QUEEN OF THE DAMNED: JOHNATAN DAVIS

It's a very different role for Korn's Jonathan Davis. In between albums he's taken some time to work outside of the band, and while looking for a solo project he was approached to score for the movie Queen of the Damned. His writing for the soundtrack takes a different approach from what Korn fans are used to, and includes the talents of a 92 piece orchestra. While in Los Angeles the week of the premiere I talked with Jonathan about his role in the project, the difficulty of giving up the soundtrack to other artists, and what's opened up for him for the future.

Shoutweb: Hey Jon, how are you doing? Jonathan: I'm good man, how are you?

Shoutweb: I'm good. Thanks for calling.

Jonathan: No problem man. Thanks for doing this.

Shoutweb: Let's get under way. Can you tell me how you got involved with this project?

Jonathan: First of all, I started writing music on the bus when I was on tour because I was bored and had nothing else to do. There were a whole bunch of instrumental pieces and I was just trying to figure out what to do with them. My manager said I should start trying to score movies. I was down for that and he thought it would be good if I hooked up with someone who could compose the background and had done movies. Someone that could show me the ropes basically. That's when I hooked up with Richard Gibbs. Me and him hit it off great, and we started working on stuff together. He was doing TV shows and TV movies and other stuff. I'd go over to his house and hang out and watch him. We just played off each other. We really liked working with each other. This was going on for a couple of weeks when we got approached to do ! this Queen of the Damned thing.

Shoutweb: Were you friends with Richard Gibbs previously?

Jonathan: Yeah, we just started working together. I met him when we had a meeting at my manager's office. We'd known each other for about two or three weeks when we got this call about doing the original music for Lestat and doing the score for the movie. So that was really exciting, because I thought it would be a great opportunity to be able to write original songs for somebody else, other than Korn. Someone to bring an orchestral element to my music, and then actually me throwing my musical influences into orchestral music, scoring with Richard.

Shoutweb: How was the experience of writing for the film, versus writing for Korn, or what you're used to?

Jonathan: It was a totally different world. When writing rock songs, they basically lay out really easily. You have to write a verse. You have to write a chorus, a bridge, or a B section, or something like that, and then you repeat that. But when you do an orchestral score, you're painting a picture of the music. You're trying to bring out what's going on. There is no verse-chorus thing. It's just all one continuous piece of music and it was difficult. It was fun. It was challenging learning to do that with orchestral instruments. It was totally apart from what I was used to. Ultimately, it made me a better musician.

Shoutweb: Can you tell me about the inspirations for writing the songs?

Jonathan: First I got in my head. I listened to the vampire Lestat in Queen of the Damned. I read both those books and tried to get a feel for what was going on with Lestat. Those books are totally different from what the movie was about. So, I just wanted to get a feeling for what was going on. The general theme of the books is how Lestat was very lonely. What would it be like to be a vampire, you know? You've been alive for say five or six hundred years. You'd have nobody to love you because they'd all died. To live, you'd have to kill someone every night. You couldn't go out in the sun. It just seems like a really lonely, miserable existence. So, I just put myself in that headspace and went with it.

Shoutweb: It sounds morbid.

Jonathan: Yeah, it was really morbid.

Shoutweb: Word has it that Munky and Head provided guitars.

Jonathan: Yeah, I wrote the songs. We had the songs done. We had players come in and play what we wrote. So, I had Munky and Head on a couple of songs and Sam Rivers from Limp Bizkit, the bass player, play bass on a couple of the songs. Vinnie Colaiuta and Terry Bozzio played drums. They're my favorite drummers.

Shoutweb: Did you ask them to be involved or did they come to you?

Jonathan: Yeah, I asked them. Richard had the idea of bringing Terry and Vinnie in, and I'm like "hell, yeah, I'm down!" So, I brought Munky and Head to play guitar, because they're my favorite guitar players, and I love the way Sam plays bass. It was basically pick anything. There was no limit.

Shoutweb: Was it a dream team band?

Jonathan: Totally. It was just about sure musicianship. It was just, "What do you want to do?" (laughs) It was cool. I never got to put Munky and Head in a studio musician role and they look at me like, "What do you want me to do?" It was really cool. It's a different way to record.

Shoutweb: Is it a coincidence that the song "Redeemer" sounds like it was written for Marilyn Manson?

Jonathan: Yeah, it was a coincidence. When we did it it was like an 80's gothic kinda of thing and it's just what fit. When we were going through picking the artists for the songs, I'm all, "Well, that's a Manson song, totally."

Shoutweb: How was it working with him after all the feuding that's gone on in the press over the last few years?

Jonathan: It was great. I'm glad that we finally made up and are friends again. We were friends for a long time there, and some of the bullshit went to his head. It was just a weird thing. It was cool that he wanted to do this for me. We made up and now we're friends again.

Shoutweb: Would you like to have to sung for the soundtrack?

Jonathan: Would I liked to have sung the soundtrack? Well, hell yes! That was my baby, man. I was so upset when I couldn't be on it. But the ultimate goal was that I wanted to be a composer and songwriter and that's what I did ultimately by having them on there.