Marilyn Manson: The Untold Feud With Limp Bizkit

The Untold Feud Of Marilyn Manson and Limp Bizkit

Today we’re going to cover an old feud that was started in the late 90s. This is the story of how Marilyn Manson and Limp Bizkit had several clashes over the years.

The year was 1999 and Limp Bizkit and Marilyn Manson were huge names in the mainstream music landscape. Fred Durst and the boys were about to release their second length album “Significant Other” and Manson had been an established figure in the heavy music space for some time.

While Limp Bizkit had conquered their space and millions of fans all over the world, Marilyn Manson wasn’t convinced by the lyrics and attitude portrayed by the band of Jacksonville, Florida. Marilyn Manson used his official website to launch an internet attack on Limp Bizkit and their fans.

Manson called Limp Bizkit and their fans “illiterate apes that beat your ass in high school for being a ‘fag’ and now sell you tuneless testosterone anthems of misogyny and pretend to be outsiders…”.

Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit was quick to hit back at Manson in an interview with the New Musical Express.

“I understand that Marilyn Manson is very unhappy that his career has gone in a shambles and he’s alienated his fans so if he has to say things like that because he’s very mad at himself, I would forgive him. And Trent Reznor‘s in the fucking same boat. Trent Reznor is obviously unhappy with how he’s alienated the world, how long he took to make a record, and how he thought he was immortal. We’re just here doing what we do and we have nothing to say about anybody. I wish them both luck and I feel sorry that they’re so jealous and mad at themselves that they have to talk shit.” He said.

Asking about Manson‘s suggestion that Fred was a bully posing as a victim? Fred had the following to say:

“That’s how stupid he must be if he thinks that. But hey, I definitely wasn’t one of the bullies at school. I was a victim. And I’m not a bully at all right now, what can I say? I’m friends with the people in his band so I don’t know why he’s talking shit.”

Even though both bands took shots at each other, they still benefited from a lot of mainstream success and attention for several years. A lot happened during this time and one of the most important events was the departure of Limp Bizkit’s guitar player in 2001. Wes would play in several bands after Bizkit, including his solo projects Eat The Day and Big Dumb Face. While he was still working on his solo stuff, Manson asked him to join his band. The year was 2008 and, at a press conference ahead of the band's 15 August performance at the ETP festival in Seoul, South Korea, Manson announced the news.

Manson commented:

"We have a new guitar player that's gonna play for the first time tomorrow; it's the first time we'll play on stage together. "His name is Wes Borland and he used to be in a really terrible band that he left because he felt that it was a destructive force in art, and he has his own band, Black Light Burns, but now he is in Marilyn Manson. We don't know how permanent that is, but starting tomorrow will be the first step. So this will be the most indestructible Marilyn Manson."

The first performance with Borland was at the ETP festival the following day. Borland would play one more live show with Marilyn Manson at the Hot Topic yearly managers meeting before leaving the band to re-join Limp Bizkit. After Wes left Manson’s band, there seemed to be some animosity left between the two of them. Manson started taking some shots at Wes, and, according to Kerrang Magazine, Wes has tried to put an end to it. But in the age of social media, things didn’t quite end well. The shock rocker fired the first attack, saying that Borland's decision to return to Bizkit "forever eradicated my feelings on his choices in life as an artist." When asked why he thinks Borland reunited with his former band, Manson said:

"That is what I find myself asking when I urinate sometimes. He said he would never go back. If the reason is money, then I'd rather roll up a 5 dollar note and shove it up my urethra. I'd rather set my dick on fire than join something that I hated."

Wes Borland responded, saying that he ditched Manson because he felt like a stand-in, and didn't see himself evolving into a full-fledge member.

"I wrote nine songs to be submitted to the Manson record and none of them made it. I was really in hired gun land there, but was sort of being told that I wasn't," Borland says. "So when I figured that whole thing out, I knew I was never going to get an inch into that band. I love Manson. He's definitely one of the wildest personalities I've ever been around and one of the smartest people I've ever met but it's the Marilyn Manson show over there. Limp Bizkit is more of a band."

In an interview in 2019 with Revolver Magazine, Manson revealed that he actually become good friends with Fred Durst. Asked about if his persona changed depending on whether he was on stage or not, Manson replied:

“Well, yes and no. I went to see Pet Sematary the other night with Fred Durst. We were just kind of hanging out. I didn't really know him that much before, and he's very different than I would have imagined, but he's not that different from the rock star that I saw on TV. It's just that he has more dimensions to him. I guess it's like, with me, there's not Marilyn Manson and then Brian Warner. There's the person, and then there's the persona — they're still the same thing, just one letter off. That's the way I look at it. I'm not acting, but I'm always acting. Sometimes I'm acting like an asshole, and sometimes I'm acting like I care about people, because I do. But I never fake it, you know? That'd be like being a girl who fakes orgasms, if you had to fake it to be a rock star. I mean, there's times when you don't want to go on stage, because you're just sore, beat up, sick, or whatever it might be, but you go through it, man, you do it. Because you have an obligation: You put the flag on the moon of rock & roll, so you're obligated to make sure that stays there.”

Later that year, Limp Bizkit covered Nirvana with Marilyn Manson for a special gig at Los Angeles’ The Troubadour. Manson joined the band to perform a cover of Nirvana’s ‘Heart-Shaped Box’, while Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan watched on. Machine Gun Kelly helped out on a version of their own ‘My Generation’, while Limp Bizkit also played a medley featuring songs by Journey, Green Day, Pantera, and Metallica, and covered George Michael’s ‘Faith’ and The Who’s ‘Behind Blue Eyes’.

While there was definitely a lot of tension between Manson and Bizkit during their early years of their respective careers, it seems like today it’s all good between them and they were able to mature and set their differences apart.

Watch the video version of this story below:

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