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Road Rage 48 Hours with Family Values
The Korn-Led Family Values Tour crossed America late last year, bringing thousands of fans a four-and-a-half-hour spectacle of profanity, rock-and-roll excess and really loud "New Metal." Aaron Burgess joined Family Values for a weekend to fin out whether life on the road really ain't nothin' but bitches and money.
It's Sunday, Oct. 4, 1998, and for the first time in 13 days of traveling together, every band on the Family Values tour has gathered in one area. They're here for an AP photo shoot, hugging, shaking hands and goofing around with one another on the arena floor of Minneapolis' Target Center. Showtime's in less than two hours, and several of the tour members are scanning the 831,533-square-foot venue's interior with wide eyes, gaping at the number of seats to be filled. The stage, a monstrous assemblage of cables, sets, chaings and lighting rigs that the road crew's been putting together since 8 a.m. today, occupies nearly the entire back wall of the arena. A flashing lighted sign reading FAMILY VALUES hangs above center stage; massive speaker systems hang aboce stages right and left; wrap-around red-and-white striped curtains mocking the American flag hang, tied back, at either side of the stage. In a few hours, nearly 10,000 fans will fill this space, and the curtains will part to reveal an estimated $35,000-per-night production of light shows, special effects and music.
If you buy the anticipatory chitchat that's passing among the fans gathered outside the Target Center's doors, the men on this floor are gods in hard-assed human bodies. Korn, Rammstein, Ice Cube, Limp Bizkit, Orgy and DeeJay Punk-Roc--a crossection of Original Gangstas, post-industrial mandroids, Adidas- and gold wearing cholos, and tortured glam rockers. But the darker side of these personalities won't emerge until the house lights go down; for now, the guys in the space are hanging loose.
Only when AP photographer Brian Garrity begins his shoot do the game faces come on--Ice Cube's trademark scowl; Orgy's disaffected sneers; Korn's and Rammstein's hardened glares; Limp Bizkit's OG pose. Toward the end of the shoot, someone playfully flips Garrity his assistant the bird. Everyone but Rammstein follows, and the subsequent image of tattooed forearms, curled lips and extended middle fingers looks fit for inclusion in any fan's dream scrapbook. There's no intended message behind the gesture, of course, but the implication's still there for anyone willing to criticize this group's particular set of Family Values.
"Fuck yeah! There's the photo, man," a grinning Ice Cube tells Garrity. "Y'all don't put that shit on the cover, you're a buncha motherfuckers."
His tourmates head back to their dressing rooms to prepare for that night's show, but Limp Bizkit's singer Fred Durst hangs back for a few moments, basking in the afterglow of what's just happened. He turns to me and says, "That was fuckin' beautiful, dude; you have to write somethin' about that. That's what this tour's about."
Flash back 24 hours to Chicago's Rosemont Horizon, the 18,000-seat venue where my stay with Family Values will begin. Even at 2 p.m., five hours before showtime, the venue's parking lot has started to grow crowded. Tour buses, catering trucks and tractor-trailers sit in rows at the rear of the arena. Small packs of Korn Klones--mostly white teens wearing slippily knotted dreadlocks and oversized clothes, a few of them cruising around on skateboards--congregate outside the Horizon's doors, some scraping together $27.50 to buy a ticket, some just waiting to catch a glimpse of the bands. At the ticket gate, a lanky teen with a pierced eyebrow and a pubescent mustache scores his general-admission pass, then turns to me as if in victory to exclaim, "Korn, baby! Ha-ha!"
Inside the venue, a crew of several dozen hired laborers works to assemble the Family Values stage and lighting rigs, roughly a third of them building themuch-whispered-about "Korn Kage" piece by piece. Each night during Korn's set, about 45 fans climb inside this two-story silver enclosure, which looms over drummer David Silveria's riser and spans the length of the stage. The idea, on Korn's and their management's end, is to bring the audience into the action, to surround the band with those gung-ho fanatics they've praised in a song titles "Children Of The Korn." These same fanatics, incidentally, had boosted Korn's latest album, Follow The Leader, to No. 1 (according to Billboard) upon it's Aug. 18 release last year, snatching up 268,000 copies in the album's first week. Parents and critics still won't acknowledge it, of course-- the music's loud and discordant, with ominous gangsta-rap overtones--but like all successful hard rock, it's not meant for them.
