The Untold Truth Of Fred Durst

Ahead of its U.K. and European leg, Limp Bizkit's "Still Sucks" tour came to a halt in 2022 over concerns about the health of its front man, Fred Durst (per CNN). Durst's message to fans regarding the delay was brief, measured, and polite — quite a ways away from the public persona he's built up over the years, that of the red-capped loudmouth ready to insult anyone. "I'm Dr. Frankenstein and that's my creature," he once told Louder. "It was a conscious effort to create Fred Durst and eventually I had to bring that guy out more than I wanted to ... I had to check into that character — the gorilla, the thing, the red cap guy. It's a painful transformation, but I do it 'cos that's what I was taught to do when you have people pulling at you."

For someone with such a surly reputation, Durst has shown considerable networking talent over the years. It was his courtship of Korn, according to Colin Devenish's "Limp Bizkit," that got the band's demos out to the right people. Per Kerrang!, he engineered numerous collaborations with other bands on several Limp Bizkit records. And despite his feuds with other groups and organizers, band members quitting and rejoining, and nu metal's general decline, Durst has managed to pull Limp Bizkit back together, keep it going to the present day, and carve out a niche for himself making movies on the side.

The image Fred Durst gave of his youth to Kerrang! was that of an outcast and anti-authoritarian, often confined to his room for clashing with his policeman stepfather. He was a skateboarding punk swept up in alternative music and Michael Jackson, and without any good grades or ready job skills once he made it out of high school. "I was such a f****** loser," Durst said of himself at that age to Rolling Stone (via Colin Devenish's "Limp Bizkit.") "I thought, 'My dad can't stand me, man.'" It was out of a desire to make his stepfather proud that Durst enrolled in the U.S. Navy.

Despite that wholesome motive, Durst's time in the service was far from an unblemished record of clean living. Stationed in California, he fathered a child and then ended up behind bars after he, his ex-wife, and his ex-wife's boyfriend got into a fight. Looking back on that time in his life for the Mirror (via the Free Library), he said, "Being in the Navy was like being in prison. I was in boot camp, my head was shaved, and they were spitting on me. I made the biggest mistake of my life."

Durst was honorably discharged after just one year in the Navy, following a skateboarding accident. One of his first moves once out was to go to work with his stepfather, cutting lawns in Jacksonville, Florida.

Speaking about his time on "The Simpsons" on the podcast Smells Like Human Spirit (via Vox), writer Sam Simon said, "People you work with, they aren't necessarily your friends. You don't have to read anything into that." 

The same seems to be true of Fred Durst and Limp Bizkit. In an interview with Louder, Durst claimed that the first time he met his band's guitarist, Wes Borland, was at their first live performance, after the other band members had taught Borland their music. "We never took the time to consider friendships," he went on. "That wasn't part of it. It was just about the magic that happened when we were together ... none of us were ever friends." Later in the interview, he claimed to have never become emotionally attached to another human being.

Durst's bandmates, for their part, have run into difficult times with their frontman, and several have walked away from the group. Borland left in 2001. According to Spinditty, he didn't like the musical direction Durst was taking or Durst's tendencies toward "selling out" and making Limp Bizkit all about himself. The two erstwhile partners got into a feud over MySpace after Borland's departure, and Limp Bizkit's albums immediately after losing him were not well-received. But after three years away, Borland came back into the fold, according to MTV. Turntablist DJ Lethal has also come and gone, per Billboard.

In defending himself against claims his on-stage remarks set off the riots at Woodstock '99, Fred Durst argued: "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 20 feet in the air ... how do they expect us to see something bad going on" (per Colin Devenish's "Limp Bizkit"). He would face a similar situation two years later in Australia when performing on the Big Day Out Tour.

According to Double J, Limp Bizkit repeatedly clashed with the event organizers. On the Auckland leg of the tour, Durst dismissed security's requests to help calm an unruly audience and threw water over the personnel. In Australia, according to Billboard, an even more animated crowd in the mosh pit surged toward the stage during Limp Bizkit's set. Security signaled for a halt to the music when people started going to the ground. Durst told the crowd to pick up anyone who fell, but after the crowd was pushed back and the music resumed, 16-year-old Jessica Michalik's unconscious body was recovered from the pit. She died five days later.

Durst blamed the event organizers for inadequate security measures and refused to directly answer questions from the Australian police. He and Limp Bizkit were ultimately absolved of responsibility for the death, but the coroner found Durst's remarks during the incident "inflammatory and indeed insulting to the security staff" (per MTV).

To hear Fred Durst tell it, movies were his passion before music. "I always wanted to be a film director," he told Black Film, "and along the way I had a wonderful time with the success of music, and I think it was a natural stepping stone for me to be behind the camera." He dipped his toes into directorial waters with music videos for Limp Bizkit in the late '90s. Shortly after, Korn hired him to do the video for their song "Falling Away from Me" and were well-pleased with the results. "It was shot really well," frontman Jonathan Davis told MTV (via Colin Devenish's "Limp Bizkit"). He also praised Durst for developing the video's concept of Korn's music as salvation for lost or depressed children.

Durst was happy to discuss his movie ambitions in interviews. Per Devenish's book, he told All Music that he had a strong vision for films as a future director and screenwriter, boasting: "Everything that I become involved with becomes successful. My hit-to-miss ratio is zero — all hits so far." In another interview with Request, he claimed, "I see myself as a kind of Dr. Dre-meets-Steven Spielberg. That's me all the way." But when Durst made his feature film debut as a director with "The Education of Charlie Banks," he garnered only mixed reviews, a trend that's held throughout his career. His last film to date, 2019's  "The Fanatic," was a box office bomb (per Hollywood Reporter).

The warning "don't meet your heroes" isn't universally true. But sometimes, it's not even necessary to meet for a hero to disappoint. Among Fred Durst's influences as a musician is Nine Inch Nails. Their frontman, Trent Reznor, has been known to shoot off insults, even to his fans. In 2000, he told Kerrang! (via the NIN Hotline) just what he thought of Limp Bizkit. "It's one thing if you know your place, like, 'Hey, I'm an idiot who plays s***** music, but people buy it, f*** it, I'm having fun.' But it's another thing when you think you're David Bowie after you've stayed up all night to write a song called 'Break Stuff.'" Of Durst himself, Reznor said, "[He] might be a cool guy, I don't know him. But his 'art' — in the word's loosest sense — sucks."

Speaking to Rock Sound years later, Durst claimed he and Reznor have since had a chance to meet on friendly terms. But he admitted to being hurt by the remarks. "There was all this negativity in the press, my idols and people in great bands, Trent Reznor and different people talking s*** about me." Durst's resentments fueled Limp Bizkit's next album, "Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water." A track on the album made extensive use of NIИ's chords, so much so that they needed Reznor's permission (per NME). He granted it. "I wasn't gonna hold [Durst's] record up."