Brian Welch

When you’ve reached the top and something’s still missing, where do you go? Brian “Head” Welch’s life was spinning out of control. As lead guitarist for the band Korn, people worshipped his music. He made all the money, had all the cars, houses and women he could handle, but still found himself with a crippling addiction to Meth. “I couldn’t stay sober. I didn’t know how. I hit rock bottom.”

There’s a point when you finally look in the mirror at an image that you’re simply tired of seeing. Brian wanted to quit, but what if quitting required complete surrender?

Q: What is it that you love about music and how did it influence your childhood?

A: Music to me is everything. I love how to communicate through music – it just takes you to another place and it just a great way to communicate. I grew up in a home with my mom and dad and one brother, an older brother, and we had a pretty normal life. We didn’t all get alone all that well all the time and my dad drank a little bit with a little bit of anger issues. I just dove into my guitar. They encouraged me to play so it was like we were all involved in it, but I just loved music. It’s not like I was escaping, it’s just I just loved music, I loved metal and it took me to another place. I played soccer and stuff but I wasn’t real good at soccer, sports or anything so I picked up the guitar, started taking lessons and once I found the basics, I was in. I was playing songs that I liked: Ted Nugent, Ozzie, you know, Journey, Don’t Stop Believing and it was a just something I was good at. Even my brother was telling his friends, “You got to listen to my brother, he’s pretty good.” It seemed like it brought the attention that I needed and wanted. My dad was proud of me, my brother was proud of me and all the kids at school. I was known as being the good guitar player.

Q: When did you realize that you were really a rock star?

A: I remember after Korn’s first album, we were on our third or fourth tour with Ozzie Osborne and that’s when I first felt like a rock star. In the middle of the tour, our album went gold and Ozzie Osborne and his wife, Sharon, brought champagne display gift to us and after we got off stage, we went in there and she was in there with Ozzie and he didn’t talk to us the whole tour except for then and they were just congratulating us and it was surreal. So it was pretty cool to become a rock star. But it seemed like every time things would happen, good for my rock star career, something at home was messing with my life. So I had to battle some personal things while I was climbing up on the success ladder.

Q: While building your career and doing what you love, did you lock those personal issues away?

A: The issues in life, I tried to lock away while I was on the road and I just drank; that was our thing, all of us in Korn just drank. And it just started out for fun, just a bunch of kids goofing around. But it masked the stuff at home. Now these were my best friends out there on the road but all this drama going on at home with my girlfriend wasn’t something I could talk to them about it because I was like addicted to this girl and they would have told me to just leave her. I couldn’t and so I just kept it inside of me and just drank.
When you’re drunk you don’t want the party to stop sometimes, especially when you’re getting paid to live your dream and just have and play music and do whatever and that’s where drugs can creep in.

Q: Why is it that with music, a lot of time drugs and alcohol enter the scene? What’s the harm?

A: There’s a high when you go on stage and you see all these people loving your music and loving you and maybe it’s an extension of that feeling of performing in front of all those people and feeling that high and not wanting to come down from that high after getting off stage. So when you see all those people just going nuts for you, t puffs you up inside, you feel important. You always partying is fun and what’s the harm as long as you’re not putting a needle in your arm. You know, you tell yourself you’re better and you got it under control and you just fool yourself like that.
It’s always a lie, because you always start out like you’re having fun but it’s like the bible says, it’s just “pleasure and sin for a season.” It seems like fun in the beginning, but when times goes by, it’s starts to wear on you. So the harm is that you’re just pushing yourself down and you’re not the real you. You’re trying to be someone else, or else you wouldn’t be drinking and partying and doing drugs. You call it a good time, I mean, all my friends, we called it a good time but it turns around on you and it was ruining our lives. You may be laughing while you’re doing it, but the next day you’re feeling sick. And year after year of that, starts to wear on your personality, starts to wear on your relationships and everything is affected by it negatively, everything.

Q: What was Korn’s music about and are you proud of it? How did the music and personal life issues affect you as a group?

A: Korn’s music was just about going crazy and getting wild and energy, constant energy. In the beginning, the lyrics were mainly about not getting with the parents, or getting alone with the parents and dealing with issues, childhood issues, growing up, getting picked on and it was kind of like fighting back against the bullies and the parents that did you wrong. And it was just a wild energetic thing and we connected with our fans because so many people go through bullying at school, so many people have issues with their parents and so many problems in life and Korn is like a therapeutic cult that everybody would get into and be like, I feel that pain. I feel that, like just power to like fight back. I’ve heard many stories of people saying that they’re going to kill themselves and Korn made them want to live because they could relate to somebody that had similar pain to them.
For us, there a was a unity in every direction with Korn. There was no healthy connection with us but we did connect in watching Jonathan write the lyrics. Still, it was always mixed with partying and stuff, always.
I wouldn’t be at where I’m at today if I didn’t go through Korn and I think everything happened for a reason in my life. I had a lot of fun back then, and if there’s a couple of things that change, of course, everybody thinks back and says I wish I wouldn’t have done that. I still love that type of music and I’m still doing it that type of music today but with a different message. Instead of screaming for what happened in the past, I’m screaming about where all the anger and partying got me and I’m like, God save me from myself.