"A lot of the people who write about us ask us to give them our really deep thoughts about this music and these shows--and we really don't have any deep thoughts about what we do," Silveria tells me. "We're not tryin' to change the world or something with this 'plan' we've put together. We play music together because it's fun, the kids like it, and we dig havin' all the kids love our music and havin' fun with all the kids and seein' their faces at these shows and getting onstage and vibin' with all the kids and just goin' off. It really doesn't go any deeper than that."
Peter Katsis, a tall, soft-featured man who bears some resemblance to Nightmare On Elm Street actor Robert Englun, helps explain Family Values' "message" as he walks me around the Horizon's backstage area. Katsis is senior VP of music for the Firm, the management company whose growing roster includes every Family Values act but Rammstein. "We just want to make a real statement for new-school music, because everybody kind of leeches off us," he says. "You;ll see Ozzfest, which is basically a metal tour, try to get a Tool or a Limp [Bizkit] on the bill [as that package tour did in 1998] so that their image is hipper. They had Manson last year; that way they could get some alternative kids to come and get a mix, a bigger pool. Korn and Cube played on Lollapalooza, and that was during the day; that's not what these bands are about. They wanted to do someting indoors, [something] rock and roll. I mean, look at the stage set-up. Korn just wanted to rip people's heads off!
There's almost twice as much PA here as they had on Ozzfest," Katsis adds. "There's an awful lot of lights up in the air; 10 trucks' worth of shit... And the Kage has een really cool; kids have a lot of fun with it--they're part of the show; they're part of the lights."
Having plans Sunday to enter this contraption myself, I ask Care Bear, a rosy-faced Korn Krew member who wonderfully fits his nickname, if he's seen much unruly behavior in the Kage. "Nah, no problems," he replies. "one guy tried to climb out the top, on the floor, climbin' up the stage. We had a security guy get him; [he] brought him down; ew're like, 'C'mon.' He stats walking, following me backstage; he's like, 'Dude, y'know, like, where we goin'?' I put him right outside the door and closed the door; he's like, 'Hey!'"
Limp Bizkit guitarist Wes Borland tells me another story of a fan rowdiness. "I saw a guy who was probably really drunk or on drugs or something make a dive for the stage during Korn's set, and they had to drag him out. It took six people to hold him down, and then the cops came and handcuffed him and hog-tied him and carried him out. But, I mean, there's always people who freak out like that for some unknown reason. They get possessed with dumbness."
Scanning the Horizon's bleachers, I spot a banner for the Chicago Wolves hockey team that proclaims, in huge bold letters: IT'S FUN TO BE A FAN.
A few days before leaving to go on tour with Family Values, I'd put in a tourine call to the Mitch Schneider Organization. A Sherman Oaks, California-based publicity firm whose clients include Deftones, the Offspring, David Bowie and Korn. I was double-checking my itinerary, confirming my plane reservations, getting details about interviews and discussing the "fly on the wall" role I'd be assuming for the weekend. Korn's publicist, Amanda Cagan, alerted me to some guidelines for behavior during my stay: I should not go into detail regarding Korn's interaction with female fans, because their wives and significant others might get the wrong idea; I should not speak to Korn unless spoken to; I should not approach singer Jonathon Davis without his okay, because he'd been feeling burned out on interviews lately. Shortly afterward I received a fax from Rammstein's management about the band's own interview stipulations--minor requests, really, and nothing over which a scrupulous writer need lose sleep.
The reality of the weekend, unfortunately, turns out to be far less outrageous than the interview guidelines had indicated. Korn aren't pillaging cites or manhanding groupies; they're mostly keeping quiet, maintaining a self-imposed exile in their dressing-rrom doors until showtime, are merely concerned that without a professional German translator on hand to assist them in dealing with press, they could be mosquoted. (For evidence, refer to the band's media-created "Nazi" image.) Ice Cube proves consistently tough to track down, as he arrives at every venue half an hour before his set begins. ("He tries to get as much relaxation at the hotel as possible," Katsis explains on behalf of his client.)
