Korn: Remember Who You Are

Jonathan Davis

We weren’t bandwagon jumping or anything. We were working on it and doing this shit before the thing really really blew up. It wasn’t us trying to be”¦ we’re not trying to be dubstep, it’s just that those elements were in there. It is still a Korn record. 

What drew you to these specific producers? Was it just because you got introduced to them through Skrillex or were these people you were considering working with anyway?

I listened to them as reference for sound design because these guys make sounds. It’s a process of synthesis and it’s a very difficult process. Anyone who says making dance music is just twisting knobs and buttons”¦ that’s not how it is. It’s very difficult. It’s the hardest instrument I have ever tried to learn in my life and I’ve learned a lot of instruments. So it’s being able to work with that kind of talent and the way they see things and do things. It’s a learning process. I’m still learning. I would never say I’ve mastered anything. I’m constantly learning more and more about music. So I explore all types. I went to Japan to learn the biwa, a kind of lute. I want to go to India and check out some tabla players because I love the tablas, I love the sitar, I love the Indian vocals, the percussive kind and the singing and the semi-tones and I’m just a student of music, that’s why I love going to all these different places and just learning their traditional music. I’ve learned stuff from Indian music, I’ve learned stuff from Asian music and it comes out in Korn’s music. We play all this minor music but we can only do it in our style because we only have half step. You guys have quarter tones, that’s two steps per half step, so it’s different. But I’ve studied it and I’m interested in it. You’ll got it going on, your musicians are the shit!

You’ve been through the ups and downs of the music industry. What’s your take on the music scene today?

I think it’s easier today for bands but I think it’s fucked up that the music business is so screwed that you can’t do the cool shit that you used to be able to do back when they had the money. We did so many cool things! We played on an airplane over Greenland at 40,000 feet; did a concert in an airplane and an MTV winner from every country in Europe got to go on the airplane and we did a DVD called Live On The Other Side. We flew from Germany to New York and we played a show on the airplane on the way there and then they get to see the actual show when we played at the Hammerstein in New York. And then they filmed that live and beamed it into theaters all across America. We did The Encounter, which was crazy ”“ we played in a crop circle. That was an ode to Pink Floyd when they did Live atPompeii, it was the same kind of idea. All the cool, crazy, insane kind of things we used to do is not there anymore.

So bands have to get more creative and figure out ways to do it cheaper so it doesn’t cost a bajillion dollars. Major labels now don’t even care about working with a band to let them grow slowly. We were lucky, we got in there right before it went to shit. We didn’t blow up until our third album. We had Sony Music believing in us, you know, putting us through two album cycles and then when the third one blew up it paid off. They believed in us and kept us on the road but they can’t do that with bands anymore. It’s sad. The new bands that are appearing now, they don’t really experience how it really was back in the day but I guess you’ve got to move with the times. Things change and change is good and we’re just rolling with it.