Q: Do you love those guys today?

A: Yeah I love the guys in Korn. They’ll always be my brothers. I’m not really connected with them that much right now, just because I’m in a new place and I walked away from everything but I love those guys and they’re in my heart a lot and I miss them.

Q: What did you worship before God and were you happy with it?

A: I worshipped a lot of stuff. When you say worship, it means love and I loved a lot of things. I loved partying, I loved music, I loved money, so I was like worshipping money, because I was brought up having a mentality where I had to get a certain amount of money so I could be good the rest of my life and I wouldn’t have to worry. I got into sex, drugs, rock ‘n roll, I worshipped that, that was the love of my life.
There was a few times where life seemed good around the time when my daughter was born and I got married to my ex-wife. When my daughter Jeanea came into the world, it was such a euphoric feeling; I thought my life could just feel like that forever. It was like spiritually, I didn’t know what was happening, I just felt so much love just fill my emotions and I thought I was going to be happy. I didn’t drink or anything I just hung at home sober and it was the best ever. I had to tour in Japan and the first thing I did was start smoking and drinking again, back to the same old things and the happiness quickly went away.

Q: How did you become a single father and how did you juggle it being on the road?

A: I was on the road with Metallica and Kid Rock and System of a Down and I was getting phone calls from my ex-wife saying, I can’t do this. When are you coming home? Toward the end of the tour, I tried calling her back and other people would answer my phone, hanging up in my house. I was freaking out because I couldn’t talk to my daughter and I didn’t know who was at my house. Suddenly I got a call from my wife and she said, I’m leaving you, I don’t want to have nothing to do with you and and my life was like just spinning out of control. I had like a three day break on the tour and I went home, I got Jeanae and I became a single father right there. I hit the road and brought her with me while touring with Metallica, Kid Rock and System of a Down. We had a headlining tour after that and I hired a nanny and just life changed. I was a rock star and a single father trying to juggle the two. I quit drugs and this is really when my life just came away from Korn and got put on my daughter. It was a juggling act, but I’d have to fight myself to figure out which one I was going to take care of.
I had a bad relationship with my wife but at the same tie, I loved her and having my kid there and seeing the smile on a kid’s face helped me. Luckily, I had a long break after that and I went home and we just stopped working for a while. When Korn started writing our fifth album, I ran into a buddy I knew from Bakersville and his wife and they wanted to help me out. So I started paying her to watch my kid and it worked out pretty cool for a while. Korn would tour for months at a time and it’d be weeks before I’d see my kid and when there would be problems, she would want her dad. For the nanny, things was getting hard for her and although the money was good, raising kids is hard. It got harder and harder as she got older and older and things started to happen to where she needed a parent to just hold or just take care of her.

Q: What was the lowest moment in your life? How did you find Christ in that?

