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Band History. The band KoRn was first formed in 1993 by the merging of two bands: LAPD and Sexart. Sexart was the band that Jonathon was the lead singer of during his days in the Kern County Coroner's office. Sexart was described as a "dull-assed Bakersfield band". He was only in this band for a short time, and it is believed that he only did one song that can be found on a Bakersfield compilation. "Sex Art spawned three bands to date. One being Korn, of course, with Jonathan. Another being Cradle of Thorns, and the third is called Juice. Juice is basically Sex Art without Jon and Ty. As far as anyone knows, there are a scarce amount of Sex Art tapes. All that are known are the ones that the band members have... and they won't even give their manager a copy because they don't want it to fall into the wrong hands. Another tidbit, Sex Art wrote "Blind." The original version is on the Sex Art demo tape, and I hear it's really cool... and it shows how much all the members of all the bands have grown. One member of Sex Art was Ryan, and he is now is Orgy (Thanks to the ).

LAPD was made up of Reggie (fieldy snuts) Arvizu (bass), James (munky) Shaffer (guitar), David Silveria (drums), and Brian (head) Welch (guitar). David says this about LAPD: "they weren't really very good. We were still trying to find our own band sound and develop our own individual sounds on our instruments. If you listen to those records now, you wouldn't think we were even the same guys playing on them. It was kinda a heavy, up-tempo punk, not at all what were doing now. But LAPD really was good for us, too, because we learned a lot about the industry and how things work. We played all the LA clubs - even some pay-to-play venues for about two years. Even when we didn't pay-to-play anymore we were playing for nothing, which is still paying to play. We definetly did not get a record deal after a few songs. We payed our dues" (Modern drummer).

It all started one day when Munky and Head went to a bar. Munky recalls: "We were getting ready to leave and just as we were walking out the door...Jon was the lead singer of that band, and we heard him sing, and me and Brian just turned to each other and our jaws just (dropped)...and so we turned around and went back in and watched the whole set" (from the video "Who Then Now?").

Shortly after, James and Brian asked Jon to join their band. According to Jon, he didn't want to, but a psychic told him to do it. Within a month, he was living with them and rehearsing under the name Korn. Within about a year of that, the band was signed to a record deal with Immortal/Epic. During the first week that the record "Korn" was out, it sold 1100 copies, and the rest is history. Jonathon says that from there, the group's popularity spread "like a virus" (Alternative Press, September 1997). The band toured for eighteen straight months, which led the album to Platinum record sales. When Life is Peachy first hit the record stores, it appeared at number three on Billboard's Top 200.

Origin of the name "KoRn". Apparently, the band got their name because they were trying to think of a name for the band, and Jonathon came up with KoRn because of a certain homosexual episode that he heard of. We won't get into too many details, but supposedly it consited of two homosexuals and one of them was licking the other dude's asshole, and the guy shot diahrrea all over his face. Apparently the guy had a Korn Kernel on his tongue afterwords. Jonathon heard about this and went around saying "corn" to everyone. They all thought it was pretty funny. So according to Jon, when they were thinking of a name for the band, Jonathon thought of "Corn", and they all just went "fuck yeah". Then he wrote it down like a little child would write it, and the rest is history. Look at all them details. There were many rumours that KoRn stood for Kiddie pORN, but this doesn't seem to be true.

The KoRn sound. According to Alternative Press, "KoRn plow an entirely new field, isolated from any established genre-and if you think they sound familiar, it is probably because someone copped the sound from them". Jonathon goes on to say: "I think it's kinda cool that no one knows how to classify us- you know you are doing something right. I like the fact that there are people out there saying that we are ruining alternative radio, keeping this metal shit alive. But a lot of them are just people who have a hard-on out to get us, anyway. We could put out the most incredible album, and they'd still write shit about it" (Alternative Press, September 1997).

