Different albums represent different chapters for musicians, and some would prefer to leave the older ones in the past. Such is the case with Jonathan Davis, who’s opened up to Metal Hammer about the one Korn song he never wants to play again.
“Daddy.”
The song serves as the closing track on Korn’s 1994 self-titled debut record, and is the longest, clocking in at over 9 minutes. Much of the subject matter on Korn was disturbing, but “Daddy” was written from the perspective of a child who’d been sexually abused. It was based on Davis’ own harrowing experience as a child, whose parents didn’t believe him when he tried to tell them what had happened.
Setlist.fm notes that Korn have only played “Daddy” 35 times throughout their 19 years of performing. After playing it once in 1993 and again in 1995, the band didn’t add the song to their setlist again until 2015, which was their 20th anniversary tour. Then, it was shelved again.
“I felt like I robbed the world of doing that live for so long,” Davis told Metal Hammer. “I felt like I owed it to our fans that were hardcore enough to come and see us on the 20th anniversary of that album, but I don’t wanna do it again.
“Going out and touring that record, I realized how dark it is – it’s some depressing shit. As we got into Follow The Leader, it became more about groove. The emotion was there, but it wasn’t that particular darkness we captured on that first record.”
The 30th anniversary of Korn is right around the corner, however, the frontman isn’t too keen on commemorating the anniversary of that song.
“I don’t think I wanna go through that again,” he affirmed. “It was difficult, and I think I was proving to myself that I could do it too.”
A few months ago, Ross Robinson, who produced Korn’s debut, recalled how he convinced Davis to even record “Daddy” in the studio at all.
“I just went up to him and held his arms, looked straight in his eyes and said, ‘You need to do it,’ and he goes, ‘I know,’ and that was it. And I still, to this day, haven’t been able to get that deep of a performance from anybody. His heart was exploding, and I think we made musical history,” the producer asserted during another interview with Metal Hammer.