Dentsu Aegis Network announced that they were canceling this summer’s Woodstock 50th anniversary festival on Monday morning, while Michael Lang disputes this claim and says a ‘legal remedy’ will be sought. As the latest Woodstock appears to be going up in flames, Woodstock 1999 literally went up in flames 20 years ago, leading to 20 years of dormancy. Limp Bizkit members recalled the infamous riots in recent years, which they ended up being blamed for.
Wes Borland told Stereogum, “I think that was a really bad idea, because Woodstock ’99 — I don’t feel responsible at all for that. I feel like the promoters of that festival were overcharging people for water, for instance, the cash machines were running out of money. The conditions were really poor, and I think that Woodstock ’99 should have not invited bands like us on it unless they expected — no one said, ‘Tone it down, this audience is not going to react in a positive way to your show.’ I mean, who knew that the festival was gonna turn into that, that atrocious riot that it did?.”
Fred Durst told Louder Sound, “For us, we turned up and expected people to know what we’re about. We’re about having fun and when I say, ‘Break your fucking face tonight’, I don’t mean it literally. It was a song for people to stand up for themselves against bullies and bad people. If I had known to make that clear, I’d have done that from the very beginning, but I didn’t.
“The whole thing exploded after we did what we normally do at every one of our concerts – bring fun. They built the whole thing around nu metal and 300,000 strangers from different backgrounds got together and to us, it was this awesome thing and everyone loved it. We get offstage and they removed us from the premises and we were just going, ‘Why?’. They tell me the plywood I was surfing on had been ripped off buildings and I’d incited a riot. We couldn’t fucking believe it. We really didn’t know, dude.”
