Some might say Fred Durst has released a few criminal records in his time, but it was a fairly disgraceful lapse in basic fact-checking when the Limp Bizkit frontman was this week named as a murder suspect by major news-gathering service The Associated Press. In fact it’s Robert Durst, wealthy heir to a real estate fortune, who is accused of killing three people, including his wife. “A Louisiana State Police trooper says millionaire Robert Durst has been booked on weapons charges in that state – on top of a first-degree murder charge lodged by Los Angeles authorities,” ran the AP report. “Trooper Melissa Matey told the Associated Press that an arrest warrant was issued for the former Limp Bizkit frontman and he was rebooked in the Orleans Parish Jail on Monday under two new charges.”
A second draft appeared shortly afterwards, explaining “The Associated Press reported erroneously that Robert Durst is a member of a band. He is a real estate heir; Fred Durst is the former frontman of Limp Bizkit.” Quite why the major respected media outlet is still convinced that Durst has left the band – when the matter can be ascertained by a few seconds of Googling – is unclear; they’ve offered no further explanation, and Fred hasn’t commented on the inaccuracy.
Slipknot’s Clown percussionist Shawn Crahan told the BBC this week that he hopes his band will continue after the original members are too old, suggesting that the children of the current line-up might want to keep Slipknot going. “Don’t be surprised if, one day, nobody in the band will be in the band,” Clown announced. “It’ll all just be new people. I’ll be 80 and there’ll be a whole Slipknot thing moving. I mean, we’ve got two new guys now, man. You never know — my son might take over.” Some might say it’s too early to start laying out career paths for the Slipknot tots, but why wait? Get some mini-masks and kid-sized boiler suits and get Slipknot Babies onstage ASAP!
The mother band might be needing more replacement members soon; the Clown was asked this week in a Live Nation Q&A if he ever finds his mask irritating: “Every night for the last 20 years,” he insists. “It has always been trying to kill me.” Meanwhile, guitarist Mick Thomson and his brother Andrew have been charged this week with disorderly conduct following a late-night knife fight in the guitarist’s garden in Iowa. A police investigation has found both brothers equally responsible for the incident, though neither wished to press charges against the other. The pair will appear in court on March 30th.
Another band keen to continue beyond the current members’ life spans is Kiss. However, the cynical motivations behind the ill-fated ‘90s reunion of their original line-up was cited this week by Dave Ellefson as an example of why he’s keen to avoid a resurrection of the classic Megadeth foursome. “Me and Marty Friedman were second row at the Kiss reunion in 1996 in Phoenix, Arizona. We were there as friends, as bandmates, watching our favourite band put the makeup back on. There’s part of me that said, ‘Lose yourself in the fantasy of being 14 years old all over again.’ And I did. Then there’s the other part of me that went, ‘But they’re all in their 40s and this is just a recreation. There’s nothing new being created here – this is just a recreation of past stuff.’” The bassist fears the temptation to regress for money might prove a similar creative dead-end for Megadeth: “We can either go back and create past glory days, which would probably sell a lot of tickets and make a lot of money, but Megadeth has never been about that, ever. It’s about creating the next chapter in our story. That really is the page-turner right now.”
Finally, and brilliantly, Rob Halford this week found a sci-fi fantasy novel that he wrote in the 1970s and subsequently mislaid for 40 years. According to the Metal God, Library Of Tears is “about this evil kind of guy who steals people’s emotions by capturing their tears… I don’t know if anything will come of it. I’m just relieved that, having thought it was completely lost, I now have it.” The Library Of Tears Official Release Campaign starts here!
