Fred Durst Quotes

I'm totally open to exploring different types of music. I just have to always remember to be true to who I am.

I wasn't playing the music, the music was playing me... and once that went away, and I had the feeling I was playing music, I had to stop. The need to go onstage and get my brain flattened every night left me, and what I didn't wanna do is go onstage and perpetrate a fraud... You cannot fool an audience.

I loved the Brazilian music I played. But this is finally me. For the first time I think it's really me.

You have to be tough-skinned and willing to accept criticism, and at the same time, just try to do music that you like and you are proud of and not just whatever you think it's going to take to get you on the radio.

I didn't want to be told what to do. I don't want to water down my music to fit into their formats. I know what rock and roll is to me, but everything's turning into one big commercial.

The whole process of music for me is something absolutely honest and really naked and bare, so I never forced myself to write in French.

If it's a good song and it fits me, that's what I'm going to do, I'm not out there trying to change the world. I'm just out there trying to sing country music the best way I can.

When I was young, I had this contrarian thing, and my music for a long time was an extension of that. I didn't want to entertain people; I had too much vanity to be an entertainer. I think that some layers of vanity came off.

Every time I went into the studio some engineer tried to impress me with how they're going to capture my sound with all kinds of tricks. But they limited the sound and never allowed me to play how I felt.

It's not like if I play in big places I won't be happy. But I don't want to start adapting to what's in style to make my music. I want to stay true to my roots, to keep making the music I love, that comes from my soul. And if there are people who want to listen to it, I'm happy.

Ever since I was a kid, I always wanted to play music that I liked, and even when I was in cover bands when I was a teenager we only played cover tunes that we liked. That was the simple morality that I grew up with.

Music is something that should speak for itself, straight from the heart. It took me a long time to understand that.

We're not here to make the ignorant people happy. We're here to write our music for those people that are interested in good rock n' roll music.

You can't pick a fight with anyone doing something with your sound.

I can only do music if I can do it the way I can do it.

I've never said anything that I didn't want to say on a record, ever.

I don't necessarily think the way people do, but that's not my problem. My problem is not to reinforce or destroy any ideas anyone might have about me, how I do what I do, what my intentions are, the way that I do it. My only job, as far as I can see, is to do the music that I want to do.

I've been doing four-track songs by myself since I was like a teenager, where I'd sing in a way that I ... I just didn't think other people would like it, so I didn't play it for them but eventually I got over that, which I'm happy that I did, because it's kind of a drag to be playing a kind of music that you don't really like as much as another kind.

I think as a mature artist, you're probably always trying to undo the compromises of one's self [in general]. It's not necessarily to do with youth.

If you try to make music and try to convey to everyone that everything is all peachy-keen, you might come off like you're full of it, and that could be something that draws listeners away.

It's really tough to make a name for yourself without compromising and without fitting yourself into a real specific mold. When I made the choice that I would be involved in every aspect of music and not necessarily make music for radio or MTV, I was saying, 'OK, this is me. You decide who it is.'

When you try to put everything into music, there's no room left to try to make you think we're cool. We know you think we're cool.

I say, play your own way. Don't play what the public want - you play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doing - even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years.

It's hard enough for me to write what I want to write without me trying to write what you say they want me to write which I don't want to write.

I don't know that I'm unique in that people relate to my music, but I would hope people would say that I'm honest and that I do the best work I can possibly do instead of coasting.