“You’re a Sick F#%k, Jon”

“I hope he doesn’t make me disappear,” mutters Korn guitarist Brian “Head” Welch, upon learning that illusionist David Copperfield has just walked up the red carpet at New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom.

That would certainly be bad. It’s June 10, and Korn are playing the Hammerstein to celebrate tomorrow’s release of their fifth album, Untouchables. The show is both celebrity-studded and very important — the California nü-metal godheads are being beamed simultaneously from New York to 6,000 fans in 40 movie theaters across the country. This has never been done before, and a lot could go wrong.

Downstairs, in front of the restrooms, the quintet plows through a high-speed autograph session, dispensing with 50 contest winners in little more than five minutes. Singer Jonathan Davis sports his trademark black bowler hat, while bassist Reginald “Fieldy” Arvizu Jr.’s bug-antenna braids poke through his outlandish Himalayan headgear. One brazen female fan returns to the line for a second set of signatures.

“Cheater! Fucking cheater!” growls guitarist James “Munky” Shaffer.

The band seems slightly subdued. Perhaps that’s unsurprising, considering that tonight’s experiment is a little like playing 40 shows at the same time. Fieldy appears particularly queasy — usually sick before gigs, tonight he throws up twice, and is calmed only by a combination of Xanax and marijuana. What’s worse, at last night’s rehearsal, pretty much everything — from live feeds to back projections — malfunctioned. After delivering his opening line into a dead microphone, Davis flipped out and threw the faulty equipment across the stage, yelling, “What if that happens tomorrow?”

“It was horrible,” Munky says, grimacing.

Outside the Hammerstein, the media horde have moved past Copperfield and his bushy eyebrows, focusing on the next celebrity guest: porn legend Jenna Jameson, who’s holding court in a black lace minidress. Fans behind the barrier whoop with delight. Pressing palms and doling out kisses, Jameson addresses the hovering microphones: “I’m a huge fan!” she says. “Korn rocks!”

Before heading inside, the acclaimed actress peers over her shoulder, hitches her skirt just a little higher and coquettishly pokes out her tongue. Sadly, nobody notices.

Next to work the magic carpet is an unlikely goth-metal fan, rapper Foxy Brown. “I don’t come out much, so it has to be an event,” she says, beaming.

What’s her favorite Korn song?

“Actually, I haven’t got one yet,” she sheepishly replies. “But that’s what I’ve come to find out!”

“Foxy, let’s smoke some weed together!” yells a male admirer.

Minutes later, packed inside the venue, more-knowledgeable fans are better acquainted with Korn’s back catalog. Mosh pits bust out around the hall as the band delivers a ferocious greatest-hits set (“Faget,” “A.D.I.D.A.S.,” “Blind”) plus three new songs, all of which combine grisly metal with strangely ’80s-flavored melodies. Davis is dressed in a fetching black man-dress/wizard’s gown with an embroidered silver cross on the front. His elaborate microphone stand is also notable: It’s a large-breasted female steel cyberghoul custom-built by German artist H.R. Giger (who designed sets for Alien). You don’t see one of those every day.

After the show, in the spacious backstage party room, a hooting, flailing gang of girls manages to make a patient Jenna Jameson (who, incidentally, thought the show was “cool”) appear demure. Fieldy enters, having changed out of his “Joker 69” football jersey, and the party girls drape themselves over Korn’s resident pimpin’ homeboy. “Oh, my breast popped out!” one screams in mock horror.

According to early reports, the simulcast came off perfectly — a theater in Seattle even spawned its own mosh pit. Korn are now considering repeating the stunt annually. “Like a Rocky Horror thing, with midnight showings for fans,” Davis suggests. “That shit they had back in the ’70s? That was new and exciting.”

Head and Munky, who scaled back their partying midway through the recording of Untouchables, leave quickly for the comfort of their Trump Hotel beds. Not Fieldy, though: “Last call for alcohol in L.A. is 1:45,” he says, leering. “Our last call here is never.”

Fieldy and his harem pile out and head to the notorious Manhattan strip club Scores. He parties extra-hard tonight, finally losing consciousness around 7 a.m.

“I stopped partying for a while, because I was getting busy — getting laid for a couple of hours,” he confesses. “But I got back up and started partying again.”

Two days later, Blender’s interview with Korn is delayed thanks to a disagreeable chili-cheddar burger Head consumed the evening before. “Don’t ever get that!” he yells from the hotel suite’s bathroom.

Emerging slightly chastened, he takes his place beside Munky, his seven-string doppelgänger. They’re an interesting pair — imagine Michael Stipe with braids and a white Snoop Dogg in dreadlocks. They describe how Korn decided to record Untouchables in Phoenix in order to keep themselves removed from the distractions back in Long Beach, California. But finding common creative ground initially proved difficult.

“Different people were excited about different things,” Munky recalls. “Sometimes three of us were excited, then Fieldy would walk in and look like he didn’t even want to be there.”

Luckily — perhaps unluckily — partying came more easily than music. Until Head and Munky swore off booze, the sessions were marked by the lethal hangovers suffered by everyone except the sober Davis. “I remember seeing [drummer] David [Silveria] green in the face, Munky laying over sideways, me throwing up,” Fieldy groans.

