Limp Bizkit were halfway through their 1999 hit “Break Stuff” at the Boomtown Fair festival in Winchester, England, when a “jacuzzi amount of water,” in guitarist Wes Borland’s words, came crashing through the stage ceiling directly above him and quite literally broke all the stuff on his pedalboard.
The incident, which occurred near the end of the band’s set on August 12, was the result of an excessive amount of rainwater having pooled up on the roof of the venue. Fan-filmed footage captured the moment that the ceiling above Borland gave way and water drenched his equipment—which was followed by frontman Fred Durst letting out a gleeful laugh and cracking, “The pedalboard is gonna go out right now.”
To the band’s—and Borland’s—credit, they finished the song, though not the rest of their set. Immediately after "Break Stuff," Borland exited the stage, knocking over a few pieces of gear in the process. “Unfortunately, the guitar rig just blew up,” Durst says afterward. “Goodnight!”
Borland later took to Instagram to display the damage done. “This is what a pedalboard looks like when it rains all day and the ceiling of the stage you're playing breaks open and a jacuzzi amount of water gets dumped on top of you on the second to last song of your set,” he wrote.
The next day, he was back with an update that stuff was now slightly less broken: “We fixed my pedalboard today. 2 days of letting everything dry out and massive rewiring and problem solving with @kadaver13 who is my hero right now. My looper pedal is gone and half of my power (we're using batteries tonight) but my rig is on the way to recovery.”
