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"The Kids Aren't Alright", published in The Face (London), issue 50, volume 3, March 2001.
THE KIDS AREN�T ALRIGHT Fred Durst stands on the stage of Sydney�s giant Showground arena, trademark scowl etched on his face. In front of him are 50,000 other faces wearing expressions of bewilderment. Durst has stopped Limp Bizkit mid-song to try and persuade the kids in the moshpit to move back and prevent those at the front being crushed. �You guys gotta help each other out,� says Durst, �because the security here sucks. Fuck these security guards _ we can take care of ourselves.� At first it works, and the show fires up again. But two songs later, right in the middle of �My Generation�, their turbo-charged anthem of the moment, it quickly becomes clear that something bad is happening. Very bad. Much worse than anyone could have imagined. As the band grind to a halt once more, it emerges that one of the bodies which has come cascading over the restraining guard rail in front of the stage is that of a 15-year-old girl who has suffered a heart attack and stopped breathing. After being taken to the side of the stage, she is resuscitated by paramedics, while fire hoses are turned on the crowd in an attempt to restore some kind of order. A little later, the girl _ along with six other fans _ is taken to hospital. Two of the victims have broken sternums. The rest of the crowd, meanwhile, grow restless. After 15 minutes of confusion, with minor scuffles already starting to break out, the police tell Limp Bizkit to resume their performance. They do, perhaps themselves fearing the worst. But not before Durst mutters darkly: �We told them how to do it, but they wouldn�t listen.� The Sydney show should have been showpiece of Limp Bizkit�s Pacific tour, not to mention the highlight of the Australasian Big Day Out festival, a travelling music circus encompassing 50-plus bands, a carnival sideshow, international food hall and 12,000-capacity rave featuring Darren Emerson, Carl Cox and Reprazent. Yet even at the first tour date in Auckland, New Zealand, a week before Sydney, there were signs that Limp Bizkit�s presence might cause problems. For a start, Durst, guitarist Wes Borland, DJ Lethal and posse arrived backstage in Auckland with five personal bodyguards in tow. In its nine years, the Big Day Out had played host to its fair share of egos _ Nirvana, Hole, Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson _ but nothing quite as ostentatious as this. �As soon .as they rolled in with five security guards we were very concerned they were going to try to take over the show,� quipped one of the organisers. �You know: �We�re Limp Bizkit and you�re all in our way.� Speaking a few days later in a plush reception room at the Stamford Plaza hotel in Sydney, Durst tries to explain: �I never thought we�d be walking around with bodyguards. But when you go out into a crowd of 50,000 people, that�s 50,000 different personalities. Some people are really cool to you, some want to rip your shirt off and take it home as a souvenir, some are mad at you because their girlfriend likes you. Or some people are just drunk or on drugs and not being themselves. You just never know. You just need that kind of thing.� This might sound like pure ego. Especially coming from someone who, at shows in the US, has made a point of mingling with fans before shows. But a lot has changed for Limp Bizkit in the past 12 months. They�ve gone from being the foremost name on the American nu metal scene, to globally infamous representatives of a loud, angry, defiant musical revolution which encompasses Slipknot, Korn, Amen and Eminem. So when evening falls on Australia Day (the country�s biggest holiday) in Sydney, the sense of anticipation among the 50,000 _ who have already endured a typically hot, humid afternoon with the temperature hovering around 100 degrees _ is already at fever-pitch. Much younger then in previous years, most of this vast sunburned, stripped-to-the-waist-of-their-baggy-jeans crowd are here because of Limp Bizkit, because of what they represent, because they want to be part of the phenomenon, the revolution. Naturally, not everyone is a believer. Limp Bizkit have founded their success on an unerring ability to polarise opinion. To youthful fans of nu metal, nu rap, nu techno (nu-ness in general, basically), they are standard-bearers for a life lived at full throttle. To pretty much everyone else, they come off as juvenile loudmouths who only have three decent songs to their name. �Like there was Guns N� Roses, there�s Limp Bizkit,� says Durst of their current �controversial� reputation. �There�s always one band. You just have to be smart enough to think about your future and not let it get to you, just be a band, which we continue to be. I think that really irks a lot of people. Instead of letting all these attacks get to us, we just keep being a band and proving them wrong. That would really piss me off too, if I was a person that really hated this band.