In a new interview with Pearl Drums, KORN drummer Ray Luzier, who has also played with David Lee Roth, ARMY OF ANYONE and KXM, was asked to name one of his favorite road stories. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “I’ve been touring for, well, pushing 35 years now. I played with David Lee Roth for eight years — from ’97 to ’05 — and I played with ARMY OF ANYONE with the STONE TEMPLE PILOTS guys, and, of course, now KORN since 2007, and in my 17 years with KORN, it’s completely different than the other situations and all the other bands I’ve ever toured with or been in. Everything that that’s about you, your personality comes out on the road, because all of a sudden you’re roommates with these crew guys, with these bandmembers. And so you could musically get along with everyone on stage, but maybe off the deck, it’s a totally different situation. So I always tell people, road or crew, whatever, be cool because you never know when you’re gonna see these people again. If you want longevity in this business, you wanna work, you have to be cool. You can’t burn any bridges and all that.”

He continued: “One story that sticks out for me is on our way to the Boston Pops Orchestra. We played with them in Boston in 2004, I wanna say, 2003. And it was a half a million people on deck. And the whole thing leading up to that, all the just crazy anxiety and being on live television and playing for that many people, millions at home, having Keith Lockhart behind you as instructing the Boston Pops, David Lee Roth in front of you, that was a pretty surreal moment, leading up into that.

“But, yeah, there’s so many stories that [laughs] I’ll leave that for another time,” he added.

Luzier was raised just outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania before moving to Los Angeles in 1988 to pursue a career in music.

A decade ago, Ray relocated his family — wife Aspen Brandy Lea and their two sons, Hudson Ray and Beck Jagger — to Franklin, Tennessee.

Ray lived in Los Angeles for 16 years before moving to Nashville.

Luzier, who got the job with KORN in October 2007 and was made an official member in 2009, reflected on some of his favorite memories of playing with the pioneering nu-metal act in a February 2024 interview
with Modern Drummer’s David Frangioni. He said at the time: “I love doing a new record and I love touring to support that… Now that I’m a part of the band, writing with them, being on a record and then going out and playing those songs live. I love the classics.”

Luzier went on to say that all members of KORN “collaborate” on new music, but occasionally songs will be largely pieced together by one or two members.

“Sometimes Jon [singer Jonathan Davis] will bring [in a finished idea] — there’s a song, ‘Never Never’, off of ‘The Paradigm Shift’, that was a good single for us,” he recalled. “It went to No. 1. And that was completely Jonathan. He brought us a song that he wrote, composed it all. And we were, like, ‘Wow, this is catchy. What do we do?’ [He said] ‘Do whatever you want.’ The drum programming that he put on there was very simple. And I ended up doing a very simplistic part because I didn’t wanna squash the song. It was such a beautifully melodic song. So there’s stuff like that that he brought in. We went full-blown dubstep in 2012 [on ‘The Path Of Totality’], and Skrillex and 12th Planet and all these dubstep DJs were a part of our existence. And that was a complete left turn. It made some people angry and it also gained some new fans that liked that style of music.”

Ray continued: “That’s one thing I love about this band. We’re not afraid to experiment and try new things. But going from ‘The Paradigm Shift’ to ‘The Serenity Of Suffering’, [which] is one of my favorite records. ‘The Nothing’ is [also] one of my favorites. And the last one [‘Requiem’], we went kind of old school, partly analog, went back to just, like, ‘Let’s get in a room and jam,’ that kind of vibe. And that’s some of the best moments for me, is watching these roots grow into the song. It becomes something that appeals to the crowds. They’re singing the words back. There’s no better feeling, rockin’ out on stage, whether it’s 500 or 50,000 people, feeling that energy. You can never, ever replace a live experience.”