I want to thank Marcus and a few of my subs for suggesting this story.
The rock band Taproot would emerge out of michigan in the mid 90’s. By the later part of the decade
things were looking pretty exciting for the band as they started to court major record labels
and some high profile rock n' rol stars. Former Taproot Drummer Jarred Montague would release a
book a few years ago called True Rockstars: 12 Guiding Principles For Success And Happiness.
In the book Montague recalls attending college and playing
with Tap Root on the weekends in and around the college town of ann arbourt michigan.
He would write in his book Dozens of my friends were coming to Taproot shows and
buying our homemade demos and T-shirts. Taproot was also building a following on the internet.
In early 1999, there was only two unsigned bands that were marketing themselves well
in that relatively new medium: Taproot and Juice We found small pockets of fans were
developing outside of Michigan. Across the country one or two people would order a CD,
send us cash or a check, and then we would ship them a CD with a hand-written “Thank You” note.
The band became so successful out side of michigan that their fans offered hotel and gas money for
them to come through their cities which they did. Taproot frontman Stephen Richards would tell
Loudwire about the band’s early days and how they caught the attention of fred durst revealing of
limp bizkit “Mike [DeWolf] and I saw Korn with Limp Bizkit before Limp Bizkit was actually
releasing a record, so we had the drop on that. We were fans, we loved it and we knew their record
was coming out and where we grew up it was in Ann Arbor, college town.” Richards would go on to
reveal that he and his bandmates got their hands on Limp Bizkit’s debut record before it came out,
because the local studnet paper reviewed it and it was normal back thenfor the student writers to
sell albums after reviewing them for beer money. When the members of Taproot got their hands on
an advance copy of limp bizkit’s first album they noticed an address on the record asking for demos.
They would send their demo to the address nearly two weeks before before the record came out
giving them a leg up on the competition. Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst took a liking to the
band and got intouch with Taproot with Richards recalling to CMJ magazine what came next saying
“we started hanging out and he promised us the world.”
Richards would add in a separate interview with loudwire Every time they’d come through
town we’d hang out and he was really good to us (referring to fred durst and limp bizkit),
I’d sing with him onstage and stuff. We were itching to go and he was getting really busy.
He was cool though, I went to L.A. and stayed with him and got to sit
through Interscope meetings about their second record coming out at the time.”
Not only did Durst hang out with the band, but he started giving shoutouts to the Taproot in
various press interviews and wearing their shirts on stage. Montague would write in his book He
told us that we were the “next big thing” and he wanted to make a deal with us. It frankly seemed
too good to be true given that we had become such adoring fans of Limp Bizkit he'd write.
It was during this time the band was putting out independent releases and cutting new music. It
was also around the time that limp bizkit was promoting their second album significant other
and giving shoutout's to taproot in the press that the band started to get the attention of
other record labels with Montague writing in his book Soon after this epic 24 hour hang we got a
call from a representative from Arista Records, and he asked to have lunch with us to discuss our
aspirations. This was definitely an indicator that things were now escalating to a new level
for Taproot. Here was someone from outside the Bizkit crew expressing interest in our band.
Taproot had done some pretty impressive stuff up until this point already selling 10000 albums
through their own efforts. It was around this time that Fred Durst appeared on an MTV show
called diary which profiled celebrities daily life. On Durst's episode he would give taproot
another shoutout as you can see here 'sign i'm the vice president of interscope records.
i'm looking for bands, i'm signing bands. Sign taproot to a production deal and thirty seconds
to mars to a production deal. What makes a success is being really true and real about
it. You've gotta have something to back it up you've really gotta have that business sense
Shortly after the show aired Tap Root finally received a contract from Durst's label. The
contract was less than ideal though. The contract stated that the band would record three songs
for the label and if Interscope liked it they could get a proper recording contract. However,
if Interscope opted not to sign the band the label would retain the rights to the songs they recorded
and the band couldn’t use those songs for their future records. The band’s drummer would write
in his book “Our opinion was that this seemed a bit shady because we would obviously want
to record our best three songs on whichever label would take us. The fact that we would be
prohibited from using the songs on another label if this didn’t pan out didn’t seem fair"he'd say.
Couple this with the fact that the band was talking to other labels and eventually signed
to Atlantic and ] signed with System of a down's management company and fred
durst was obviously upset. Richards would tell Loudwire
When Fred heard, he left a scary, stupid message on my mom’s answering machine about how we’d
be blackballed from the industry and if I ever showed up to one of his shows he’d kick my ass.”
Durst's voicemail would be leaked online by the members of Taproot
and here’s the angry message fred durst left. It's the fred durst hey man you up
you don't ever bite the hand that feeds in this business bro and your manager
is a loser going nowhere you guys have just chosen that path. Talk about you guys on press. I took
you under my wing and brought you to my house and you embarass me and the interscope family.
Your association with limp bizkit doesn't exist. Your manager just slings our name around and he's
going to be black balled and erased and you probably will be too. He's an idiot.
you just yourself. you need to be associated with somebody in this business you need someone to get
you up there and put you up there. Now you got enemeis and you're yourself already. Tell your
friend that. Don't show up at my shows cause if you do . All right? You're going to get punekd
ass. You call your manager David or whatever and ask him what he's done and doing you're a dumb,
you're lying. You're learning how to ruin your career before you get started. All right brotha.
System of a down meanwhile were on the bill of the family values tourin the late 90's and suddenly
got booted off.It was rumored that limp bizkit who were headlining the festival whose frontman
fred durst was upset about the whole Taproot deal and kicked system of a down off the tour
before having a change of heart and bringing system of a down on tour with limp bizkit.
That does it for today’s video guys thanks for watching and be sure to hit the like
button and subscribe and we'll see you again on rock n' roll true stories. Take care.