Korn borrowed its backwards R from the toy shop where members had worked
Somebody proposed calling the Bakersfield band Corn. Guitarist James Shaffer swapped in a K and flipped the R, an idea lifted from the Toys R Us logo, since several members had worked there. Drummer David Silveria admitted it was a dumb name that the music would have to make cool.
Three of the founders, Shaffer, bassist Reginald Arvizu and Silveria, had played in L.A.P.D., which made one album in 1991 before its singer left. The trio briefly called themselves Creep, then recruited guitarist Brian Welch and singer Jonathan Davis in 1993. Recording at a rented Huntington Beach studio, they drew a crowd outside just by rehearsing the opening of Clown, because it sounded so different. An Immortal Records scout heard it and called it a new genre of rock.
Their free demo, Neidermayer's Mind, went mostly unnoticed, but the self-titled debut, made with producer Ross Robinson and released in October 1994, is credited with launching nu metal and shaping Slipknot and Limp Bizkit. Early touring was rough: their first bus broke down halfway through. After playing somewhere between 200 and 250 shows they made Life Is Peachy, which sold 106,000 copies in its opening week with barely any radio support.
Style mattered as much as sound. The band lived in Adidas gear through the mid-1990s, yet Adidas refused a sponsorship, saying it did sport, not music. Puma stepped in with a $500,000 deal. In 1998 a Michigan school suspended a pupil for wearing a Korn shirt; a local radio station handed out hundreds of free ones outside, and the police who were called ended up helping. Before Follow the Leader, the band streamed a weekly online show taking fans' phone questions, an early use of the internet, then toured on a chartered jet styled as an election campaign.
Follow the Leader sold at least 268,000 copies in week one, and Got the Life became the very first video retired from MTV's Total Request Live. By 2021 the band had sold more than 40 million records, with two Grammys from eight nominations.
Source: Korn