With not much to do in deepest Arizona but drink and visit strip clubs, the band usually continued celebrating at home, in rented houses they customized in distinctive Korn fashion: Fieldy had a stripper’s pole installed in his (after a couple of accidents, he began asking visitors to sign a legal waiver). He also put in a badminton court, and encouraged his ladyfriends who dropped by to compete in topless tournaments.

Rent, food, crew-retainer and transportation costs spiraled; the final bill for Untouchables came to $3 million. “I fucked up one room,” Fieldy admits. “Put a bunch of holes in the wall with the TV. One of our guys patched it up, though. You don’t want to lose your deposit.”

Speaking of excess, what does the rest of the band think of Davis’s pricey new mic stand?“I think it’s stupid,” Fieldy drawls. “He’s a dummy for paying $50,000 for that thing.”

“Fifty? Are you kidding me?” blurts an astonished Silveria. “Holy shit, I didn’t know that!”

“And he bought two — $100,000 altogether! He buys weird crap. I don’t know; he’s a weirdo,” Fieldy continues, shouting into Blender’s tape recorder. “Weirdo!”

During his week in New York, Davis has been busy in meetings to plan the serial-killer museum he’s opening soon in Los Angeles. The Museum of Justice, nominally dedicated to all criminal acts, grew out of the singer’s gruesome collection of crime memorabilia, including Ted Bundy’s Volkswagen (“It’s imprinted with terror and fear — you can feel it inside”), John Wayne Gacy’s clown suit and the hats Bonnie and Clyde were wearing when they were gunned down. “I get shit from the families of victims, saying we’re glorifying the killers,” Davis says. “But we’re not. It’s like any Holocaust museum — they don’t glorify what the Nazis did.”

Oddly, Davis’s newfound passion reflects his more stable lifestyle. Peering out from under his bowler, he appears pale, slightly chubby and, yes, happy. He’s exhilarated about the band’s new album. The former master of torment has settled down with former porn actress Deven Davis (her films were “all girl-girl,” he notes, “and I’m into that” — see “Who’s Who in Korn Porn,” below), and has been drink- and drug-free for four years. He still enjoys preparing eight-balls of cocaine for friends, but he says he’ll never return to the dark days of his addictions. “I was an asshole,” he says, glowering. “The band didn’t want to be around me. I miss partying, but I remember that when I partied, I wasn’t happy.”

A mix of Prozac, vitamins, magnesium and fish oil now keeps his “organs in balance” and his panic attacks at bay. He even overcame a longtime fear of cars in style: He purchased a Bentley. But new tracks “Wake Up Hate” and “Hating” suggest he hasn’t completely mellowed. Indeed, when he recently tried getting off Prozac, his anxieties came flooding back.

Is he concerned he’ll become too content to keep delivering his signature nightmarish lyrics? “I’m not so happy at night,” he counters. “I lie awake and start freaking out, so I write then. And I’m always attracted to things of a dark nature. People get weirded out when they come to my house, ’cause I’ve got shrunken heads and shit.”

What do they say?

“ ‘You’re a sick fuck, Jon,’ ” he says, shrugging.

And what does the band say?

“ ‘You’re a sick fuck, Jon.’ ”


Who’s Who in Korn Porn
Investigating Korn’s many adult-movie associates is a dirty, dirty job. But somebody has to do it. . . .

Mandy Arvizu
The 25-year-old younger sister of Korn bassist Reginald “Fieldy” Arvizu. She’s been known to procure girls for the band at Korn shows. She also appears exclusively in the altogether on adult Web site ivolt.com.
Her Finest Work: The wholesome, Playboy-esque photographs that were shot in Fieldy’s Bakersfield, California, home. Found at ivolt.com/visage.asp.

Deven Davis
Jonathan Davis’s girlfriend of the past four years. Born Kristan Thompson, the former adult actress, now 23, appeared in girl-on-girl scenes in seven videos, including Perfect Pink Volumes 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6. She’s currently an exotic dancer, and under contract with adult-video company Jill Kelly Productions in a non-“performing” capacity.
Her Finest Work: The Best of Perfect Pink. The only commercially available evidence of the hot lesbo action from which Davis made her name, including a lengthy poolside slurp session with her boss, Jill Kelly.

Jill Kelly
Close friends with Jonathan and Deven Davis. In 1995, two years into her adult career, Kelly’s husband and fellow porn performer, Cal Jammer, blew his brains out on her doorstep. She left the industry for a few months, and established her own adult-entertainment company in 2000. A frame from one of her films appears in the video for Korn’s “Here to Stay.”
Her Finest Work: 100% Jill. Her farewell to her “performing” career, in which only her nose goes unplugged! She continues at the helm of porn company Jill Kelly Productions.

Matt Zane
Producer/director of multivolume rock/porn series Backstage Sluts. Jonathan Davis introduces Volume 2 (No Ass, No Pass), which features Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst and Wes Borland and Sugar Ray’s Mark McGrath discussing groupie shagging. Porn stars posing as groupies are promised access to rock stars if they fellate roadies. Once the roadies are done, the chicks get the boot. Shame!
His Finest Work: Backstage Sluts, Volume 2. Did you know that the late Snot singer Lynn Strait is the only musician to have sex on camera in Sluts 2? Sure you didn’t. . . .
–Penn Chilton