Interview: Ray Luzier, Drummer, KORN

Venue: Mayhem Fest 2010 Cincinnati, OH

By: Amy Harris

Date: 6/24/10

Korn is a rock band formed in Bakersfield, California, in 1993. The current band line up includes four members: Jonathan Davis, James “Munky” Shaffer, Reginald “Fieldy” Arvizu, and drummer Ray Luzier. The band was formed after the disbandment of L.A.P.D..

We sat down with drummer Ray Luzier on the bus at Mayhem to discuss his love of drums and the new record, KORN III: Remember Who You Are.

CB: I saw that you really got your start with David Lee Roth and you played for eight years in his band, what was that like?

Ray: It was awesome. I had been in a million bands before that in L.A. I was with the lead singer from Ratt, Stephen Pearcy. I was in a lot of those kinds of bands, but nothing really of stature, so I became kind of a session guy. I would play other peoples’ records and I would play on movie sound tracks and T.V. commercials, you name it. I was a working musician. I went to music school when I moved to L.A., so I also got a job teaching there. I just wanted to be involved in the business, no matter what I was doing. Obviously to be in a hit band would be the ultimate, you know, but Dave came along through a session. I played three songs on his guitar player’s record and he was this little kid, like 21 years old and I thought he was lying when he told me he was in Dave’s band. He said “Hey man I’m playing with David Lee Roth” and I was like “Sure you did,” and he said “No, no really and the even better news is, the two songs you played on my record, he really likes and he wants you to come back and cut them again, and he’s going to sing over them.” And I’m thinking, okay, now you’re really reaching pal. And it was true, but we did it in Steve I’s house in Hollywood Hills and Dave came over and it was bizarre because I’m from a very small town in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 118 acre farm. Dave has been hanging on my wall since I was 10 years old. So I’m like playing his songs in my underwear, and the next thing you know I’m on stage with Dave playing along, so it was awesome.

CB: I saw that you joined an Entertainment Company in LA and you were just doing all kinds of gigs around town.

Ray: Yeah.

CB: Any weird gigs that you’ve done?

Ray: Oh yeah a lot of weird gigs. It was called Perfect World Entertainment, and I called them the life savers because when you’re off the road, sometimes you get no salary. Some artists are fortunate enough to keep you on your salary, but if you’re not getting salary, what are you going to do? You’re looking for work and, well Perfect World Entertainment is this company that has 18 bands coast to coast, and it’s an amazing thing. They do disco, they do like 80’s retro, they do funk, jazz. They do everything and it’s so awesome because you get into this character. Like literally with the disco thing, you put this wig on and you play disco beats and people show up from all over the place. We had a steady gig in Vegas for a year and a half with this gig. They would fly you out, put you in a hotel, and pay you a lot of money. I’m playing like two drums and had gold chains on. Then there was a thing called Metal Shop and they actually evolved into Steal Panther in L.A. and they are actually quite popular there still. You put an 80’s metal wig on, and you’re playing this crazy, you know. But it’s more of a show. A lot of bands play covers; this isn’t like that. There are costumes involved and the disco has dancers and so it’s more of a show production and skits. There are also comedy skits, so I learned a lot from that. I’ve played about 1200 gigs with them. Yeah, that’s how much I’ve done since ‘96, just with Perfect World. I am a working guy. I don’t like to sit around, so if I am home for two days, I will call the agency and ask if they have any gigs coming up. I’ll never forget the first KORN tour. We were playing stadiums in Australia, with Ozzy. Literally 60,000 seat stadiums, and I got home two days later and I played at a wedding in Malibu with the Boogy Nights, the wig band.

CB: Does anybody freak out when they see you? Do they know?

Ray: No, most of them don’t notice who I am, I saw one girl had a stick and it had KORN written on it and she goes, “Oh this is the KORN drummer’s stick” and I went, “Yeah, that is his stick.”

CB: What made you decide to go to music school? I don’t see very many drummers that have been professionally trained.

Ray: To be honest with you, it was an excuse to go to L.A. My parents were all into education and everybody in my family is in education, but I was kind of turned off by the school musician. I always played from the heart no matter what. But the lessons were kind of an excuse to go to L.A. I got out there and I realized how much I didn’t know. I was like, “Man, I’m stupid, naive, and gullible.” I just played the stacks of records since I was a kid. I never was taught how to play. I had marching band and symphonic band in high school, but then when I got to L.A. I realized how bad my timing was and I didn’t know the styles like jazz, latin, funk. I just played to Kiss, Rush, Ozzy, whatever. I thought I was like big shit walking into the room like, “Oh hey here I come” and then I got stomped on at that school. So, needless to say, it was a great thing that I did. I learned how to read music. I learned how to play a session, go in and read a movie sound track and see the score in front of you and read music, and that was all new to me. Then I started teaching there. I still yell at students and I’m like, “Don’t bury your nose in the book,” because a lot of them leave like robots. They have to play from the heart. They can’t just play off the piece of paper. When people buy your records, they don’t care whether you read a piece of paper or you memorized the song. It’s always, How does it make you feel? Does it make you dance? What’s the emotion?

CB: I read that when you got called up to do the KORN audtion that you had to learn five songs, but you learned 30, the live versions and the studio versions.

Ray: Yeah.

CB: The over-achiever.

