It must feel good to get back out on tour after this hiatus.
We haven’t taken a break in, shit, we have never taken a break. This is the longest that Korn has ever done nothing. Ever! The band was off for 11 months and that’s the longest we have ever done anything like that. It’s good to be back working, I’ve been going kind of koo koo.
Are you somewhat grateful too, so you can spend time with your family? Do your children know what you do?
I cherish every moment I got at home, I’ve got three boys and they are amazing, one is 13 so he obviously knows what I do. I have a four-year-old and a two-a-year-old, all boys. I like to spend as much time as I can with them.
Are you still working on your solo material as well?
Yeah, I have been writing songs. I have got about 30 songs right now, and I am still writing. We go on tour, and after this three-month tour, I’ll probably have like 40, 50 songs. I’ll choose them, and go in with a producer and just add things or subtract things from what I have been recording and hopefully, I am going to have them out soon.
What’s the differentiation for you between your solo material and Korn?
Well Korn is just heavy aggressive music, this is more world—I call it like a heavy Peter Gabriel type vibe. Yeah, it’s really different. I am only using six-string guitars and Korn will use seven strings, and all the tunings. I love Korn, I am not trying to go off and do a Korn knockoff, I am not going to do what Steve Perry did from fucking Journey and ‘Oh Sherrie.’ It sounded like a Journey song. I am always going to be totally different.
You toured a bit solo-wise as well. What was that like?
Yes, I did solo touring, I did two. One in the States and one in Europe, and I did some one-offs here and there, and I had blast. I have an amazing band, I had Shenkar in my band, Peter Gabriel’s violinist, he did Passion: Music For The Last Temptation Of Christ, and Miles Mosley, stand-up bass, just a lot of great, great musicians in the band. It was great musicianship and just this crazy vibe. When you se us, it’s a trip.
Was it scary for you at first embarking on your solo tour, seeing different members surround you?
It was awesome. It was awesome playing with new people, and it’s awesome that Korn fans came out to support it, because they know it was something that I always wanted to do. Everybody just had a really good time. I mean at first it was scary, but then it was like, ‘This is so much fun, I am down.’
Given that you do so many different things like produce, acting, and so on, do you feel like music is the purest art form? Where the filter between artist and product is the smallest?
Yeah, I think music is. Obviously movies go through screenings and testing’s and all this crazy shit. It’s hardly ever the director’s true vision, because there’s always suits involved. I think music is the purest, music and art, actual art. Painters and photographers are the truest. Movies get destroyed by people who think they know what they are doing.
Will this upcoming tour be scaled down production-wise?
Yeah, totally. Korn is going back to like what Ross says—straight truth and reality. All the lights and all that other shit, that’s for bands that really can’t play. The big old stage show and that shit. This time, we just want to come out and just slay people. It’s just us. The record we are doing is just us, Ray Luzier, is the new drummer, me, Fieldy and Munky, it’s a four-piece. We are doing it all on tape—on a 16-track tape machine like they did back in the old days when Led Zeppelin did it, and all those great bands did. We are keeping it simple, so when you see us, it’s just going to be a huge Korn backdrop and lot of white lights and just us going for it.
