Limp Bizkit guitarist Wes Borland‘s straight-faced delivery of his humorous rant against playing ‘ShipRocked‘ saw many a fan outraged at his perceived contempt. Borland has since set the record straight with Stereogum, here’s some excerpts from that chat:
In reply to being asked if he hates being in Limp Bizkit:
“Um, no I don’t hate being in Limp Bizkit. I’m very aware of my band. You know, I totally get tons of people don’t like it and think it’s a joke. And then we have a really strong fan base that are great. And it’s been something I’ve always been part of, on and off, but something that’s always been my band, and whether people think it’s dumb or not, or elements of it aren’t cool, whatever. We’ve always had really fun live shows.
I’ve always gotten to create stupid stage personas that make me laugh and hopefully could possibly rub off on someone in the crowd that isn’t used to seeing things like that that borderline on costuming and performance art, or whatever you want to call it. No, it’s an interesting place to be, and I’ve always sort of thought of it as being a Democrat who’s voting in a red state, in a way.
It’s like, I really like my band. Do I listen to that genre of music? No. But do I participate in my band and do I enjoy playing with those guys? Yeah, it feels like home. I’ve known them for 20 years and developed as a player with John on drums and Sam on bass, and it’s part of my DNA, I guess. It feels good.”
On still being in Limp Bizkit all these years later:
“Probably not because 10 years ago I think I was out. Yeah, I wasn’t in the band 10 years ago. I’d quit and had all these — I didn’t like the direction that we were going in and I had developed this huge ego and communication between me and Fred had completely shut down in like 2001. And then we played the Big Day Out Festival and had a girl die during our set, which was devastating to me and I still haven’t really ever gotten over that, but I was like, “That’s enough. I’m done. I don’t like all the attention that we’re getting.
I don’t like that we’re on TRL. This is not what I thought being in a rock band would be like.” So at 26, I went “See ya later, I’m out. I’m gonna go do something that I think is cooler than this.” I had all these presumptions about what life after Limp Bizkit would be, and boy did I get my ass handed to me, because if you are known for one thing and then depart and go do something else, it doesn’t always work out because you have a fan base that is not going to accept what you’re doing.
So I had a completely failed self-indulgent project that I developed for like two years after the first time I left Limp Bizkit, and I got to play guitar in Marilyn Manson for a little while. I was talking with Trent about a Nine Inch Nails position and had that for a little while, and was like, “OK, finally I’m moving into these other worlds of these people that I look up to as musicians.” [But] participating in these other bands wasn’t what I thought it was gonna be like and I didn’t enjoy it as much … and I started to kinda miss Bizkit.
I was like, I really miss our live shows and improvisation. I started to miss playing somewhere with a group of guys that feels like home, and also kind of realized that I had gotten, at that point, kind of too big for my britches and had to be humbled a little and grow up a little bit. And I went back. I accepted it, the good with the bad.”
Regarding a Stereogum staffer thinking that Limp Bizkit ‘ruined metal’ in the late 90’s:
“I think metal is so fucking boring that I wanna stab my eyes out with screwdrivers. In the ’90s we tried to do something with metal, to take it into a new direction, based on combining metal bands with stuff that was on the heels of the grunge movement, like Helmet and Primus and even Pantera and the Melvins — taking those Helmet slaughterhouse riffs and combining it with like Carcass riffs and treating it more like a hip-hop Ministry song.
That was the thought process at the time, and we didn’t know where it was gonna go. And luckily for him, metal’s right back to being the same as it was then. So obviously nothing was ruined because it was a time period of just experimenting and going in a certain direction and seeing what guitars did if you did this to them, and songs, and so on and so forth. And at no point were ever claiming to be, like, metal. That was put on us by having that as an influence, and I think that’s funny that he’s even getting that mad about it! [laughs]”
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