Ray: Yeah yeah well, everybody’s careers are different. I envy KORN from where they came from because they are a bunch of guys from Bakersfield and they didn’t know anything else. They just got a band together and they started playing and they just took off. They worked hard. I had a different up-bringing. I had to work hard in different areas. All my bands kind of failed. My original bands, it would be dangling, then we would almost get a bite, and then the record label would drop us, but I refused to give up. It’s in my blood, it’s what I do. I have to play. I don’t do anything else. So whether I am playing a Bar Mitzvah or playing in a stadium, I am going to play drums. They are my life, so once you have that mentality, it never stops. And no matter what failed bands or whatever, you just keep going. I learned a lot through all the auditions through the years. I had the third call back for the Ozzy Osborne gig in 2000. They narrowed it down from 200 drummers, to 50, to 10, to 3, and I was in the top three for his. I was like, “Man, I’m going to get this gig” and then somebody beat me out. One thing I did learn, when you have a cattle call of a lot of musicians auditioning for something, what do you have that that next guy doesn’t? You know what I’m saying? Because there are a lot of great people in line. I have seen, my buddies all showing up and I’m like, “What are you doing here?” this guy’s amazing. So one thing I always do, and I teach this, I tell my students, you have to put more effort in. You have to learn more than needed. If they give you 3 songs, research, go back and look at the catalog. When I auditioned with Jake E. Lee in ‘94, they gave us three songs. And I was literally the hundredth drummer to audition that day, and they were so tired. They were like sleeping on their amps, they were like, “Oh here’s this guy, great. Awesome” and I’m like, “Hey do you guys know some Badlands or some Ozzy stuff?” And they were like, “Just play the three songs.” And I go, “Man I would love to play Soul Stealer” it was like one of my favorite Badlands songs, and they kind of went, “Soul Stealer, yeah I remember that riff.” And the next thing you know it was like a new energy in the room and we started playing it. We didn’t play any of the three songs that I was supposed to learn and then I got the gig. I toured with them for three years. So, that’s the same thing with KORN. When I got there they just said, “learn a couple of the songs” or whatever, and I’ve been a KORN fan for awhile, obviously, but playing drums for it is a whole new thing than listening to it because it’s like getting inside the music and feeling it. So I learned as many as I could and I ended up, I had a list of about 33 songs, and they were like, “What do you know, all these?” and I’m like, “Kind of.” And so, that’s what happened. I played six songs with them and they said, “Welcome to the band, we’ll see you in Dublin.”

CB: I have seen that you have collaborated a lot with all kinds of great artists. Is there anybody that you haven’t collaborated with that you’d like to?

Ray: Yeah, there are a lot of people out there. One of them came true a couple years ago with my last band, Army. They write for a lot of people. They will call me up just to play drums while they are writing with the artists. I am a closet Seal fan. You know that pop star? I love all aspects of music. If something moves me, I listen to it. I don’t care if it’s techno, if it’s country, and Seal has been one of those guys I’m like, “Man it would just be so cool to play with him some day.” One of my good buds called me up and said, “Hey man we’re writing with Eric Frampton and there’s also this one artist, this week coming up, and do you think you could come down?” They didn’t even tell me who it was, and then I found out it was Seal. He walked in and Heidi Klum walks in, and I’m like, “There’s Heidi, and there’s Seal. This is weird.” So it was cool because for six hours straight, I got to write with this guy. I just love growing, I love expanding. I hate when people are narrow minded. When they only listen to one style of music, they need an open mind, you know? I’d like to do something with Chino from the Deftones too, I’d love to work with him. If he ever did a solo project, it would be killer to play drums on that.

Ray: Make sure you say something about the new record too. KORN III Remember Who You Are, it’s out world-wide now, everywhere. We’re really excited about it. Ross Robinson, the first producer, he’s come back, he did the first two KORN records.

CB: He knows a lot of great people.

Ray: Yeah a lot of great people. The first two SlipKnot, Machine Head are on his resume, it’s like insane. He really likes to get inside the artist. There was an intense brutal recording situation. You can feel it here. We really had to go back and like, no pro tools, no click track for the drums, it was all two-inch tape. And you can really hear the emotion and everything on it. There is nothing hidden on there, so I encourage everyone to check that out. Get the limited edition because it’s got a DVD that goes with the record and you can actually watch us recording, so it’s the best you can get. All the editing and video, he was in this small little room capturing everything. You can actually watch us and listen to the record. It’s pretty cool.

CB: What’s your favorite track on the album?

Ray: I like a lot of them. I don’t know, I mean we have been playing Let the Guilt Go, it’s really fun to play. I like one of the songs that didn’t make it on the record called Trapped Underneath the Stairs, it’s on the bonus edition. I love that song. It’s just really unique.

CB: How do you think it’s changed? I mean you guys had all the big hits, how do you think your music has changed with this album compared to the others?

Ray: It’s changed because we went back to the old school way of recording it. A lot of times there’s too many perfect sounding records out there. You can make anyone sound like a great musician or whatever, you just throw them into pro tools, or use pitch correcting, fixing the drums. This record we went back to hey, we’re four guys in a room, let’s just play whatever comes out. You know? Old school. We’re not trying to sound like the first couple records, it’s just that way of recording, that way of, “Hey let’s stop messing around.” I’ve been to so many recording situations where they will play something really kind of pitchy and they will be like, oh we’ll just fix it later. Then you come back the next day and it’s fine cause it’s been meshed up with the machine. It’s like we’re humans, you know what I mean? We feel. I hate that way of recording. That’s why I am really in love with this record. It’s back to like, it’s just us. There is no messing around with machines. KORN.com check that out.