The Search For The �illist� Guitar Player Known To Man

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Source Confidential Case Report (Internal) 

The office of Dirk Spenser � Rock Detective

Case:The Search For The �illist� Guitar Player Known To Man
Date: 1-20-02
Case Number: 12-01-B4UGO

I usually turn over my case files to antiMUSIC for them to publish but this time I decided to recount my experience in this case in story form since the case file does not translate well for the requirements of antiMUSIC.  Here is the story of the case of "The Search For The 'illist' Guitar Player Known To Man"

Forget what you read in books and see in movies. The life of a private investigator is usually quite boring. Most of the time you find yourself shuffling paper or looking through other people�s shuffled paper. Even in the lively world of rock n roll, things on the PI end are usually more along the lines of a glorified skip tracer or secretary and not James Bond. Lately my biggest cases have involved tracking down copyright violators. You can probably figure out who the clients are! 

From time to time an interesting case comes my way and that�s what the folks at antiMUSIC have asked me to talk about. I haven�t had any really exciting cases lately but I decided that I would go through my old case files and try to find something fun to share with the antiMUSIC people. The one I came up with was a dozy!  It has it all�sex, drugs and rock n roll. But not like you would expect. 

Back in December of 2001 I received an email from a talent scout. He wanted to enlist my help in finding a replacement guitarist for a well-known band. This isn�t the usual instance where a rock n roll PI is called on, most bands simply put advertisements in music papers and hold auditions but this band was high profile and they were looking for something quite different (or so I thought).  The talent agent wasn�t working for the band but he thought that if he found the right guitarist then he would be sitting on easy street by collecting a handsome finders fee. 

I didn�t have any heavy cases at the time so I decided, �what the hell, I�ll give it a shot�. That was first mistake. I gave the talent agent a contract for my service with my usually hourly rate and he signed on the dotted line, faxed the contract back to me with the one piece of information he had for me to go on. A reprinted press release, evidently printed on this group's website. 

For Immediate Release: 

Limp Bizkit Seeks the �Illist� Guitarist In The World. 

Allright, enough already. You know Wes has decided to leave Limp Bizkit and I know you�re wondering whats gonna happen from here. Well, the first thing thats gonna happen is were going to comb the globe in search of the illist guitar player known to man.  Then were gonna take this illist guitar player known to man and were gonna finish writing the sickest new undeniable Limp Bizkit record you could ever imagine. Wes was a big part of the Limp Bizkit you�re used to but his decision to leave has left us in a place where we know the best of Limp Bizkit is yet to come. Lethal, John, Sam and I are gonna take this as an opportunity to take our song writing to a whole new level. At the end of the day its all about the music and the music is all were about. Life is unpredictable and though were shocked, were not discouraged. As the world turns, so does Limp Bizkit. 

Thank you so much for sticking with us through thick and thin. Weve never let you down and were not gonna start now. Keep the faith and join us on this journey to the next level. 
Seeya in the Chat....... 
Fred Durst

The first thing I thought was that this band needed a new publicist, one with a spell checker or the very least they could do would be to give this Fred Durst character a copy of hooked on phonics. It�s rock n roll and all but I find it hard to believe a major record label would let a press release go out in the sorry shape that this one was in. But I�m a PI not an English teacher, so I took another look at it from a PI standpoint to figure out what I was going to need to do to help find the �illist guitar player� known to man. 

It struck me as a weird quest on the part of Limp Bizkit. Why would they want an ill guitar player? Shouldn�t they want a healthy one? I assumed by ill, they meant terminally ill. I thought about it a bit and decided that it must have to do with royalties and the money end of things. A terminally ill guitar player isn�t likely to be around long enough to collect royalties, so the band would basically be making out like bandits.  Very curious move on their part. But I guess you have to collect all the cash you can while your riding the highs of a trend that isn�t likely to last much longer. 