Limp Bizkit and Orgy, the only Family Values acts to which I've been granted unlimited access, are refreshingly open about their backstage antics, which amount mainly to consuming massive amounts of alcohol and (in Bizkit's case) pot, and playing juvenile pranks on one another. Though I'll hear more tawdry stories throughout the weekend (threesomes; double blowjobs; homemade porn flicks), the heaviest debauchery I'll see will be that of crew members, who, possibly bored with their second-fiddle roles, take to fucking groupies in shower rooms or creating other, equally heinous forms of amusment for themselves.
But if Korn are worried about image control, they've picked the perfect weekend in which to squash critics' opinions of them as Coors-guzzling, potty-mouthed corrupters of children. Saturday night in Chicago, with help from the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Northern Illinois, the band meet with two terminally ill fans whose presence brings out a warm, empathetic side in the otherwise hard-edged California "pimp rock" quintet. While nubiles and their Korn Kopycat boyfriends gather around the band's dressing room hoping to be invited inside, two Adidas-clad Make-A-Wish recipients, Nicole, 18, and Bruce 14, get their wish to meet with Korn one on one. (Make-A-Wish, incidentally, withholds the last names of its wish recipients; refer to "Justin," a track off Follow The leader that Korn titled after one very special Make-A-Wish youth.) Nicole, a college freshman, presents her crush, guitarist James "Munky" Shaffer, with a card, a neclace and a letter from herself; Bruce, a quiet youngster from the Chicago suburbs who seems to be hiding underneath the rim of his ball cap, grins widely as the band members joke around with and embrace him.
"The most important thing to me is that the kids have a good time," says Line Byrne, the Wish Coordinator who accompanies Bruce and Nicole backstage. "The majority of my work is done in the office; I'm managing about 250 volunteers who are out there in the field; meeting with the families, finding out what the kids' wishes are. Every once in a while I get to come out and do something like this, and that's the best part for me, getting to see firsthand what it is that we're corrdinating. Because the effect of a wish is bigger than I can describe."
The next day in Minneapolis, Korn look back on their meeting. "It's kina weird because these kids are terminally ill, and out of anything they could do, they're askin' to meet us, these fuckin' guys from Bakersfield who play music," Silveria tells me. "The first wish we did where ew actually got to hang out with the person, that guy Justin, who we did the song about--we hung out with him for two days; we actually got to know him. It was weird when he left us; it touched everyone because we knew when he was leaving that we'd probably never see him again."
"Me and Munky were talkin' about it," says guitarist Brian "Head" Welch. "We just said, like, hi and bye to those kids yesterday, like they were anybody else. It would've been cool to take 'em back to catering, sit 'em down and eat with 'em, talk to 'em a little bit."
Even more than his bandmates, Jonathon Davis seems worried about pleasing his public. I finally meet the Korn singer Sunday night in Minneapolis, when, after several failed attempts, I'm granted access to his dressing room. He's fidgety and, unlike the wildman he becomes onstage, surprisingly she. For the majority of our chat he sits curled in a chair, twirling his dreads with a finger or picking at an imaginary obrstuction on the wall. He explains that he's been suffering from anxiety lately. "It's kind of weird. I've been sober for two months, and I'm havin' fun for the first time in my life. That's why I've been out of the public eye for a while. I'm fuckin' lovin' life, though, lovin' everything that's goin' on. I dunno--for the first time I can think, so it's kinda weird." He laughs. "I dont' know what to think yet. Being sober's kind of a high in itself."
"Is it hard to be around these guys in the environment?" I ask.
"No, not at all. I've fuckin' been around it the whole time. Now I just step back and watch--and it's weird. I just get drunk by hangin' out with the rest of the band. It just rubs off; I can act silly and stupid. It's all good."
"It's all good" has become a mantra of coping for Davis. He's been obsessing on having to leave behind his 3-year-old son, Nathan, to go on tour, because he knows what it's like to haev an absentee father--but "It's all good." He's been thinking about hitting the bottle again once his system's clean, but it's too early to think about where that might lead him. "Y'know, it's all good." I ask him what he thought of last night's meeting with Bruce and Nicole. "It's weird; like, with Justin, we were in a rehearsel studio, so he got to come hang out with us for a few days," he says. "Here they put us in a situation where it's like a fuckin' meet-and-greet, like, hi, sign this shit, and we have to leave. That's not how we wanna go it. It's like these kids' last fuckin' dream; we wanna make it somethin' special for 'em."
