Biography

Song Information: (look below for album)

korn life is peachy follow the leader

How it all started:

Korn was formed in 1993 with the combination of two bands: Sexart and LAPD. Sexart was the band that Jonathan Davis had led during his years as an assistant coroner in the Kern County (California) Coroners Department (also moonlighting as an undertaker at a nearby funeral home), having recently earned a degree at San Francisco's School of Mortuary Science. Jonathan was only in Sexart for about four months and did only one song with the lead singer which is on a Bakersfield compilation. LAPD was the band which included James "Munky" Shaffer (guitar), David Silveria (drums), Reginald "Fieldy Snuts" Arvizu (bass, later) and on tour only (not on the album) Brian "Head" Welch (guitar). LAPD was apparently bigger then Sexart and is not impossible to find, like Sexart is. Munky said: "Me, Fieldy, and David recorded it when we were about 18 or 19. You might even hear some Korn parts. That's when I played rippin' solos."

The bands first crossed paths when Munky and Brian were in Bakersfield one night, and they went to this bar where Sexart happened to be playing. According to Munky: "We were getting ready to leave, and just as we're walking out the door...Jon was the singer in that band, and we heard him sing and me and Brian both turned to each other and our jaws just... (drops jaw) oh my God. And so we turned around and went back in and watched the whole set." Later they asked him to join the band. Initially Jonathan didn't want to do it, but a psychic had told him that he would be stupid if he didn't do it, so he went and tried out. The rest, as they say, is history...

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Stories behind songs:

All quotes from Jon Davis:

Ball Tongue: "The meaning of ball tongue is simple. Some thought it had to do with oral sex,

but infact its about a guy we had to work with on a t-shirt. He either had a pierced tongue

or a wart or something on his tongue and he was a dick to us"

Clown: "We were playing at this show in San Diego and this skinhead guy came up and said 'Fuck

You! Go back to bakersfield!' I didn't understand that I bent down and he took a swing at me.

Our road manager Jeff knocked gis ass out. So that song is 'Clown'..."

Faget: "Everyone thinks I'm bashing gay people in this song, and I'm not. It's really about me

going through highschool being called 'pussy', 'queer', and all that stuff, about getting

picked on by all these jocks."

Shoots and Ladder: "The lyrics are all from nursery rhymes, and a lot nursery rhymes go back

to the middle ages. They're actually pretty twisted if you know the stories behind them, like

about Black Death and stuff."

Helmet In The Bush: "It's about a speed problem that I had. You know, you do a lot of speed

and -- if you're a male -- your penis retracts severly." In the song he says: 'Please God let

me sleep tonight.' Jonathan had trouble sleeping, becuase that's what it does to you.

The guy heard at the beggining of the song is La Caco, a friend of the band. His real name is

Michael and like taco bell. He's a really Nice Guy and he has been friends with the band for

years.

Daddy: "People think Daddy was written becuase my dad fucked my up the ass, but thats not

what the song is about. It wasn't about my dad or my mom. When I was a kid I was being

abused by someone else and I went to my parents and told them about it. They thought I was

lying and joking around, so they never did shit about it. They didn't believe it was happening

to their son. I don't like to talk about that song, this is the most I've ever talked about it"

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Chi: "Chi is about a lot of alcohol and drug abuse; people turn to that when they have problems so that they won't have to feel their pain." Jonathan has said that Chi is actually Chi Cheng from the Deftones: "We named it after him because he used to call it reggae, and he loves reggae music."

Swallow: "That's about being paranoid. Drug-induced paranoia."

Lost: "It's the sterotypical thing about your best friend meeting a chick, and then you're nothing."

Good God: "It's about a guy I knew in school who I thought was my friend, but who fucked me. He came into my life with nothing, hung out at my house, lived off me, and made me do shit I didn't really wanna do. I was into new romantic music and he was a mod, and he'd tell me if I didn't dress like a mod he wouldn't be my friend anymore. Whenever I had plans to go on a date with a chick he'd sabotage it, because he didn't have a date or nothing. He was a gutless fucking nothing. I haven't talked to him for years."

