September 22, 2025 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Brian “Head” Welch seemed to have it all. As co-founder and guitarist of the Grammy-winning, multi-platinum band KoRn, he was at the center of the nu-metal movement—living in mansions, selling millions of records, and playing for legions of fans around the world—but it was all a lie. Beneath the fame and fortune, his life was unraveling. Addiction, emptiness, and despair left him searching for something more. In his moving testimony, Welch shares what pushed him to leave the band and how he found a peace he had never known before.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American
people coming to you from the city where the West begins,
Fort Worth, Texas. Brian Head Welsh was a rock star
who thought he had it all, who was the co
founder and lead guitarist of the Grammy Award winning multi
(00:30):
platinum band Corn, one of the biggest and most controversial
rock bands on the planet. He lived in a mansion,
had millions in the bank and legions of fans.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
All over the globe.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
He was living the good life and it should have
been perfect, but it was all alive.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Here's Brian Wels with his story.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
I grew up just loving music.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Man.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
My parents in nineteen eighty bought me ACDC back in Black.
I turned that record on, it was over. I was like,
I want to be that stared at Ingush Young, I
stared at his picture like it just played. Then I
got every album out there and just played that Iron Maiden,
Ossie Osbourne, like all these all these bands, and and
(01:14):
you know, I just wanted to be a rock star. Man.
I met the guys in Corn in elementary around nineteen
eighty seven. These guys, they went and started hanging out
with this other guy named Pete Capra, and he was like, dude,
there's some new music. There's some new bands coming out,
and he showed them Red Hot Chili Peppers and Faith
the More before they either of them got big. So
(01:37):
they were they were they started getting too that music
and then they started forming this band away from me.
They they went and moved down to Hollywood, California, because
we grew up two hours away from Hollywood. And I
was stuck with this girl and I treat her sorry,
I actually really loved her, but I was I was
stuck back in this bad relationship and I treated her
(01:58):
bad and and she was a sweet girl actually, and
I was controlling. I was so insecure. I had this
self hatred that I grew when I was probably junior high.
You know, I got picked on and didn't like the
way I looked and was just you know body. I
felt like I was fat and just everybody with you
puberty before me. So it was like that's the worst,
(02:20):
you know, so everyone's kicking my butt, you know, I'm
this little guy. Let me alone. But I look in
the mirror and something in my mind and my heart
was like I don't like you. You're not good enough,
you're ugly, you know, all this stuff, all these you know,
and so I carried that. I remember I went down
to Hollywood, California and visited the guys because they're still
(02:42):
my friends, you know, and they were just like, you
should move in with us, you know, just stay with us, man,
you're not doing good. And and so I moved in
with these guys and I became I started them with
their instruments, and I turned into their roadie. I'm carrying
their gear and I mean, they're carrying it with me
(03:05):
because they don't got nothing right. They're like they have
to pay to play. That was Hollywood back then, and
so but yeah, well they would. I was the worst
roadie in the history of Rody's. Because they're my friends.
I'm like, they tell me to do something like shut up.
So I did that for a few years, and as
divine intervention would have it, Allison Chains came out and
(03:29):
then what some faith, the War start getting really big.
Metallica was huge. Azzi No More Tears that record came out.
So this low music thing, grunge thing was happening. But uh,
and so thank god, these guys got out of their
little funk rock face Chili Peppers rip off thing. And
(03:49):
I like Chili Peppers, don't get me wrong. It was
just too much of a they're copying them, you know,
And so they asked me to join, and thank god
because I was just I was partying like crazy. One
of my roommates we all lived together. We lived at
the beach, like right close to the beach. But you know,
the rent was expensive. But you pile six people in there,
if becomes like two hundred bucks each, and so who
(04:11):
would like if we had one guy in the garage.
I was in the closet. Then there's two bedrooms and
then a pool room where someone slept in. It was crazy,
but I was. I love the alcohol. I was addicted
to alcohol from like age sixteen. I just my dad
was a drinker man. He he ran some chevrons with
my uncle, a couple like gas stations, and you know,
one time he was just you would drink. You wouldn't
(04:33):
drink all the time, but he would slip back and forth,
you know, and then he when he drank heavy, he
would drink heavy. Like one day he came home and
do some bank runs for the business, and he had
a water bottle and I went to grab it and
I take it and he's like, give me that, give
me that, and I smell like vodka. It was straight vodka.
You know. I didn't confront him or nothing, but I
was just like, WHOA dad's partying? And so we have
(04:56):
that that that kind of curse in our family line, right,
And so I stepped into it at sixteen. And so
when I joined the band, we instantly we got Jonathan
Davis in the band. We went to the Honeyton Beach Pier.
We were just drinking some forty ounces of beer and
we're like, okay, we're in a band, now what are
we gonna call ourselves? And Corn popped up? The singer
(05:17):
Jonathan said, what about corn? It's a couple of stories
going around, but we just thought it was cool because
it was with a K and the backwards are people
are doing that? Like crazy? Now? Right back then, it
was like different, you know, spelled a word different, you know,
And it was a cool branding thing and we tested
it in honeyt Beach, small little beach town. No one
knew what corn was. We just plastered stickers everywhere, stop signs,
(05:40):
businesses everywhere, all over the place, and everyone in the
city was going.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Man, what is Corn?
Speaker 3 (05:47):
What is this Karn?
Speaker 2 (05:49):
What is that?
Speaker 3 (05:50):
We knew that people would either love it or hate it,
but they would not forget it. And so yeah, we
start playing shows around in Orange County. Then we played
anything that we could do to get people to our shows.
We would tell our friends. We found a place that
had school buses, and we rented a school bus and
put a keg in the back and said, give us
ten bucks, you can ride in the bus. We're gonna
(06:11):
go play Hollywood. Anything we could do. So we got
there and our names started getting around. This weird band
Corn is coming in. They're bringing a bus with all
these fans and the place is going off, and so
record companies started hearing about it. Next thing you know,
we got a couple of different record companies getting ready
to offer us a deal. We ended up signing with
Immortal Records. It's A.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
It's A.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
It was a label off of Sony Music, and so
we recorded our first record. That's when we got introduced
to meth amphetamines. And man, yeah, it's crazy because I
didn't like it the first time because I'm used to
going to sleep you know you got a routine in life.
You're like you, you get up, you've been your day
(06:53):
doing whatever, and you go to sleep at night. You
can't sleep on myth and the just put a little
sign on it, right, can't sleep on this.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
And you've been listening to Brian Welsh, who's the co
founder and lead guitarist to the Grammy Award winning multi
platinum band Corn while he's sharing his story here, and
my goodness, what a story, you know, the typical sixteen
year old kid going through some bad things in high school.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
And that's a whole lot of us, folks.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
When we come back more of Brian head Welsh's story
here and our American Stories, plea habibe here again, and
I'd like to encourage you to subscribe to our podcast
on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get
your podcasts. Every story we are here is uploaded their
(07:44):
daily and your support goes a long way to keeping
the great stories you love from this show coming again.
Please subscribe to the Our American Stories podcast wherever you
get your podcasts, and we continue with our American Stories
(08:11):
and the story of Brian Welch, who is the co
founder and lead guitarist of the Grammy Award winning multi
platinum band corn Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
I just I did not thought it was like a
couple hours high or something.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
I didn't know.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
I just was oblivious, and so yeah, I just I
tossed the turn. I hit my friend up at ten am.
I was like, dude, I didn't sleep all night. And
he's like, oh no, dude, let's go to Taco Bell.
So he picks me up. We go to Taco Bell
and I start eating this taco and like the roof
of my mouth is like sore or something from the meth.
(08:48):
And I'm like, and if I can't, I was like,
taco tase gross. So everything I loved. It took away
my sleep, took away my Taco Bell. And so I
don't know why I continued. But when we were starting
corn Man, this guy once we figured out that you're
supposed to stay up on it, and we're like, okay,
but we just won't sleep, and we would go two
(09:09):
or three days without sleeping, freaking out all spun out
meth heads, so you know, looking, but we try to
write songs. Try to write a song when you're high.
