Korn‘s Brian Welch and his daughter Jennea talked to The Morning Blaze about the documentary “Loud Krazy Love” about growing up in environment with so much excess. Read some excerpts here:
This is a pretty intense documentary. It’s really about your guys’ relationship – tell us a little bit about the journey…
Head: “Well, the movie starts with my daughter Jennea being born into the crazy rock ‘n’ roll world and all the damage that me and the guys did to each other, to our personal lives just by addiction, just being rockstars…
“It shows all the damage done to me, my ex-wife, my daughter, and the good times too, and all the restoration and healing that took place. It also tells the Korn story. It’s a really well-rounded movie, we really opened our souls.”
It’s all incredibly relatable, more relatable than I think people even realize. I guarantee a lot of people you’ve met have dealt with addiction whether they’ve talked about it or not, so when people that are in the spotlight come out and share their stories, then people who are going through it just think, ‘Wow, so I’m not the only one who’ve felt this way.’
Head: “Exactly, I feel like the movie has everything. There’s a lot of funny things, and there’s a little bit of faith and family.
“But then there’s like, Jonathan [Davis]; well, he has a problem and he has his own beliefs, so he has that voice of someone who doesn’t walk up in faith like me, so there’s someone in the movie that everybody can relate to.
“I love my daughter, she talks about three points. What are your favorite three points?”
Jennea: “For me, the movie really focuses around family connection, the father-daughter mainly, and then things that fight depression, anxiety, and struggle. So like you said, it’s really well-rounded.”
This is a topic that everyone can relate to, just as far as parenting goes, but I want to ask you – growing up as someone whose parent is such a massive rockstar; for the early part of your life you’ve seen it as normal, at what point did you realize that wasn’t normal?
Jennea: “To be honest, to me it was always kind of normal, but I think when I started going to kindergarten that all the kids had their mom and dad who came to pick them up, and I had to stay with my grandparents or this friend of a friend. That was a little difficult. Obviously, I was totally healed from that.”
Brian, as a father, I think that at certain points in your life, there were things that you focused on a lot. Kids are born and you have all these ideas and plans that you are going to do, but your life was in such a unique place when you had your daughter. How did you realize you were kind of losing sight of how you focused on when she was born?
Brian: “That’s a great question. It’s just a magical feeling. All of these parents, when the child is born, you feel that miracle. It’s just so beautiful and pure, and then life happens and the diapers, and the difficult marriage or whatever it is, it kind of beat you down.
“For me, it was a lot of issues undealt with. There’s a lot of free Jagermeister that covered it up. When you are trying to be a good dad and you’re sober, all the real issues are coming back, it’s like, ‘How am I going to handle this?’.
“My faith came in and I found a love that’s greater than me that could help me heal the hatred I had even for myself. Once I got that alright, now I actually love and like myself, with all my flaws.”
Jennea, you started developing your own issues almost as a cry for help, just to bring attention to the issues you were dealing with family-wise. That had to be really hard for you…
Jennea: “Yeah, and especially being a teenager, that’s awful, I just had all sorts of feelings. Luckily enough, I went to a therapeutic boarding school when I was 14, I got counseling and therapy, and I had an amazing life who just lived a normal life, and it changed my life, honestly.”
During a separate conversation with Build, Jennea was asked about memories of touring with Korn as a toddler. She replied:
“I think a lot of them are bittersweet. A lot of the times, it felt like a playground every day. They took me everywhere.
“I have this memory of… we were somewhere in Europe and there was this giant playground – like hundreds of kids, and it was amazing. It stuck with me forever. And so there was a lot of those memories.
“Even being at shows, it felt like a giant playground. There was a lot of ‘dark.’ I think when you’re a kid – this may sound weird – you’re a little more spiritually sensitive, I guess.
“I felt like some people, even if they didn’t look like him – it’s my dad; he looks normal to me – people felt dark sometimes and depressed or angry, and that would scare me or I would see women or parties and stuff.”
Head chimed in:
“To that, you heard on the trailer, she said, ‘There’s naked chicks walking around.’ And I’m, like, ‘Where?’ Wouldn’t that be my luck? My kid’s on tour. ‘Cause there wasn’t naked chicks around all the time.
“If there was something going on in the bus with one of the guys, but it was a thing where if the kids were around, there was even respect back then. So I’m, like, ‘How could that happen?’
“But there was a lot of partying going on. So they might have transferred from one bus to the next, or from the dressing room to the bus or something.
“Oh, god help us. [Laughs] But everything worked out. That’s rock and roll for you. But we’re all mature now and it’s different.”
Jennea concluded:
“It made me who I am.”
Watch “Loud Krazy Love” trailer here:
