Fred Durst

• 1. Introduction

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  Fred Durst chose the name Limp Bizkit because he wanted a name that would repel listeners. It was a strange strategy for a man who would become one of the most recognizable faces of nu metal. Durst was born Frederick Allen Mayne III on the 20th of August 1970. He grew up to be a rapper, singer, songwriter, actor and filmmaker, and he became a magnet for both devotion and fury. Rival musicians answered him in print, in interviews and on stage. How did a bullied child from the American South end up at the center of so many arguments? What did he mean when he said the figure on stage was not really him? And what did a man who set out to push people away do with an audience that kept coming closer?

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• 2. Early Years

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  Jacksonville, Florida, was his birthplace, but the family did not stay. They moved to Orlando, and then, when he was one year old, to a farm in Cherryville, North Carolina. His mother, Anita, later married a local police officer named Bill Durst. She renamed her son William Frederick Durst, and the couple soon had a child of their own, his half-brother Cory Durst.

  By the fifth grade the family had settled in Gastonia, North Carolina, and Durst eventually graduated from Hunter Huss High School. Other children bullied him, and he carried that experience into his music as a recurring theme.

  At the age of 12 he fell for breakdancing, hip hop, punk rock and heavy metal. He started rapping, skating, beatboxing and working as a DJ.

  Durst later spent two years in the Navy. In 1990, while stationed in Oakland, California, he married Rachel Tergesen, and the couple had a daughter. They divorced in 1993 after a heated argument led to a domestic disturbance. Durst was arrested, charged with disorderly conduct and fined $5,000.

  After the Navy he returned to Jacksonville to live with his father. There he worked as a landscaper and a tattoo artist, and he began shaping an idea for a band that would blend rock with hip-hop.

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• 3. Building the Band

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  Three songs came out of a single jam session in 1994. Durst played that day with Sam Rivers, a bassist from the band Malachi Sage, and with John Otto, a high school friend of Rivers. Guitarist Wes Borland joined the group afterward.

  The underground scene noticed them for an odd reason. Their covers of George Michael's "Faith" and Paula Abdul's "Straight Up" drew curious concertgoers, and a cult following grew from there.

  Korn supplied the next break. When that band came through town as the opening act for Sick of It All, Durst invited the members to his house. He talked Korn's bassist, Reginald Arvizu, into listening to demos of the songs "Pollution," "Counterfeit" and "Stalemate." Korn then added the still unsigned Limp Bizkit to two tours, which put the band in front of a new audience.

  DJ Lethal, formerly of the hip hop group House of Pain, joined as the band's turntablist. Durst and Borland clashed during this period, and the guitarist briefly left before returning soon after.

  In 1997 Limp Bizkit signed with Flip Records, a subsidiary of Interscope Records. The debut album, Three Dollar Bill, Y'all, drew only a moderate response. The band's fortunes would soon be tied to a group Durst met on the 23rd of October 1997.

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• 4. Collaborator and Scout

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  Friction began almost immediately when Durst met the band Staind on the 23rd of October 1997. The disagreement was over the cover art of Staind's album. Shortly before the group's performance, Durst tried and failed to have it removed from the concert bill. Then he heard them play and changed his mind completely. He signed Staind to Flip/Elektra, recorded a demo with them and co-produced their next album, Dysfunction.

  After a tour with Deftones, Max Cavalera, formerly of Sepultura, asked Durst and DJ Lethal to appear on "Bleed." The song comes from the self-titled debut of Cavalera's new band, Soulfly. Cavalera said the producer Ross Robinson had recommended Durst.

  Korn's album Follow the Leader brought another invitation. Jonathan Davis had planned a battle rap with B-Real of Cypress Hill, but B-Real's label would not allow it. Durst was chosen instead. He and Davis wrote the lyrics for "All in the Family," in which the two vocalists trade insults, and they often swapped suggestions on each other's lines.

  Durst also turned toward filmmaking. He directed the video for Limp Bizkit's "Faith," made to promote the song's appearance in the film Very Bad Things. He was unhappy with the result. He shot a second video as a tribute to tourmates Primus, Deftones and Mötley Crüe, all of whom appeared in it.

  In June 1999 Interscope named him Senior Vice President of A&R. Using the label's connections, he landed record deals for Cold, Puddle of Mudd and She Wants Revenge. He also helped draw 30 Seconds to Mars to the label, although he passed on signing them.

  Taproot proved a messier case. The band from Ann Arbor, Michigan, had sent Durst a demo in 1998, and he quickly befriended its members. He invited them to press events in Los Angeles and sometimes to Limp Bizkit shows. Durst lined up a deal at Interscope, but executives there wanted the rights to the three songs on the demo. Taproot declined and signed with Atlantic Records, helped by a new friendship with System of a Down. Durst was enraged, and he left a threatening message on the answering machine of frontman Stephen Richards's mother. He was later alleged to have removed System of a Down from the 1999 Family Values Tour as payback.