It sounds like your Mozart or something. Then you sober up.
You wake up the next day after three day run
or something, you listen to it and it's like you're
not even in key. It's just like, what is this?
(09:31):
It sounded so good on the drug, and so yeah,
I was off and on. But we started Corn. It
was off and on with that drug. But you know,
we would get sober, the producer would be like, you know, yeah,
they just got to get off that stuff. We need
to record an album. We got the record done and
we started touring right after that and started gaining fans
right away. But like we knew we had something book.
I never thought we would get like real big. I
(09:53):
thought that maybe we could get like a club level big,
maybe like tour America, you know, and play some club.
The pack out just like crazy. You know. It was crazy, crazy,
but small, and it just started growing. And it was
a trip because, Uh, when our second record came out,
it hit number three on Billboard out of the whole country.
(10:16):
I see myself at three a m. On MTV. You know,
we're all the Corn's playing, They're playing the Corn videos,
and then I look out my window and I see
a beat up BW Bug and I'm like, wait, when
I watched my heroes on TV, I thought they were
rich and famous. I'm like, I got a little bug
out there. So the money wasn't pouring in yet. So yeah,
(10:38):
the second record came out, man, And when you when
you tour, the crazy thing is you don't think about
when you're when you're a kid. Is that the touring
cycle is just it's like anything else. You get up
and you do the same thing every day. Right when
you get on the road, you're in a different city
and at first you're just like, oh, man, I we're
in Baltimore, We're in you know, wherever it is, and
(11:01):
you're like, this is so cool. But then it's the
same people and you load into a building that looks
the same. You don't have time to go look at
the city, and you get up and you play the
same songs. The only thing different is a crowd. But
it starts to feel like the same thing. And within
like in two or three years, I realized that it's
not all glamorous like you think. Even the big shows,
(11:22):
it's the same thing, man. You do the same thing
every day, and it's like a career. It's a career,
it's a fun one because you're playing, you're doing what
you love. So we're thankful though, because we kept growing
and growing and growing, and after our second record cycle,
we went into the studio and started really going for it,
and our record company was just like, let us do
(11:45):
whatever we wanted. We don't really understand this corn band,
but people seem to like them, the guys with the suits,
so let them keep doing what they're doing. So we
went in and that's when we got a little bit more.
We just wanted to try things that we did in
the first couple of records, and we get We wrote
Got the Life and Freak on a Leash and those
big songs. That record. We spent a lot of months
(12:06):
and that came out, went through the roof man TRL
and MTV was huge, and we were just on there
every day. Skyrocket. I called my dad then and I
was just like, Dad, we are number one in the
country this week and selling like one hundred and fifty
thousand records a week. It was crazy, and we were
on TV every day. MTV News followed us, and it
(12:28):
was surreal man to be in that mainstream of pop culture.
It's just it was crazy. I mean, we were selling
out arenas left and right all over the place, and
money was just pouring pouring on us. We couldn't make enough.
We were getting money from shirts, we were making money
from records, we were making money from just guarantees, you know,
(12:52):
three to five hundred thousand dollars a night or something
like that. And back then, you know, it's a lot.
Now what am I talking about? And so it's just
it's like, you know, and it was just crazy. And uh,
by that time, I had gotten married, all of us
had gotten married and had started having kids. But meanwhile
we're on the road being the rock star too, and
(13:12):
and so we just it was like Vegas, what happens
on the road stays on the road type of thing.
We had some good times, but it it seemed like
every year that passed it got a little bit darker
and darker than darker, you know, and uh, we started
losing our souls, the soul being the mind, will in
the emotions, and she started losing our our core of
(13:36):
who we were. It was like when I saw Phility
or Jonathan or Monkey, I was like, that's not him.
And I look in the mirror and I'd be like,
that's not me, you know, they look at me and
that's we just became a different people. Well, then a
year or two after we had got married and had kids, divorces, five,
(13:57):
had a five, everybody got divorced, broken homes, kids going
with whoever, and divorced settlements, millions of dollars going to
these girls and our wives, and they're just some of
them just blowing through it. Mine was the worst ever.
I was on tour. My biggest and one of my
(14:22):
greatest memories is touring with Metallica. System of a down
and kid rock. My wife when she when she was fourteen,
she ran away from home. So she lived kind of
on the streets and on couches, and so in Huntington Beach,
she left Lake Tahoe and moved to Huntington Beach. So
when we were married, I was on tour with Metallica.
She ended up running into some old punk rock dudes
(14:45):
that were from when she was a kid, right, and
they used to like, well, look out for her because
she was fourteen, and so she was like, hey, I
married this guy, Come hang out with me. He's always gone.
So they've ended up moving and partying, start stealing things,
out of my house taking things to a pawn shop,
(15:05):
and my friend owned the pawnshop, so he'd call me
and say, dude, you send me a picture or whatever.
I saw this in your living room, and I'm like what.
I call my wife, I'm like, who you having over
our house? She's like nobody, just trying to lie and
I'm he heard rumors and everything. Meanwhile, one of the
punk dudes, she ends up getting a boyfriend, and I
(15:27):
don't know what to do. I'm on tour with Metallica.
This is my dream come true. Man, I'm riding in
planes with him. This is crazy, and I end up
flying home. I was like, I'm taking this kid on
the road. I don't know what I'm gonna do or
how I'm gonna do it, but I have to protect
her because there's these meth heads and skinheads around my kid, right,
it's my little girl. So I take her with me
(15:50):
and I'm like, I need some I call management, I
need someone to help me with this kid on the road,
and I'm like, what am I gonna do? So we
ended up going into the Enemies camp and stealing one
of theirs. Britney Spears dancer was off the road with her,
so we hired her. She was they were. We hired
(16:11):
her in between tours with Britney and she became my
daughter's nanny. So we did that for a little bit
and man, we just tried to make the best of it.
My heart was broken because my wife cheated on me
with my daughter around, and when the skinheads were in
my house and I just my hatred started rising up.
I just we had these guys that were in the
(16:32):
because we toured with ice Cube, you know, from NWA,
and so we hired this guy from ice Cube and
so he was connected with the crips in LA and
so I'm like talking to him at night, all drunk
or high on drugs and saying, man, this guy has
done this to me. I need to do something to him.
Can your guys can I pay for And he's he
(16:53):
was like, yeah, you can do that.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
And you've been listening to Brian Welsh, the co founder
and lead guitarist the Grammy Award winning Van Corn, tell
the story of his spiral up with wild success, something
even he couldn't have dreamed of, and at the same time,
the spiraling out of control of his personal life. The
next thing, you know, They're at the top of the
(17:16):
billboard charts and touring with Metallica, and as each year passed,
Brian noted, things got darker and darker.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
We became different people.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
There were five guys in the band, there were five divorces,
and there were five broken homes. And then Brian Welsh
gets an idea in his head that he should take
his daughter with them out on the road. In this
highly dysfunctional setting with men who have no idea how
to be responsible adults.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
What happens next.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Stay tuned to our American stories, the story of Brian Welsh,
and we continue with our American stories and the story
(18:11):
of Brian Welch. He's the co founder and lead guitarist
of the Grammy Award winning multi platinum band Corn. Let's
pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
I got guys that will do anything, you know, and
he said, you cross that line, you can never go back,
though you can have a target on your back. So
I was just I could never do that, but I
just wanted to so bad and it was man, I
just I made the best of it. I had her
on the road for like two months and it was
crazy because we had these big, old you know, like
that guy, that guy with the crips guy, but like
(18:43):
pushing my daughter and a stroller. You know, another Hispanic
dude named Loke. We hired him. He had hell bound
tattooed on his head. You'd be pushing the stroller too.
So we got off that tour. I ended up getting
the she was still spun out my ex. She didn't
show up the court. I got full custody of the kid.
