Some people just don’t like each other. It might look like two peers would get along well on paper, but big personalities can be like oil and water. Most adults can remain civil and even work together regardless of their personal feelings about each other. However, there are occasional instances where it’s best to just keep everybody separated.
In a 1998 interview with Metal Hammer, Korn frontman Jonathan Davis was prompted to discuss a particularly violent incident between bassist Fieldy, Fear Factory guitarist Dino Cazares, Limp Bizkit, and a whole lotta gang members.
“Oh my God, that was the funniest thing I ever saw! Dino [Cazares, Fear Factory guitarist] and Fieldy have always had a problem with each other. After we went out on tour with Megadeth, Dino went out and got a seven-string guitar, did his hair like Head’s and started wearing Adidas. So there we go. And then he starts talking shit about us in the press in a couple of interviews I read. Me and Burton [C Bell] stayed friends pretty much, but I know he was talking shit behind my back as soon as I turned my fucking head. I don’t think Raymond [Herrera]’s like that, he’s quiet and cool, and Christian [Olde Wolbers] is a good guy, but Dino is like the ticket. And Fieldy’s different from most people – he holds grudges for life.
“We were at the Limp Bizkit show and Dino came on the bus to say goodbye to the guys and Dino popped off at Reggie [Fieldy]. He said something about him saying goodbye to everybody, apart from that ‘stuck-up dickhead rock star’. So Reggie jumps up and goes, ‘What, you motherfucker?’ and his sister’s boyfriend Josh takes Dino, picks him up and throws him down the stairs – he fell on his ass outside the bus! All I can see is Dino bouncing and rolling off the bus, and I’m like, ‘Oh my God!’
“And then Josh walks out and I see him punch Dino in slow-mo. You know how big Dino is? He flies up in the air and bounces of the ground and rolls off. I’m like, ‘Oh God, it’s on…’
“So all of Dino’s boys roll up, and all of the Bizkit guys and Reggie roll out, and it’s a full-on gang rumble brawl, people running and shit – it was full-on chaos! Then Fieldy runs up to Dino and they’re sitting there throwing punches, then Christian runs up to Fieldy and kicks him right in the head. Fieldy later told me, ‘He got me, ’cos if someone was fighting you, Jon, then I would go up to that guy and cheap shot him too, ’cos that’s what you do for your bandmate,’ so it was all cool.
“By this time, the Bizkit guys have attacked Dino’s friends, and those guys don’t play – they’re from Jacksonville and they’re crazy. They pinned those guys against the bus, and they were kicking their faces in. Their lips and shit were flipped and broken, they were beating the piss out of them! There was blood everywhere, three guys just kicking this guy in the face as hard as they can with their sneakers, over and over again. Shit’s just flying… After that they all bailed, we’re all getting out of there.
“I guess these guys came back with a whole big truckload of their gang friends, all turned up with guns ready to blow us away – they wanted to cap Fieldy, they were gonna blow his brains out. So we heard this was all happening and we were like, ‘What?’ So we called up Dino, and at that point, Fieldy had got it all out, Dino had it all out, we were all friends, but the gun issue was still in place. So I call up Dino to find out what the hell’s going on and Dino’s like, ‘Dude, I can’t control these people, they want to kill you!’ And I go, ‘You know what? The only one from Korn in this was Fieldy and the Limp Bizkit guys,’ and all that stuff. So I called their manager, called Dino, and said, ‘If anything happens to us, they will be dealt with…’ – whatever that means.”
When asked what he meant by that ominous comment, Davis responded: “I dunno, I’m not gonna go there,” says Jonathan shiftily, “but we get a phone call that says everything’s fine. And that’s that. The Fear Factory thing had been a long time coming, man. It was just building up and building up, and I’m glad they got it out. I wanted to tell Dino off too, but I’m not a physical person and Fieldy is – when his bodyguard’s there!”
Harsh as this might sound, it appears that things softened between Cazares and Limp Bizkit over time. When Wes Borland temporarily left the band in 2001, the Fear Factory axeman was asked to audition. As he recalled in a 2021 interview with the Talk Toomey podcast:
“We were on tour with Iron Maiden around ’95 when they had Blaze Bayley. We were playing everywhere and we met the guys from Limp Bizkit. They came on our bus, they played the demo—their first demo—and they said that Ross Robinson was gonna be producing the album [“Three Dollar Bill, Y’all“] and this and that and they were gonna be in L.A. and to come hang out.
And so Ross Robinson called us up and Limp Bizkit were there and I was able to be on their first record on a song called ‘Indigo Flow‘. But whatever, you know. Later on they had asked me to audition for Limp Bizkit when they lost Wes [Borland], I respectfully declined.
I was like ‘nah’, but way back I saw Limp Bizkit fucking blow the fuck up and how that happened. Same thing with Korn, I witnessed Korn blow the fuck up too. I was there, we were on tour with them.
The minute they fucking started selling fucking 70,000 records a week, it was stupid. It was fucking insane how they blew up. We were on tour with Megadeth, Korn, Flotsam And Jetsam and Fear Factory opening up. Literally on that tour things started to take a shift for that band, ’cause remember this was still their first album and they’d been working that album for about a year and a half before it really started to take off.
“So they blew the fuck up and I was witnessing all that and I’m like ‘fuck.’ We’re selling like 5,000 records a week, 10,000 records a week and they’re like, ‘oh I’m doing 50,000’ and the next week ‘oh I’m doing 70,000’ and I’m like ‘holy fuck’.”
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