How the raw fury of Limp Bizkit’s Sam Rivers took the 1990s by storm, Limp Bizkit bassist Sam Rivers dies aged 48
When Limp Bizkit bassist Sam Rivers took the stage at the start of the nu-metal iconoclasts’ infamous Woodstock ’99 performance and surveyed the crowd stretching to the horizon, his first gesture was to point the finger at the audience with both hands.
His second gesture was to plunge into the pounding bassline of “Just Like This”—a blistering blend of raw fury and musical complexity that epitomized not only these notorious giants of the rap-metal realm but also their enigmatic bassist, who has passed away at the age of 48. Despite his confrontational nature, Rivers was a deft young man whose musical talent cemented Limp Bizkit’s reputation as one of the leading knuckleheads of late-nineties rock.
Limp Bizkit’s Woodstock concert ended when lead singer Fred Durst encouraged the audience of approximately 200,000 to sing “Break Stuff” and introduced the Jacksonville, Florida, group to the tune of the same name. Sunburned and dehydrated, fans took his advice seriously, and the show ended with them tearing down parts of the stage and tearing down fences. This was a major blow to the Woodstock brand—and it placed Limp Bizkit at the center of a moral panic among angry suburban youth who had no other way to express their anger than through explosive vandalism.
Rivers was 21 at the time of the Woodstock concert—a headbanger, a Götterdämmerung, just five years after he and Durst met while working at a Chick-fil-A fast-food restaurant in a Jacksonville mall. After jamming together and discovering they had good musical chemistry, they added guitarist John Otto, whom Rivers had considered his cousin for many years (in fact, they weren’t related, though they had been friends since childhood).
Limp Bizkit’s rise was dramatic and controversial. Grunge had ended with Kurt Cobain’s departure in 1994, and by the end of the 1990s, Britpop had become a hyperbolic parody of a cheesy Beatles song (reaching its lowest point in 1997 with Oasis’s terrible “Be Here Now”—the most boring cocaine storm in pop history). Music was ready for something raw and angry—and nu-metal represented just that, with its blend of heavy metal guitars, rap vocals, and turbulent grooves.
Being simultaneously aggressive and funky was a major challenge, but Rivers pulled it off admirably as Limp Bizkit surpassed their early mentor, Korn, to become nu-metal’s biggest name. Their rise reached its peak with Woodstock 99 – which, by the end of its three days in upstate New York, had devolved into a horrific inferno of vandalism, vandalism, and multiple sexual assaults.
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