Found at www.mtv.com

KORN AT LOLLAPALOOZA

by Serena Altschul

Serena Altschul: I looked at old tapes of Perry Farrell's interview from 1991, and he was talking about what Lollapalooza was gonna be and, one of the things he said, sort of like, prophetically, was that it was gonna have to evolve and change morph and do different things. Do you feel like it's been able to do that at all, particularly from last year to this year?

Jonathan Davis: I think so from last year because last year were like, bands like Metallica and Soundgarden, it wasn't like a real Lollapalooza vibe because it seems to me that Lollapalooza's been about cutting edge bands, ones on the underground, and that's what I think he based that whole thing on and last year really just wasn't all about that. And this year, now that he's back on, you can tell, there's so many different, diverse music groups here, so....

Serena: What do you think of the line-up, it's everything from rock and rap, and dance music, and you guys....

Jonathan: That's how a festival should be.

Serena: You guys just recently finished touring in Australia?

Jonathan: Australia, Europe, everywhere.

Serena: And you did a lot of festivals and shows. How does a festival differ, as far as this and other shows you've played? Is it different at all or is it pretty much the same?

David: The food's worse.

Jonathan: The food's worse.

David: Weather's worse.

Jonathan: The weather's worse over there.

Fieldy: But the crowds are great.

Jonathan: The crowds are crazy, but I think here, this festival's more diverse than the ones in Europe for the fact that it's all about the same like, I mean, say the Dynamo Festival, it's all heavy, heavy, heavy metal bands, there's like....It just depends. Like Essential was all alternative Brit pop-rock stuff and then we got on that. It's different.

Serena: Yeah, a number of the people I've spoken to sort of have like mixed feelings about what Lollapalooza is or has become. Do you have mixed feelings, do you like what it's doing or you feel like it's sort of whatever?

David: I think it's doing just fine, it's been changing every year, in a little bit different vibe, it's doing good. It's the coolest tour for a summer festival I've ever seen. It always has been.

Serena: A lot of bands who are playing Lollapalooza for their first time years back felt like there was some kind of like mystique about Lollapalooza, there's something a little different. Do you still feel like there is a mystique? Or are you sort of over that?

David: I think it's kind of mystique in the way that all the different bands that are playing, like say if there's a fan that's just into Snoop and he's never heard of us, it's kind of mystique because this person's getting ready to go to a big festival, these bands of different styles of music they've never heard before. So I think that way it's kind of mystique.

Serena: I just interviewed Snoop and he said he's really excited to hear you guys. Are there any bands you're looking forward to seeing and listening to?

Fieldy: Yeah, we're missing 'em right now.

David: Right now we wanna be on there watching 'em.

Brian: I wanna see Tool, I've never seen 'em before, heard a lot of good things about 'em.

Jonathan: Tool. I wanna check out Orbital too

Fieldy: Yeah, Orbital got a huge disco ball, the biggest one I ever seen in my life. That thing's as big as my house.

Jonathan: Definitely.

Serena: They need like a crane to hang it from.

Fieldy: It's so huge.... it's HUGE!

Jonathan: It's huuuge!

Serena: What does Lollapalooza mean to you? Does it mean anything to you other than a great festival where people hear varied music?

Jonathan: That's about it.

Fieldy: It means like, drink all day.

Jonathan: Drink all day and get a chance for people to see different styles of music that they haven't seen before.

Munky: Yeah, I think it means like, bringing a lot of different people together. I think that's what Perry's original idea was: to bring a lot of different styles of music together and uh, just so everybody would have a good time and appreciate the different styles of music and open their minds to some different stuff.

David: I think it means spending the summer in hot-ass Africa.

Fieldy: Can you say ass?

Serena: We did an interview with Tricky recently and he was just saying, and maybe you feel this way too, I don't know, that he was a little concerned about how the crowd was gonna' take him. He was like "Okay, I think this is gonna be, like, all Tool fans and Korn fans and they're not gonna' get what I'm doing." Is that a concern at all? Or you feel like "Okay, this is gonna be all Snoop fans and they're not gonna get what we're doing?"

Fieldy: You know, if that ever happens to us, it makes us push harder and want to win the crowd over. It doesn't matter. We'll go out if nobody's heard of us and we'll just, we'll push harder and make 'em like us. That's all you gotta do. It's all good.

Jonathan: Doesn't matter.

Serena: When you were approached to do Lolla, like, why did you want to do it, I mean, you guys have a huge following?

Fieldy: 'Cuz the line-up was good.

Serena: Right.

Fieldy: We like the line-up, it was good, good variety.

