It appears that Limp Bizkit may have a new guitarist to replace the departed Wes Borland. Hard Rock music site Shoutweb reported earlier this week that Limp Bizkit has tapped Mike Smith to fill the vacant guitarist slot in the band. 

According to Shoutweb, fans will know Smith from his past work with “Snot (replaced Sonny Mayo in 1998), theSTART (studio guitarist for "Shakedown!") and was the guitarist for Burning Orange.” 

A previous unfounded rumor that made it’s way onto a few online message boards that claimed Backstreet Boy, A.J. McLean, had taken a three week crash course in guitar to fill the slot, appears to simply be mischief from some of the people Fred Durst calls “haters”, who were playing around online and having a go at the band. 

However, contrary to the Shoutweb report and a couple others, this remains a rumor at the moment since the Limp Bizkit camp has yet to confirm that Smith has indeed joined the band. We will keep you updated on developments as we get them. 

Update:MuchMusic picked up the story and have reported the following additional information, ”But now an insider close to Limp Bizkit confirmed to worldpop that these reports are inaccurate saying: ‘I’ve seen the story posted on various internet sites and would like to set the record straight that at the moment, there has been no official confirmation.’ The insider goes on to say, ‘We can’t either confirm or deny that Mike Smith has joined the band.’”

Also: The comment in our original article about A.J. from the Backstreet Boys taking a three week crash course in guitar was actually a joke. Unfortunately, MuchMusic picked up our story and was inaccurately reporting the following, “A previous rumour circulating the web, claimed that Backstreet Boy A.J. McLean would replace Wes. Apparently the BSB member was taking a three week crash course in guitar. Fred Durst said the rumours were started by ‘haters.’”  I wanted to clear this up before it gets any further. For the record, it was a joke! While we typically report the news straight here, this is antiMUSIC and from time to time I will interject a little humor into stories. Unfortunately, someone read into that comment and misunderstood that it was acutally humor. So once again, for the record - AJ taking the three week guitar crash course was nothing but a little satire on my part. MuchMusic has since corrected this error. 

However, back in April of 2000 AJ McLean was in talks with Durst about a collaboration on AJ’s fictitious rock band project "Johnny No Name". AJ toured in 2000 as his alter ego, “Johnny No Name”, a fictional British rock star. He told fans at his Los Angeles gig at the time, that he was in discussions with Durst to collaborate on an album project for “Johnny No Name”.  AJ’s band did various covers ranging from Rage Against the Machine to George Thorogood. 

Needless to say, the album project never happened. But AJ did have this to say back when it looked like the project would go forward, “. Rock 'n' roll has been around for ages, it will never die. Pop just kind of comes and goes.”
 

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