KORN's JONATHAN DAVIS Talks Own 'Family Values'

KORN frontman Jonathan Davis recently spoke to Risen magazine (web site) about his near-death experience and fatherhood.

Davis, the man who as a coroner's assistant "fell in love" with working around dead bodies, nearly became one this summer.

The KORN singer was midway through a European tour when he began noticing bruises on his body and feeling weak after shows. He checked into a London hospital and was diagnosed with immune thrombocytopenic purpura, with a rare blood disease.

While people typically have somewhere between 140 and 400 platelets in their blood cells, he had five.

"If I continued to headbang on stage, I could have had a brain hemorrhage and dropped dead on the spot," Davis blogged from his hospital bed.

Since then, the Bakersfield, California, native has made a full recovery. "If it comes back, the worst case scenario is they take my spleen out," he says now, rather casually.

KORN's follow-up tour, the return of Family Values, was a colossal critical and comercial success, and Davis has since put plans in motion for his first solo tour. And literally right after he finished the Risen interview, the band reconvened to start recording its eighth studio album.

Jonathan Davis has now been sober for eight years.

"It's the most amazing thing you can ever do," Davis says on being a father. "It's the reason for living, pretty much. Just seeing these little people who depend on you and you see yourself in, that's a way of immortality in itself.

"The day [11-year-old] Nathan was born, I was a complete stark-raving drug-addict-alcoholic nutcase, and I didn't give a crap about anybody but myself. I lived the rock 'n' roll lifestyle full on, excess chicks, everything.

"One day I came home completely sloshed and he was probably 2 at the time. He knew I was fucked up and he gave me this look I'll never forget. It made me feel like an inch tall.

"I went on this tour when 'Follow the Leader' came out and my grandfather passed away and those two things put me over the edge. I quit drinking, smoking, doing drugs, everything, that day, August 22, 1998. I haven't touched anything since.

"I was messed up mentally for about a year from the alcohol and drug withdrawal and the chemistry getting back to normal in my body. I had horrible panic attacks, I got schizophrenic for a while. I thought people were trying to poison my food.

"The whole first Family Values Tour, I only came out of my bunk to play shows. Then I went right back in. Once it cleaned all out, my mind got straight and it was great. I had to be around for my kids."

(Thanks: Korn.Simpol.Net)