Nu metal pioneer Limp Bizkit is mourning the loss of bass player Sam Rivers. In a joint Instagram post, the group announced he passed away Saturday.
“Sam Rivers wasn’t just our bass player — he was pure magic,” the post read. “The pulse beneath every song, the calm in the chaos, the soul in the sound.”
Open about his health battles
The cause of death wasn’t revealed, but it came just weeks after Rivers’ 48th birthday. The musician had been open in the past about his health challenges.
“I got liver disease from excessive drinking,” Rivers told writer Jon Wiederhorn in an interview with Variety. “I had to leave Limp Bizkit in 2015 because I felt so horrible, and a few months after that I realized I had to change everything because I had really bad liver disease.”
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He said he quit drinking and followed his doctor’s orders, which eventually led to a liver transplant. After recovering, Rivers rejoined the group in 2018.
His final social media post, shared Friday, was a “save the date” for the Rock for People music festival next June in the Czech Republic.
“[Rivers] was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of human,” the band wrote on Instagram. “A true legend of legends. And his spirit will live forever in every groove, every stage, every memory.”
A defining force in Limp Bizkit’s early years
Rivers began his music journey as a teenager in Jacksonville, Florida, where he was scouted by frontman Fred Durst at 18. The group went on to include guitarist Wes Borland, drummer John Otto and turntablist DJ Lethal.
Despite their widespread mass appeal in the early 00s, Limp Bizkit was largely panned and considered unserious by the musical literati at the time. However, in recent years, the band has earned a second look, garnering the recognition and accolades they so long deserved.
“Limp Bizkit was a consolidating force in the nu metal popularity arc of the late 90s to early 2000s,” Canadian musicologist Dr. Clare King told Straight Arrow News. “Where bands like Korn and Deftones established the genre, Limp Bizkit brought front page news coverage to the new genre and really pushed what we call ‘rage bait’ today through various negative marketing schemes.”
While Limp Bizkit was busy carving out an entirely new genre of metal, Rivers’ playing similarly helped usher in a new direction for metal rhythm sections that were previously unexplored.
“Sam Rivers was leading the pack at the turn of the millennium, with a tight and powerful bass tone that projected through even the tiniest, most tinny boom-box speakers,” Stephen Hudson, a music theory professor at Occidental College, told SAN. “On Limp Bizkit’s biggest hits you can hear him using all these glissando slides that amplify the band’s attitude and groove, and his fingerstyle bass technique –– which is uncommon in metal –– makes his bass lines throb at the base of your skull.”
Many fans believed Rivers and his rhythm section counterpart Otto were related, though they later confirmed they weren’t. Nevertheless, their unparalleled synchronicity betrayed a familial bond –– the kind of deeply emotional sonic conversation usually reserved for siblings.
“Sam Rivers brought a funky, tight, innovative bass style to the group that landed right in the pocket of the jazz-influenced drumming style of John Otto,” King said. “Together their rhythm section carried the beat and melody of many of Borland’s more experimental guitar riffs.”
Rivers played bass on the band’s early albums, including its 1999 breakthrough, “Significant Other.” His heavy, rhythmic style helped define Limp Bizkit’s sound as the group rose to fame during the nascent nu metal wave.
In 2000, Rivers was voted Best Bass Player at the Gibson Awards. He also co-wrote some of the band’s most recognizable hits, including “Rollin’” and “My Way.”
“Their famous peak popularity single ‘Rollin’ (Air Raid Vehicle)’ was actually a cover of the original song found later on the same album –– 2003’s ‘Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavoured Water –– called ‘Rollin’ (Urban Assault Vehicle),’ where the group reimagined the beats originally performed by Swizz Beats as a pop/rock/metal track,” King said. “Rivers’ funky downtuned bass line holds the beat fresh while Borland is free to ad lib and create scratching sounds on his guitar.”
The band’s lasting success and influence
Limp Bizkit has received Grammy nominations, including for Best Hard Rock Performance and Best Rock Album.
Last April, Billboard recognized the band as one of only 26 artists or groups to sell at least 1 million copies in a single week. Limp Bizkit achieved that milestone with “Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water” in 2010, selling 1,047,000 copies. The band shares that distinction with icons like Taylor Swift, Whitney Houston and Adele.
“Limp Bizkit brought together the latest innovations in metal tone with nearly hysterical angry rap reminiscent of Eminem, giving voice to a whole generation of mall rats and bored suburban kids who felt unwanted or trapped for one reason or another. Rock music has rarely spoken so directly to emotional distress,” Hudson said. “But while Limp Bizkit’s angry and violent lyrics caused a big splash, their music’s primary appeal was always more fundamentally physical.”
On a more technical level, Hudson said of Rivers’ importance, “For their percussive power, modern metal styles laminate together all these different recorded takes of guitars and bass to create the illusion that you are hearing a single-voiced, enormously powerful, indivisible riff. The crunch and buzz of guitar distortion is a crucial factor, but without bass to ground it, the illusion evaporates.”
Limp Bizkit is scheduled to kick off a South American tour on Nov. 29.
