Korn Reunites with Brian 'Head' Welch

Brian 'Head' Welch backstage during the Ichthus Music Festival in Wilmore, Kentucky.

One of Korn's most instantly recognizable musical ingredients has always been their detuned guitar riffs, played on seven-string instruments – originally supplied courtesy of Brian "Head" Welch and James "Munky" Shaffer. But for nearly a decade, one half of the equation has been absent: Welch initially exited in 2005 to sort out a drug addiction before finding solace in Christianity. Now Welch is ready to reclaim his position in Korn; he will rejoin the group for live dates later this year.

"I played one song last May [at the Carolina Rebellion Festival]," Welch tells Rolling Stone. "I showed up at that festival – I was on tour with POD, and we had a few days off. They had a big festival, and Korn, Evanescence and Five Finger Death Punch were playing. I wanted to go and my daughter loves those bands. So I took her, and I was just going to go hang out.

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"Then I met up with Munky, who I hadn't seen in seven years, and talked with him for 30 minutes. It was really heavy. Then, 10 minutes before they went onstage, [bassist] Fieldy is like, 'I'm just saying, we have a guitar set up for you.' I'm like, 'What? I just want to see you guys! All right, I'll play 'Blind.' It was just crazy, because it was really emotional. That's what set it up. Munky called me a month after that, and he said, 'Hey, if you ever want to come back, the door's open. We miss you.'"

Korn (which also includes singer Jonathan Davis and drummer Ray Luzier) will perform their first full set with Welch since 2004 on May 17th at the Rock on the Range Festival in Columbus, Ohio, before spending most of June playing shows overseas. While a set list hasn't been discussed yet, Welch wouldn't be opposed to playing a certain Korn album in its entirety.

"I think that would be kind of cool to do somewhere, sometime. Like the very first [1994's Korn debut]. We're all in different places, so we're all just going to get together and talk about set lists. Obviously, all the hard-hitting, energetic classics, where people lose their mind – those will definitely be there. Because those are the funnest ones to play."

Before the upcoming Korn dates, Welch will be fronting his other band, Love and Death, which just released their debut album, Between Here & Lost, on Tooth & Nail Records last week. "My first solo album [2008's Save Me From Myself] was more personal. This one is more broad, and people can relate to it more. People can get different meanings from the songs. And I've hit melody on this album that I've never done before, ever. There is also the heaviest song I've ever done before, with Mattie Montgomery from For Today [the track "I W8 4 U"]. I love my new band. I get to have that outlet. The vocals are a challenge to me, and I like facing that challenge. Even though it's probably less stressful to just play guitar in Korn – which I'm going to love that – but I love both, so I'll definitely balance them out." 

Thus far, Welch is pleased with the feedback he has received from Korn fans. "Everyone is broken in this world. There's so much divorce, hate and unforgiveness. For people to see this, I think it's just really uplifting. I never thought it would happen, and I'm not sure they did either. The fans just love it, because a lot of the fans back in the day were like, suicidal, and from broken homes and abuse. They looked up to us like their family. And to see their family split up was hard on them. To get it put back together, there is a joy around the people who care about it."

Any chance of Stateside fans getting their Korn fill with a full tour? "We're going slow," Welch said. "We're hanging out when I've got time, but I've got my album out, and they're busy doing their stuff. But I'd say anything is possible right now."

And what about the possibility of Welch and Korn working on a new studio album? "Again, I'd say anything is possible."

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Producer Brian Grazer on His Jay-Z Festival Documentary

It took one collaboration with Jay-Z for Brian Grazer to realize the rapper's creative genius. It occurred im 2007, when the Academy-Award winning producer behind Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Mind was wrapping up American Gangster; Jay contacted him and offered to make a digital soundtrack for the film. "I thought, 'Well, how will he have time to do that?'" Grazer recalls to Rolling Stone.

However, Jay-Z wouldn’t back down: he promised Grazer that he could knock out 12 tracks in 10 days. "He figured out how to write, produce and perform all the tracks," the producer says, still baffled by the prospect. "When Jay really relates to something, he relates on the deepest artistic level and he's able to do things that we all find to be phenomenal."

So when Grazer was recently approached with the opportunity to produce a documentary film on the Budweiser Made in America Festival, Jay-Z's two-day extravaganza in Philadelphia over Labor Day weekend, he considered the idea a no-brainer. The event features headlining performances from the Brooklyn mogul himself, along with Pearl Jam, Drake and Run-DMC. "We just immediately, that minute, said we want to do this," Grazer says. “We want to be your partner!"  The 61-year-old film executive also knew it would be a perfect fit for Ron Howard, acclaimed director and his partner at Imagine Entertainment. "I thought it would be great for Ron's career and good [for him] as a culture icon to be working with Jay,” he explains.