Jonathon "HIV" Davis on vocals. Jonathon was born on January 18, 1971. He is Scottish, and was born presbyterian, but had to convert to Catholic because his mother wanted to marry his stepfather in a catholic church. He has one sister, a half-sister, a half-brother, and a stepsister. Jonathon went to High School at Highland High School in Bakersfield. His mom was an actress/dancer in local theatrical productions; his father was a big band keyboardist and owned a music store, as well as the studio once owned by country singer Buck Owens.

Jonathon attended Mortuary College and used to work in a coroner's office. He describes his time there as "death, death, crying and grief. You become a cold motherfucker when you work for a coroner. But I loved it" (Alternative Press, September 1997). He got his nickname because in High School he was picked on by all of the jocks. They called him faget and pussy because he was a "glam" type, and he listened to Duran Duran. According to Jon: "That's my nickname: HIV. I got it from the band because they got tired of calling me 'faggot' all the time...and I dunno, I've been called that all my life, and I just got tired of it. So I just put this (tattoo) on my arm. Everybody should have this on their arm-there's so many people that are HIV-positive and know it, and are out sleeping around-they're gonna take everybody down with them. So once you test positive, right then and there, they should stamp your ass. It'd work good. But I've gotten a lot of shit for this tattoo. A lot of Interview was totally offended by it, and I was like 'Look I am not some fucking New York artsy guy; I'm from Bakersfield California, and this is what it means to me. I don't give a fuck what you think of it, and you are putting words in my mouth when I don't mean it that way' (Alternative Press, September 1997). Contrary to popular belief, he is not a homosexual and he doesn't have AIDS.

Davis began his musical life messing around in his father's Bakersfield music store. He started playing drums when he was 5, and used to join his father's band for their gigs at a local nightspot. Jon says that he started picking up other instruments in the store and playing them. "There were were music teachers in the store all the time giving lessons. Between their lessons, I asked them to teach me. I would learn the basics for each instrument and then would teach myself the rest." By the time Davis got to high school, he played well enough to become a musical all-star of sorts. He was also playing bagpipes, and won medals at various Scotish games. By this time, Davis' dad had lost the music store. He started a recording studio and eventually ended up owning country pioneer Buck Owens' studio. The elder Davis warned his son about getting into the music business. Jon says: "He flat-out refused to let me get in, he kept saying, 'no, no, no, don't do that'. I wanted to be in music so bad."
Jonathon has a baby boy named Nathan Houseman Davis. He was born on October 18, 1995. Houseman is also Johnathon's real middle name.

According to a recent Alternative Press Article, Jon feels that "You gotta have kids. That's the single most awesome experience you'll ever have in your entire life. You made a little fuckin' human being that you look at and see yourself in. Having a son is probably the best thing that ever happened to me. Before, I was killing myself. Back when we first started I was 23 and I was killing a whole bottle of Jagermeister, doing blow, wake up in the morning no hangover, still go, go! I did that for a year straight, and it started catching up to me. The hangovers and the anxiety- shit was starting to snowball...Then my son was born. I looked down at that little piece of-at that little life-and went, 'I don't want to be dead and have him growing up without a dad'. When he was born, I was even drunk. I fucking went out to the car and hit the bottle. My dad was a drunk musician all the time, and I don't want my boy growing up seeing that. Me and Fieldy are traumatized enough from our fathers: the dope and the booze-they were in bands together, so we saw all that shit when we were little kids- and they wonder why we drink so bad. But now, having a kid changes everything; I feel responsible for another person. And thank God I got him. I still hurt myself. I still get drunk, but not around him, and I try not to go that far" (Alternative Press, September 1997).

Jonathon has a girlfriend named Rene. Both Jonathon and Nathan live in Huntington Beach California. He sites his musical influences as Old-school rappers like Rob Base and Slick Rick; Simon Lebon of Duran Duran, Barry Manilow, Western and Eastern classical music. Jon is musically trained in upright bass, violin, clarinet, drums, bagpipes and piano. His favorite bands are Flock of Seagulls, Missing Persons, and Duran Duran.

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Jonathan Davis - Vocals & Bagpipes Fieldy - Bass J. Munky Shaffer - Guitar Brian (head) Welsh - Guitar & Vocals David - Drums

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