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

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?

DJ LETHAL (DJ)
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.

DJ LETHAL
When we listened to the tape I thought I was going to have a heart attack from laughing. I’ve never heard people fart for so long. And then we fast forwarded and found the two of them singing.

BORLAND
It was amazing. Apparently they stumbled back onto the bus, out of their minds on drugs and booze a few hours later. They were howling at the top of their lungs like animals. I’m not even sure they were using words, but it sounded great. The tape recorder picked up the whole damn thing.

DURST
Neither of us remember anything from when we got back on the bus, to be honest. But that duet we did, it was straight fire.

SAM RIVERS (bassist)
John (Otto, drummer) and I were just sitting there, looking at each other, like, “Are these dudes serious?”

DJ LETHAL
It was pure magic. I could see the spark of inspiration in Fred’s bloodshot eyes. I knew we were going to be making a record soon, but not that soon.

BORLAND
We immediately rushed to the studio and laid down some music to accommodate the vocals. I swear we never recorded a song so fast. It just flowed through us.

JOHN OTTO (drummer)
What they heard and what Sam and I heard were from two different planets. The noises on the tape weren’t even singing.

RIVERS
It was crazy. I never thought it would make it past the demo stage. We were all high as shit. But that demo turned out to be the song first song (“Hold On”) we finished for the album. It was the exact track we recorded that night. And the vocals were untouched from the tape recorder.

KATSIS
When they played the demo for me I asked Fred if he had any other tapes like the one he found. He said, “No. Not yet.” with a huge grin on his face.

DURST
I knew what I had to do at that point.

For all of their previous albums, the band would record music and then weeks or sometimes months later, Durst would contribute his vocals, writing lyrics on the fly. The tape recorder incident turned that process on its head. Durst decided to lock himself in the screened-in porch of his Jacksonville home for a week. There, he would consume nothing but illicit substances and a case of Pop Tarts, recording the entire process.

OTTO
I still can’t believe he made it out of that week alive. Sam and I would stand outside the porch and just watch him. A few times we were sure he was dead, but then he’d gurgle and rap a few lines.

WEILAND
My man Jacksonvill’d the shit out of those vocals. I’ve done similar, I guess you’d call them “experiments”, in the past but they never yielded results like that. Shit, I always forgot to press record.

DURST
“My Generation” was the first song we put together, I think. I got on this Who trip for part of that week.

DL LETHAL
It started out with Fred singing The Who’s “My Generation” over and over.

RIVERS
It evolved into him changing the lyrics and eventually just making guttural noises that kind of sounded like the song. I think the tracks “My Way” and “The One” worked out that way too.

DURST
“Full Nelson” was an interesting one. I spent half a day trying to put myself in a full nelson, you know, the wrestling move. I was never able to do it, but those screams were pretty sick.

BORLAND
He really wanted to get himself in that move. The pure rage in his voice was out of this world. Classic vocal performance, man. It actually inspired me to write my heaviest riff ever.

KATSIS
There’s an urban legend going around about the band’s signature song “Rollin’”, but it’s most definitely not true.

OTTO
Yeah, what was it? Something about drugs, obviously. I don’t remember.

DJ LETHAL
Fred loves to tell people it was about him rolling joints while out of his mind on E. Ain’t true, man. Ain’t true. Good story. Sounds true. But it ain’t.

DURST
Look, I’ve definitely done that before. Rolling joints while high on other stuff. But I’m going to be real with you, it didn’t go down like that. It happened on the porch. And it’s kind of hard for me to talk about.

RIVERS
The true story is totally messed up. And we saw the whole thing.

BORLAND
It was late in the week and Fred was burned out at that point. Just tired as hell. So he moved all of his stuff to the edges of the porch and got on the ground to take a power nap. But the drugs had him. They had him hard.

DURST
I squeezed my eyes really tight together because I thought it would help me fall asleep. But I started having a seizure and seeing visions and shit. Crazy shit.

KID ROCK (friend, singer)
He told me I showed up on the porch and set him on fire. Even in my craziest days I’d never do something like that. Setting people on fire isn’t cool. But that’s what Fred thought he saw.

DL LETHAL
He totally thought he was on fire. And he did the only thing he knew to put it out. He started rolling around on the floor and screaming, “Rollin, rollin, rollin.” It went on forever.

DURST
At one point when we were listening to the vocals, we thought it was stuck. But I actually rolled around on the ground like that for about six hours.

RIVERS
We were ready to burst onto the porch, John and I. I mean this dude is insane, but he was our meal ticket. Wes stopped us and said everything would be alright. And it was.

BORLAND
I wouldn’t let them break up the creative process I saw on display. It was awe inspiring. Fred eventually snapped out of it when he noticed he had wet his track pants.

DURST
Thank god for my bladder, you know? Otherwise I think I’d still be rolling today. It’s tough for me when we play that song at our shows. I break down and cry sometimes. The audience thinks it’s because I’m not high anymore, but it’s really about that day on the porch.

Once the band decided on which vocal performances they wanted to keep from the tapes, Durst went about piecing together his concept album. His ability to weave a tale of a broken and sad man (Chocolate Starfish) searching for his one true love (Hot Dog Flavored Water) out of his porch excursion is legendary. Once he handed them to the band, it was off to the races as far as recording the music. The band never recorded so fast or efficiently.

KATSIS
In my opinion it’s nothing short of amazing. Once the band finished recording Fred started going into phase two of his plans. I fully supported him when it came to that stuff. It really eats away at me that it never worked out.

BORLAND
Fred had all these crazy ideas, man. Theme parks, restaurants. We’re talking big. I told him as long as I get a burger named after me I’ll sign off on all that shit. The Borland Burger was what I wanted to call it.

DURST
I didn’t just want to take the band global. Shit, we already were global at that point. I wanted to go bigger, bigger bigger.

OTTO
Yeah man. Casinos, food joints, Broadway musicals. I even think he wanted Jon Davis from Korn to teach a class at UC Santa Barbra. Family Values or something? Whatever, we were going to get paid, right?

DURST
It was called Family Values on the Family Values Tour: How Friendship Lead to the Greatest Nu Metal Album of All Time. I had an entire semester planned.

DJ LETHAL
I don’t want to go into detail about that shit. You guys are well aware that none of it panned out. Fred ended up spending most of the money on drugs and track pants. Twelve million copies. Man, that must have been a sick amount of money.

WEILAND
More than anything, I really wanted to ride the Rollin’ Rollin’ Roller Coaster at Chocolate Starfishland. I think it’s one of my life’s greatest regrets. It sucks Fred couldn’t get his act together. He should have come to me for some advice.

RIVERS
Layin’ back on the Starfish Resort Beach, sippin’ a Hot Dog Flavored Margarita. As dumb as that sounds I was all in. Fred conned us, dude. But I have nothing else to do with my life, so as you can see I’m still in the band.

KATSIS
Fred has a lot of issues. We all do. But I’m never going to tell him to stop dreaming. Never.

DURST
At least I aimed high. I have no regrets. None. Limp Bizkit is bigger than music. We proved that with the music alone. And the toilet. The world’s largest fuckin’ toilet. Think about that, dude.