Sam Rivers, Limp Bizkit bassist, dies at 48

Sam Rivers, the longtime bassist and founding member of Limp Bizkit, has died at the age of 48. The band announced his passing on social media Saturday, though no cause of death has been made public.

“Today we lost our brother. Our bandmate. Our heartbeat,” the group wrote in a heartfelt Instagram post accompanied by a photo of Rivers. “Sam Rivers wasn’t just our bass player – he was pure magic. The pulse beneath every song, the calm in the chaos, the soul in the sound.”

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Rivers helped form Limp Bizkit in Jacksonville, Florida in the mid-1990s. He met frontman Fred Durst while the two were playing in a short-lived project called Malachi Sage. After that band dissolved in 1994, the duo joined forces with drummer John Otto to form what would soon become Limp Bizkit. Guitarist Wes Borland and DJ Lethal later joined to complete the band’s iconic early lineup.

Limp Bizkit exploded onto the music scene with their 1997 debut album Three Dollar Bill, Y’all. Their breakthrough came with 1999’s Significant Other, featuring the hit single “Nookie,” which propelled the band to the top of the Billboard 200. The follow-up album, Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water (2000), broke records for highest first-week sales for a rock album and went multiplatinum.

Despite lineup changes over the years, Rivers remained a constant in the band through their initial run and first hiatus in 2006. During that time, he also worked as a producer and collaborated on the Queen of the Damned movie soundtrack in 2002.

In 2015, Rivers quietly stepped away from Limp Bizkit, initially citing a degenerative disc condition. However, he later revealed in the book Raising Hell: Backstage Tales From the Lives of Metal Legends that he had been battling liver disease and had undergone a transplant. “I quit drinking and did everything the doctors told me,” he said in the book. “I got treatment for the alcohol and got a liver transplant, which was a perfect match.”

Rivers returned to Limp Bizkit in 2018 and had remained with the band ever since. Their most recent and first full-length album in a decade, Still Sucks, was released in 2021. In September, the band released a new track, “Making Love to Morgan Wallen.”

Tributes and condolences poured in from members of the music industry, as soon as the news of Rivers’ death touched headlines. Korn band bassist shared a photo with Rivers and a video tribute.

The news of Rivers’ death hits just days after the passing of Ace Frehley, legendary KISS guitarist known as ‘The Spaceman’. Ace Frehley, the iconic lead guitarist and co-founder of the legendary rock band KISS, died at the age of 74 following complications from a fall at his New Jersey recording studio.