Yesterday, a beef kicked off in rock music, when Rage Against The Machine’s Tim Commerford apologised to the world. He was really sorry. Like, really sorry. The same way that someone who takes a shit in your bidet or might be sorry. His contrition comes in the wake of the unprecedented impact his band, Rage Against The Machine, had on the world of rock. “I do apologise for Limp Bizkit,” he said in a recent interview with Rolling Stone, “I really do. I feel really bad that we inspired such bullshit.”
In Commerford's mind, Rage Against The Machine single-handedly gave rise to that new, frat-boy-meets-overgrown-skater genre known as nu-metal. He's basically saying they grew Fred Durst in a petri dish. Which would be a reasonable thing to take responsibility before if it was even slightly true.
The truth is, when Fred and co burst onto the scene in 1997 with a madcap metal cover of George Michael’s “Faith”, they provided a lighter take on Linkin Park’s emotionally heavy, industrial sound. They kept the key elements – sampling, hip-hop infusions and an angry man shouting – and injected some needed humour.
I was seven years old when their first album, Three Dollar Bill, Y’all, came out, so if I’m being completely honest, I didn’t really appreciate its impact. But fast forward ten years, and the album was still being blasted at the kind of house parties that posh Dan from the nearby village held whenever his parents went to Sorrento. Being invited to those sorts of gatherings was a big deal for a nerd like me. As well as my scant selection of emo-haired chums, the popular kids would also be there, because posh Dan was the kind of guy who got on with everyone but still managed to remain cool. And what were the highlights of his playlist, the bangers we listened to while downing his dad’s whiskey, gubbing red wine through a straw, and spewing on the Persian rug? “Faith”, “Nookie”, “Break Stuff”, “Rollin’”.
By this time, Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavoured Water had come out. RATM's Commerford might think it’s a crime against music, but when it dropped in 2000, it shot straight to number one and stole Pearl Jam’s record for having the fastest-selling rock record ever. Bawling along to “Starfish” in posh Dan’s house is one of the few memories from school in which everyone – regardless of dress sense, musical preference, prettiness or intelligence – banded together and had a fucking good time.
That record even transcended subcultures, with the kind of songs that had enough popular sway to make it onto the playlist of your shitty local nightclub. The kind of place that sold WKDs for £2, had a sticky floor, underage bar staff, and happily played the Baha Men three times in one night. By the time I’d graduated from house parties to said nightclub, a Limp Bizkit hit would make me feel at home. I wasn’t the weird kid listening to heavy stuff any more; I was just dancing along like everyone else.
The fact that Limp Bizkit took that nu-metal and chucked it into the mainstream isn’t something to be scoffed at. Of course, they’re not the only band to bring nu metal to a wider audience – Linkin Park and Sum 41 had similar success. All three are still inspiring artists today – The One Hundred and Stray From The Path, to name a couple of bands, borrow gleefully from the unmistakeable nu-metal chug, and prove that the genre is by no means dead.
But it's not just that Commerford is wrong about Rage inspiring nu-metal and it being shit, Rage didn’t actually directly inspire nu-metal at all. Sure, the genre owes a little bit to their mix of rap attitude with punkish guitars. But they were by no means the first to meld those worlds. That was actually Biohazard, or, if you want to go even further back, Bad Brains. But you don’t see Billy Graziadei and Paul ‘H.R.’ Hudson spouting their mea culpas for the existence of Rage, do you?
Commerford’s slur was a splurge of nonsense on a lot of levels. It insinuated that Limp Bizkit are "gone" (they’re not) and that there’s "only one [nu metal band] left" (there isn’t) and that band "is Rage, the only one that matters" (they don’t). Well, they matter in the sense that they did their thing in the Nineties and it seemed sort of revolutionary at the time, but for Commerford to genuinely believe that Rage Against The Machine, who haven’t released an album in fifteen years or played a gig for four, are some kind of nu-metal figureheads is nothing short of delusional. The best thing they’ve done is recent years is stop Joe McElderry from having a Christmas number one, and that wasn’t even their idea.
Limp Bizkit, meanwhile, are working a new record called Stampede of the Disco Elephants, and have just finished playing a bunch of successful gigs around the UK, including Reading Festival. Sorry Tim, but Limp Bizkit are still very much here. The student has surpassed the master. And now the master just looks like a grumpy old man.
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