JOSEPH LEVINE.

Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water: An Oral History

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Editor’s Note: KGRA is doing something a little different this week by giving you a sneak peek into a chapter of a dissertation written by Joe John, one of our interns. He’s completing his doctoral thesis in Rap Metal this winter at the University of Phoenix. Good luck, Joe!

DJ LETHAL (DJ)

 A year removed from their rousing success at Woodstock ‘99, in which the band’s “Violate for Fun” slogan was fully realized, Limp Bizkit weren’t exactly ready to rest on their laurels. No, bandleader Fred Durst had bigger goals. Not only would their next release be a sprawling concept album, but the charismatic singer had hatched a plan that could take the band to new heights. Though Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water went on to sell over 12 million copies worldwide, Durst’s dreams ultimately went unfulfilled. Kim Gordon’s Real Age recently had a chance to speak with the band and their associates about how the album came together and what exactly went wrong.
 
PETER KATSIS (manager)
I don’t have to tell you that Fred Durst is a genius. But every genius hits a wall sometimes. I told him to relax and that whatever he came up with was going to be gold.

FRED DURST (lead singer)
It was driving me nuts. I wanted to go bigger all the time, but I wasn’t sure where I could take the band. I mean, I came up with the world’s largest toilet and that was cool and everything but how do you even top that?


We were chilling at my place one night, trying to help Fred to come up with some ideas for the new album. He started dancing around because I announced I was going to roll a fresh blunt. And then something crazy happened.

DURST
I was doing the Macarena. That shit’s hilarious. Lethal was rolling a fat one on the coffee table and I crashed into it because I was already super blazed. When I was on the floor I looked over noticed a tape recorder under the couch.

WES BORLAND (guitarist)
The tape recorder. That’s where pretty much everything started. It was like some kind of miracle.

DURST
Most fans know that the Jacksonville Porch Demos are where the majority of Chocolate Starfish came from, but it was the tape recorder that set it off.

After his final emergence from the band’s signature giant toilet, Durst ran into Stone Temple Pilots frontman Scott Weiland backstage one night during the Family Values Tour. Weiland’s band had just finished a show at another venue in town and he was hungry for the kind of action only Durst could provide. The two had long been friends, previously collaborating on the smash single “Nobody Like You”. But they had no plans to even record that night.

SCOTT WEILAND (singer, Stone Temple Pilots)
We were on Fred’s bus, just fucking around with this nerd reporter from some local newspaper. I yanked the tape recorder out of his tiny hands and tossed it to Fred.

DURST
Scott and I played keep away with the tape recorder until the dork got pissed and ran off the bus. Then we started farting into it.

WEILAND
We must have farted into it for ten, fifteen minutes before we got bored and threw it on the ground.

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just one of those nights where you stay up too late thinking about all the people who have recently wronged you