Fred Durst
William Frederick Durst is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, actor, and filmmaker, best known as the frontman and lyricist of the nu metal band Limp Bizkit, formed in 1994, with whom he has released six studio albums.
Early life
Durst was born Frederick Allen Mayne III in Jacksonville, Florida, but soon moved to Orlando, and then to a farm in Cherryville, North Carolina, at one year old. His mother, Anita, renamed him William Frederick Durst after remarrying Bill Durst, a local police officer. Shortly after, Durst's mother and stepfather had a child, his half-brother, Cory Durst. In the fifth grade, Fred Durst moved to Gastonia, North Carolina, where he graduated from Hunter Huss High School. As a child, Durst was bullied, a theme that he incorporated into his music. At the age of 12, Durst took an interest in breakdancing, hip hop, punk rock, and heavy metal. He began to rap, skate, beatbox, and DJ. After serving in the Navy for two years, Durst moved back to Jacksonville with his father, where he worked as a landscaper and a tattoo artist while developing an idea for a band that combined elements of rock and hip-hop.Career
Formation of Limp Bizkit (1994–1998)
In 1994, Durst, Malachi Sage bassist Sam Rivers, and Rivers's high school friend John Otto jammed together and wrote three songs. Guitarist Wes Borland later joined. Durst named the band "Limp Bizkit" because he wanted a name that would repel listeners. Limp Bizkit developed a cult following in the underground music scene when its covers of George Michael's "Faith" and Paula Abdul's "Straight Up" began to attract curious concertgoers.Later, when Korn performed in town as the opening act for Sick of It All, Durst invited Korn to his house. He was able to persuade bassist Reginald Arvizu to listen to demos of the songs "Pollution," "Counterfeit," and "Stalemate." Korn added a then-unsigned Limp Bizkit to two tours, which gave the latter a new audience. DJ Lethal, formerly of the hip hop group House of Pain, joined the band as a turntablist. During this time, Durst's disagreements with Borland led the guitarist to briefly leave the band, but Borland rejoined soon after.
In 1997, Limp Bizkit signed with Flip Records, a subsidiary of Interscope Records, and released its debut album, Three Dollar Bill, Y'all to moderate response. On October 23, 1997, Durst met the band Staind, but friction quickly emerged between the two over the cover art of Staind's album. Durst unsuccessfully attempted to remove Staind from a concert bill shortly before the latter's performance, but after hearing the band play, he was so impressed that he signed the band to Flip/Elektra, recorded a demo with the band, and co-produced its next album, Dysfunction.
After Limp Bizkit finished a tour with the band Deftones, Durst and DJ Lethal were asked by Max Cavalera, formerly of the band Sepultura, to appear on "Bleed," a song from the self-titled debut of his new band Soulfly. Cavalera stated that producer Ross Robinson recommended that he work with Durst. Durst also made an appearance on Korn's album Follow the Leader. Jonathan Davis had intended to write a battle rap with B-Real of Cypress Hill, but the latter's label wouldn't let him do it, and Durst was tapped instead. Davis and Durst wrote the lyrics for "All in the Family," which featured the two vocalists trading insults. Davis and Durst would often offer suggestions for each other's lyrics; a lyric written by Durst as "tootin' on your bagpipe" was changed to "fagpipes" by Davis, who stated, "I helped him bag on me better".
Durst began to take an interest in filmmaking, directing the music video for Limp Bizkit's single "Faith" in promotion for its appearance in the film Very Bad Things; he was unsatisfied with it and made a second video that paid tribute to tourmates Primus, Deftones, and Mötley Crüe, bands that appeared in the video.
Mainstream success (1998–2005)
Limp Bizkit achieved mainstream success with the albums Significant Other and Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water. In June 1999, Durst was appointed Senior Vice President of A&R at Interscope. Durst utilized his connections through the label and scouted numerous bands, landing record deals for Cold, Staind, Puddle of Mudd, and She Wants Revenge. Durst would also aid in attracting other bands such as 30 Seconds to Mars and Taproot, though Durst would pass on 30 Seconds to Mars, and he later engaged in a minor feud with Taproot after it rejected his original offer to sign the group to Interscope in 1999.In the summer of 1999, Limp Bizkit played at the highly anticipated Woodstock '99 festival in front of approximately 200,000 people. The concert was tarnished by violent behavior from the crowd, much of which occurred during and after Limp Bizkit's performance, including fans tearing plywood from the walls during the song "Break Stuff." Several sexual assaults were reported in the aftermath of the concert. Durst stated during the concert, "People are getting hurt. Don't let anybody get hurt. But I don't think you should mellow out. That's what Alanis Morissette had you motherfuckers do. If someone falls, pick 'em up. We already let the negative energy out. Now we wanna let out the positive energy." Durst later stated in an interview, "I didn't see anybody getting hurt. You don't see that. When you're looking out on a sea of people and the stage is twenty feet in the air and you're performing, and you're feeling your music, how do they expect us to see something bad going on?" Les Claypool told the San Francisco Examiner, "Woodstock was just Durst being Durst. His attitude is 'no press is bad press,' so he brings it on himself. He wallows in it. Still, he's a great guy." "It's easy to point the finger and blame , but they hired us for what we do —— and all we did is what we do. I would turn the finger and point it back to the people that hired us," Durst said, in reference to Woodstock co-founder Michael Lang.
