Fat Freddy's time is running out and he knows it. This story is priceless.
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When Fred Durst and his band Limp Bizkit were booed off stage at a Chicago festival in July, many music fans allowed themselves a satisfied laugh. Durst had it coming: a man who combined the worst aspects of a boorish thug and a cynical businessman to make a fortune out of the critically reviled genre of nu-metal. Finally, it seemed, the moshpit magnate was on the way down.
Epitaphs may have been premature. On September 6, Limp Bizkit will play a huge free concert in Finsbury Park, North London. Later in the month, their long-delayed fourth album will be released the follow-up to 2000s successful
Chocolate Starfish and the Hotdog Flavored Water. In the video to their new single,
Eat You Alive, Durst kidnaps his latest crush, the actress Thora Birch, showing the grasp of dating etiquette which has seen him repeatedly labelled a misogynist. Another new song is reputedly about Britney Spears, with whom Durst may have had a fling. It is called, with that notorious Durst charm,
Just Drop Dead. Durst is not sophisticated, talented or nice. He is not, however, anywhere near as stupid as his detractors suggest. The man Marilyn Manson calls an illiterate ape has been clever enough to build a formidable empire. First, he created Limp Bizkit, a band that brought together heavy metal with Dursts whiney excuse for rapping, reproducing the most inane adolescent tantrums in crude musical form. Then he made a commodity out of that brattishness, ending up as senior vice-president at Interscope Records. Many of Dursts actions seem ill-advised, not least when he implored the crowd to break stuff at the 1999 Woodstock Festival, and was blamed by many for inciting the riots that ensued. Yet one suspects much of his oafishness is calculated, a pragmatic way to maximise his appeal to teenagers. Im not a rock star, Im a businessman, he has said, never averse to flaunting his cynicism. He knows, too, that his songs are ephemeral, admitting: In ten years, the people who are 15 today wont be singing
Break Stuff. He even turns the masses of criticism thrown at the band to his own use. It is as if all the bile directed towards Limp Bizkit accords them an erroneous, if lucrative, outsider status. On a US tour in 1998, the group arrived on stage by climbing out of a 25ft-tall toilet Dursts explanation was as unsubtle as ever: We wanted them (the critics) to see us as the big pieces of s*** that they said we were. Now, though, there are signs that his reasons to be obnoxious may be fading. Nu-metal is in decline, and Dursts indelible connection to the movement means that he has the furthest to fall. A vast American summer tour sought to capture a new audience by twinning Limp Bizkit with the old metallers Metallica. At that Chicago show, the band were welcomed with a hail of bottles, banners reading Fred sucks and a massed chant of F*** Fred Durst. Durst left the stage after six songs. The new album, too, has been beset with problems. The guitarist Wes Borland credited by many as Limp Bizkit's talented member left in its early stages. Bullishly, Durst claimed he had always told Borland what to play, and launched a
Pop Idol-style search for a replacement. After many open auditions he recruited Mike Smith, formerly of the emblematically named Snot. I dont give a f*** what anyone thinks, has long been Dursts credo. But such a shrewd manipulator of youth culture must be aware that he will never be forgotten as one of nu-metals architects, and that his prospects of musical reinvention are slim. The boardroom beckons, or perhaps Durst will use Hollywood friends such as Ben Stiller to fulfil his ambition to direct films. One thing is certain: if there is a market for the crass, macho and patronisingly dumb, Fred Durst will be working hard to milk it for every last dollar.