(19:04):
And I was a mess too. I wasn't much greater
than her. But uh, one night I was at home
and uh, I ended up, you know, doing some drugs
or whatever. I took some Xanax to go to sleep,
and I ended up. I woke up at three am,
and I went to check on my daughter and everybody
had left by that point, and she was gone. She
(19:25):
was she's like two and a half years old, three
years old, gone out of her room. And I'm like, June,
where are you? Like, where are you looking all the beds?
She's gone. And I go and I look at the
back door and it's like cracked open to the backyard
and we have a pool, and so I rush out
there and right by the pool there's a lounge chair
(19:45):
you know, we lay out on and she's sleeping right there,
like her feet are on the ground and she's like that.
I felt like the biggest loser. She could have drowned.
She went looking for me because that was my smoking chair,
and so I quit right then. I was done, and uh,
and I started working out. He's got sober, stopped drinking
(20:07):
and by that time Corn did our Untouchables record, that
whole record. Everybody got divorced around then, so everybody was
in full time like party mode. And that's when I
had to get sober. So it was it was hard
because everybody was going richter Man and Uh. I tried
to live sober right that lasted, I don't know a
(20:28):
few months, and then I fell back into the stuff.
I just I'd hired nannies take care of my daughter.
And that's when it got really dark, man, really dark.
Vicat In was taking like dozens of vike it In
and Uh. We had these doctors that would write us prescriptions,
give us anything we wanted.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Right.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
They're called we call them rock doctors because hey, I
haven't an anxiety on the road, doc. Here's some xennex.
My back hurts from playing every night here's some viking
in you know, And so it was really dark man.
And it got even darker though, because that's when I
got I said I would never do crystal meth after
what those skinheads did. After seeing my ex wife walk
(21:07):
away from her daughter, I was like, I'm never touching
that stuff. That's scum, scum of the earth drug right.
I got drunk one night and I was like, oh,
he used to love that high. I'll just do it.
Once I ended up getting the dealer's number. I ended
up an attic worse than before. So I was like,
I felt like a loser, but I'm like, I'm going
(21:28):
on a world tour. I gotta I started putting this
meth and like wherever I could hide it, I put
it in, put it in plastic, and put it in
deodorant like scoop the deodorant out, put it back in,
and then just try to hide the smell in case
drug docks came. I was like, thinking of everything, man,
and uh, yeah, I took it to uh everywhere. I
took it to Asia, took it the Europe. I ran
(21:49):
out in Europe, had my dealer send me some in
a candle because he made candle he had this tweaker
candle business, right, he thought he was gonna get rich
off candles. So he's like, I'll I'll put eight balls
in a candle and then I'll make the candle and
it'll be inside. And so I don't know if they
have these X ray machines, I can see what's inside,
you know, they see a ball or something inside a candle.
(22:11):
I didn't know. I'm thinking, like I could get popped,
you know. And so I by that time, the Internet
was starting to come out. It was like two thousand
and three or something, and it was growing and you
could track your package even on FedEx, and so I'd
start seeing this package come from you know, went to
California to New York to London and then and I'm
watching I'm like, okay, it's coming. I'm watching my meth
(22:32):
come on the internet. And it's like I'm in this
nice hotel and I see it says delivered, got the
email or whatever, and I go down there and I
grabbed the package and they interested me. So I got
away with it and finished the tour. And I felt
like the biggest loser then, man, I mean loser loser.
How much guilt can you carry, right, the sins on
(22:55):
your back. I'm like, oh gosh, the secrets, and it
was too much to bear. Man, and my parents are
still together to this day, fifty three years together or something.
You know, right, that's a miracle. That's a miracle. And
so I would my mom would come over all say, hi, Bright,
(23:16):
how doing And I'm just freaking up for two days,
Hey mom, where's it going. So I just felt so bad.
They didn't raise me to be this. You know, my daughter,
she's this perfect little Shirley Temple kid. She's just so sweet.
Hi daddy, you know. And I just and I remember
we had one more tour. It was two thousand and fours,
(23:36):
was corn Lincoln Park, and I got so bad where
I started thinking about killing myself. And I was like,
I'm no good for my daughter. She deserves better than this.
She would be better off without me. The rock star
dream didn't satisfy. I had some good times, but it
was just everybody in my band's miserable. Most of the
(23:57):
other bands out there struggle with addiction, and everyone's miserable,
and everyone's struggling with addiction, and or you're you're just
a bitter, ex drunk right, and you're just like, I
don't want to be either. I don't want to be
the party or the ex bitter guy. And let's just
let's end it all. Man. If I had a little
bit more nerve to kill myself, thank god it didn't happen.
(24:20):
By that time, I had some friends they ended They
ended up invited me to come to church with them.
I was doing some real estate deals with them, and
uh I resisted at first for a little bit, you know,
because I just thought Christians were like ned Flanders from
the Simpsons. Man, it's just like, why you so happy?
(24:40):
I just want to choke you. You know, how you
doing today? God bless you? All right?
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Brother? Just shut up?
Speaker 3 (24:48):
And what world are you living in? But they kept
asking me and I was like, you know, I'm just
gonna go check it out. They're sober. I tried to
go to outpatient rehab to get off of meth, and
the dudes like I don't have any luck with myth.
I'm sorry, and I'm like, there goes my hope. And
so I'm like I'm stuck with church only that's my
only option. God is so kind man. As a last resort,
(25:11):
He'll still take you when you're all done with everything
else that you tried on the planet, He's there still
for you. And I ended up going to church, and
it was crazy because all these different people, like three
different people by that time. I moved back to Bakersfield
where Corn grew up when we went to school right
and by that time there was there was like three
(25:33):
of my friends. One of them that got me the
myth hooked me up with that dealer. He was telling me,
you should go to church, man, come to church with me.
I'm like, what are you going to church? What? And
I'm still high and I'm like, no, man, I don't
need that. And then the guy at the real estate
guys invited me to go to church and I'm thinking
about going with them. And then there's someone else I
forget who, but they, oh, yeah, this punk rock dude
(25:54):
that used to beat up people. He smashed bottles of
people's heads. He was telling me about Jesus. I'm like, what,
you're weird man, what happened to you? And the next thing,
you know, as you know, I finally gave in and
I was like the church people, it gets that they
don't do math in church. I don't think so I
should go there. Maybe it'll rub off rub off on me,
(26:17):
you know. And I get in there and I see
like there is these place like Hispanic dudes just look
like gang members, you know, and they're up like praying together,
and I'm just like, what it's not nid Blanders.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
And you've been listening to Brian Welsh, the rock star,
co founder and lead guitarist of Corn walking Us through
his life and the descent into what's as close to
hell on Earth as one could muster. His ex wife
doesn't show up in court, but the custody hearing of
his baby girl and he gets full custody, and then
(26:52):
came this night that you would have thought would have
been the clarifying moment, but the lifestyle came back, pulled
him back to the drugs, to the drinking, and to
everything else. By two thousand and four, he's on tour
with Lincoln Park and he's considering killing himself, but then
he thought the final chance was church. And as he said,
(27:14):
God is so kind as a last resort, He'll still
take you when we come back. The redemption story of
Brian Welsh here on our American Stories, and we continue
(27:38):
with our American stories and the story.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Of Brian Welsh.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
He's now on a journey that many of you listening
have been on in your lives. Let's pick up where
we last left off.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
These guys look scarier than the corn concert fans, you know, crazy.
And people started telling me, yeah, see that she used
to be in prostitution, he used to be gang men.
They turned their lives around it, and I'm like, so
you guys really believe in this stuff. I thought it
was just like a thing to be a good person.
You know, you go to church and you say you
go to church, and then you're like, you know, you're
(28:12):
proper and all that. But I started seeing a whole
new angle and I'm like, because I was like, if
God is real, where is he? Look at all the
pain in the world, right, look all the you know,
you don't see nothing. And they start telling me, no,
he comes in by the spirit and he lives in
your heart and he starts to reveal himself to you inside,
and I'm just like, what what are you talking about?
