LIMP BIZKIT DETERMINED TO COVER, RUIN EVERY SONG EVER
In 1997 there was this girl that I was really into. I don’t even remember what her name was now, but I remember being very excited when I finally found myself at her place with just the two of us for company.
“Hey, wanna hear something awesome?” she asked me. The correct answer in that situation is obviously “Yes,” and so she walked over to her stereo and hit “play.” And this is what came out of the speakers:
The song ended and I figured out some excuse to leave and I left. Later I wondered if the girl really liked the song (she certainly seemed to) or if she played it knowing it was awful because she couldn’t think of a polite way to reject me, but it’s a moot point: I will never know how my relationship with that girl might have played out, all because she had to go and be the first person ever to introduce me to Limp Bizkit, and, more specifically, Limp Bizkit’s terrible covers.
I don’t know if Limp Bizkit did any covers on their subsequent albums with Wes Borland or not; I know they had a song called “My Generation,” but, mercifully, it had nothing to do with The Who. But I do know that in 2003, as part of that insipid MTV Icon thing Metallica agreed to do, Fred Durst and the now temporarily Borland-less Bizkit performed a version of “Welcome Home (Sanitarium),” which was so incredibly terrible that I can’t believe James Hetfield didn’t storm the stage and ram John Otto right up DJ Lethal’s ass.
See the part where Lars Ulrich is rocking out? I just wanna make sure you saw it, in case you’re somehow still operating under the impression that Lars is cool. But he’s better off than Kirk Hammett, whose face seems to say “I’m moving in my chair because Lars is moving in his and there’s a camera pointed at me, but I’m not really sure what’s happening right now.” (Also, Kirk: LOVE your suit, guy.)
Apparently emboldened by the approval of Viacom executives and a Danish midget, and in desperate need of a surefire hit, The Bizkit Boys decided to find another song to decimate; right around this time, someone apparently told Durst that he’d missed an opportunity to ruin The Who, and he decided that he should remedy the situation by covering “Behind Blue Eyes.” And just because he’s that fucking arrogant, Durst also directed a video for the cover, in which, for no apparent reason other than the clip was a tie-in with some terrible movie, he makes out with Halle Berry for roughly forty seconds. That’s forty seconds of screen time, mind you; with all the different set-ups required to get multiple angles of him rubbing his lips all over the Oscar-winning actress’ seemingly reluctant face, he probably spent the better part of a day pawing at the poor woman. Like that Adrien Brody shit wasn’t bad enough.
It would be nice if this is where The Limp Bizkit Cover Saga ended, but there is no fucking God, so instead we get what is allegedly a version of GN’R’s “Sweet Child O’ Mine.” I say “allegedly” because this sounds about as much like “Sweet Child O’ Mine” as me farting into a megaphone might sound like Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Apparently it was too hard for Wes Borland to learn one of the five easiest riffs in the history of rock music, a riff played by first-week guitar students around the world every day, so instead he just played the exact same shit he always does and Durst did his pussy-whine non-rap voice over it, using Axl Rose’s lyrics. The song then segues into the Bizkit original “My Way,” a track which has absolutely no thematic connection whatsofuckingever with “Sweet Child O’ Mine.”
I know I often say that if a band is gonna cover a song, they should put their own spin on it and not just do a rote remake. But by “put their own spin on it,” I most certainly did not mean “gang rape it so bad it needs I Spit on Your Grave-style retribution.”
What great song will Limp Bizkit terrorize next? Personally, I’ve always thought that “Toxic Waltz” would sound, like, a bajillion times better with some turntable scratching… don’t you agree?
-AR
[via Metal Insider]
