Fred Durst is the iconic figure of rock music. There are no rock-fans, who have never heard of Limp Bizkit. But little do people know about Fred`s life and how he had started his career.
The first years of Life
Fred`s childhood was a hard challenge. The father had left the family soon after Fred was Born, so his mother and him had to live a poor life. It continued for almost two years, until she married police officer Bill, who was a huge fan of rock music. Since the very first years of his life Fred enjoyed listening to “Kiss” and playing a rockstar.
School
The family had moved to Florida, where the future rockstar had entered the school. During that period Fred was rather interested in music. He tried both playing guitar and mixing rap beats. Fred was more successful in rapping, especially that he managed to write lyrics and make scratches (he would have probably succeeded more in playing guitar, if he had a decent one for a teenager https://musiety.com/ibanez-pf15ece-review-just-another-dreadnought/). He was taking part in rap-battles and break-dancing contests. As this culture stopped being popular, Fred started skate-boarding and listening to heavier music (Black Flag for example). This was the time, when he started paying more attention to making music and creating lyrics, than to
Creating Limp Bizkit
After working as a bartender and tattoo master, serving as a marine and having an unsuccessful marriage, Fred returned to making music. He was a member of three bands (Malachi Sage, Split 26 and 10 Foot Shindig), but none of them were really worthy. In 1993 Fred contacted Malachi former guitarist Sam Rivers. They formed a band together with Sam`s cousin John Otto, who was a drummer at Douglas Anderson School at the moment and Wesley Borland.
Interesting Fact: Members of Limp Bizkit managed to find a guitarist only after two failures. Before Wesley Borland joined Rob Waters and Terry Balsamo took part in demo-records.
In 1996 DJ Lethal joined the group as well. Electric musician in a rock group allowed members to start experimenting a lot. However, later that year Fred and Borland had a conflict, so Borland refused to take part in development of Limp Bizkit.
Interesting Fact: The members couldn`t come up with a name for a long time. After one of the repetitions, Borland said that his brain was like a limp biscuit. Fred enjoyed this phrase so much, that he based the band`s name on it.
The first Albums
After Fred showed the band`s demos to several producers, he was able to sign a contract with Interscope Records. Limp Bizkit started as a warm-up group at Korn`s concert. Soon after the first album named “Three dollar bill Ya`ll” was released. It gathered mixed feedbacks, yet the style was so fresh, that Limp Bizkit managed to gather a small fan-base.
In two years, in 2000 the second album “Significant other” was published. It was a filler-album, shown to public before the real hit dropped. Later the same year “The Chocolate Starfish and The Hot-Dog flavoured Water” had seen the World. It was the piece of music that made Limp Bizkit and Fred particulary popular and recognizable.
The next striking album was only published in 2009 after several mediocre releases. The years since 2001 till 2009 were not the brightest in the band`s life, as it had to change the label and members. Yet Limp Bizkit remains one of the greatest nu-metal bands of the 21st century.