Taproot Ponders Fred Durst Experience

11/10/2000 6:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Craig Rosen

(11/10/00, 6 p.m. ET) - Regardless of the future success of Taproot, the band's experience with Limp Bizkit's Fred Durst will go down as one of the more amusing chapters in recent rock history.

It was in the summer of '99 that Limp Bizkit's Durst, feeling betrayed that the young Michigan band would investigate other recording opportunities beyond what he was considering for them, left the threatening, profanity-laced message on the answering machine of Taproot lead singer, Stephen Richards. The message soon became an audio file and, eventually, fodder plastered all over the Internet.

More than a year later, members of Taproot say they're over it, and glad they made the decision to shop beyond what Durst was offering via his affiliation with Interscope Records. "I wish we didn't have this beef with Limp Bizkit," says bassist Phil Lipscomb, "but at the same time I'm glad we didn't go in that direction."

Drummer Jarrod Montague tells LAUNCH where it all went wrong between Durst and his band. "He was one of the first kinda major people to show interest in us, just from a demo that we sent him," Montague says. "But then he kinda slept on it for like three years, so we kinda had to do what we needed to do. After about three years we started getting some of our own buzz without his help. And I think it was at that point that he kind of felt the urge to act on it. He offered us a deal, which wasn't even really a good record deal--it was more of a production deal that didn't even guarantee that we got signed."

Montague adds, "That's when he left the message."

Lipscomb says that Durst snapped after the group played a gig for Rick Rubin, the producer whose credits include the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Beastie Boys, and who Lipscomb says is "a god" to Taproot.

The bassist tells LAUNCH, "We didn't exactly tell Fred we were going out there, but we figured he'd understand, he's a businessman, we're just trying to do what's best for our band, and just see the other options, not necessarily turning him down, you know? So we play a great set for Rick Rubin, he loved it, come back, there's that notorious answering-machine message by Fred Durst on Steve's machine basically telling us to piss off and never associate ourselves with Limp Bizkit again," he adds. "We didn't even sign with anybody yet. You know, we were just showcasing, looking around, seeing our other options, and Fred got real pissed about it."

Taproot is currently on the road in support of its major-label debut, Gift, which arrived this summer from Atlantic Records. The group plays tonight (November 13) in Toronto, in the opening slot for the Deftones/Incubus tour.

-- Neal Weiss, Los Angeles

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