Long earlier than Korn’s self-titled debut album went gold, the band was already residing the excessive life, with an emphasis on excessive. The solely time Korn have been principally sober was after they have been performing. Other than that they have been ingesting closely, popping capsules and snorting up jumbo-sized traces of blow all night time lengthy. By the time they completed touring for the album and entered their rehearsal house to work on their second album, Life Is Peachy, which got here out Oct. 15, 1996, Korn might barely keep in mind the final 12 months of their lives.
They had even much less of a clue about what lay of their future, and have been in a severe state of disarray after they began engaged on new songs.
“We didn’t know what we wanted to do,” frontman Jonathan Davis advised me in 1998. “We didn’t have anything written and I didn’t know what I wanted to sing about. But we had a great vibe and we had lot of momentum behind us, so we just had to get in there and do it.”
The 4 instrumentalists within the band — guitarist James “Munky” Shaffer and Brian “Head” Welch, bassist Reginald “Fieldy” Arvizu and drummer David Silveria – began engaged on materials first. Someone would provide you with an concept – be it a gap riff a mid-song rhythm or a cool beat, and the others joined in. Sticking with what they knew, the band included parts of alt-metal, hip-hop and new wave of their songs, and inside weeks they’d tough skeletons for a handful of latest tunes. At that time, Davis began including vocals to their jams.
“With a lot of bands someone will write a full song and bring it in and then everyone else will play it,” Fieldy mentioned. “This was a way more collaborative process.”
Korn, Live at Donington (1996)
Soon after Korn began engaged on the songs, producer Ross Robinson, who performed a significant position within the sound of the band’s first album, joined them to offer enter. Korn ran the whole lot they’d written by Robinson, who mercilessly critiqued them, explaining what labored and what didn’t.
“I wanted to help them capture their fire and make sure it stayed completely lit,” Robinson mentioned. “I worked with each person in the band to make sure they understood why they were doing what they were doing. My inquiry was very deep and we discovered a lot of unhealed wounds. I’m not afraid to go there and I craved it. But everything was based on a foundation of love and support.”
From a artistic standpoint Korn have been developing with some impressed and cathartic music that progressed naturally from the fabric from their first album. On a social degree, nonetheless, the band had bother holding themselves collectively from one minute to the following. They fought regularly and regardless that Robinson implored them to remain sober lengthy sufficient to complete what they have been engaged on, the band members usually opted for partying over writing and rehearsing, main productive periods to a crashing halt.
“We were drinking mass quantities of everything, and when we were really fucked up you didn’t want to be around us,” Davis mentioned. “I’d bite people when I was drunk. I bit everyone in the band hard. I didn’t know what I was doing and I didn’t care.”
Korn, 1996 Rehearsal
“We were under a lot of pressure, so drinking and getting high seemed preferable to facing our responsibilities,” Welch mentioned. “There were a lot of nights when we’d be playing and someone would do too much of something and suddenly they were passed out and couldn’t play. And a lot of times that guy was me.”
Somehow, with the encouragement of Robinson and their administration, Korn motivated themselves sufficient to complete writing a batch of songs for Life is Peachy. And in April 1996, they entered Indigo Ranch Studios in Malibu, Calif., to start out monitoring.
As with Korn, the album is abrasive and confessional and Davis regurgitates his poisoned guts with lyrics about betrayal, self-abuse and extra. “Sick of the same old things / So I dig a hole / bury pain / I am so high always / Burying my life so slowly,” he sings on “Chi.” In “Good God” he laments the psychic trauma of a dysfunctional relationship: “In the sea of life, you’re just a minnow / live your life insecure / Feel the pain of your needles as they shit into my mind.”
“Most of the lyrics came to me really spontaneously,” Davis mentioned. “A lot of it what I was dealing with. Like, in the song “A.D.I.D.A.S.” [which features the line “all day I dream about sex“] I’m just singing about myself. I’m a horny motherfucker.”
Korn, “A.D.I.D.A.S.” Music Video
In July 1996, Korn completed the ultimate overdubs for Life is Peachy. The album included a canopy of Ice Cube’s “Wicked,” which featured a visitor look by Deftones singer Chino Moreno.
Life is Peachy entered the Billboard album chart at No. 3, and went gold on Jan. 8, 1997, lower than three months after it was launched. Eleven months later, the album went platinum. To date, Life is Peachy has gone double platinum and is taken into account by many to be one among Korn’s finest information.
“It really felt like we could do no wrong,” Davis mentioned. “Everyone was into what we were doing and really enjoying all the different styles we were putting into the music. It was a great time – a fucking crazy time, but a great time.”
Loudwire contributor Jon Wiederhorn is the creator of Raising Hell: Backstage Tales From the Lives of Metal Legends, co-author of Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal, in addition to the co-author of Scott Ian’s autobiography, I’m the Man: The Story of That Guy From Anthrax, and Al Jourgensen’s autobiography, Ministry: The Lost Gospels According to Al Jourgensen and the Agnostic Front guide My Riot! Grit, Guts and Glory.
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