That night, in a moment worthy of Bon Jovi's "Dead Or Alive" video, the house lights in Minneapolis' Target Center flash on midway through Korn's set, illuminating the sweaty faces and moshed-together bodies of 10,000 crowdgoers. It's an awesome sight; I'm looking down on the audience from the second tier of the Korn Kage, a row of fans bouncing around on either side of me. I'd expected crazier action in here, but from the looks of it, the Kage is safer than the floor area. Security guards patrol the tiers, making sure no one rattles the Kage's bars or tries to mosh. To my left, a couple of starstruck girls fixate on Silveria, who's shirtless and sweating behind his drum kit. His riser sits a few yards below their feet, but it's impossible to reach him through the Kage bars. I ask the girls how they got lucky enough to snage Kage tickets. "We don't have tickets; we just saw some peolpe walking backstage, and we folloewd them in here," one of them tells me. "But I love Korn; I see them every chance I get."
Fieldy's gold rings and chains, looking valuable enough to finance a college education, rest atop a speaker cabinet to my right (hey, you try slapping bass with all those karats). Davis and Ice Cube circle one another in front of the stage, shouting the lyrics to their duet "Children Of The Korn." At their respective positions stages left and right, Munky and Head rock out in time to the music, triggering DJ-worthy scratches and squeals from their banks of effects pedals. When I pull out my tape recorder to dictate some notes on the action, one of the male Kagegoers to my right yells, "This is the greatest thing that's ever happened to me!"
Whether or not they realize it, the fans inside the Kage are sharing in that short-lived nightly period when a touring band really feels alive. ("This tour sucks because we're used to fuckin' opening up for bands," Davis had told me earlier. "Here, we're headlinging, so when we're done, it's like the party's over.") After the set, which closes with an encore of the Korn/Bizkit duet "All In The Family" in which Orgy join both bands onstage, the daily routine will start over. The crew will begin the long process of tearing down and loading the stage and the sets. For the bands, it'll be back to the dressing room for a quick meet-and-greet with fans; then to the tour bus, where they'll kick back, eventually fall asleep and wake up in another city where they'll have no idea what time or day it is. ("That's one of the weirdest things about being on the road," Limp Bizkit's Borland had told me Saturday afternoon. "Actually, do you know what time is it?")
The next day will be like the rest: Wake up mid-afternoon; kill time backstage while crew and management work out your business and itinerary; submit to interviews in which you rattle off answers to the same questions you've answered a million times before ("So, how's the tour going?"); finda runner to grab you some necessities from the local stores; eat your meals in ther catering area; then wait for showtime, when you're again reminded for 45 minutes why you've chosen this surreal existence.
But the day-to-day's not the only routine element of Family Values. By Sunday's show, it's become apparent that many stage moves that look spontaneous are actually rehearsed. Ice Cube's act of goading the crowd by walking offstage two songs into his set (he's a Hollywood actor, remember); Rammstein's pyro show, which peaks in singer Till Lindenmann's shooting flaming "arrow" over the heads of his audience à la Ted Nugent; Jonathon Davis' and David Silveria's appearance onstage with Orgy during the band's performance of "Revival"--all planned in advance.
Wielding plastic Lightsabers and water cannons, Limp Bizkit and a trio of radiation-suit-wearing breakdancers emerge nightly from a crash-landed UFO. Ice Cube and his crew-rapper foil WC, DJ Crazy Tunes and four men dressed as grim reapers--perform in front of a Mount Rushmore-like Cube bust, the base of which features the engraving ICE CUBE THE GREAT. (The Great One, it should be noted, left Family Values Oct. 24 to fulfill prior commitments; he was replaced on Oct. 26 by Korn labelmates/Urban Dance Squad throwbacks Incubus.) Between sets, DeeJay unk-Roc spins new- and old-school electro, hip hop and house from a riser in the lighting pit. Orgy keep things simple with an icy-blue glass-and-neon set, but even this captures a mood--in Orgy's case, that of a nightclub, which until Family Values has been the Southern California Korn protégés' primary touring outlet.
