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Keeping The Faith
02/23/1999 3:00 AM, Yahoo! Music
Sandy Masuo
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From Little Richard to Alice Cooper, rock history is scattered with
artists torn between the sacred and the profane. But Limp Bizkit insist
on combining forces of light and dark into one shuddering amalgam designed
to jump-start people’s spirituality. The dark side of the Jacksonville,
Florida quintet is
easy to see in its harrowing musical assault. The forces of good, however,
are less obvious, but according to guitarist Wes Borland they are the
impetus behind the songs.
"That’s what we find works best for us," Borland says. "The
best way to get our message across is through shock value. That’s what grabs
people. I mean, you turn on the TV and you see a bunch of starving children
in another country and it gets you to react, and that’s kind of what we’re
about, getting people to react by showing something negative, hoping
something positive will come out of it. Trying to stay in reality."
The reality reflected in Limp Bizkit’s debut album, Three Dollar Bill, Y’all, is pretty harsh, yet as chaotic and noisy as the songs are,
they are grounded in the sturdy rhythms that bassist Sam Rivers and drummer
John Otto hammer out. Even Borland gets into the groove with his axe work.
("I’m a guitar player, but I’ve got a drummer’s heart," he
confesses.) This leaves frontman Fred Durst free to rap and rant his
visceral tales of disaffection and insecurity with seething abandon. As
provocative as numbers like "Sour" and "Counterfeit"
are, perhaps the most apropos track on Y’all is Limp Bizkit’s
apocalyptic deconstruction of George Michael’s "Faith," for
which Borland & Co. had to obtain written permission from the reluctant, now
(understandably) hostile British pop maven. "Our record company wants
to put that out as a single with a big video and everything," Borland
muses. "We said the only way we’ll do it is if we can get George
Michael to be in the video and have us dog him out and really make fun of
him in it. And they’re like, ’Well, we could get a double maybe,’ and we
went, ’Nope. It’s gotta be him."
They may be irreverent about the man behind "Faith," but Borland,
whose father is a minister, emphasizes that Limp Bizkit take faith quite
seriously. "I was baptized and pretty much made to go to church every
day of my younger life," he explains. "That was pretty much the
rule. If I was living in [my parents’ house] I had to go to church. That
ended when I was about 18, after I moved out. I’m not a real big fan of
organized religion. Fred our singer is a total Christian, and I don’t have
anything against that because it’s just one way of looking at God; I think a
lot can be learned from all religions. Growing up in the home I did, I had a
fine childhood--there was nothing wrong with it, but I’m searching for other
truths right now."
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