Ay caramba!
In a story that’s stranger than fiction, according to Andrew Bennett’s new photobook Eruption in the Canyon: 212 Days & Nights With the Genius of Eddie Van Halen, the guitar legend had it out with Fred Durst — and even pulled a gun on him. Yes, you read correctly.
Let’s rewind a section.
According to a bit on Ultimate Classic Rock, the book says that Van Halen was introduced to Durst and Limp Bizkit by a record exec who suggested they jam together following Wes Borland’s departure from the band. That’s the high-water mark. Bennett said Durst responded, “That would be hilarious. The greatest guitar player ever plays with the worst band ever.”
He was right.
Van Halen apparently was so dismayed by the jam session to the point where he called it “like being a scholar amongst kindergartners.”
It gets better.
The next day, he went to get his gear from the Beverly Hills house, and well, Bennett’s description can go from here:
“Eddie once bought an assault vehicle from a military auction,” Bennett wrote. “It has a shine gun mount on the back and is not legal. Eddie drove that assault vehicle through L.A., into Beverly Hills, then parked and left it running on the front lawn of the house Limp Bizkit was rehearsing in. He got out wearing no shirt, his hair in a Samurai bun on top of his head, his jeans held up with a strand of rope and combat boots held together by duct tape. And he had a gun in his hand.”
“That asshole answered the door,” Bennett said that Van Halen told him of the incident. “I put my gun to that stupid fucking red hat of his, and I said, ‘Where’s my shit, motherfucker?’ That fucking guy just turned to one of his employees and starts yelling at him to grab my shit. … Eddie Van Halen stood on the front lawn of a residential home in Beverly Hills in broad daylight, smoking a cigarette while holding a gun on Fred Durst as he went back and forth from the house to the assault vehicle, lugging amps and guitars.”
Read more of the crazy story at Ultimate Classic Rock and you can buy the book here to read (and see) more of Van Halen and is priced at…$51.50.