Both onstage and off, Rammstein are the tour's most talked-about act. Their sleek hybrid of industrial metal, gothic romanticism and visual comedy offers the tour's sole diversion from the angst-ridden and ugly, while their stage show--featuring faked sodomy, flaming microphone stands, flashpots out of the wazoo and elaborate "spaceman" costumes--recalls the heights of poodle-metal excess. Despite a language barrier, Orgy manage to befriend the stone-faced German powerhaus. bonding with Rammstein through the international language of sex, jugs, and post-industrial rock and roll.
" I taught him what the word 'faggot' meant," Orgy guitarist Ryan Shuck tells me over lunch, Sunday, referring to Rammstein singer Till Lindenmann. "He's like, 'Faggot? What is that?' and I explained. 'It's like gay, homosexual.'
"So Paige [Haley, Orgy's bassist] was cold one night," Shuck continues, "and he's like, 'I need a jacket.' And Till was like"--he mimics Lindemann wrapping his arms around himself--"'Oh, little faggot needs a coat. Is cold.'"
"They get mad because he teaches us [German] words," Orgy's guitar-synth player, Amir Derakh says of Lindemann's bandmates. "Like [Till] taught us how to say 'dick' in German, and the other guys in the band were like, 'Traitor!'"
I explain to the boys that I'm curious about the lack of wild behavior I've seen during my stay with Family Values. "You need to be here on a day off, when we're not driving," says Shuck. "You'd see a lot of that shit."
Limp Bizkit Daily (Left on my lunch table Oct. 3 by a crew members)
"Tomorrow: October 4th, 1998
"We are filming the video for the song 'Faith.' The basis of this video is the Family Values theme. Cameras will be roaming throughout the venue, including backstage, all day and all night. If there is something you do notwant filmed, please let [Bizkit tour manager] Nick Leo know.
"Note: By not responding to Nick Leo, you consent for us to use your likeness in any way we see fit.
"Thank you,
Fred Durst"
Sunday Night, I wander into Limp Bizkit's dressing room, where the Corona and rotgut have been flowing freely all weekend. It's one hell of a contrast--where the other band's dressing rooms have been low-key, generally sleepy areas, Bizkit's pad is a non-stop party. I'm not complaining, either; after all, this is the kind of action I've waited all weekend to see.
In one corner of the room, Bizkit's traveling tattoo artist is working out a design on a groupie's shoulder. A small film crew stands around Durst and some friends near the center of the room, gathering some "Family Values theme" footage for the "Faith" video, while a few tattooed hangers-on in athletic grea share a gargantuan joint. I walk to a table at the back of the room to pur myself a 7&7 as I turn around to check out more action, I spy a naked girl on the couch to my right. She's sitting with her feet under her, her bellybutton ring and neatly groomed pubic mound exposed. Her nipples are erect; her gaze is blank. She smiles at me. "They told me I had to take off my clothes so I could stay in here," she says, apparently expecting a response. I stare for a few seconds (you wouldn't?) before heading out the door.
About 20 minutes later, I walk into Bizkit's dressing room to grab another drink. I notice that a crowd has gathered around the shower-room entrance. The film crew and the naked girl are back there, as well, adding their own touch of color to the "Faith" footage. Within seconds I'm cornered by Durst and Fieldy, who ask me what I'm going here.
"I'm just gonna check out what's going on back there," I say.
"You ain't gonna write about it."
Fieldy steps back a few inches. I swear he's puffing out his chest. "Oh, I ain't worried about it--'cause if you do write about it, I'm gonna fuckin' hunt you down."
It's 4A.M. Sunday, and I'm in a bunk on Orgy's tour bus, going over some notes while en route to Minneapolis. I've been told by management to expect a wild ride because this has been Family Values' "party bus," but that's not been the case tonight. Rammstein vlew out the bus' speakers during a party the other night, so the band's only source of music has been a Sony PlayStation. In Chicago a couple of the guys had to say goodbye to their gal pals, and, in drummer Bobby Hewitt's cade, his wife (porn starlet turned director Shane), so the mood's been sullen. "You got us on the most mellow night, dude," Shuck tells me. "Our girlfriends are all flyin' home, our stereo's busted--we're bummin'." Still, the band are making do: Singer Jay Gordon's landed a groupie, and his bandmates haev dived into some pizza and Bud Light, a South Park video (Haley does a great Cartman impersonation) and a few rounds of Tekken.
