Limp Bizkit

How does that behavior exemplify business savvy, you ask? Well, since LB’s aggressive, funky, hip-hop, hard rock hasn’t exactly been embraced by commercial media, Durst has to make sure every live show is an experience not to be forgotten. By the looks of the band’s box office numbers and sales of its Flip/Interscope debut, Three Dollar Bill, Yall$, it seems the tactic is working.

While taking a walk through the mosh pit can be dangerous at times, Durst insists on getting close to his audience. He had the good sense to add a security guard to his performance recently to keep fans from smothering him. “I just get a little circle around me where everything’s focused to where I am in the whole pit. And then I’ll just start singing and once it builds up, man, it’s like the circle gets broken. It’s out of control,” he said. “I’ve been hit and stuff but that’s what you get in the pit.”

Durst extends the idea of being accessible to fans by hanging out in line before shows and mingling with the audience afterwards. It’s part of his way of keeping the ol’ ego in check. “If you separate yourself and don’t talk to them and go backstage, then they start thinking you’re immortal. They start idolizing you,” he said. “I just hang out and let them know that I’m a dork, down to earth, redneck guy from Florida just like anyone else.”

The boys of Limp Bizkit, though up-and-comers on the mainstream rock scene, are pros at entertaining large audiences after touring for more than a year and a half with the likes of KORN, House of Pain, Faith No More, Primus and the Deftones. The band also had a slot on last summer’s Warped tour. But it is LB’s first headline tour that Durst is most proud of.

Because it’s hard to get the female half of the population to attend aggressive rock concerts (“it’s all dudes beating the shit out of each other”), Durst came up with the idea of letting hundreds of ladies into each show for free. Since he loves the movie “Apocalypse Now,” he wanted to do a military Cambodia theme, thus the name of the tour: “Ladies Night In Cambodia.”

When the concept was brought to promoters, their reaction was, “What the hell are you talking about? We’re not letting nobody in free,” Durst said. But he held firm to his idea and told promoters if they wanted LB’s show, they’d have to trust him. All but a few shows on the tour sold out. “There were a lot of girls there and I’m still single so it didn’t work,” Durst joked. “But it was awesome.”

Though Limp Bizkit has worked to build a strong fanbase without mainstream media, Durst now feels the band is starting to reach a level that can only be surpassed with the help of radio and MTV. LB didn’t record any tracks on its debut with a single in mind but despite that, the song “Counterfeit” has made it to the airwaves and MTV. So with one toe in the pond, Durst is ready to jump in. “I think that we need a couple slam dunk singles on the next record that are fully original and very Limp Bizkit,” he said.

Perhaps it was a desire to experiment with radio that put LB in the headlines recently for trying pay-for-play. Flip/Interscope paid KUFO-FM in Portland, Ore., to play 50 spins of “Counterfeit.” “Our record label knew that they just needed to get it on there,” Durst said. “Trust me, the kids in Portland like this band.” After the pay-for-play spins ended, kids kept calling for “Counterfeit” and the song became No. 1 at the station.

But media backlash about what was termed “legal payola” soured LB’s success with pay-for-play. “We’re not a band that sucks and we gotta pay everybody to play us just to see if we even have hope for a career,” Durst said. “Interscope’s a smart record label. They aren’t gonna put our credibility on the line. They’re not gonna do it unless they know it’s gonna work. They only did it one time and coincidentally, the story comes up and Interscope’s a good target.”

Even though the pay-for-play saga brought some negative publicity LB’s way, it also brought awareness to the band via a lengthy news piece on MTV accompanied by shots of the live show. “A lot more kids picked up the records because they saw that than people that heard this pay-for-play interview and didn’t even pay attention to it,” Durst said.

The moral of the story is this band can’t seem to lose. For a hard rockin’ tattooed guy who is the captain of his ship, Durst is not too tough to say in all sincerity, “I feel blessed by God for what’s happening to us.”

Limp Bizkit is taking a few weeks off to recover from Ladies Night In Cambodia but will take on OZZfest ’98 in July. Durst has an idea up his sleeve for LB’s next headline tour that promises to be as ingenious as the last. But even a little begging and pleading couldn’t get that secret out of him.