(28:36):
This sounds awesome, man, But at the same time, I'm like,
you're weird, you know. So it's a battle going on.
It was like, you know, it was like evil and
good wash. It was just back and forth, and so
I was. I was just there and I felt something.
I fell to peace, and I was like, Okay, this
is my plan. Since I'm a public person, everybody knew
who I was, especially in the hometown. Back then. I
(28:58):
was like, I'm gonna I'm gonna receive Christ. I'm gonna
get him in here. Then I'm gonna go home and
talk to him and see if it's real. If it's
not real, then all these people are crazy and I'll
try something else or kill myself. So I receive him
and I said the prayer. You know, I actually asked
Christ in my heart when I was twelve, real quick
(29:19):
on my bathroom floor when someone told me Jesus was
a savior of the world. And I was like, if
there's a savior, then if it's true, then why not
just do it? Jesus, will you coming to my heart?
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Amen?
Speaker 3 (29:29):
Then I went back to watching Jason hackup people on
Friday the thirteenth. But so while I was on meth
at that church, I went home and I received Christ.
I went home and I was like, here we are.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
You know.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
I felt like that little boy. You know, I was like, Lord,
that guy. But I prayed like I was a Christian
for ten years. I was so desperate. I wanted my
daughter to have a good daddy. She deserved it. So
I'm like, Lord, I am a loser. I'm gonna ruin
my life. I'm gonna die from these drugs. This kid
deserves a better dad, and I am nothing. I'm a
(30:03):
lost soul. Are you real? I prayed so hard and
I was just like, just look at my heart. You know,
I want to get off these drugs. It was all
about I needed something from him, right, and that's okay.
But then you know, after a couple of weeks, it
just I was going. They said, just go to go
to church. Bring your garbage. The pastor was like, bring
your garbage to church. You don't have to clean up
for me, you have to clean up for God. Just
(30:25):
show up. Just start the relationship. And I would. I
would go high on meth to church. Man. One day
after church, I was at home and I was just
I was somebody bought me a Bible and everything. I
was sitting there and uh, and I was just looking
through that. It seemed like every word was talking to me,
saying something to me, you know, and I was just like,
and I was like, sounds cool, it's all cute and everything,
(30:46):
but how do I know it's real. I'm just in
my heart. I didn't say it out loud. I'm just wondering, like,
how do you know if this stuff's real? People say
brainwashed from this, you know, And I just instantly like,
right then it had been like toured through weeks or
something like that. It's a blurb, but I just remember
like something came around me and it was like swirling,
(31:08):
and I kid you not, it was it was a
touch from the spiritual world where God is, God is spirit.
It says God is spirit, he is the big main spirit,
the source of life. Came around me, wrapped like love
around me from another dimension. And I was just like,
(31:30):
and I looked up and all I could say was Father.
And I was looking for like some angel or being
or Jesus like this around me. And I was just like,
I felt I felt accepted, I felt forgived, I felt
I felt brand new. I felt like I wasn't an addict,
but I was doing meth that week. It was like,
(31:53):
you know, it says in the Bible, it says that
he calls things that are not as though they are.
It was like he was pouring everything into me that
I was to become. Yeah, and I was just like,
I was just I was done. I was like I
couldn't talk. And the feeling was there for a few
minutes and I don't know, ten minutes or so, and
I was just it felt like forever man and and
(32:14):
it was and it just lifted, It kind of lifted,
and it was like I was like, what was that?
Oh my, and and I got it. It was like
God revealing himself to me. And I was just like,
oh my gosh, God just came into the room and
revealed himself to me. Now he is omnipresent, He's everywhere,
but sometimes we feel it more so he's always there.
(32:36):
That's where faith comes in. But I was like, oh
my gosh, God is will he sees everything. He heard
me He's and I was like, he sees everything.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
And I started thinking about everything I've done, all the
junk man everything, all the secrets where I thought I
was alone. And then I'd go to church and just
hear that all that forgotten washed away, and it's like
you'd never happen. He wipes the slate clean, start over,
brand new everything. It's they call the good news. That's
(33:09):
pretty good news, right. He promises to be with us.
That's who wants a God that doesn't understand, right, Jesus
came and got annihilated. God became a man and became
annihilated on the cross for us. He knows our sorrows,
he knows rejection, he knows everything you've been through. He's
(33:32):
been through. He knows it all. And that's why Jesus
is the best. Now, when I first got saved, I
was just a whoa going back to church. I'm like,
oh my God, I love I love to get high
for so many years, and now I'm feeling a high
that is like from a spiritual world. It's real, a tangible.
(33:55):
I'm feeling it. The Holy Spirit's real comes inside of
you and you feel things. I'm like, I'm like everywhere
I go, I'm like Jesus and people are like, you're weird. Now,
you know, I just felt I had a strong knowing.
I can describe it like that to go home and
quit the band. I went home and I sent off
emails to everybody because they could. Those dudes could talk
(34:17):
me into anything. If I would have called him and
Sid dude, I'm going to quit the band. They said, no,
you're not shut up. Come on, come over, let's go
get let's go get drunk. So I sent emails and
I said, guys, I love you. I got to quit
the band. I want to be home with my kid.
I got God in my life. I don't want to
get to know him, and I just I'm sorry and
I love you. And they were in the middle of
doing a record deal and they had EMI. I think
(34:40):
I was offering them twenty three million dollars. I quit.
I didn't get a piece of that. I just did
not want to serve money anymore. I was like, I
just want to follow God. And he was saying, it
was pretty simple to me, Actually, go be a dad,
stop touring. But twenty three million dollars, yeah, well you
made how much money before that? And look at your life.
(35:01):
So it was pretty simple to me. And so I
quit and I went through a lot of things. Jesus
started taking me through some sufferings and to cleanse my soul.
It's called fire, it could be called fire, and it
purifies like gold. Fire purifies gold and makes it the
shiny thing that we see. And so He does that
(35:22):
with our souls through negative circumstances, through allowing things to
come into your life, to to you know, to challenge
your love, for people, to challenge your faith. Are you
going to still believe? And it's the most It's the
way you go to maturity and it's real. I'm telling you, guys,
this is the most realist thing I've ever experienced. The
Lord sent me back to Corn in twenty twelve after
(35:42):
I was away. My big story was like, hey I
am I'm the guy that left it all to apolog Jesus.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
You know.
Speaker 3 (35:48):
That was my thing, became my prideful story. And next thing,
you know, he sends me back. He goes, hey, you're
not better than them. I want you to be with
them too. And so I'm back with the band now
and life could not be better. I promise you. It's
the best thing I ever did.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
Got a terrific job on the editing by Greg Hengler
and a special thanks to Brian Welsh, who was a
rock star who thought he had it all, the co
founder and lead guitarist of the Grammy Award winning multi
platinum band Corn and my goodness, what a redemption story
this is. He'd just hit the bottom and hit the
(36:23):
end of the line and on his knees doing what
well many of us have done in our lives. If God,
if you're real, where are you? And how many of
us have made that play? And in the end he
made that deal in the beginning, and it was a deal,
and he admits it. I'm going to receive Christ, get
him in my heart and talk to him and see
if he'll fix this mess I made. He wanted his
(36:45):
daughter to have a better daddy, and my goodness, did
the Lord allow him to be that man and become it.
He started to go to church. He was told to
bring his garbage, to bring his junk. The perfect Christian
doesn't exist. Bring your sin, bring your baggage. I felt accepted,
he said, I felt forgiven. He talked about this spiritual
(37:07):
moment where he truly had an encounter with God. He said,
God revealed himself to me, and I wiped the slate clean.
He talked about the new high he found from the
Holy Spirit, and he quit the band Cold Turkey, even
on the cusp of a twenty three million dollar recording contract.
And the task ahead of him was simple, be a dad,
(37:30):
Go be a dad to your daughter and be a
good one. And then, of course, years later, returning to
the band, having healed his heart, fixed his life and
become the father he needed to become. A beautiful redemption story.