Armed with w dispossable camera, two female fans in a sporty utility truck had raced alongside us as the bus pulled out of Chicago, but they'd gotten spooked when Shuck pulled out his weenie and tried to slap it against the bus' window. He'd also wanted to show them his "flying squirrel" penis trick, but, he'd grumbled, "my balls are too tight to do it." Later, when we pulled into a truck stop to buy some grub, we watched in horror as the driver emptied gallons of liquid onto the pavement. Shuck pressed his face against the window. "Is that our piss?"
The bunk I'm in is about six feet long by two feet high by four feet wide. Its walls, once off-white, have turned gray with age and neglect. Whoever's in the compartment above me is snoring. I put in earplugs and start to grow sleepy. The constant rumble of the bus engine is comforting, and I'm alreayd starting to forget what day and time is it.
I could get use to this, I think as my eyelids grow heavy. I look around me one last time before turning out the lights. The copy of Rolling Stone I've been reading features a Marilyn Manson cover story that's far more decadent than anything I've seen these past 24 hours. maybe some family values are at work here after all.
Onle last look before lights out. There's an old booger fused to the wall of my bunk. A few crusty white stains of unknown origion dot my comforter. I'm sleeping on pink cotton sheets--not very rock and roll, but it doesn't matter. By tomorrow, I'll have forgotten about it.
It's pronounced "Rom-Shtine"
Nazis, Sadists, Pedophiliac homosexual lunatics--the rumors surrounding Rammstein becme more outlandish with each new stop on Family Values. After talking with the German Sextet's Tourmates, However AP learned that the only sturm and drang weighing on Rammstein's minds was how soon it was until the next party.
AP: What's your favorite Rammstein Story?
Ice Cube:: The first night my dudes saw 'em pull that dildo out [during the performance of "Buck Dich" ("Bend Over")], we knew that we was on somethin' different; you know whatI'm sayin'? We knew this ain't somethin' you want your grandma comin' to. That group is a trip, man. Fire show, dude settin' hisseld on fire--all that is crazy, man. It's off the hook.
David Silveria, Korn: Every time I see Till, the singer, he's gota bottle of fuckin' whiskey. We were at a club in Detroit after the show; it was kind of like Orgy were meetin' some radio people, and we were there. I was sittin' down, and all of a sudden here Till comes, walkin' in with a big bottle of Jim Beam. Before he even said hi to me, he hands me a bottle of fuckin' whiskey. I'm like, "No thanks,Till." I was drinkin' Jack anyway.
Jonathon Davis, Korn: They don't hang out that much. They hang out with Orgy a lot; they go on their tour bus and beat the shit out of it and blow up their stereo.
Jay Gordon, Orgy: Till came to us all serious; he's like, "I've written a song in English. I want to know what you think of it." So he starts singing [in an exaggerated basso profundo], "I've got a dick. You've got a pussy. We could fuck. Let's do it real quick." We're like, what the fuck?! [Laughs.]
Ryan Shuck, Orgy: [Till] worships me; I'm likethe god of fuckin' party to him, dude.... Seriously, though, I have the most fun watching that band--and I personally like them; I love those guys. Till's probably my best friend on the whole tour--but Dave, from Korn, is my best friend. He lives like a black from me.
AP: What's your favorite story about yuor tourmates?
Flake Lorenz, Rammstein We are friends with Orgy, and after show we meet up and go drink often.
AP: I understand that you've had some fun on their tour bus.
Flake: Ja, we meet up at one of our buses and switch the music on, and we dance on the bus.
Sun., Oct. 4, Minneapolis: A group of fans waits outside the Target Center, trying to decide when to go into the show. One of them says, "But I don't like Orgy." His female friend replies, "Dude, I don't like Orgy, either. But what the hell--they're famous."