The chance meeting

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

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

While Jonathan Davis was entrenching himself in the local underground rock scene, the other musicians who would help become Korn were busy shedding the hair metal vibe of the '80s and looking for a new sound.

It was the right time for musical exploration. Hip-hop was getting more attention on MTV and on radio. Funky rhythms were finding their way into alternative rock bands like the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Faith No More. And by 1991, Nirvana was introducing audiences to grunge -- a style that embraced punky spirit, navel-gazing introspection and as little guitar virtuosity as possible.

Listen to early Faith No More albums like 1985's "We Care a Lot" and there's a direct evolution to what Korn's sound would become. The verses are funky, and choruses soar above intense walls of crunch.

Later Faith No More singer Mike Patton's oddball side band, Mister Bungle, also was influential in mixing funk with metal in innovative directions. Korn's "Shoots and Ladders," a song on the band's self-titled 1994 debut album, puts nursery rhymes ("Nick-nack paddy whack, give a dog a bone") against harder backing music. So does Mister Bungle's 1991 song "Squeeze Me Macaroni."

By the late '80s, Shaffer, Arvizu Jr. and Welch had graduated from high school and were looking to pursue rock 'n' roll dreams head-on. Shaffer and Arvizu Jr. joined former Ragtyme vocalist Morrill in a band called L.A.P.D. (Love and Peace Dude). Welch hung out with the band, acted as a volunteer road crewman at shows and sometimes played second guitar.

Looking for a drummer, the group put up fliers around town. One caught the eye of a young South High School student, David Silveria. He was much younger than the rest of the band (nearly three years younger than Arvizu Jr. and two years younger than Shaffer) but had drum chops well beyond his age.

"David was, like, so young, he had to get his mom to drop him off at practice," Shaffer has said in interviews.

Though only 14 years old, Silveria's knack for tight funk playing and stop-on-a-dime precision meshed well with the other rockers. L.A.P.D.'s songs blended tight metallic riffs with a playful spirit. The four-piece outfit thought it had a winning sound, so it made a bold move:

It packed up and went to Los Angeles.

Broke, the group moved into a two-bedroom apartment in Burbank with Morrill's mother. She took one bedroom. The band crammed into the other one.

Times were tough for the musicians, who scrambled to find basic things like food while working day jobs to buy band equipment. Jake Chavez remembered Arvizu Jr. walking into convenience stores and sneakily stuffing his face with hot cheeseburgers, then dropping prepackaged snacks onto the floor and kicking them out the door so he wouldn't have to pay for them.

But the band was successful at promoting itself. It catered to Bakersfield fans by selling tickets to L.A. shows and then chartering buses to take fans down and back.

The musicians also booked gigs and passed out fliers tirelessly in Hollywood. And it did so with a sense of humor:

"Reggie's really silly. I remember him passing out fliers to a show one night and telling people, 'Don't go to our show. Don't go to our show,' " Jake Chavez said. "They ran into Slash (of Guns N' Roses) in front of a club ... Reggie went up and handed him a flier. He said, 'Don't go to our show,' and Slash said, 'That's no way to promote your band.' Reggie introduced himself and Slash said, 'I'm Slash.' So Reggie said, 'Slash ... from Bon Jovi?' It's funny, 'cause now Reggie's probably making more money than Slash."

L.A.P.D. played shows around Southern California and eventually signed a recording contract with independent label Triple-X Records, which had signed Elam's Cradle of Thorns the previous year. It was a terrible deal, though L.A.P.D. didn't know it at the time. A 12" record and a CD titled "Who's Laughing Now" were released in 1992, though the band didn't earn any money from them. (Calls to Triple-X's office for comment were not returned.)

Making things worse was that L.A.P.D.'s players were beginning to act like the big rock stars they always wanted to be. They got rowdy at their shows, drinking and smashing up backstage areas -- then getting banned from some clubs in Los Angeles.

"That's how they thought they were supposed to act," Arvizu Sr. said.

By 1993, still no closer to stardom, the band itched to get out of its contract with Triple-X and ditch lead singer Morrill, whom some said was too stuck in the hair metal ways of the past.

"He was like David Lee Roth without the humor," said Anderson, owner of Andy Noise.

So L.A.P.D. did what it had to do. It broke up. Morrill left and tried to form his own unsuccessful groups (including one, Supermodel, with former SexArt musicians), eventually working as a hairdresser in Huntington Beach. At some point, the remaining L.A.P.D. musicians also moved to Huntington Beach and re-established themselves as Creep. Welch was brought in to play guitar with Shaffer. All that was needed next was a singer.

Auditions yielded a few interesting prospects. One vocalist stuck with Creep for a short period, though he was bounced out for unknown reasons. Things were looking grim for the band.

"Reggie was about to give it up," Arvizu Sr. said.

Meanwhile, Silveria was being scouted by thrash metal band Suicidal Tendencies' frontman Mike Muir to possibly add a funky backdrop to Muir's side project, Infectious Grooves.

But, on a return trip to Bakersfield, fate intervened.

It was a gig at John Bryan's, a bar on California Avenue that offered its stage to local bands. SexArt was playing and Jonathan Davis, then 22, was at the microphone. The members of Creep were impressed by Davis' wild stage presence. Sort of.

"He was a really skinny little kid," longtime band friend LaTouf said. "It was weird to see him go off."

The members of Creep introduced themselves and asked Davis to audition. Five weeks later, Davis came down to Huntington Beach and things clicked. Before long, Davis was moving down to join the band in a new direction.

He even helped the band pick a new name, Korn, a week after joining. (It's a play on a supposed homosexual practice, though Silveria has said in interviews that it's more about the idea that a band's name can be stupid, as long as the music is good.) Davis even suggested flipping the "R" backward to emulate a child's scribbled handwriting.

But things weren't pitch-perfect with the new-named band. Welch, Arvizu Jr., Shaffer and Silveria were already taking their music in a darker direction out of sheer despair and poverty, Arvizu Sr. said, but they weren't ready for what Davis was about to deliver.

"I remember Brian saying, 'Dude, that guy's strange. I don't know about him,' " Jake Chavez said.

"He was different from us. He was darker," said LaTouf, the band's bass tech.

Davis offered bleak, nihilistic lyrics about personal anguish. He crawled inside each song and sung it with a rage that was visible from his flailing gyrations. He took the intensity of his bandmates' instrumental crush and made it even angrier.

The group lived together in a house with other roommates, though living arrangements were even worse than the two-bedroom apartment in Burbank. Some members draped blankets across hallways to build makeshift rooms. Welch slept in a closet in the front of the house.

Rick Davis went to visit his son a few months after Jonathan had moved into the Huntington Beach house, and the father was heartbroken by what he saw: Jonathan and his then-girlfriend, Renee Perez, were living in a 7-foot-by-10-foot corner of the garage. Jonathan was working in a pizza parlor to make rent.

The father took his son out to dinner that evening and watched as his son scarfed down food. When asked why he was shoveling food down his throat, Jonathan said he hadn't eaten in three days.

"I had a wet face all the way back to Long Beach, where I was staying," Rick Davis said. "Everybody wants their children to be OK, and we want them to have a better life."

Click here to continue to "Hope on the horizon"