Korn’s Jonathan Davis famously worked with the dead prior to breaking through in music. He started at 17 doing autopsies. “There was actually a class in high school, it’s called ROP – Regional Occupational Program,” Davis told Ultimate Guitar. “So I’m like, ‘I wonder what it’s like to go cut up dead bodies…’ I finally got in, and I started doing autopsies at 17. Then I went to the San Francisco College of Mortuary Science and became a mortician, came back here, was an embalmer, and then at night I would go to the coroner’s office and I was studying to be an investigator so I didn’t have to get my hands dirty, per se, doing an autopsy.”
Butcher Babies co-vocalist Carla Harvey also worked as a mortician, and she recently recounted some weird times during her work with the Talk Toomey podcast. She talked about her 2014 biography, “Death and Other Dances,” and she talked about how she used to imagine people she was close to were dead in order to accept that they would no longer be a part of her life. “That was a coping mechanism that I actually started when my dad abandoned us,” she said. “I just pretended that he was dead… It was a way to protect myself. And as I got older in relationships and attachments, I found it was kind of easier to use that method of healing myself rather than to face the actual facts.Even when I worked at the mortuary and I did embalming and funeral directing, in people’s last moments where I had to dress the bodies or embalm, I always want to…You know, of course they’re not alive anymore, but even the corpses to feel at peace and okay. So I would speak with them a little bit, ‘We’re gonna take care of you, we’re gonna make you look good, you’re gonna be a smash at your funeral.’ I’ve just always been like that.”
Harvey also explained the challenges of dealing with the families of the deceased. “You get pictures beforehand. The problem is with families is… you look a little bit different when you’re dead. Sorry to break the news guys, but you’re dehydrated, you’re always gonna look a little bit different, so we do our best,” she continued, adding that people often got upset because their family members may not have looked like themselves. So you gotta wheel it back, and then wheel it back out without doing much, and they’re like, ‘Oh, that’s much better!’ But you didn’t really do anything, they just have to get used to the idea that they’re not alive anymore. But I was a very good embalmer, I was great with the hair and makeup. I really enjoyed doing it.”
Before rocking the casbah with The Clash, the late Joe Strummer dug graves to make ends meet. Other famous people that have worked in the death profession include Angelina Jolie, Danny DeVito, Whoopi Goldberg and Sean Connery.
