Wes Borland: what's interesting in the musician's biography?

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

If you are familiar with the work of Limp Bizkit, you have clearly noticed a musician who stands out among them in particular. This is Wes Borland - the most original member of the team and a very talented composer. According to the print publication Total Guitar, he is ranked 37th in the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" ranking. He has a habit of taking Lucy's ceramic bunny with him to every performance for good luck.

Biography

Wes Borland (full name Wesley Lowden) was born on February 7, 1975 in Richmond (Virginia), in the family of a clergyman. In early childhood, the guy received a serious brain injury, which slightly affected the psyche. However, this did not stop him from mastering many musical instruments - guitar, bass, piano, drums, percussion, cello and violin.

Wes Borland's family traveled from place to place (perhaps due to the fact that the guy was offended by his peers), and he often had to change schools. From childhood he was an outsider: he did not communicate with anyone and was immersed in his rich inner world.peace.

When Wes was 12 years old, he passionately wanted to make friends with the drum kit. However, the parents were not attracted by the prospect of listening to the roar of drums for days, so Borland was solemnly presented with a guitar. The boy was taught by one of the priests of his father's parish, who knew all the intricacies of blues and country.

And then an interesting story arose in the biography of Wes Borland: when he entered the music school named after Douglas Anderson, it turned out that the guy did not know a single note. After all, the priest taught him to play by ear, but he himself did not understand musical notation. Therefore, in the educational institution, the future rock star had to sweat a lot. It was there that Wes Borland was introduced to the blues genre and fell in love with it.

Career

The musician got his first serious experience in the Krank group, but after some time he ended up in Limp Bizkit. It all started with the fact that Fred Durst, who managed to work both as a tattoo artist and a lawn mower, decided in 1994 to create a unique group. The trick was that the music had to include both rap and hip-hop, as well as hard rock.

Fred succeeded, and soon Wes Borland joined the team he had assembled. The group Limp Bizkit ("Soft Cookies") was born in Jacksonville and immediately became known throughout America. They were distinguished from millions of other bands not only by their aggressive style of performance, but also by various experiments with sound, and Wes Borland's eerie stage presence. For all the time of its existence, the group Limp Bizkit has become three timesGrammy Award nominee, and the discs scattered around the world with a circulation of up to 60,000,000! But inside the team, everything did not go very smoothly.

Discord

In 96, a conflict arose between Fred Durst and Wes Borland, the reason being the updated sound of the band. The fact is that DJ Lethal just joined them, whose presence, in fact, added new colors to Limp Bizkit, which, perhaps, caused discord between the comrades. Borland refused to continue cooperation, but Fred and the company had a serious accident, and Darst suddenly realized that without Borland he would have a very hard time. So Darst was able to convince Wes to come back.

Care

After years of performances and studio work, the old conflict suddenly flared up with renewed vigor. In 2001, Borland's official statement appeared on the Web that he was leaving the band. And shortly before that, the musician, together with his brother Scott, created a solo project Big Dumb Face. However, after a single vinyl, the group ceased to exist. Then there was the group Eat the Day, about which there is no official information. From these experiences, a more successful project was born, founded together with Danny Lonner called The Damning Well. This group managed to write the soundtrack for the film Underworld and disbanded, like the previous ones.

Soon, Wes Borland was showered with offers of cooperation with fairly well-known teams, but he refused everything. Then there was a temporary collaboration with The Crystal Method, where he was not onlyguitarist, but also co-producer.

In 2004, Borland once again finds himself in the same boat with Darst, for the sake of recording the album The Unquestionable Truth (Part 1), but they again quarreled. The disagreement was so strong that Fred kicked Wes off the team via the Myspace blog. Borland was offended and decided that since he was not good enough for Limp Bizkit, they should do without him.

Solo career

After leaving the group, Wes did not sit still, and soon put together another project called Black Light Burns. In 2008, he worked as a session guitarist with Japanese rockers X-Japan. Around the same time, the musician managed to visit the ETP FESTIVAL in the company of the band Marilyn Manson. In 2013, Wes Borland participated in the recording of a track for the League of Legends gaming tournament called Hybrid Worlds with Riot Games.

Return of the musician

In early 2009, Wes Borland and Fred Durst realized they needed to compromise and make peace. Therefore, they forgave each other all insults and reunited. It's just that the guys realized that they have to exist as a group in exactly this composition of five people in order to do something worthwhile. After 2 years, the world was presented with a new album "Limp Bizkit" called Gold Cobra.

Wes Borland discography with Limp Bizkit

1. Three Dollar Bill, Yall$ - 1997.
2. Significant Other – 1999.
3. Chocolate Starfish and the Hotdog Flavored Water – 2000.
4. New Old Songs – 2001.
5. The Unquestionable Truth (Part 1) – 2005.
6. Gold Cobra –2011.

Useful hobbies

An interesting fact is that Wes Borland is the best image maker and couturier for himself: he creates original costumes and skillfully applies makeup. By the way, the second hobby comes from childhood, because as a little boy, the musician dreamed of making up actors for horror films (which he loves to watch at his leisure).

Private life

In 1998, Wes Borland decided to say goodbye to single life and married Heather Macmillan. The couple had a very peculiar honeymoon, because they did not go to rest at the resort, but made a pilgrimage to the best attractions in the United States. A year later, the musician decided that he needed to adjust his lifestyle, so he quit smoking.