Heavy metal daydreams

By CHRIS PAGE, Californian staff writer
e-mail: cpage@bakersfield.com

Sunday November 10, 2002, 12:00:00 AM

The way the members of Korn tell it, Bakersfield was a wasteland for anyone too young to get into bars. And that isn't far from the truth for friends Brian Welch and James Shaffer.

The two, who were both born in June 1970 and went to East High School, were friends who spent much of their free time jamming on guitars together. Early on, Welch seemed to be adept at songwriting. Friends remember hearing him wail away on Ozzy Osbourne tunes with his Gibson electric guitar as early as the sixth grade.

In the mid- to late-1980s, so-called "hair metal" music was popular, and bands like Moetley Cruee and Poison were scoring big hits on MTV. Local bands sprouted up playing the style and indulging in the outrageous, gender-bending fashions of the time. But gigs in Bakersfield for metal acts were largely limited to keg parties and 21-and-over clubs.

Still in high school, Welch joined the band Ragtyme, featuring singer Richard Morrill and Highland High School bassist Reggie Arvizu Jr.

An early flier for one of the band's gigs showed all five members of the band wearing girlishly long, teased-out and hairsprayed manes, black boots and tight, acid-washed jeans. (The flier also announced the gig's date as "Roctober 31" [sic].)

Ty Elam -- a rock kid who would later go on to front one of the most popular Bakersfield bands of the early '90s, the gothic-tinged Cradle of Thorns -- took a physical education class with Welch and Shaffer. He remembered how much the two stood out from the crowd.

"It was odd in Bakersfield at that time to be rockers," Elam said. "They were just as different as me with a mohawk. They'd pull their sweats over their jeans because they were too tight (to take off)."

Around that time, Welch got the nickname that would stick with him to this day: "Head." It's what Korn's fans know him by -- though he originally hated the moniker, given to him because of his too-big-for-hats head.

"I remember us giving him that nickname," said high school friend Jake Chavez, 34, who now runs Downtown Records in Bakersfield. "He hated it. That song 'Head Games' (by Foreigner) would come on and I'd go [singing], 'Head games!'' "

At the time, the cliques in high school were inclusive enough that punks like Elam and Chavez often hung out with the rockers. Welch and Shaffer were remembered as being "very shy." Oftentimes, they would serve as stagehands for other local bands and hang out rehearsal studios downtown, absorbing the scene.

Click here to continue to "A reluctant star"