We've done redemption stories on Pete Maraviche, Darryl Strawberry, Brett
Fahr of, Johnny Cash, Steve McQueen, and so many more.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
They're a part of all of our lives.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
We love telling him here on our American Stories. Story
of Brian Welsh, Here on our American Story
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American
people coming to you from the city where the West begins,
Fort Worth, Texas. Brian Head Welsh was a rock star
who thought he had it all, who was the co
founder and lead guitarist of the Grammy Award winning multi
(00:30):
platinum band Corn, one of the biggest and most controversial
rock bands on the planet. He lived in a mansion,
had millions in the bank and legions of fans.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
All over the globe.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
He was living the good life and it should have
been perfect, but it was all alive.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Here's Brian Wels with his story.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
I grew up just loving music.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Man.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
My parents in nineteen eighty bought me ACDC back in Black.
I turned that record on, it was over. I was like,
I want to be that stared at Ingush Young, I
stared at his picture like it just played. Then I
got every album out there and just played that Iron Maiden,
Ossie Osbourne, like all these all these bands, and and
(01:14):
you know, I just wanted to be a rock star. Man.
I met the guys in Corn in elementary around nineteen
eighty seven. These guys, they went and started hanging out
with this other guy named Pete Capra, and he was like, dude,
there's some new music. There's some new bands coming out,
and he showed them Red Hot Chili Peppers and Faith
the More before they either of them got big. So
(01:37):
they were they were they started getting too that music
and then they started forming this band away from me.
They they went and moved down to Hollywood, California, because
we grew up two hours away from Hollywood. And I
was stuck with this girl and I treat her sorry,
I actually really loved her, but I was I was
stuck back in this bad relationship and I treated her
(01:58):
bad and and she was a sweet girl actually, and
I was controlling. I was so insecure. I had this
self hatred that I grew when I was probably junior high.
You know, I got picked on and didn't like the
way I looked and was just you know body. I
felt like I was fat and just everybody with you
puberty before me. So it was like that's the worst,
(02:20):
you know, so everyone's kicking my butt, you know, I'm
this little guy. Let me alone. But I look in
the mirror and something in my mind and my heart
was like I don't like you. You're not good enough,
you're ugly, you know, all this stuff, all these you know,
and so I carried that. I remember I went down
to Hollywood, California and visited the guys because they're still
(02:42):
my friends, you know, and they were just like, you
should move in with us, you know, just stay with us, man,
you're not doing good. And and so I moved in
with these guys and I became I started them with
their instruments, and I turned into their roadie. I'm carrying
their gear and I mean, they're carrying it with me
(03:05):
because they don't got nothing right. They're like they have
to pay to play. That was Hollywood back then, and
so but yeah, well they would. I was the worst
roadie in the history of Rody's. Because they're my friends.
I'm like, they tell me to do something like shut up.
So I did that for a few years, and as
divine intervention would have it, Allison Chains came out and
(03:29):
then what some faith, the War start getting really big.
Metallica was huge. Azzi No More Tears that record came out.
So this low music thing, grunge thing was happening. But uh,
and so thank god, these guys got out of their
little funk rock face Chili Peppers rip off thing. And
(03:49):
I like Chili Peppers, don't get me wrong. It was
just too much of a they're copying them, you know,
And so they asked me to join, and thank god
because I was just I was partying like crazy. One
of my roommates we all lived together. We lived at
the beach, like right close to the beach. But you know,
the rent was expensive. But you pile six people in there,
if becomes like two hundred bucks each, and so who
(04:11):
would like if we had one guy in the garage.
I was in the closet. Then there's two bedrooms and
then a pool room where someone slept in. It was crazy,
but I was. I love the alcohol. I was addicted
to alcohol from like age sixteen. I just my dad
was a drinker man. He he ran some chevrons with
my uncle, a couple like gas stations, and you know,
one time he was just you would drink. You wouldn't
(04:33):
drink all the time, but he would slip back and forth,
you know, and then he when he drank heavy, he
would drink heavy. Like one day he came home and
do some bank runs for the business, and he had
a water bottle and I went to grab it and
I take it and he's like, give me that, give
me that, and I smell like vodka. It was straight vodka.
You know. I didn't confront him or nothing, but I
was just like, WHOA dad's partying? And so we have
(04:56):
that that that kind of curse in our family line, right,
And so I stepped into it at sixteen. And so
when I joined the band, we instantly we got Jonathan
Davis in the band. We went to the Honeyton Beach Pier.
We were just drinking some forty ounces of beer and
we're like, okay, we're in a band, now what are
we gonna call ourselves? And Corn popped up? The singer
(05:17):
Jonathan said, what about corn? It's a couple of stories
going around, but we just thought it was cool because
it was with a K and the backwards are people
are doing that? Like crazy? Now? Right back then, it
was like different, you know, spelled a word different, you know,
And it was a cool branding thing and we tested
it in honeyt Beach, small little beach town. No one
knew what corn was. We just plastered stickers everywhere, stop signs,
(05:40):
businesses everywhere, all over the place, and everyone in the
city was going.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Man, what is Corn?
Speaker 3 (05:47):
What is this Karn?
Speaker 2 (05:49):
What is that?
Speaker 3 (05:50):
We knew that people would either love it or hate it,
but they would not forget it. And so yeah, we
start playing shows around in Orange County. Then we played
anything that we could do to get people to our shows.
We would tell our friends. We found a place that
had school buses, and we rented a school bus and
put a keg in the back and said, give us
ten bucks, you can ride in the bus. We're gonna
(06:11):
go play Hollywood. Anything we could do. So we got
there and our names started getting around. This weird band
Corn is coming in. They're bringing a bus with all
these fans and the place is going off, and so
record companies started hearing about it. Next thing you know,
we got a couple of different record companies getting ready
to offer us a deal. We ended up signing with
Immortal Records. It's A.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
It's A.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
It was a label off of Sony Music, and so
we recorded our first record. That's when we got introduced
to meth amphetamines. And man, yeah, it's crazy because I
didn't like it the first time because I'm used to
going to sleep you know you got a routine in life.
You're like you, you get up, you've been your day
(06:53):
doing whatever, and you go to sleep at night. You
can't sleep on myth and the just put a little
sign on it, right, can't sleep on this.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
And you've been listening to Brian Welsh, who's the co
founder and lead guitarist to the Grammy Award winning multi
platinum band Corn while he's sharing his story here, and
my goodness, what a story, you know, the typical sixteen
year old kid going through some bad things in high school.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
And that's a whole lot of us, folks.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
When we come back more of Brian head Welsh's story
here and our American Stories, plea habibe here again, and
I'd like to encourage you to subscribe to our podcast
on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get
your podcasts. Every story we are here is uploaded their
(07:44):
daily and your support goes a long way to keeping
the great stories you love from this show coming again.
Please subscribe to the Our American Stories podcast wherever you
get your podcasts, and we continue with our American Stories
(08:11):
and the story of Brian Welch, who is the co
founder and lead guitarist of the Grammy Award winning multi
platinum band corn Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
I just I did not thought it was like a
couple hours high or something.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
I didn't know.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
I just was oblivious, and so yeah, I just I
tossed the turn. I hit my friend up at ten am.
I was like, dude, I didn't sleep all night. And
he's like, oh no, dude, let's go to Taco Bell.
So he picks me up. We go to Taco Bell
and I start eating this taco and like the roof
of my mouth is like sore or something from the meth.
(08:48):
And I'm like, and if I can't, I was like,
taco tase gross. So everything I loved. It took away
my sleep, took away my Taco Bell. And so I
don't know why I continued. But when we were starting
corn Man, this guy once we figured out that you're
supposed to stay up on it, and we're like, okay,
but we just won't sleep, and we would go two
(09:09):
or three days without sleeping, freaking out all spun out
meth heads, so you know, looking, but we try to
write songs. Try to write a song when you're high.
It sounds like your Mozart or something. Then you sober up.
You wake up the next day after three day run
or something, you listen to it and it's like you're
not even in key. It's just like, what is this?
