Hope on the horizon

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

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

Later in 1993, the band took up an offer by producer Ross Robinson to work on a debut album. Though Robinson, originally from Barstow, would later produce albums by nue-metal giants Limp Bizkit and Slipknot, he was virtually unknown back then.

He helped Korn ink a deal with Immortal Records, a subsidiary of Epic Records (which itself is owned by Sony). The band recorded tracks at Malibu's Indigo Ranch Studios, where it lived on fruit from nearby orchards for days on end, and Rick Davis' Fat Tracks studio.

Robinson pushed Davis to inject a torturous amount of emotion into his vocal performance, and got the band to make its musical onslaught even darker.

The end result was 1994's "Korn," an album that offered a foundation on which the band would base itself from then on: distorted, effects-laden guitar riffs played on low-tuned seven-string guitars; five-string bass slapped with funky abandon a la Les Claypool against Silveria's Primus-esque backbeats. Floating on top and swooping into the thick of it was the wild braying of Davis' vocals.

The album's cover capitalized on an image that has been at the core of Korn's style ever since -- childhood scares, both real (child abuse, sexual predators) and imagined. The cover photo showed a little girl on a park swingset, shielding the sun from her eyes as an imposing male figure loomed in the shadows in front of her.

Davis' lyrics hinted at personal tortures. "Clown" threatened, "Try and hit me again, if you like/Throw your hate at me with all your might ... Turn around and get your face split," which many took as a retaliation against child abuse. (In reality, the song is about a guy in the audience at an early show; he tried to punch Davis and then yelled, "Go back to Bakersfield!")

The song "Daddy" ("You've raped/I feel dirty") caused many to assume Rick Davis had molested his son. It's a source of embarrassment for him, though his son has gone on the record in many interviews saying it was written about a family friend who sexually abused him. When a 12-year-old Jonathan tried to turn to his family, he said, they ignored him. (Neither Jonathan or Rick will say who the person was, though both say it was a woman.)

The album wasn't an immediate success. The band couldn't get played on rock radio due to the inflammatory, expletive-filled content of its songs. So instead of waiting around for airplay and a shot on MTV, Korn hit the road supporting acts like House of Pain, 311, Ozzy Osbourne, Marilyn Manson and Megadeth.

Out on the road, the band earned buzz for its intense tunes and live show. It even returned to Bakersfield in December of '94 to play for a large crowd in the ballroom of the Casa Royale hotel on Union Avenue.

"I knew it was something," Rick Davis said. "They found a niche. Their niche was to communicate with the Korn kids the way the Korn kids communicate with each other."

By the time the band had finished touring -- two years after releasing "Korn" -- it had sold 700,000 copies of the album, an unheard of amount for a band with little radio support and no video on MTV. Immortal/Epic, which hadn't expected that kind of popularity for the band, pushed Korn and Robinson back into the studio for a follow-up album.

"Life is Peachy" was released in 1996 and debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard album chart. According to almost everyone associated with the project, the recording process was much too rushed. But the album razor-sharpened the Korn formula: There was more experimentation on the guitars, more use of dynamics (softer moments explode into monster-size choruses) and a greater emphasis on Davis' vocal ticks and tricks.

His singing can be broken down into four different styles, often incorporating all four into a single song. There's Davis' scat singing that kicks off the disc's opener, "Twist" -- a sort of demented speaking-in-tongues that he uses frequently. There's his haunted whispering, which sounds like a kidnapper whispering into his victim's ear. There's his straight-ahead singing, which is slightly pinched and almost imitates a spooky child singing nursery rhymes (think of the little girl in "Poltergeist II" saying, "They're baaack"). And then there's Davis' full-throated guttural scream, which can jump out from a stereo speaker and hit like a punch to the gut.

It's no wonder, then, that Davis has had to work with vocal coaches over the past few years to keep his singing from tearing up his throat.

"Life is Peachy" spawned a hit in the track "A.D.I.D.A.S.," which attempts to explain the popular shoe manufacturer's name. (Davis sings that it means "All Day I Dream About Sex.")

Touring continued to be a major aspect of Korn's work, one of the most popular acts at the '96 Lollapalooza tour. In 1998, the band got into the concert-promotion business and started its own rock package tour, called "Family Values."

Life on the road has been the band's proving ground, but touring has also come close to being the band's undoing. According to Arvizu Sr., Korn almost broke up after its stressful second tour.

And though Davis has been clean of drugs and alcohol for several years, Arvizu Sr. said, the rest of the band used to check itself into rehab soon after any major touring.

Most bands whitewash their alcohol and drug use, whether current or in the past. But Korn has been upfront with its fans: On the DVD "Deuce," which offers music videos and behind-the-scenes footage, the band is shown guzzling cans of Coors with no end in sight, while later, Davis shows viewers why he doesn't drink alcohol anymore, with a graphic display of vomiting.

The success of "Life is Peachy" established Korn as a major force on the rock scene. It was also a good sign for the band itself, which knew that sophomore albums are usually where most acts fail. Those that have successful sophomore albums are typically then able to renegotiate their recording contracts, meaning higher royalty rates on later albums.

And that's what Korn did.

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