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• 5. Crowds and Controversy

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  Two albums made Limp Bizkit a mainstream act: Significant Other in 1999 and Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water in 2000. That success put the band on one of the era's biggest stages in the summer of 1999. About 200,000 people attended Woodstock '99, and much of the violence there happened during and after Limp Bizkit's set. Fans tore plywood from the walls during the song "Break Stuff," and several sexual assaults were reported in the aftermath.

  From the stage, Durst told the crowd, "People are getting hurt. Don't let anybody get hurt." Later he said he had not seen anyone hurt. With the stage twenty feet in the air, he asked how performers could be expected to spot trouble in a sea of people. Les Claypool told the San Francisco Examiner, "Woodstock was just Durst being Durst." Durst pointed the finger back at the festival's hirers, including co-founder Michael Lang, saying all the band did was what it was hired to do.

  On the 13th of July 1999 Durst was arrested for kicking a stage security guard in the head. He was released on $50,000 bail and later fined in exchange for reduced charges.

  The following June, Napster sponsored the band's tour. Durst was an outspoken advocate of file sharing. At the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards he performed "Livin' It Up" as a duet with Christina Aguilera. Filter frontman Richard Patrick said, "Fred getting onstage with Christina Aguilera embarrassed us all." Durst asked why anyone should segregate music, and why genres should be treated as enemies of one another.

  A far darker night came at the Big Day Out festival in Sydney in 2001. Fans rushed the stage in the mosh pit, and a teenager named Jessica Michalik died of asphyxiation. In Auckland on the same tour, Durst threw water over the head of a security guard who was trying to defuse a similar surge. Durst was accused of taunting security guards as they tried to intervene in Sydney.

  In court, his long-time attorney, Ed McPherson, presented his account. Durst testified that he had warned organizers Aaron Jackson, Will Pearce and Amar Tailor, and promoter Vivian Lees, about the danger of minimal security. After viewing video and hearing witnesses, the coroner found that the crowd was dangerously dense when Limp Bizkit took the stage. The coroner also said Durst should have acted more responsibly once the problem was clear. Durst said he was "emotionally scarred" by the teenager's death.

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• 6. Rivals and Fallouts

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  Corey Taylor of Slipknot disliked the Calvin Klein magazine photo campaign of Korn drummer David Silveria. He burned copies of the magazines at several live shows, and Durst took offense. In February 2000, in Sydney, Taylor said Slipknot fans enjoyed all kinds of music, "like Limp Bizkit...maybe." In October 2000 Durst praised Slipknot on VH1 and said he wanted to ease the tension. Taylor answered, "Fred Durst is a great businessman, but he is not an artist." The two bands still shared numerous UK festival dates in 2000. By 2010, while recording Gold Cobra, Durst worked a shout-out to Taylor into the lyrics of "90.2.10." In 2014, Limp Bizkit was booked on the Japanese leg of Slipknot's Knotfest tour, alongside Korn.

  In June 2000, Limp Bizkit arrived an hour late for its set at a radio festival in Holmdel, New Jersey. Mid-set, before "Break Stuff," Durst gave a lengthy speech criticizing Creed and its singer, Scott Stapp, calling him "an egomaniac." Creed's representatives later gave Durst an autographed anger management manual.

  December 1998 brought a feud with Placebo at Irving Plaza, where Durst was hosting a show. A side-stage argument with singer Brian Molko led Durst to ask the crowd to chant "Placebo sucks!" before the band played. Molko said nobody had told him Durst would host, or that Placebo would follow opening act Kid Rock. The conflict flared again at Big Day Out 2001, and by 2004 it had supposedly ended.

  Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails was an influence Durst cited in several interviews, and Reznor did not appreciate it. In a profile for Kerrang!, Reznor said, "Fred Durst might be a cool guy; I don't know him." He added that Durst's art "sucks." Durst then referenced Nine Inch Nails in the Limp Bizkit song "Hot Dog," which earned Reznor a co-writer credit. Reznor joked that Durst realized he had better ask permission first or risk a lawsuit.

  Marilyn Manson, in 1999, described Limp Bizkit fans as illiterate apes who bullied people in high school. A 2000 Nine Inch Nails video poked fun at several artists, Durst among them. Durst replied that both men were unhappy with their careers and that he forgave them. The relationship later seemed cordial, and Durst and Manson shared a Rolling Stone cover in June 2003 with James Hetfield and Ozzy Osbourne. Then Wes Borland joined Manson's touring band in 2008. On the 15th of August 2008, in Seoul, Manson introduced Borland as a new guitarist who used to play for a really bad band. Borland left after less than nine months.

  Puddle of Mudd singer Wes Scantlin grew tired of being asked about Durst. In a 2004 interview with Canada's Chart magazine, Scantlin complained that Durst did nothing for the band anymore and relied on an assistant to call with congratulations. On the 22nd of April 2008, he told Artisan News Service, "Fred got our foot in the door and helped us out tremendously."

