"Honestly, I didn’t want it on the record. It was unfinished." The surprising story behind the Deftones song the band hate, the fans weren't sure about and yet became one of their biggest hits

Deftones backstage in 2001 — (Image credit: Theo Wargo/WireImage via Getty)

There is a long and storied history of bands learning to hate some of their biggest songs: Kurt Cobain pulled Smells Like Teen Spirit from Nirvana’s setlist towards the end of their career; Radiohead play Creep sparingly and through gritted teeth; Blur’s Graham Coxon has blamed Country House on the breakup of one of his relationships.

But none of them are as unusual as the story of Deftones and their song Back to School (Mini Maggit). Created almost against their will and purely to prove a point to their record label about how easy it was to write a hit single in a genre they were looking to escape, it’s a song that the band have seemingly never liked or felt any connection to - and yet it remains one of their most iconic moments.

Even going back to their second album, 1997’s Around the Fur, Deftones had made a point of distancing themselves from the ever-growing nu metal tag that was applied to so many of their peers.

“Obviously, our first record comes out, Korn had put out a record maybe a year before, and right away, we were being compared to that,” vocalist Chino Moreno told Spin in an interview in 2016. “This nu metal moniker started to come to fruition here, but it was kind of putting us in the same category. Even as early as Around the Fur, I felt like we were taking a left turn from just being what people expected us to be. I kind of knew that we were taking things somewhere else and somewhere that opened our creativity up, so we wouldn’t be so easily pigeonholed in with everything else that was going on.”

Korn had put out a record a year before, and right away we were being compared to that
Chino Moreno

Ironically, the success of Around the Fur not only propelled the popularity of Deftones; it also gave the nu metal tag they were so keen to shake a boost.

By the time Deftones had reconvened to record their third album, Korn were now one of the biggest bands on the planet and riding high on the gargantuan triumph of their Follow the Leader album, Limp Bizkit had experienced massive mainstream success with 1999’s Significant Other and the likes of Slipknot, System of a Down and many others were making such huge waves that nu metal was unquestionably the dominant subgenre in heavy music.

With this being the climate at the time, it’s no wonder Deftones' record label Maverick were rubbing their hands in anticipation at the prospect of one of the genre's OG bands coming back and making them a truck load of cash. Unfortunately for them, the band themselves had other ideas.

Chino Moreno over a crowd in 1999 — (Image credit: Martin Philbey/Getty Images)

“Papa Roach and Limp Bizkit and stuff like that were becoming really big bands, and bigger than us,” Moreno recalled in an interview with Revolver in 2017. “The label would sort of hint, ‘Well, this music right now is selling really big so you guys should capitalize on this,’ and we were totally anti that. Not that we thought we were better than all these bands. It wasn’t like that. We just wanted to do something a little more left of center.”

The result of this was 2000’s White Pony. These days it’s considered one of the most unique, challenging and artistically bold albums in metal’s history. But back at the start of the Millennium, the stylistic change from downtuned, raging metal to slight, delicate and atmospheric soundscapes was seen by many as a huge risk.

“People think when you’ve got a record deal, you’ve made it,” a clearly nervous and under pressure Moreno sighed in a 2000 interview with Alternative Press about the musical leap. “But there’s a lot of shit that comes with it. You have to make a lot of people happy, including your fans. Our fans are hardcore. I don’t want to do anything to let them down.”

But within all of Deftones' bold new sonic terrain was a song that unquestionably did share plenty of similarities and DNA with the nu metal scene they were trying to break free from. Back to School had originally not been included on White Pony; it was a rocket-fuelled, riff-heavy, rap metal reimagining of the album's final track, the quiet, cerebral Pink Maggit. The band simply felt it didn’t fit with the rest of the record.

“It never belonged on the album,” DJ Frank Delgado told Visions. “Our record company received White Pony without that song.”

“Honestly, I didn’t want Back to School on the record,” Chino added. “It was unfinished at the time and I didn’t want anything too hip hop orientated on the album.”

But once the label had heard it, they believed they had something they could market to a nu metal-hungry world far more easily than any of White Pony’s more experimental material.

“They said we lost our heaviness, and there were no more singles on the album,” Chino scoffed to Visions, revealing how the conversation of making Back to School came about.

Initially, Deftones were dead against releasing the song, but Chino found himself coming round to the idea... although not necessarily because he thought it was a good one.

“First, I wanted to stick this idea up my ass,” Moreno continued. “But then I thought, I'm gonna show those fuckers how easy it is to create a hit single. So I rapped a hip hop part on that song, we shortened it and half an hour later, the hit-single was ready to roll on."

Honestly, I didn’t want Back to School on the record
Chino Moreno

In October of 2000, with only one song from White Pony having been released as a single, Back to School (Mini Maggit) was released as its own standalone EP. It featured some live tracks, an acoustic version of previous single Change (In the House of Flies) and peaked at a very respectable number 35 on the UK albums chart.

It also came with one of the era's most defining music videos; with the band playing in a US high school, filled with skaters, jocks and goths, it was the perfect snapshot of teen culture at the time.

It certainly increased Deftones' immediate popularity, the video intrinsically linking them to the likes of Papa Roach’s Last Resort or Linkin Park’s One Step Closer as definitive visions of early 2000s pop culture. Somewhat ironic, considering Deftones' desire to make musical statements that were timeless and not tied to a single style and era.

Deftones - Back To School (Mini Maggit) [Official Music Video] - YouTube

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Since then, Deftones have had something of a rocky relationship with the song. According to Setlist.fm, it’s their thirty-second most performed track live, and has only been performed on three occasions since 2018. The band, and Chino in particular, do seem to regret the decision to release it as a single, and now see it as a strong-arm tactic from their label, with Moreno calling it “a mistake” and a “calculated song”.

The final kicker came when White Pony was re-released with Back to School not only added to the final album but positioned as its opening track, turning what the band, and most fans, felt was nothing more than just a fun, unrepresentative standalone single into an ill-judged, bizarre way to start such a perfectly conceived record.

“As far as we’re concerned, the first edition was the record done,” Chino said in 2002. “When this version came out, a little part inside all of us felt like 'Fuck! We just totally compromised.’ And I know that a lot of our fans felt bad about it too."

Regardless, today Back to School (Mini Maggit) is a song many people have a great deal of affection for, despite it hardly being considered Deftones' finest moment by most longtime fans. Whether you believe it was the right song at the wrong time, or the wrong song at the right time, its legacy, no matter how complex or no matter how much Deftones themselves dismiss it, has endured.

Stephen joined the Louder team as a co-host of the Metal Hammer Podcast in late 2011, eventually becoming a regular contributor to the magazine. He has since written hundreds of articles for Metal Hammer, Classic Rock and Louder, specialising in punk, hardcore and 90s metal. He also presents the Trve. Cvlt. Pop! podcast with Gaz Jones and makes regular appearances on the Bangers And Most podcast.

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