(09:31):
It sounded so good on the drug, and so yeah,
I was off and on. But we started Corn. It
was off and on with that drug. But you know,
we would get sober, the producer would be like, you know, yeah,
they just got to get off that stuff. We need
to record an album. We got the record done and
we started touring right after that and started gaining fans
right away. But like we knew we had something book.
I never thought we would get like real big. I
(09:53):
thought that maybe we could get like a club level big,
maybe like tour America, you know, and play some club.
The pack out just like crazy. You know. It was crazy, crazy,
but small, and it just started growing. And it was
a trip because, Uh, when our second record came out,
it hit number three on Billboard out of the whole country.
(10:16):
I see myself at three a m. On MTV. You know,
we're all the Corn's playing, They're playing the Corn videos,
and then I look out my window and I see
a beat up BW Bug and I'm like, wait, when
I watched my heroes on TV, I thought they were
rich and famous. I'm like, I got a little bug
out there. So the money wasn't pouring in yet. So yeah,
(10:38):
the second record came out, man, And when you when
you tour, the crazy thing is you don't think about
when you're when you're a kid. Is that the touring
cycle is just it's like anything else. You get up
and you do the same thing every day. Right when
you get on the road, you're in a different city
and at first you're just like, oh, man, I we're
in Baltimore, We're in you know, wherever it is, and
(11:01):
you're like, this is so cool. But then it's the
same people and you load into a building that looks
the same. You don't have time to go look at
the city, and you get up and you play the
same songs. The only thing different is a crowd. But
it starts to feel like the same thing. And within
like in two or three years, I realized that it's
not all glamorous like you think. Even the big shows,
(11:22):
it's the same thing, man. You do the same thing
every day, and it's like a career. It's a career,
it's a fun one because you're playing, you're doing what
you love. So we're thankful though, because we kept growing
and growing and growing, and after our second record cycle,
we went into the studio and started really going for it,
and our record company was just like, let us do
(11:45):
whatever we wanted. We don't really understand this corn band,
but people seem to like them, the guys with the suits,
so let them keep doing what they're doing. So we
went in and that's when we got a little bit more.
We just wanted to try things that we did in
the first couple of records, and we get We wrote
Got the Life and Freak on a Leash and those
big songs. That record. We spent a lot of months
(12:06):
and that came out, went through the roof man TRL
and MTV was huge, and we were just on there
every day. Skyrocket. I called my dad then and I
was just like, Dad, we are number one in the
country this week and selling like one hundred and fifty
thousand records a week. It was crazy, and we were
on TV every day. MTV News followed us, and it
(12:28):
was surreal man to be in that mainstream of pop culture.
It's just it was crazy. I mean, we were selling
out arenas left and right all over the place, and
money was just pouring pouring on us. We couldn't make enough.
We were getting money from shirts, we were making money
from records, we were making money from just guarantees, you know,
(12:52):
three to five hundred thousand dollars a night or something
like that. And back then, you know, it's a lot.
Now what am I talking about? And so it's just
it's like, you know, and it was just crazy. And uh,
by that time, I had gotten married, all of us
had gotten married and had started having kids. But meanwhile
we're on the road being the rock star too, and
(13:12):
and so we just it was like Vegas, what happens
on the road stays on the road type of thing.
We had some good times, but it it seemed like
every year that passed it got a little bit darker
and darker than darker, you know, and uh, we started
losing our souls, the soul being the mind, will in
the emotions, and she started losing our our core of
(13:36):
who we were. It was like when I saw Phility
or Jonathan or Monkey, I was like, that's not him.
And I look in the mirror and I'd be like,
that's not me, you know, they look at me and
that's we just became a different people. Well, then a
year or two after we had got married and had kids, divorces, five,
(13:57):
had a five, everybody got divorced, broken homes, kids going
with whoever, and divorced settlements, millions of dollars going to
these girls and our wives, and they're just some of
them just blowing through it. Mine was the worst ever.
I was on tour. My biggest and one of my
(14:22):
greatest memories is touring with Metallica. System of a down
and kid rock. My wife when she when she was fourteen,
she ran away from home. So she lived kind of
on the streets and on couches, and so in Huntington Beach,
she left Lake Tahoe and moved to Huntington Beach. So
when we were married, I was on tour with Metallica.
She ended up running into some old punk rock dudes
(14:45):
that were from when she was a kid, right, and
they used to like, well, look out for her because
she was fourteen, and so she was like, hey, I
married this guy, Come hang out with me. He's always gone.
So they've ended up moving and partying, start stealing things,
out of my house taking things to a pawn shop,
(15:05):
and my friend owned the pawnshop, so he'd call me
and say, dude, you send me a picture or whatever.
I saw this in your living room, and I'm like what.
I call my wife, I'm like, who you having over
our house? She's like nobody, just trying to lie and
I'm he heard rumors and everything. Meanwhile, one of the
punk dudes, she ends up getting a boyfriend, and I
(15:27):
don't know what to do. I'm on tour with Metallica.
This is my dream come true. Man, I'm riding in
planes with him. This is crazy, and I end up
flying home. I was like, I'm taking this kid on
the road. I don't know what I'm gonna do or
how I'm gonna do it, but I have to protect
her because there's these meth heads and skinheads around my kid, right,
it's my little girl. So I take her with me
(15:50):
and I'm like, I need some I call management, I
need someone to help me with this kid on the road,
and I'm like, what am I gonna do? So we
ended up going into the Enemies camp and stealing one
of theirs. Britney Spears dancer was off the road with her,
so we hired her. She was they were. We hired
(16:11):
her in between tours with Britney and she became my
daughter's nanny. So we did that for a little bit
and man, we just tried to make the best of it.
My heart was broken because my wife cheated on me
with my daughter around, and when the skinheads were in
my house and I just my hatred started rising up.
I just we had these guys that were in the
(16:32):
because we toured with ice Cube, you know, from NWA,
and so we hired this guy from ice Cube and
so he was connected with the crips in LA and
so I'm like talking to him at night, all drunk
or high on drugs and saying, man, this guy has
done this to me. I need to do something to him.
Can your guys can I pay for And he's he
(16:53):
was like, yeah, you can do that.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
And you've been listening to Brian Welsh, the co founder
and lead guitarist the Grammy Award winning Van Corn, tell
the story of his spiral up with wild success, something
even he couldn't have dreamed of, and at the same time,
the spiraling out of control of his personal life. The
next thing, you know, They're at the top of the
(17:16):
billboard charts and touring with Metallica, and as each year passed,
Brian noted, things got darker and darker.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
We became different people.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
There were five guys in the band, there were five divorces,
and there were five broken homes. And then Brian Welsh
gets an idea in his head that he should take
his daughter with them out on the road. In this
highly dysfunctional setting with men who have no idea how
to be responsible adults.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
What happens next.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Stay tuned to our American stories, the story of Brian Welsh,
and we continue with our American stories and the story
(18:11):
of Brian Welch. He's the co founder and lead guitarist
of the Grammy Award winning multi platinum band Corn. Let's
pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
I got guys that will do anything, you know, and
he said, you cross that line, you can never go back,
though you can have a target on your back. So
I was just I could never do that, but I
just wanted to so bad and it was man, I
just I made the best of it. I had her
on the road for like two months and it was
crazy because we had these big, old you know, like
that guy, that guy with the crips guy, but like
(18:43):
pushing my daughter and a stroller. You know, another Hispanic
dude named Loke. We hired him. He had hell bound
tattooed on his head. You'd be pushing the stroller too.
So we got off that tour. I ended up getting
the she was still spun out my ex. She didn't
show up the court. I got full custody of the kid.
(19:04):
And I was a mess too. I wasn't much greater
than her. But uh, one night I was at home
and uh, I ended up, you know, doing some drugs
or whatever. I took some Xanax to go to sleep,
and I ended up. I woke up at three am,
and I went to check on my daughter and everybody
had left by that point, and she was gone. She
(19:25):
was she's like two and a half years old, three
years old, gone out of her room. And I'm like, June,
where are you? Like, where are you looking all the beds?