In June 2000, Limp Bizkit's tour was sponsored by the controversial file sharing service Napster. Durst was an outspoken advocate of file sharing. During the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards, Durst performed Limp Bizkit's song "Livin' It Up" as a duet with Christina Aguilera. In response to the performance, Filter frontman Richard Patrick claimed that "Fred getting onstage with Christina Aguilera embarrassed us all." In response to the negative reactions to the performance, Durst remarked, "People always just wanna talk about Britney or Christina. What's the problem? Because they make a type of music we aren't allowed to like? Or you think they are the nemesis of what our music is about? Why segregate? Why be so musically fuckin' racist? What do you mean, I can't hang out with these types of people? Clearly I didn't give a fuck, which fed a lot of it, too. I mean, someone that's not going to give in and gonna make people carry on talking."
During a 2001 tour of Australia at the Big Day Out festival in Sydney, fans rushed the stage in the mosh pit, and teenager Jessica Michalik died of asphyxiation. In Auckland, New Zealand, on the same tour, Durst threw water over the head of a security personnel tasked with defusing a similar situation. During the Big Day Out crush, Durst has been accused of taunting security guards intervening in the situation. In court, Durst, represented by his long-time attorney, Ed McPherson, testified he had warned the concert's organizers Aaron Jackson, Will Pearce and Amar Tailor and promoter Vivian Lees of the potential dangers of such minimal security. After viewing video and hearing witness testimony, the coroner said it was evident that the density of the crowd was dangerous at the time Limp Bizkit took the stage and Durst should have acted more responsibly when the problem became apparent. Durst stated that he was "emotionally scarred" because of the teenager's death.
In 2002, Durst was tapped to write songs for Britney Spears and later said that he was in a relationship with her. Spears denied Durst's claims. In a 2009 interview, he explained that "I just guess, at the time, it was taboo for a guy like me to be associated with a gal like her." In February 2005, a sex tape featuring Durst was released on the Internet. Durst filed a $70 million lawsuit against ten websites that posted the video.
In May 2003, it was reported that Durst was working on a New Wave side project alongside Limp Bizkit's Results May Vary album. The band, named Pacifica, was reportedly in its "very early stages" and had a sound reminiscent of Duran Duran and Soft Cell. News about the band stopped quickly and no releases ever surfaced.
In July 2003, Limp Bizkit participated in the Summer Sanitarium Tour, headlined by Metallica. In the days preceding the tour's stop in Chicago, local radio personality Mancow Muller mocked Durst and suggested that listeners who were attending the concert should heckle the singer and throw debris. With the crowd chanting "Fuck Fred Durst" and pelting the stage with garbage, Durst erupted after six songs, threw the microphone down, and walked off stage. Durst was eventually sued for breach of contract by Chicago lawyer Michael Young in a class-action suit.
In May 2005, The Unquestionable Truth was released. Sammy Siegler took over drumming duties for the band for much of the album. At Durst's insistence, the album was released as an underground album, without any advertising or promotion. The album sold over 2,000,000 copies worldwide, peaking at number 24 on the Billboard 200. Durst later announced that despite the album's title, no sequel to The Unquestionable Truth would be produced. Later in the year, the band released a Greatest Hitz album.
Having been bullied while growing up, Durst disliked seeing people "using my music as fuel to torture other people"; feeling that his music was being misinterpreted, he would later cite this as the reason for the band taking a hiatus.
Durst also said that he created a character for his music, but that he was also misunderstood by the public: "I always knew the guy in the red cap was not me. I'm Dr Frankenstein, and that's my creature. Being a breakdancer, a graffiti artist, a tattoo artist, and liking rock and hip hop was too much; it was a conscious effort to create Fred Durst, and eventually I had to bring that guy out more than I wanted to. It took on a life of its own. I had to check into that character —— the gorilla, the thing, the red-cap guy. It's a painful transformation, but I do it that's what I was taught to do when you have people pulling at you."