While they may not carry the clout of pairings like Mick Jagger and Keith Richards or Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, it’s sort of hard to envision Limp Bizkit without singer Fred Durst and guitarist Wes Borland. Though Borland did leave the group in 2001, he later rejoined, and his unique style both in his playing and appearance has become synonymous with both Limp Bizkit and the nu metal genre as a whole.
That almost wasn’t the case, however, as Borland revealed on a recent episode of the “Disrespectfully Podcast” that he actually quit the band when they were on the verge of being signed. Borland stepped away just prior to their work on debut album “Three Dollar Bill, Y’all$.”
“It wasn’t very long,” Borland revealed (as transcribed by Metal Injection). “It happened pretty quickly. We did a couple of regional tours. We actually … Fred and I have had an interesting history of trying to get along with each other, up until, like, the last seven years, and now we’re awesome. But it took us really growing up, because of egos and just like different ideas of what the band should be.”
Borland said that as the band was set to ink a record deal, he split and returned to work at a coffee shop. “Right before we got signed, I was like, ‘No, I don’t want to do this.’ And I went back to working at a coffee shop. And they got different guitar players and sort of reformed the band. They got signed. I’m out. My brother – Scott Borland – was originally in Limp Bizkit too, on keyboards, and he was like, ‘If you’re not doing I’m not doing it.’ But, we were young and stupid, and just like, you know, knuckleheaded people not being adults.”
A string of bad luck befell the band shortly after Borland’s initial exit. Borland said: “They got signed, bought a van and trailer, drove out to LA to start making their record without me, without my brother, at DJ Lethal’s house, who was in House Of Pain at the time, he was going to produce. And the guy driving, one of their friends — I kind of knew him a little bit too — but in the middle of Texas, he flipped the van, went off the road, flipped the van.”
“Fred’s feet went through a window, destroyed. Everybody was cut to ribbons. The guitar player flew out of the window. They showed up in LA … they were in the hospital, they showed up in LA on crutches to start recording. And the people in LA that were doing the record were like, ‘What is happening?'”
Then even more bad luck befell the band. “The guitar players, in the middle of the night, stole all the gear — all the guitar gear — and rented a car and drove back to Florida. Then it was just like, they started calling me and going, like, ‘Do you want to do this again?’ And I was like ‘No. I don’t want, I don’t want any part of it,’ you know, being stubborn. I think finally they went to New York, and were trying to record in New York with some people, and I finally just went, ‘Yeah, I’ll come up to New York and we’ll try’. And that’s when we started writing the first record. It’s been wild, like wild. When I think back, I don’t think about like the old days, but how many terrible, weird things happened to get us where we were.”
Reception for the debut album was mixed at first, but the band’s fortunes changed on the back of their cover of George Michael’s “Faith.” “So we had like two singles that came out that didn’t do well, that didn’t really hit,” Borland said. “And then ‘Faith’ came out, and we made a terrible video for ‘Faith’. And then Fred was like, ‘We’re trashing this. We’re gonna do like a Mötley Crüe-style tour video that shows us, like our footage on tour. And he brought a film crew out, and the video was just us on tour. I think, the combination of doing the cover of ‘Faith’ and people seeing actually what the shows were like, that’s when it really hit, and that’s the first time … We were recording our second record at the time when ‘Faith’ came out. That was just like, the last ditch to see if we could get any traction.”
Borland’s full appearance can be seen below.