Then it occurred to me that I may have been cynical and the group�s motives may have been pure. Perhaps they wished to find a �ill� guitarist to give some poor dying soul a chance at fulfilling a dream to play with a major band. I ran with that notion and it gave me more resolve to actually find the perfect guitarist for the group. 

I�ve heard of Limp Bizkit but didn�t recall actually ever hearing their music, so the first order of business was to listen to some of their CDs to get a feel for the artistic requirements the band would have for a new guitarist. 

I spent a couple of hours listening to the groups CD�s and found that this search wouldn�t be hard since the level of musicianship in the band could easily be matched. If worst came to worst, judging by these songs, we could find a really sick person and teach them the basics within a few weeks and they would fit right in. 

Now came the task of actually finding some terminally ill guitarists to pitch to the group. I thought about the best way to find such people and decided that I would first contact the various charities that specialize in helping make the dreams of the terminally ill come true. 

I was utterly surprised at the resistance I received when I placed my calls to three of the major organizations I was able to track down. Their main question was my relation to the band and I told them I was hired by a talent scout to help trackdown the perfect guitarist. I explained that the group wanted to help make the dreams of a dying guitarist come true but they said that representatives from the band would have to contact them directly. One person rudely hung up on me when I explained what I was after. 

This wasn�t going to be as easy as I thought. My next plan of action was to contact a few of the major cancer centers in the US and see if they had any patients that fit the bill. I did have luck on this front as one of the nation's leading cancer treatment centers seemed to warm to the idea. I gave my contact the particulars and told her that we would need to get a demo tape, a short bio and perhaps a short video interview from the potential guitarist. 

A couple days later she called me back and said that she posted a bulletin and sent it off to other cancer centers and she already received a positive response from several young patients!  I was thrilled and arranged to fly into the city where the center was located to conduct the video interviews myself. 

Over 35 would-be guitarists in various stages of terminal cancer were interested in the job and for over 4 days I conducted video interviews with all of them and then flew home. 

The very next day it occurred to me that I had focused all of my energy on tracking down cancer patents and ignored potential guitarists with other terminal illnesses.  So I thought about what other major terminal diseases centers I could check where I would most likely find the right candidates at.  The easy answer was HIV patients and then like a lightbulb going off over my head, I realized that a HIV positive guitarist was perfect, hopefully one that practiced an alternative lifestyle. 

While the band never came out and said it in the open as far I could determine, I suspected that there were some alternative lifestyle interest within the group. I gathered this by the �code words� used on their album titles. It didn�t take much to decode the alternative lifestyle meanings in album titles like �Three Dollar Bill, Y'all,� which I gathered referred to the old slang, �queer as a three dollar bill.� The group�s second album was titled �Significant Other� which is a term often used by homosexuals to describe their lovers. And a lot could be inferred from the title of their third album, �Chocolate Starfish and the Hotdog Flavored Water�.  I wasn�t about to venture a guess of the true meaning of the group�s name but it seemed to follow the same pattern. 

On the other hand, I could have been totally off base with the alternative lifestyle assumption but I decided to run with it and present my client with an equal number of guitarists with cancer and those who practiced an alternative lifestyle who suffer from AIDS. 

Tracking down treatment centers and organizations that help people with HIV was not difficult and I easily found people within those organizations willing to help. Within a week I had a couple dozen candidates but it did seem like a more difficult task this time.

I spent the next ten days traveling to various cities across the country and conducting video interviews with candidates. 

I returned home and had the task of going through the video interviews, demos and bio information to whittle the list down to 20 candidates that I would turn over dossiers on to the talent agent who hired me. 

It took a long three days to go through all of the material but at the end I was confident I had selected the proper candidates. All were proficient enough on guitar to handle the simply job requirements of this band. All were terminally ill with life expectancies of between 12 to 18 months. I eliminates those who were expected to pass on before then because I thought the band would need at least that much time to get to know the guitarist, teach them the music and record the album. 

Continued...