Serena: Do you think it somehow represents sort of a state of fragmented music these days? You know, there was that whole grunge movement for a period and other periods had their movements but right now really seems like there's so many varied kinds of music and they're all sort of popular....

Jonathan: That's good. To me it is. That's good for me. It means people are opening their minds up a little bit and just not listening to one style of music and I think that's what it should be about.

Fieldy: I hope they don't try to label our music something stupid like "grunge." We're just Korn.

Serena: I know you've been really involved in Internet stuff right from the beginning. Is that still a priority, are you using the Internet?

Jonathan: Yeah, there's still stuff going on. We just did a live broadcast from London, we played a show there. It's just another tool to get out to people, for us and there's a lot of kids out there that are on the Internet.

Munky: The other night I stayed up 'til like, 6 in the morning talkin' to all these kids and then I was like "Okay, I'm gonna go now," type in, like, I'm a one-finger typer so I'm like "oh sh*t," it's taking me like an hour to say a sentence. I stayed up one night 'til like 6 talking to some kids, it was real cool.

Serena: You've been touring pretty much since like October of last year, '96, like when your "Life is Peachy" came out...anything new like you guys working on something coming out really soon, maybe this fall?

Fieldy: We just did a song for "The Spawn." That's the only thing that we've done new.

Serena: Any plans for doing a new album?

Fieldy: September.

Jonathan: September. After 'Palooza we're gonna go into the studio and write a new album.

Munky: I'm gonna start writing it, but you guys can play what I tell ya'.

Fieldy: Okay. Thanks Munky.

Serena: You mentioned working on the "Spawn" soundtrack, you were working with the Dust Brothers, do you stay in touch with them on that? How did that work out?

Fieldy: We just did it up. We just did it.

Serena: How'd it go?

Jonathan: It was awesome.

Fieldy: It was phat.

Jonathan: It came out really phat. They were really impressed, they liked it. We just went into a studio for like, the whole song probably took about 5 hours to do everything.

Serena: Really?

Jonathan: Yeah, we just wrote the song, we gave it to Dust Brothers, Dust Brothers did what they had to do with it, did vocals and it was done.

Serena: Was that it? Do you stay in contact with them? Are you talking about doing other stuff?

Jonathan: Not, no it's not like that, it's like, when we get hooked up together, we get hooked up. It's like, it's so hard, we're doing so much stuff. It's hard to keep in touch with people.

Fieldy: We're really busy and they're really busy so....

Jonathan: What happens, happens.

Serena: Your third single is coming out or is like about to come out, "Good God". Video? Any ideas for like a video? Are you gonna shoot anything soon for that?

David: No more videos.

Jonathan: No videos.

Serena: No videos? Okay.

Fieldy: Maybe on the next record.

Jonathan: Next record probably.

Serena: I wanna ask about your lyrics 'cuz I know that you're really not into writing them out and letting people....

David: Well, the stuff I wrote about was uh, no....

Serena: I'm totally cool with that, not disclosing lyrics, but I want to know why. For the fans who wanna' know what it is you're saying, I mean I know they're gonna get their own thing out of it but....

Jonathan: Yeah that's exactly why I didn't put the lyrics out. It seems like when I get a cd, I'm listening to lyrics and I'm reading, I'm just reading 'em, it's like "okay that's' it." I think music's something that every individual has their own meaning to the song. They can come up with whatever the hell I'm saying and that's the beauty of it and that's what I wanna keep there.

Serena: So if you were to say to like the bazillions of fans that look at you record and like "Where are the lyrics?" What would you say to them?

Jonathan: Stop being so lazy and just listen. They're right there.

Serena: Despite what people may think, you guys are a family band, like you all, several of you have kids.

Fieldy: Yup.

Jonathan: Yup.

Serena: That's just, when I found that out I was like "They do? Really? Those guys are dads?"

Jonathan: Heck yeah.

Serena: Isn't that sort of a shock to some of your....

Fieldy: The three dads right here.

Jonathan: It's the three dads.

Munky: I'm raising me right now a serial killer, little kid, I'm starting him out with kitty cats and little things like that.

Jonathan: No, we do have children, everybody has children. I mean, there's always been this thing about artists not having kids or whatever. It's like bad thing -- hell no! We have lives too and having a child's the most incredible thing you can ever do in your life so....

Munky: Yeah, it's kinda like a science experiment.

Jonathan: Let's see how they turn out.

Serena: Alright, I know one of you is a really big Snoop fan, anybody else here have big fans, like people you wanna see here perform other than Snoop?

Jonathan: We wanna see Tool, Orbital....

David: Prodigy, Devo....

Jonathan: All the ones that're comin' on. The whole tour....