What has Fred Durst said about Woodstock ’99 and what happened during his performance?

The Limp Bizkit frontman had LOADS to say at the time

2 years ago

TW: One brief mention of sexual assault.

Netflix’s newest documentary detailed the chaotic events of Woodstock ’99, a three-day music festival which rapidly turned sour.

Among riots, fires and assaults, the people who contributed to the doc were trying to find out who was to blame: The organisers, the attendees or the acts. On the festival’s second day, things started to go downhill. Organisers believed the turning point came when Limp Bizkit went on stage to perform.

The ’90s rap-rock band are famous for their angry lyrics and cynical sentiments – which staff suspected were the reasons for the crowd turning. Fred Durst, the frontman, was notably missing from the series. But what exactly did he do, what did he say and why didn’t he give an interview?

Photo via Netflix

Just before Limp Bizkit’s performance of Break Stuff, in which the lyrics are “you don’t really know why/but you want to justify/rippin’ someone’s head off”, Fred encouraged the crowd to take all their pent-up negative energy out when the song started.

“Lemme ask you a personal question,” he said. “How many people ever woke up one morning and just decided it wasn’t one of those days, and you’re gonna break some shit?”

“Time to reach deep down inside,” Fred continued. “Take all that negative energy and let that shit out of your fucking system.”

What came next was an influx of people beating each other up, raiding the sound tower, ripping parts off the stage and crowdsurfing on them. A number of sexual assaults also reportedly took place in the mosh pit.

Photo via Netflix

Fred Durst didn’t take part in the documentary. His absence was significant due to the fact that Fatboy Slim, Korn’s Jonathan Davis and Gavin Rossdale each gave interviews about their performances.

During the gig, he said: “Don’t let anybody get hurt. But I don’t think you should mellow out. That’s what Alanis Morrisette had you motherfuckers do. If someone falls, pick ’em up.”

He later stated in an interview: “I didn’t see anybody getting hurt. You don’t see that. When you’re looking out on a sea of people and the stage is twenty feet in the air and you’re performing, and you’re feeling your music, how do they expect us to see something bad going on?”

During another interview, he said: “I don’t think (the crowd) understood what I meant. Okay, let’s get rid of all that negative energy so we can bring positive in. That means start jumping — jumping and singing. It doesn’t mean start raping and burning the place down.”

In 2019, he told Variety: “It’s easy to point the finger and blame (us), but they hired us for what we do — and all we did is what we do. I would turn the finger and point it back to the people that hired us.”

Trainwreck: Woodstock 99 is available on Netflix now. For all the latest Netflix news, drops, quizzes and memes like The Holy Church of Netflix on Facebook.