  The ugliest crowd turn came in July 2003 at Hawthorne Race Course in Chicago, during the Summer Sanitarium Tour. Limp Bizkit was booed off after just seventeen minutes, ahead of Metallica. Chicago radio host Mancow Muller had been attacking the band for days. He called it a manufactured band, akin to the Monkees, and reportedly urged fans to throw coins at the stage. Fans chanted against Durst and pelted the stage with garbage. After six songs, Durst yelled homophobic slurs, threw down the microphone and walked off. The Chicago Sun-Times said he had "self-destructed." Metallica's set was delayed by 90 minutes, and a class action lawsuit followed on behalf of thousands of attendees.

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• 7. The Creature and the Camera

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  A rumor and a leak kept Durst in tabloids in the early 2000s. In 2002 he was tapped to write songs for Britney Spears and later said he was in a relationship with her. Spears denied it. In a 2009 interview he said, "I just guess, at the time, it was taboo for a guy like me to be associated with a gal like her." In February 2005 a sex tape featuring him appeared online, and he filed a $70 million lawsuit against ten websites that posted it.

  In May 2003 came word of a New Wave side project called Pacifica, said to sound like Duran Duran and Soft Cell. News stopped quickly and no releases ever surfaced.

  May 2005 saw The Unquestionable Truth (Part 1). Sammy Siegler took over most of the drumming. At Durst's insistence, the album came out with no advertising or promotion. It sold over 2,000,000 copies worldwide and peaked at number 24 on the Billboard 200. Despite the title, Durst said there would be no sequel. A Greatest Hitz album followed later that year.

  He linked the band's hiatus to his own history. Having been bullied, he disliked hearing that people were using his music as fuel to torture others. He also felt the public misread him. "I always knew the guy in the red cap was not me," he said. "I'm Dr Frankenstein, and that's my creature."

  With the band on hiatus, Durst moved into independent films. In 2006 he played Deputy Bobby Caine in Population 436. On the 25th of October 2006, he hit two Los Angeles residents with his car. In 2007 he pleaded no contest to seven misdemeanor charges, including battery, assault and reckless driving. He received a 120-day suspended sentence, 20 hours of community service and a $1,500 fine.

  In 2007 his directorial debut, The Education of Charlie Banks, arrived with Jesse Eisenberg, Chris Marquette and Jason Ritter. Rotten Tomatoes gave it 48% from 31 critics. His second film, The Longshots, starring Ice Cube and Keke Palmer, came in 2008. It earned 41% from 71 reviews, and the site called it a "largely formulaic affair." That same year he played a bartender in two episodes of House, M.D.

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• 8. Return and Reckoning

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  In 2009 the original Limp Bizkit lineup reunited and went back on tour. Durst announced work on a new album, Gold Cobra. It arrived on the 28th of June 2011, drew mixed reviews and peaked at number 16 on the Billboard 200.

  Several partnerships followed in 2012. Durst appeared on the Insane Clown Posse cover album Smothered, Covered & Chunked. In February of that year, Lil Wayne said in a radio interview that Limp Bizkit had signed to his label, Cash Money Records, which Durst confirmed on Twitter. A few months later, Durst joined Lil Wayne and Birdman on Kevin Rudolf's song "Champions," which reached the top 10 on iTunes.

  His film plans shifted too. He was once set to direct and produce Pawn Shop Chronicles, starring Paul Walker, but Wayne Kramer was later chosen to direct. In 2014 Durst shot three commercials for the website eHarmony. In February 2018 he began filming The Fanatic, starring John Travolta. The film earned him a 2020 Golden Raspberry nomination for Worst Director.

  In his personal life, Durst has a son with his ex-girlfriend, the actress Jennifer Thayer. He married Esther Nazarov in 2009, and they split up after three months. In 2012 he married make-up artist Kseniya Beryazina. They filed for divorce in September 2018 and finalized it in 2019. He married again in 2022.

  In 2015 Durst said he was interested in getting a Russian passport and spending half the year in Crimea. On the 8th of October 2015, the Russian newspaper Izvestia reported that he had responded positively to Sergey Aksyonov's call to settle there. He reportedly wrote a letter calling Vladimir Putin "a great guy with clear moral principles and a nice person." At a concert in Voronezh on the Money Sucks Tour, he also picked up a thrown flag bearing an anti-Ukrainian slogan. The Security Service of Ukraine banned him from entering Ukraine for five years starting in November 2015. Durst denied asking for Russian citizenship.

  Those comments resurfaced in November 2025, when a Limp Bizkit concert planned for May 2026 in Tallinn was canceled. Estonian Minister of Foreign Affairs Margus Tsahkna said supporters of Russia, especially after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, had "no place on Estonian stages." The show's organizer replied that Durst never spoke in favor of the invasion and that his earlier comments reflected "living in a distorted information bubble" at the time.

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