Mr. Rogers: "Back in the day when I was a speed freak, um... even further back when I was a little kid watchin' Mr. Rogers, that shit was scary. He was a freaky old man... Land of Makebelieve and Mr. FuckinMcFeely and shit... made me sick. So back when I was doing speed, like for 5 or 6 days I'd be trippin out and my brain would start to get freaky and get schizophrenic and stuff, and I'd tape it and watch it everyday over and over... I don't know, I was sick in the head. As a kid he told me to be polite and all it did was get me picked on. I fucking hate that man. Thanks for making me polite and trusting everyone, and easy to take advantage of. So I spent 3 months on that one song, just tweakin' on it, and it was totally just my Mr. Rogers obsession, about how evil I thought he was. Pretty much drug induced."

Kunt: "People think it's sexist but it isn't. It's more subconcious bitching at all the women who've been with me in my life. It's not about women in general, just those women who hurt me. Initially, we wrote it to send to American radio for a joke, because they always chop up all the other songs. So we were going to send a 'real' single seven days later."

Wicked: It's an Ice Cube song from his album "Predator". Chino, the lead singer of the Deftones, covers vocals.

Ass Itch: "That was the last song I wrote, and I was so burned at writing out lyrics because everytime I write I get depressed because I start thinking about things, you know? So the whole song is about that. In the chorus it says, 'Before day, my sun will be dying'. It's because I put myself on the line all the time and for what? Because people aren't going to be listening to it anyway."

Kill You: "It's about a relative I first met when I was 12. I fucking hate that bitch. She's the most evil, fucked up person I've met in my whole life. She hated my guts. She did everything she could to make my life hell. Like, when I was sick she'd feed me tea with Tabasco, which is really hot pepper oil. She'd make me drink it by saying, 'You have to burn that cold out, boy'. Fucked up shit like that. So every night when I'd go to sleep, I'd dream of killing that bitch. In some sick way I had a sexual fantasy about her, and I don't know what that stems from or why, but I always dreamt about fucking her and killing her."

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IT'S ON
"It's On" is my shit peer pressure song. Me being so stressed out going out and partying. Everybody's just going 'Come on dude, it's on.' That's partying, it's alcohol, cocaine, women. All that wrapped into one. I wrote a song about it. And the chorus I talked about Why am I really doing this? It's all my fault that I'm doing this because all the alcohol, the booze an the chicks do is just make it worse. They just rearrange all the problems in a different order that I can deal with at that moment.

FREAK ON A LEASH. One of the best titles I've heard ever for a song.
That's my song against the music industry. Like me feeling like I'm fuckin' a pimp, a prostitute. Like I'm paraded around. I'm this freak paraded around but I got corporate America fuckin' making all the money while it's taking a part of me. It's like they stole something from me, they stole my innocence and I'm not calm anymore. I worry constantly.

GOT THE LIFE
That's a song baggin' on myself. How everything's always handed to me. How I look up to God and don't want this anymore. Like I want something more out of life than all this. And I've got everything I really need but I sometimes don't like. I don't know how to explain it. I have to let it sit through the songs more to actually get into what I write. I truly know, really, the meanings of the songs almost. That's what I'm getting out of it right now.

B.B.K.
Big black cock! That's what I call a jack and coke. Those little glasses they serve in Europe and everything. That's what I named it, big black cock. And that's another song about me dealing with the pressures of this album and how I, you know, I'm trying to kill myself, but you know? Do I really want to kill myself? Things I'm just questioning myself. Most of this is self-structured.

CHILDREN OF THE KORN That's the song that Ice Cube is on
Cube came up with the title. I fed off of what he wrote, he was talking about growing up and puberty. Dictating what he can do, like how you gonna tell me how to live and who to fuck? And all this stuff. And I took that and in my stuff I was talking about being a kid always known as the fuckin' town faggot. It's funny how things change. That some of these people picked on me and all of a sudden look who's laughing now. Also in another of the verse I talked about all these parents fuckin hating me for what I do, saying I'm corrupting their children, but in turn these parents need to step outside of themselves and really listen to what I'm talking about. Then I think they can understand that they were kids before. They're just really quick to judge me. All the Children of The Korn are all our Korn fans. All those kids going through that shit and feeling what I feel.