She's gone. And I go and I look at the
back door and it's like cracked open to the backyard
and we have a pool, and so I rush out
there and right by the pool there's a lounge chair
(19:45):
you know, we lay out on and she's sleeping right there,
like her feet are on the ground and she's like that.
I felt like the biggest loser. She could have drowned.
She went looking for me because that was my smoking chair,
and so I quit right then. I was done, and uh,
and I started working out. He's got sober, stopped drinking
(20:07):
and by that time Corn did our Untouchables record, that
whole record. Everybody got divorced around then, so everybody was
in full time like party mode. And that's when I
had to get sober. So it was it was hard
because everybody was going richter Man and Uh. I tried
to live sober right that lasted, I don't know a
(20:28):
few months, and then I fell back into the stuff.
I just I'd hired nannies take care of my daughter.
And that's when it got really dark, man, really dark.
Vicat In was taking like dozens of vike it In
and Uh. We had these doctors that would write us prescriptions,
give us anything we wanted.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
Right.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
They're called we call them rock doctors because hey, I
haven't an anxiety on the road, doc. Here's some xennex.
My back hurts from playing every night here's some viking
in you know, And so it was really dark man.
And it got even darker though, because that's when I
got I said I would never do crystal meth after
what those skinheads did. After seeing my ex wife walk
(21:07):
away from her daughter, I was like, I'm never touching
that stuff. That's scum, scum of the earth drug right.
I got drunk one night and I was like, oh,
he used to love that high. I'll just do it.
Once I ended up getting the dealer's number. I ended
up an attic worse than before. So I was like,
I felt like a loser, but I'm like, I'm going
(21:28):
on a world tour. I gotta I started putting this
meth and like wherever I could hide it, I put
it in, put it in plastic, and put it in
deodorant like scoop the deodorant out, put it back in,
and then just try to hide the smell in case
drug docks came. I was like, thinking of everything, man,
and uh, yeah, I took it to uh everywhere. I
took it to Asia, took it the Europe. I ran
(21:49):
out in Europe, had my dealer send me some in
a candle because he made candle he had this tweaker
candle business, right, he thought he was gonna get rich
off candles. So he's like, I'll I'll put eight balls
in a candle and then I'll make the candle and
it'll be inside. And so I don't know if they
have these X ray machines, I can see what's inside,
you know, they see a ball or something inside a candle.
(22:11):
I didn't know. I'm thinking, like I could get popped,
you know. And so I by that time, the Internet
was starting to come out. It was like two thousand
and three or something, and it was growing and you
could track your package even on FedEx, and so I'd
start seeing this package come from you know, went to
California to New York to London and then and I'm
watching I'm like, okay, it's coming. I'm watching my meth
(22:32):
come on the internet. And it's like I'm in this
nice hotel and I see it says delivered, got the
email or whatever, and I go down there and I
grabbed the package and they interested me. So I got
away with it and finished the tour. And I felt
like the biggest loser then, man, I mean loser loser.
How much guilt can you carry, right, the sins on
(22:55):
your back. I'm like, oh gosh, the secrets, and it
was too much to bear. Man, and my parents are
still together to this day, fifty three years together or something.
You know, right, that's a miracle. That's a miracle. And
so I would my mom would come over all say, hi, Bright,
(23:16):
how doing And I'm just freaking up for two days,
Hey mom, where's it going. So I just felt so bad.
They didn't raise me to be this. You know, my daughter,
she's this perfect little Shirley Temple kid. She's just so sweet.
Hi daddy, you know. And I just and I remember
we had one more tour. It was two thousand and fours,
(23:36):
was corn Lincoln Park, and I got so bad where
I started thinking about killing myself. And I was like,
I'm no good for my daughter. She deserves better than this.
She would be better off without me. The rock star
dream didn't satisfy. I had some good times, but it
was just everybody in my band's miserable. Most of the
(23:57):
other bands out there struggle with addiction, and everyone's miserable,
and everyone's struggling with addiction, and or you're you're just
a bitter, ex drunk right, and you're just like, I
don't want to be either. I don't want to be
the party or the ex bitter guy. And let's just
let's end it all. Man. If I had a little
bit more nerve to kill myself, thank god it didn't happen.
(24:20):
By that time, I had some friends they ended They
ended up invited me to come to church with them.
I was doing some real estate deals with them, and
uh I resisted at first for a little bit, you know,
because I just thought Christians were like ned Flanders from
the Simpsons. Man, it's just like, why you so happy?
(24:40):
I just want to choke you. You know, how you
doing today? God bless you? All right?
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Brother? Just shut up?
Speaker 3 (24:48):
And what world are you living in? But they kept
asking me and I was like, you know, I'm just
gonna go check it out. They're sober. I tried to
go to outpatient rehab to get off of meth, and
the dudes like I don't have any luck with myth.
I'm sorry, and I'm like, there goes my hope. And
so I'm like I'm stuck with church only that's my
only option. God is so kind man. As a last resort,
(25:11):
He'll still take you when you're all done with everything
else that you tried on the planet, He's there still
for you. And I ended up going to church, and
it was crazy because all these different people, like three
different people by that time. I moved back to Bakersfield
where Corn grew up when we went to school right
and by that time there was there was like three
(25:33):
of my friends. One of them that got me the
myth hooked me up with that dealer. He was telling me,
you should go to church, man, come to church with me.
I'm like, what are you going to church? What? And
I'm still high and I'm like, no, man, I don't
need that. And then the guy at the real estate
guys invited me to go to church and I'm thinking
about going with them. And then there's someone else I
forget who, but they, oh, yeah, this punk rock dude
(25:54):
that used to beat up people. He smashed bottles of
people's heads. He was telling me about Jesus. I'm like, what,
you're weird man, what happened to you? And the next thing,
you know, as you know, I finally gave in and
I was like the church people, it gets that they
don't do math in church. I don't think so I
should go there. Maybe it'll rub off rub off on me,
(26:17):
you know. And I get in there and I see
like there is these place like Hispanic dudes just look
like gang members, you know, and they're up like praying together,
and I'm just like, what it's not nid Blanders.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
And you've been listening to Brian Welsh, the rock star,
co founder and lead guitarist of Corn walking Us through
his life and the descent into what's as close to
hell on Earth as one could muster. His ex wife
doesn't show up in court, but the custody hearing of
his baby girl and he gets full custody, and then
(26:52):
came this night that you would have thought would have
been the clarifying moment, but the lifestyle came back, pulled
him back to the drugs, to the drinking, and to
everything else. By two thousand and four, he's on tour
with Lincoln Park and he's considering killing himself, but then
he thought the final chance was church. And as he said,
(27:14):
God is so kind as a last resort, He'll still
take you when we come back. The redemption story of
Brian Welsh here on our American Stories, and we continue
(27:38):
with our American stories and the story.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Of Brian Welsh.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
He's now on a journey that many of you listening
have been on in your lives. Let's pick up where
we last left off.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
These guys look scarier than the corn concert fans, you know, crazy.
And people started telling me, yeah, see that she used
to be in prostitution, he used to be gang men.
They turned their lives around it, and I'm like, so
you guys really believe in this stuff. I thought it
was just like a thing to be a good person.
You know, you go to church and you say you
go to church, and then you're like, you know, you're
(28:12):
proper and all that. But I started seeing a whole
new angle and I'm like, because I was like, if
God is real, where is he? Look at all the
pain in the world, right, look all the you know,
you don't see nothing. And they start telling me, no,
he comes in by the spirit and he lives in
your heart and he starts to reveal himself to you inside,
and I'm just like, what what are you talking about?
(28:36):
This sounds awesome, man, But at the same time, I'm like,
you're weird, you know. So it's a battle going on.
It was like, you know, it was like evil and
good wash. It was just back and forth, and so
I was. I was just there and I felt something.