A: Well, I have had a couple low points in my life. I had swore that I would never do methamphetamines again because I saw what it did to my child’s mother. It just took her feelings away and made her leave her kid. I’d say a year or two years later, I ran into somebody while I was drunk and and he had some speed. I just told myself, just this one time. And then the next weekend, I told myself, just this second time and I won’t do it again. Then I did it again and again and then I ended up every day with a crippling addiction to the methamphetamine and everything I said about my ex-wife came true for me. I turned into a junkie, a speed junkie. I took it all over the world on Korn tours, to Asia where the penalty for carrying drugs is death. I was so paranoid I was going to get caught and I sunk to the lowest gutter. After tours, I would spend time with my kid and I would still be on it, because I needed it to function. In Europe, I brought so much drugs and then I ran out. I had my drug dealer send me drugs through the mail. It was crazy and that was the lowest, lowest, lowest point of my life. After two years of being a junkie, I came home after one tour in 2004 and Janaea had come with me and she was watching her dad and all the crazy stuff that was going on. I tried to shelter her from it, but it was too hard. I remember her skipping around the house singing a Korn song called “Adidas” . She was skipping around singing “All day I dream about sex,” and this little girl, not knowing what she’s saying, I’m like, what am I doing? I’m a junkie, my daughter’s singing all day I dream about sex and I’m going to die if I don’t change things and that was the lowest point of my life.
I was doing business with some friends from Bakersville and they were Christians but they didn’t try to push it on anybody. I was becoming friends with them and I would talk to them about all the drama and being a single dad. I was up all weekend, all night tweaked out on meth and I heard my email pop and I got a message. It was from Eric, my real estate broker, and I opened it and he said, “Brian I don’t mean to be weird with you and I hope you don’t take this the wrong way but I felt a scripture jump out at me, I’ve never done this before. So I don’t know, really how to do this, but I felt like this would mean something to you. It’s Matthew 11:28, ‘Come to Me, all who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.’” And right there, I looked at this scripture and I was like, either this guy is crazy and an idiot or something’s real going on and the Lord’s calling me. I remember all tweaked out, I looked in the dictionary, weary, I looked up burden and I just pulled the scripture apart and I was like, I’m weary and burdened and I need rest for my soul and I didn’t know if it was real. They invited me to church a couple of weeks later and I was all spun out from staying up all night and I looked up in the monitor and the pastor was talking and it said Matthew 11:28. And I was like, “Oh man, these guys are setting me up.” I was all paranoid and thought everyone’s out to get me but I felt the presence just during the worship music, I just felt something but I needed to get out of there, quick, because I was all sketched out. He put up another scripture and it was Matthew 6:3, ‘Seek first the kingdom of God and all His righteousness and all things will be given to you,’ and he explained that if you just hang out with Christ and you talk to him every day, then all the bad things, they’ll just fall away. You gotta call Him into your life. So in my head I was going to accept Christ in front of everyone and then I’m going to go home and snort drugs. I raised my hand and I received Christ at the church, I went home, neglected my daughter by putting her in front of the TV like I always did and I went and grabbed a hundred dollar bill chopped up my crystal meth and I snorted a big line and I looked up and said, “Jesus, if you’re real like that pastors said, then you gotta take these drugs from me. Come into my life, come into my heart, search me, right now, search my heart. You know I want to quit, you know I want to be a good dad for this kid, she lost her mother to drugs, and she’s going to lose me if I don’t quit. Amen.
I tried to quit and I started going to church a lot, and then I fell again. I was still on the meth and I was stumbling through the bible wondering, “How do I know if this is real?” All of a sudden I felt a peaceful presence come into the room, I felt like Heaven invaded Earth, all around me and I was just in awe of the feeling of ecstatic bliss and I looked up, shaking and all I could say is Father. I felt so much Fatherly love from Heaven and it was like, “I don’t condemn you, I love you, I love you.” It was just love, love and instantly that love from God came into me. It was so powerful that the next day I threw away all my drugs, I called a friend over and we threw them away together and I quit Korn. I’m going to raise my kid because now I got the love of God come into me and then it came out of me to my kid. It changed me, my heart was changed like that. My life totally changed and it’s still changed and that experience I had with God was so real. I mean this blissful encounter with the revelation of Christ was so real and my relationship is so much deeper with Him right now.
When you finally have an understanding that Christ is everything, and that He can take all that stuff from you and that He takes care and you don’t got to worry about things in life anymore, He gives that understanding to you, by faith as a substance that you know for sure that you’re right where you belong. I made more money, I played bigger shows, had houses, cars, I tried drugs, I tried sex, I tried everything to try to get this pleasure out of this life. And I thought that I could fulfill my life with all this stuff. By having my dream come true and it came true but it didn’t fulfill it that’s why I wanted to die so much. That’s why I didn’t care if I died. When contentment is given to you in life you don’t have to look anywhere else and you’re exactly where you need to be. And the question about life is answered.
Christ is everything. He gave me that gift. That’s the biggest thing you could ever be given in all of Creation is that gift of understanding, because there’s a lot of people that don’t understand that. I am going and tell everybody in the world, that Christ saved me from my drugs, because I could have easily died and He deserves everything and I’m going to give Him everything.

Q: What kind of father are you now? Does you daughter know Christ?

A: I’m a hands on father now. I’m way better than I was and I didn’t change into this Sunday day school-teacher father where I was perfect right away. I battled anger and I still have issues today, but I’m a lot better than I was. I get up with my kid and I make her breakfast, I take her to school and I pick her up. We hang out and our relationship is so tight. I believe God used her to save me. My daughter has seen miracles, she loves the Lord and she’s seen her dad totally change. She knows Christ. She knows Him well. It’s what our whole life is centered on, Christ. It’s an everyday walk. It’s not like we’re going to go talk about Jesus on Sunday. It’s every day that we pray, it’s everyday that we talk to God because we’re one with Him. He doesn’t do in that church on Sunday, He lives in us so He’s all over my walls, He’s in us, He’s in our mouths, we talk about, its everything. It’s just really cool that she sees all this and I just tell her over and over that she’s so special to God because He used her to save me, because He has this call on her life and she’s special.

Q: What kind of musician are you now?

A: My musical gifts opened up a lot more. God gave me this gift, after I gave my life to Him. I was able to write and I’m able to hear songs in my head now, before I put them down to tape and I was never able to do that before but God can. He can do anything and it’s like II Corinthians 6 says, “When we united ourselves with the Lord and we become one spirit with Him” And everything I do is mixed together with God. And He’s brilliant. I’m an idiot in a lot of ways but God’s not an idiot but He’s brilliant. Anything that people like about my music, it’s God working in me and a lot of people don’t understand that, but I do. And it keeps me really humble.

Q: Why are you second?

A: I am second because Christ is everything for me. I led myself to being a junkie, a speed junkie and I surrendered and put Christ first and He will always be first. He’s everything, He’s the air I breathe, He’s all the love that I have in my heart, He’s everything. And He deserves to be first for the rest of my life and for eternity.