Staind

In October 1997, twenty minutes before going on stage at the Webster Theatre in Hartford, Connecticut, Aaron Lewis saw Fred Durst coming with a CD in his hand. Staind were opening that night for Limp Bizkit in a twelve-hundred-capacity room, and the sleeve of their self-released album — a Barbie doll on a bloodied crucifix — had struck Durst as so offensive that he tried to pull them off the bill, convinced they practised Satanism. What happened next decided the careers of four musicians from Massachusetts: Durst stayed to listen to them, changed his mind and by February 1998 had already signed them to his label. Three years later, Staind were debuting at number one on the Billboard 200 with the best-selling rock album of 2001 in the United States and the song that had spent the most weeks at the top of alternative radio in the entire history of that chart up to then. All of it depended on a nu-metal singer deciding to stay ten minutes longer.

Springfield, a Christmas party and a home-made record

Aaron Lewis and the guitarist Mike Mushok met at a Christmas party in 1993. By 1995 they already had a band in Springfield, Massachusetts, with Jon Wysocki on drums and Johnny April on bass. Wysocki had been born in Westfield, half an hour away by road: the whole group came out of the same corner of the west of the state.

In 1996 they self-released Tormented, a record much harder and more aggressive than everything that came afterwards, and sold it themselves at gigs. That home-made sleeve is the one that almost sank them in Hartford and the one that, by the long route, ended up opening the door for them.

What Durst heard

After the episode with the sleeve, Durst signed them to Flip Records in February 1998. Dysfunction came out on 13 April 1999 and left them pigeonholed as one more nu-metal band, heavy and angry, at a moment when there were dozens just as heavy and just as angry.

The real turn happened on a stage, on the Family Values tour of 1999, in Biloxi, Mississippi. Lewis sat down alone with an acoustic guitar to play "Outside", a song that even he had not finished — he has said he improvised different words every time — and Durst sang backing vocals for him. That live version was recorded, began playing on the radio and reached number one on the Mainstream Rock, number 2 on the Modern Rock and number 56 on the Hot 100, being a concert recording made almost by accident.

That is where it became clear what the band's real resource was, and it was not the weight. It was that Lewis, with the distortion switched off, sounded disarmed. The nu-metal of those years was built on bravado; they started building on the opposite.

Sixteen weeks at the top

Break the Cycle was released on 8 May 2001 and debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 with more than seven hundred thousand copies in its first week. It was the tenth best-selling album in the world that year, with 5.6 million units, and it also topped the charts in the United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand. In the United States it has accumulated seven platinum certifications.

The single was "It's Been Awhile", from March 2001, and its figures remain hard to match: sixteen weeks at number one on the Modern Rock — the chart's record at the time —, fourteen weeks at the top of the Mainstream Rock and number 5 on the Hot 100 in October 2001. It is the only Staind song that entered the American top ten, and also the only one almost everybody recognises.

What that song does is say in a low voice things that normally go unsaid: the accumulated guilt, the wasted time, the damage done to the people closest to you. The band's whole catalogue goes that way. They talk about depression, about ruined relationships and about addiction, without protective metaphors and without the joke that would let you off the hook. At that time, that was less common than it now seems.

Country, the hiatus and the drummer's death

Wysocki left the band in 2011, after seven albums. In 2012 Staind entered a long hiatus and Lewis took up country music, with considerable success and in a direction that had nothing to do with what came before. They went back to playing together intermittently from 2014 and released Confessions of the Fallen in September 2023.

Jon Wysocki died on 18 May 2024, aged fifty-three. No official cause was made public; before his death it was reported that he had liver complications and a bandmate from his later band confirmed that he was in intensive care for that reason. He had played on seven of the band's albums and he was, along with Lewis and Mushok, one of the three who were there that night in Hartford.

What to remember

Staind came in through the nu-metal door and stayed through the opposite one. The song that defined them has no scream, no memorable riff and nothing a teenager in 2001 could have used to look tough; it has a man admitting he has been doing things wrong for a long time. They sold millions with that, in an era that rewarded exactly the opposite.

The rest are figures nobody argues with any more: number one on the Billboard 200, the tenth best-selling album in the world in 2001, sixteen weeks of "It's Been Awhile" at the top of the Modern Rock. But the reason the song keeps turning up when somebody is going through a bad patch is a different one, and it is the same one that made Chester Bennington or Korn work in those same years: they were telling the truth about something almost nobody likes to say out loud. Several of those songs talk about addiction from the inside, and if that sounds like someone's own story, in Chile SENDA's Drugs and Alcohol helpline, 1412, answers free of charge, is confidential and runs every day.

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Sources

Staind are an American rock band formed in 1995 in Springfield, Massachusetts, by Aaron Lewis (vocals and rhythm guitar), Mike Mushok (lead guitar), Jon Wysocki (drums) and Johnny April (bass); Lewis and Mushok had met at a Christmas party in 1993. In 1996 they self-released the album "Tormented", whose sleeve shows a Barbie doll on a bloodied crucifix. In October 1997, while Staind were opening for Limp Bizkit at the Webster Theatre in Hartford, Connecticut, a room with twelve hundred seats, Fred Durst presented himself to Aaron Lewis twenty minutes before the performance with a copy of that record and tried to pull them off the bill over the sleeve, convinced they practised Satanism; after hearing their set he changed his mind and signed them to Flip Records in February 1998. "Dysfunction" was released on 13 April 1999. The acoustic version of "Outside" premiered on the Family Values tour of 1999 in Biloxi, Mississippi, with Aaron Lewis alone on vocals and guitar and Fred Durst on backing vocals, over a lyric Lewis had not yet finished; that live recording reached number one on the Mainstream Rock, number 2 on the Modern Rock and number 56 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States. "Break the Cycle" was released on 8 May 2001, debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 with more than seven hundred thousand copies in its first week, was the tenth best-selling album in the world that year with 5.6 million units, also topped the charts in the United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand, and has accumulated seven platinum certifications from the RIAA. Its single "It's Been Awhile", from March 2001, remained sixteen weeks at number one on Billboard's Modern Rock chart, that chart's record at the time, fourteen weeks at the top of the Mainstream Rock, and reached number 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 in October 2001, the band's only American top ten. Their repertoire addresses depression, relationships and addiction. Jon Wysocki left the band in 2011 after seven albums; Staind entered a hiatus in 2012, a period in which Aaron Lewis developed a career in country music, resumed performances intermittently from 2014 and released "Confessions of the Fallen" in September 2023. Jon Wysocki, born on 17 January 1971 in Westfield, Massachusetts, died on 18 May 2024 at the age of 53; no official cause was made public, although it was reported that he had liver complications and that he had been admitted to intensive care for that reason. Profile compiled for Rebobinados with fact-checking; interpretations of the meaning of the work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Billboard, Wikipedia, Variety, Loudwire and other coverage.