� But to the kids packed into the Showground arena, all that matters is �Break Stuff�, �Nookie�, �Take A Look Around�, �Rollin� _ the chance to scream, shout, mosh and vent some energy. Hence the disappointment when the scene descends into chaos. �It was going crazy before they even came on stage,� says 22-year-old Ryan Keogh, who�d readied himself for the show by pressing up against the front barricade. �People were crowdsurfing and jumping around. Then the band came on and people just went berserk.� Crazy, of course, is how Limp Bizkit like it. But Keogh could see quickly that things were getting out of hand. �It was just people stacked on people,� he says. �And then people who were crowdsurfing would just fall on top. Then I went down underneath everything. I was on the ground, on my back; I was looking up and I couldn�t see anything, I couldn�t hear anything except for this bloke next to me screaming. I was shit-frightened. I�ve been in a lot of moshpits before, but that was just chaotic. I knew it was going to be hard, but I didn�t think I�d be scared for my life.� If he heard him, Durst would probably sympathise. Despite his aggressive stage persona, in person he is generally articulate and open. �We�re not mad all the time,� he says at the Stamford, for once without his backwards red baseball cap and dressed in nothing more outrageous than a grey T-shirt. �Every day is different for us. We�re just human beings. Sometimes if I think about things or something happens to me, it affects me. How long or how often it�ll keep coming back into my mind for me to have a grudge against it, I can�t predict. I�m getting better with it. With the lyrics, I�m handling things that upset me emotionally better than I ever have. But I still tend to be the guy that lets things bother me for a while. I�m just that guy. If you do me wrong, I don�t really forget it. I don�t forgive and forget.� It�s true that in the early days, Durst had to fight to be heard. When Chocolate Starfish And The Hot Dog Flavored Water topped the US charts late last year (selling over a million copies in its first week of release), it was the culmination of over a decade�s worth of hope and determination. Durst had an unsettled upbringing in North Carolina and Jacksonville, Florida, an outsider both to his conservative parents and reactionary schoolmates largely because of his early interest in hip hop culture. By the time he reached his early twenties, Durst had joined the Navy, left the Navy, got married, got divorced and fathered Adriana, now eight. In fact, until he formed Limp Bizkit in 1994, drawing together musicians stuck in dead-end Jacksonville bands _ Borland, bassist Sam Rivers and drummer John Otto _ Durst was simply a character in search of an author. Typically for Durst, it turned out the author was him. Durst was holding down a day job as a tattooist when, later that year, Californian metal rap act Korn came to town. When their bassist entered his shop, Durst made certain to give him a demo Limp Bizkit had been working on. After all, Korn were a big influence and they had a major label deal. The rest is standard industry fairytale: the demo ended up at Interscope; Limp Bizkit were signed to make their debut album, Three Dollar Bill Y�All$, it went on to sell 1.5 million copies, largely on the back of a brilliantly caustic cover of George Michael�s �Faith�. As a result, Limp became a regular fixture on the alt rock festival circuit touring back and forth across America. And, in a sign of what was to come, their follow-up album _ 1999�s guitar-powered, Method Man-enhanced Significant Other _ debuted at number one on the US charts. At the Big Day Out gig in Auckland, the band were not overawed by their new global status. In fact, not only did they look like superstars, they sounded like them too: Borland�s relentless, post-Rage Against The Machine riffing; Durst�s fierce rap rock delivery and hyperactive stagecraft; and DJ Lethal�s blur of turntablist flourishes. This high-energy brew stirs up a primal frenzy among Limp�s legion of young worshippers. Big Day Out promoter Ken West later describes the crowd as an �uncontrollable mass that really doesn�t give a fuck�. Yet in a portent of what was to come in Sydney, their set in Auckland was also stopped, albeit briefly, to relieve a crush at the front of the stage _ a delay which prompts Durst to demand changes to future security arrangements the moment he walks off stage. These include the demand that a T-shaped barricade be erected at the remaining shows to split the audience down the middle, allowing security to walk through the centre of the crowd. The organisers did add an extra 60 security staff for the Sydney show (following a relatively drama-free gig in Brisbane), but explained that a T-barricade would block emergency evacuation points. �It reached the point where we weren�t pandering to them as much as they liked, and they basically just took their ball and went home,� says West. �They�d warned us that if we stopped them one more time, they�d go home. And we said, �Well, if we have to stop you for safety reasons, we�re going to stop you.