JUSTIN
Justin, that was the kid dying terminally with intestinal cancer. His last dying wish was to meet us and it really freaked me out. That threw a whole bunch of new kind of pressures on my head. That's really intense. Someone's gonna die and his last thing he wants to do is come hang out with us. So I truly just freaked out. It's like why would you want to meet me? What makes me so special? And in turn I talk about how I admire his strength and his life. I couldn't stare at him because he was so content he was gonna die. No one could look him in the eyes. And I totally admire his strength. I wish I had it.

PRETTY
It's a story about this little girl that came into the coroner's office when I was working there and she was fucked by her dad. She was an 11 month old little baby girl. Her legs were broken back behind her and he just fucked her like a toy doll and chucked her in the bathroom. It was the most heinous thing I've ever seen in my life and I still have nightmares about it.

ALL IN THE FAMILY
Fred was there after Korn TV and we said, 'Let's do a song together, Hey, man, let's go back and forth and rip on each other like an old school battle.' I don't know who's idea it was, I can't remember if it was mine or Fieldy's or Fred's but we came up with the idea and we started writing and we worked on it together. I came up with some bags on myself for Fred to say. It was all in good natured fun.

SEED
Seed. That's all about the same thing again. I, laying in bed in my hotel room, thinking about do I really need all this stuff? All this pressure on me? Because I'm a stressed out freak. It's about Nathan, it's about every time that I look into his eyes, I see myself how I used to be, innocent and stress free. I'm kind of jealous of it. It really sucks, I used to be that way. It's like I have to work so hard at this thing in my life. I have to become a stressed out freak. I put food on the table for my child. Every time I look in his eyes, I just see myself staring right back at my ass laughing. I was like care free, innocent as a child. It's really weird and I'm really jealous of it.

RECLAIM MY PLACE
This one is about the whole band and about all my life being called a homosexual. And then I became this big rock star in a band and I'm still called a fag even by my own band. So it's like I was fuckin' pissed off at them. It's like erase them all because I'm gonna reclaim my place and say hey, they owe a lot to me for what I did, and I owe a lot to them back. But, it still kinda sucks. I've never ever gotten away from that fag fuckin' title. Just because I'm a sensitive kinda guy. Kinda feminine it really sucks.

CAMELTOSIS
That's a love song. It's about women in general, women who hurt me. It's Tre's lyrics. He's going on about chicks and my chorus is like I'm so scared to love anyone and really let them in after I got hurt really really bad by a girl. I've let Renee in a little bit, to be honest, but I'll never be that in love ever again. That's what I'm saying, if you've loved twice, you're gonna get fucked, 'cause you usually do.

DEAD BODIES EVERYWHERE
That was the song about my parents trying to keep me out of the music business. My father was in it and he knew how it was and I totally understand now that I have a son. I want Nathan to be a musician but I him don't want him to go through the hell I went through. That's the same thing my Dad was doing. A lot of people can relate to it, because it's like the Dad's wanting their songs to be football players and their sons want to be doctors or something. That peer pressure its like trying to make them something they're really not. And the Dead Bodies thing is like so I did it and all I got out of it was dead bodies everywhere and got all traumatized. Thanks a lot Dad, Mom.

MY GIFT TO YOU
Renee always wanted me to write her a love song and that's why I called it My Gift To You. It's my gift to her, you know how I get sick. I always had a fantasy of fucking her and choking her to death. I fantasize about what it would look like me in her body and watching me do it. So it's like a really sick fucked up song. I did it totally like, I love her so much, I want to take her out of this world. It's really strange. She used to leave notes on my pillow like 25 ways she'd like to kill me. She's got this weird death fetish. We're kinda fuckin' freaky. She got it. She's all 'Thank you that's kinda fucked up. I was expecting a fuckin' I love you, baby kinda song.' I'm all, 'No, you know me.' I mean I can't do that.

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