Korn recently announced that bassist Reginald "Fieldy" Arvizu would be stepping down for a few months to deal with "some personal issues." Arvizu is currently replaced by Suicidal Tendencies bassist Roberto "Ra" Diaz, though Korn guitarist guitarist Brian "Head" Welch doesn't expect that to be for too long.
Welch said in an interview with 97.9 GRD that Arvizu just needed some time off and will be back soon.
"Fieldy is good, man. He's at home, and he's with his kids. I wanna say that Fieldy's a good dad. He's a good dude, and he has his life structured. The bad habits he talked about in the press — everyone has their issues in life. But those he'll work on in his own way. But that dude is — I look up to him as a dad, actually.
"He's had five kids. He always says, 'I've got two thousand kids,' 'cause it feels like it some days. But he's a good dad. He's gone through a lot, man, personally, and he just needs some time off to reflect on himself and his family. That's it."
Welch also touched on how Diaz got the gig.
"Well, there's COVID and everything, so when we started talking about it, it was a thing where we wanted to be careful still and whatnot. 'Cause it was a couple, a few months ago or whatever. So we just started brainstorming and hitting up friends and whatnot.
"We need the slap — we need the slap bass, we need the finger playing, we need someone, 'cause Fieldy is unique — very unique. So it just kind of happened that way, man, where Ra, he was open because Suicidal is not going out until next year. I think Mike Muir has a back surgery or something this year. So it just worked out, man.
"He came down, we jammed. He's a really humble guy, and just very talented. He can play anything — from jazz to slap to anything. He played all the songs with, like, three mistakes out of 10 songs or something — little mistakes. I mean, not even mistakes — it was just, like, 'I thought I heard it that way.' They weren't even mistakes. So we were, like, 'Okay. You got it down.'"
