored a platinum record for them with Candyass. By now, almost every heavy band on the planet was playing down-tuned 7-string guitars (which were virtually extinct before KORN). The proliferation of sound-alike bands ironically placed the band in a tenuous position: Not only was KORN in danger of seeming "played out" in the very genre they spearheaded, the beginnings of a backlash to "rap-metal" chart domination were cropping up in the media. KORN knew that another Peachy or Leader, however great, however welcome by fans, and however commercially successful, would not do. It was time to reinvent themselves and break from the pack-a risky move given the band's traditionally loyal following. KORN took some time off to work on what would be one of the most important records of their career.
"We knew when we wrote this album that we were going to have to do something really great," Shaffer said at the time. "...We had to move forward, push the boundaries, and create something very personal." In yet another nod to their audience, KORN allowed the fans to design the cover. Fans submitted their work, and one fan painting was chosen for the record's striking cover art. Several runners-up got limited-edition album covers of their own work. Musically, Issues turned out to be the best album since the group's debut release, and eclipsed even that record in strength of songwriting. When Issues was finally released, all the band's efforts paid off wildly. For the second time in their career, they debuted at No. 1. They had yet another high-charting single with the eerie, crushing "Falling Away From Me." And the record went quadruple platinum. This was followed by yet another massively successful tour, which kicked off on Halloween 1999 at Harlem's historic Apollo Theater. If Issues represented an artistic, critical, and commercial triumph at a crucial moment for the band, how would KORN respond to the inevitable pressure of its follow-up?
By making a better one: Untouchables. Using a 24-BIT sampling rate-twice the highest rate normally used for recording-KORN and producer Michael Beinhorn have created a rich sonic panorama. Unfathomably heavy, uncompromisingly introspective, and startlingly unique, Untouchables catapults KORN to yet another level.
But what should we expect? After all, this is a band marked by an insatiable desire to push the rock envelope. It's what makes them KORN.
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