� They were like, �Well, you can�t stop Limp Bizkit. The crowd�s not our problem: that�s your problem.� That�s when we thought, well, we�re in really dangerous waters here.� True to his word, the morning after events in Sydney, while Limp Bizkit�s road crew is en route to Melbourne to set up for the festival�s next stop, Fred Durst and the band are already on a plane home. They leave behind a press release condemning the event�s organisers. It reads, in part: �We�d like to express tremendous sorrow over the injuries suffered by our fans during the Big Day Out concert. Concern for our fans� safety and well-being is our first priority, and to have people hurt during what is supposed to be an enjoyable and unifying experience affects us profoundly. We love our fans, but we don�t want them to get hurt. We pray for the life of the heart-attack victim. We�ll be back to Australia to play for our fans under our own terms and with proper safety and security.� The day before the Sydney gig, ask 29-year-old Durst if he considers his teenage fanbase as his generation and he replies: �I think for sure I fall into that generation. I wasn�t accepted by my generation and finally I�m getting accepted by a generation. So I definitely call it mine. If you were me, you probably would too.� Durst responds to criticisms _ both real and perceived _ calmly, in good humour and without faltering. Why did he appear at the MTV awards with Christina Aguilera? �I can�t pick one boy fan out there that wouldn�t hump her,� he smiles. �I�ve asked a lot of fans, man. �What ya do that with Christina for?� [they ask me]. �Would you hump her, dude?� I ask them. And they�re like, �Yeah, man!�� OK but what�s with the cartoon rap image? �l don�t think we have that much of an image. I�m a superstitious guy. I wear a ball cap when I go on stage and it�s red. Well, that�s become an image, I guess.� He is also at pains to point out that Limp Bizkit _ despite US album sales in excess of ten million copies _ are still nowhere near matching his own expectations. Talking of the music that has moved him most through his own life _ Nirvana, Soundgarden, Smashing Pumpkins _ he says: �We don�t hold a candlestick to those guys. But our vision isn�t blurred. We see our future and we see what�s going on. We know that Limp Bizkit is just a stepping stone for what great music is about to come. I think we�re in a lull, a time when a lot of music isn�t creative or innovative. And I think we�re a stepping stone to another realm of music, such as the early Nineties was.� Even so, there�s long been a feeling that for Durst, Limp Bizkit will last only as long as he wants it to _ especially since he has taken on an increasing number of side projects. These include an executive position at Interscope, video directing (he directs all of the band�s videos) and film script development (director David Fincher has apparently signed up to executive produce one of his script ideas, Runt). Could the pressure created by escalating crowd problems and confrontations with concert organisers finally persuade him enough is enough? Of course, it�s not the first time the band have faced such problems. Following a riot during their set at Woodstock 1999, they were accused of inciting the crowd _ an accusation bitterly rejected by Durst. He has always insisted that the fans come first, and that it will be Limp Bizkit fans who tell the band when it�s all over _ not security guards, concert promoters or the media. �There�s a feeling and respect for each other, from us to our fans, our fans to us,� he says. �I think there�s a universal, mutual thing going on. And I think if that goes away, this will go away. That�s the deal.� Two days after Sydney�s Big Day Out, the Melbourne show goes ahead without Limp Bizkit. Organisers say they�re relieved to have them off the bill, but while flyers for a cast and crew party that night are subheaded �come celebrate the departure of Limp Bizkit�, and some fans at the gig choose to wear homemade T-shirts which read �fuck Fred� and �Limp Bizkit crumble�, most messages from fans (from Australia and elsewhere) on the band�s website are supportive of the decision to quit and only hope the band return soon. The Sydney heart attack victim, who has been named only as Jessica, dies at 3.30pm on January 31. The girl�s father tells the Australian media that despite his anger and tears, �I blamed myself because I picked up the tickets.� The following day the band release a short statement. �We are devastated that Jessica died, and really nothing can describe the sadness and anguish we�re feeling,� it reads. �We offer sympathy, prayers and compassion to her family and friends. The loss of her life will impact ours forever�.
