Korn’s Munky explains bassist Fieldy’s mysterious departure: “Lost his ambition”
Korn‘s co-founder and guitarist Munky has lifted the lid on bassist Fieldy’s 2021 departure from the nu metal group.
Fieldy, whose real name is Reginald Quincy Arvizu, served his time in Korn from 1993 until 2021. In a podcast appearance in April, the musician revealed that COVID had a huge impact on his personal life; his refusal to get vaccinated caused tension in the band and several logistical issues when it came to getting on the road.
In a new interview with Rolling Stone Brasil, guitarist James ‘Munky’ Shaffer opened up about Fieldy’s departure, revealing that, “Trying to get him engaged was a little bit difficult, just to stay in the room while we’re writing.”
He added, “He would always just kind of leave… and he’d be in there for a few minutes and then kind of just not focused, and he just kind of lost his ambition, I guess.”
Munky was quick to offer his former bandmate kind words, stressing, “But it’s okay. It happens. People, everything, goes in cycles. We’re definitely not mad at him or anything, we want him to be happy. And it didn’t really feel like he was happy being a working musician at the time.”
He concluded, “So it was kind of like it was a mutual sort of – I wouldn’t say split – because I still use the word hiatus.”
Additionally, when recently recalling his departure, Fieldy had plenty of kind words to share: “I look back at my life, and almost 30 years with Korn, that was a blast, man. I can’t explain it. It’s not easy, but it is a blast, and I don’t look back on it going, ‘That sucked’.”
The new information falls in line with what Fieldy shared in 2021, when the bassist first announced he would be sitting out from Korn’s upcoming tour as he was “dealing with some personal issues that at times have caused me to fall back on some of my bad habits and has caused some tension with the people around me”.
Elsewhere in the interview, the nu metal icon revealed that the band have been hard at work creating their first album since 2022’s Requiem. “We’ve gone through… I swear to God, we’ve written probably almost 40 songs, and gone through ’em, and rewrote ’em, and got rid of ’em, and tore ’em apart, and rebuilt ’em,” he shared.
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