The producer plans to incorporate Jay-Z's personal storyline – overcoming a rough upbringing, transforming himself into a successful rapper and businessman – into the film's narrative arc. "I think that's what I'm gonna do," he says. "There's sort of a creation element." Grazer adds that he wants to hone in on "what the meaning of the festival is, why Jay is doing it and how he relates to each artist."

Merging music into film is a familiar concept for Grazer: he produced the Eminem film 8 Mile in 2002 and notes that his TV series Friday Night Lights always made music a central focus. Still, he admits that a concert documentary will be a different beast. "It is a new challenge," he concedes. “Challenging but exciting... I see documentaries as equations that you have to solve."

When Made in America kicks off in two weeks, Grazer will be on-site in Philadelphia, he says, to help "define the film's perspective." He stops, catching himself. "Wait, that sounds pretentious," he says, laughing. "It should be good."

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

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Producer Brian Grazer on His Jay-Z Festival Documentary

It took one collaboration with Jay-Z for Brian Grazer to realize the rapper's creative genius. It occurred im 2007, when the Academy-Award winning producer behind Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Mind was wrapping up American Gangster; Jay contacted him and offered to make a digital soundtrack for the film. "I thought, 'Well, how will he have time to do that?'" Grazer recalls to Rolling Stone.

However, Jay-Z wouldn’t back down: he promised Grazer that he could knock out 12 tracks in 10 days. "He figured out how to write, produce and perform all the tracks," the producer says, still baffled by the prospect. "When Jay really relates to something, he relates on the deepest artistic level and he's able to do things that we all find to be phenomenal."

So when Grazer was recently approached with the opportunity to produce a documentary film on the Budweiser Made in America Festival, Jay-Z's two-day extravaganza in Philadelphia over Labor Day weekend, he considered the idea a no-brainer. The event features headlining performances from the Brooklyn mogul himself, along with Pearl Jam, Drake and Run-DMC. "We just immediately, that minute, said we want to do this," Grazer says. “We want to be your partner!"  The 61-year-old film executive also knew it would be a perfect fit for Ron Howard, acclaimed director and his partner at Imagine Entertainment. "I thought it would be great for Ron's career and good [for him] as a culture icon to be working with Jay,” he explains.

The producer plans to incorporate Jay-Z's personal storyline – overcoming a rough upbringing, transforming himself into a successful rapper and businessman – into the film's narrative arc. "I think that's what I'm gonna do," he says. "There's sort of a creation element." Grazer adds that he wants to hone in on "what the meaning of the festival is, why Jay is doing it and how he relates to each artist."

Merging music into film is a familiar concept for Grazer: he produced the Eminem film 8 Mile in 2002 and notes that his TV series Friday Night Lights always made music a central focus. Still, he admits that a concert documentary will be a different beast. "It is a new challenge," he concedes. “Challenging but exciting... I see documentaries as equations that you have to solve."

When Made in America kicks off in two weeks, Grazer will be on-site in Philadelphia, he says, to help "define the film's perspective." He stops, catching himself. "Wait, that sounds pretentious," he says, laughing. "It should be good."

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

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Week in Rock History: Brian Wilson Performs the World Premiere of 'Smile'

Brian Wilson Presents "Smile" World Premiere Performance at Royal Festival Hall in London.

February 22, 1976: Florence Ballard of the Supremes dies
Talented, tragic Florence Ballard never got her due. As a founding member of the Motown sensations the Supremes, Ballard had the indisputable knock-out voice of the group; recording legend has it that she was made to stand almost 20 feet away from her microphone when she sang, just to save others' ears from her powerful pipes.

As the Supremes began to take off, Motown Records CEO Berry Gordy decided to pivot the group around the pleasant, less dramatic Diana Ross, and she became the lead singer (whereas she had often demurred to Ballard in the past). Ballard and Gordy butted heads constantly, and he fired her from the group in 1967. Ballard attempted a solo career that never ignited, and unsuccessfully sued Motown for unpaid royalties in 1971, but she lived out her last days on welfare with her children in Detroit. She died of cardiac arrest and coronary thrombosis in 1976, at age 32. Her story was later thinly fictionalized in the musical Dreamgirls.

 February 20, 1991: Bob Dylan receives the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammys and delivers a perplexing speech
Thirty years (and one month) after Robert Zimmerman arrived in Greenwich Village, New York, and changed the world's folk landscape, he was bestowed with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 1991 Grammy Awards. During the ceremony, he sang his vitriolic song "Masters of War" (from 1963's The Freewheeling Bob Dylan), a pointed protest of the Gulf War, and was then presented the award by Jack Nicholson as his esteemed musical peers applauded wildly.

His speech was cryptic, to say the least. In accepting his industry's highest honor, he said (in entirety): "Well, my daddy, he didn't leave me much, you know he was a very simple man, but what he did tell me was this, he did say: 'Son,' he said. He say, 'You know it's possible to become so defiled in this world that your own father and mother will abandon you. And if that happens, God will always believe in your ability to mend your ways.'"

Then he snatched the trophy and exited the stage. The words were later identified by Dylan biographer Seth Rogovoy as a loose paraphrase of Psalm 27; its faithful recitation traditionally precedes Yom Kippur.

February 19, 1996: Björk attacks a reporter in Bangkok
Until her paparazzi smack-down in 1996 – a prescient move in pop culture, like so much of her music – Björk was widely perceived as a sort of benevolent, wildly eccentric art sprite. The musician had been a star in her native Iceland for much of her life, first with the electro-pop group the Sugarcubes and then through her haunting, nuanced solo fare.

In 1996, though, Björk showed a ferocious side to the media when reporters converged upon her at Bangkok International Airport. She had just completed a long flight with her son, Sindri, and later claimed that reporters had pestered him with intrusive questions. However, the reporter whom Björk assaulted had merely told her, "Welcome to Bangkok," after which the singer jumped on her and knocked her to the ground.

Björk later insisted that the reporter, Julie Kaufman, had been harassing the singer and her family for days. She apologized to Kaufman, though, and no charges were filed.

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

Amazon Music and MP3 Center

Read more »

Week in Rock History: Brian Wilson Performs the World Premiere of 'Smile'

Brian Wilson Presents "Smile" World Premiere Performance at Royal Festival Hall in London.

February 22, 1976: Florence Ballard of the Supremes dies
Talented, tragic Florence Ballard never got her due. As a founding member of the Motown sensations the Supremes, Ballard had the indisputable knock-out voice of the group; recording legend has it that she was made to stand almost 20 feet away from her microphone when she sang, just to save others' ears from her powerful pipes.

As the Supremes began to take off, Motown Records CEO Berry Gordy decided to pivot the group around the pleasant, less dramatic Diana Ross, and she became the lead singer (whereas she had often demurred to Ballard in the past). Ballard and Gordy butted heads constantly, and he fired her from the group in 1967. Ballard attempted a solo career that never ignited, and unsuccessfully sued Motown for unpaid royalties in 1971, but she lived out her last days on welfare with her children in Detroit. She died of cardiac arrest and coronary thrombosis in 1976, at age 32. Her story was later thinly fictionalized in the musical Dreamgirls.

 February 20, 1991: Bob Dylan receives the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammys and delivers a perplexing speech
Thirty years (and one month) after Robert Zimmerman arrived in Greenwich Village, New York, and changed the world's folk landscape, he was bestowed with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 1991 Grammy Awards. During the ceremony, he sang his vitriolic song "Masters of War" (from 1963's The Freewheeling Bob Dylan), a pointed protest of the Gulf War, and was then presented the award by Jack Nicholson as his esteemed musical peers applauded wildly.

His speech was cryptic, to say the least. In accepting his industry's highest honor, he said (in entirety): "Well, my daddy, he didn't leave me much, you know he was a very simple man, but what he did tell me was this, he did say: 'Son,' he said. He say, 'You know it's possible to become so defiled in this world that your own father and mother will abandon you. And if that happens, God will always believe in your ability to mend your ways.'"

Then he snatched the trophy and exited the stage. The words were later identified by Dylan biographer Seth Rogovoy as a loose paraphrase of Psalm 27; its faithful recitation traditionally precedes Yom Kippur.

February 19, 1996: Björk attacks a reporter in Bangkok
Until her paparazzi smack-down in 1996 – a prescient move in pop culture, like so much of her music – Björk was widely perceived as a sort of benevolent, wildly eccentric art sprite. The musician had been a star in her native Iceland for much of her life, first with the electro-pop group the Sugarcubes and then through her haunting, nuanced solo fare.

In 1996, though, Björk showed a ferocious side to the media when reporters converged upon her at Bangkok International Airport. She had just completed a long flight with her son, Sindri, and later claimed that reporters had pestered him with intrusive questions. However, the reporter whom Björk assaulted had merely told her, "Welcome to Bangkok," after which the singer jumped on her and knocked her to the ground.

Björk later insisted that the reporter, Julie Kaufman, had been harassing the singer and her family for days. She apologized to Kaufman, though, and no charges were filed.

To read the new issue of Rolling Stone online, plus the entire RS archive: Click Here

Amazon MP3 Download Center

Read more »