I fell to peace, and I was like, Okay, this
is my plan. Since I'm a public person, everybody knew
who I was, especially in the hometown. Back then. I
(28:58):
was like, I'm gonna I'm gonna receive Christ. I'm gonna
get him in here. Then I'm gonna go home and
talk to him and see if it's real. If it's
not real, then all these people are crazy and I'll
try something else or kill myself. So I receive him
and I said the prayer. You know, I actually asked
Christ in my heart when I was twelve, real quick
(29:19):
on my bathroom floor when someone told me Jesus was
a savior of the world. And I was like, if
there's a savior, then if it's true, then why not
just do it? Jesus, will you coming to my heart?
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Amen?
Speaker 3 (29:29):
Then I went back to watching Jason hackup people on
Friday the thirteenth. But so while I was on meth
at that church, I went home and I received Christ.
I went home and I was like, here we are.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
You know.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
I felt like that little boy. You know, I was like, Lord,
that guy. But I prayed like I was a Christian
for ten years. I was so desperate. I wanted my
daughter to have a good daddy. She deserved it. So
I'm like, Lord, I am a loser. I'm gonna ruin
my life. I'm gonna die from these drugs. This kid
deserves a better dad, and I am nothing. I'm a
(30:03):
lost soul. Are you real? I prayed so hard and
I was just like, just look at my heart. You know,
I want to get off these drugs. It was all
about I needed something from him, right, and that's okay.
But then you know, after a couple of weeks, it
just I was going. They said, just go to go
to church. Bring your garbage. The pastor was like, bring
your garbage to church. You don't have to clean up
for me, you have to clean up for God. Just
(30:25):
show up. Just start the relationship. And I would. I
would go high on meth to church. Man. One day
after church, I was at home and I was just
I was somebody bought me a Bible and everything. I
was sitting there and uh, and I was just looking
through that. It seemed like every word was talking to me,
saying something to me, you know, and I was just like,
and I was like, sounds cool, it's all cute and everything,
(30:46):
but how do I know it's real. I'm just in
my heart. I didn't say it out loud. I'm just wondering, like,
how do you know if this stuff's real? People say
brainwashed from this, you know, And I just instantly like,
right then it had been like toured through weeks or
something like that. It's a blurb, but I just remember
like something came around me and it was like swirling,
(31:08):
and I kid you not, it was it was a
touch from the spiritual world where God is, God is spirit.
It says God is spirit, he is the big main spirit,
the source of life. Came around me, wrapped like love
around me from another dimension. And I was just like,
(31:30):
and I looked up and all I could say was Father.
And I was looking for like some angel or being
or Jesus like this around me. And I was just like,
I felt I felt accepted, I felt forgived, I felt
I felt brand new. I felt like I wasn't an addict,
but I was doing meth that week. It was like,
(31:53):
you know, it says in the Bible, it says that
he calls things that are not as though they are.
It was like he was pouring everything into me that
I was to become. Yeah, and I was just like,
I was just I was done. I was like I
couldn't talk. And the feeling was there for a few
minutes and I don't know, ten minutes or so, and
I was just it felt like forever man and and
(32:14):
it was and it just lifted, It kind of lifted,
and it was like I was like, what was that?
Oh my, and and I got it. It was like
God revealing himself to me. And I was just like,
oh my gosh, God just came into the room and
revealed himself to me. Now he is omnipresent, He's everywhere,
but sometimes we feel it more so he's always there.
(32:36):
That's where faith comes in. But I was like, oh
my gosh, God is will he sees everything. He heard
me He's and I was like, he sees everything.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
And I started thinking about everything I've done, all the
junk man everything, all the secrets where I thought I
was alone. And then I'd go to church and just
hear that all that forgotten washed away, and it's like
you'd never happen. He wipes the slate clean, start over,
brand new everything. It's they call the good news. That's
(33:09):
pretty good news, right. He promises to be with us.
That's who wants a God that doesn't understand, right, Jesus
came and got annihilated. God became a man and became
annihilated on the cross for us. He knows our sorrows,
he knows rejection, he knows everything you've been through. He's
(33:32):
been through. He knows it all. And that's why Jesus
is the best. Now, when I first got saved, I
was just a whoa going back to church. I'm like,
oh my God, I love I love to get high
for so many years, and now I'm feeling a high
that is like from a spiritual world. It's real, a tangible.
(33:55):
I'm feeling it. The Holy Spirit's real comes inside of
you and you feel things. I'm like, I'm like everywhere
I go, I'm like Jesus and people are like, you're weird. Now,
you know, I just felt I had a strong knowing.
I can describe it like that to go home and
quit the band. I went home and I sent off
emails to everybody because they could. Those dudes could talk
(34:17):
me into anything. If I would have called him and
Sid dude, I'm going to quit the band. They said, no,
you're not shut up. Come on, come over, let's go
get let's go get drunk. So I sent emails and
I said, guys, I love you. I got to quit
the band. I want to be home with my kid.
I got God in my life. I don't want to
get to know him, and I just I'm sorry and
I love you. And they were in the middle of
doing a record deal and they had EMI. I think
(34:40):
I was offering them twenty three million dollars. I quit.
I didn't get a piece of that. I just did
not want to serve money anymore. I was like, I
just want to follow God. And he was saying, it
was pretty simple to me, Actually, go be a dad,
stop touring. But twenty three million dollars, yeah, well you
made how much money before that? And look at your life.
(35:01):
So it was pretty simple to me. And so I
quit and I went through a lot of things. Jesus
started taking me through some sufferings and to cleanse my soul.
It's called fire, it could be called fire, and it
purifies like gold. Fire purifies gold and makes it the
shiny thing that we see. And so He does that
(35:22):
with our souls through negative circumstances, through allowing things to
come into your life, to to you know, to challenge
your love, for people, to challenge your faith. Are you
going to still believe? And it's the most It's the
way you go to maturity and it's real. I'm telling you, guys,
this is the most realist thing I've ever experienced. The
Lord sent me back to Corn in twenty twelve after
(35:42):
I was away. My big story was like, hey I
am I'm the guy that left it all to apolog Jesus.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
You know.
Speaker 3 (35:48):
That was my thing, became my prideful story. And next thing,
you know, he sends me back. He goes, hey, you're
not better than them. I want you to be with
them too. And so I'm back with the band now
and life could not be better. I promise you. It's
the best thing I ever did.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
Got a terrific job on the editing by Greg Hengler
and a special thanks to Brian Welsh, who was a
rock star who thought he had it all, the co
founder and lead guitarist of the Grammy Award winning multi
platinum band Corn and my goodness, what a redemption story
this is. He'd just hit the bottom and hit the
(36:23):
end of the line and on his knees doing what
well many of us have done in our lives. If God,
if you're real, where are you? And how many of
us have made that play? And in the end he
made that deal in the beginning, and it was a deal,
and he admits it. I'm going to receive Christ, get
him in my heart and talk to him and see
if he'll fix this mess I made. He wanted his
(36:45):
daughter to have a better daddy, and my goodness, did
the Lord allow him to be that man and become it.
He started to go to church. He was told to
bring his garbage, to bring his junk. The perfect Christian
doesn't exist. Bring your sin, bring your baggage. I felt accepted,
he said, I felt forgiven. He talked about this spiritual
(37:07):
moment where he truly had an encounter with God. He said,
God revealed himself to me, and I wiped the slate clean.
He talked about the new high he found from the
Holy Spirit, and he quit the band Cold Turkey, even
on the cusp of a twenty three million dollar recording contract.
And the task ahead of him was simple, be a dad,
(37:30):
Go be a dad to your daughter and be a
good one. And then, of course, years later, returning to
the band, having healed his heart, fixed his life and
become the father he needed to become. A beautiful redemption story.
We've done redemption stories on Pete Maraviche, Darryl Strawberry, Brett
Fahr of, Johnny Cash, Steve McQueen, and so many more.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
They're a part of all of our lives.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
We love telling him here on our American Stories. Story
of Brian Welsh, Here on our American Story
Host
Lee Habeeb
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