What Fred Durst Taught Me About Marketing

Finn McKenty did an excellent deep dive on this if you’re interested. 

I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but Nu Metal is making a comeback.  Looking back, it makes sense.  As much as it was hated at the time (including by me), it was huge.  Metal was never bigger than it was in the late 90s and early 00s. 

At that time, I hated this stuff.  I still don’t love it, but I can definitely appreciate Korn and Limp Bizkit, as well as a few others.  I used to tell friends back in the day that if I met Fred Durst at the Grammys or something, I’d whip his ass.  He reminded me of all the wannabe Fred Dursts who populated small town America.

Then I moved to Los Angeles in March 2002 and not only did I see Fred Durst almost immediately, for about a month, it seemed like he was stalking me.  I saw him everywhere. 

I saw him a few times at various Hollywood bars from a distance initially.  Then, one night hanging out with Tasha Valentine, we ended up at Boardner’s and Fred, backwards red hat and all, was holding court at a table in the middle of the rood.  His Samoan body guard was sitting alone in one of the classic red vinyl booths and every other table was completely full.  So, we asked if we could sit at the table with him and he welcomed us to sit down.  I was telling her how I seemed like I couldn’t get away from Durst and his bodyguard, who didn’t say anything, but looked to me and nodded. 

Later that week, I was at my job at the Macy’s Men’s Store in West Hollywood and Durst and the body guard came in to shop.  I said, “Okay, I get it.  I guess I’m supposed to talk to him.”  

I simply approached him, said hello and he gave me a friendly “what’s up?” in response.  So, I had seen on VH1 that they were working on a new album, and this was after Wes Borland had left and Durst was doing all the guitars.  I asked him, “Hey I saw you’re doing all the guitars on the new album, how’s that going?”

And the dude talked my ear off for twenty minutes.  One of the nicest people I’ve ever met. 

It clicked.  His asshole image was nothing but a marketing strategy.  And it was brilliant.

After I recognized it in him, I started figuring out with other artists as well.  As Homer Simpson once said referring to Lollapalooza, “Selling depression to teenagers is like shooting fish in a barrel.”

This ties into what I’ve previously written about authenticity.  You can write something from someone else’s perspective, you can present an image as a caricature, you can express something hyperbolically without it being how you truly feel to prove a point.  We’re all multi-faceted (or should be anyhow) and we can show different parts of ourselves at different times, but as we’ve seen, people want to see the artist as larger than life.  They want to see someone who is polarizing, so they can either love you or hate you.  Indifference is an anathema in our culture.   

It’s not enough to make music, you have to have an image.  Even if you’re in something obscure or in Contemporary Christian Music.  It reminds me of what Kyra Sedgewick says to Campbell Scott in Singles, “I think you do have a gimmick, and not having a gimmick is your gimmick.” 

And should we be surprised?  People go to work, to church, online, wherever and they act one way, and then they go somewhere else and act another way.  Why should artists be any different?

Check out “Take a Look Around” – probably my favorite Limp Bizkit tune.