“Today we lost our brother. Our bandmate. Our heartbeat,” the band wrote in the Instagram caption, alongside a photo of Rivers. Rivers earlier revealed that he had to quit the band and just rejoined two years later.
Sam Rivers left Limp Bizkit and later rejoined
Limp Bizkit bassist and co-founding member Sam Rivers revealed the real reason behind his multi-year hiatus from the band in rock writer Jon Wiederhorn’s new book Raising Hell (Backstage Tales From the Lives of Metal Legends).
“I got liver disease from excessive drinking,” the musician shares in the book, quoted by Loud Wire in a 2020 article. While it was previously believed that Rivers left Limp Bizkit due to degenerative disc disease, he clarifies that his departure was actually caused by severe liver disease and the liver transplant that followed.
“I had to leave Limp Bizkit in 2015 because I felt so horrible, and a few months after that I realized I had to change everything because I had really bad liver disease,” the outlet reported, quoting Rivers. It further said that he quit drinking and did everything the doctors told him to do.
Then he got treatment for the alcohol and got a liver transplant, which was a perfect match. Rivers further recalled his early diagnosis in 2011 and said he stopped drinking and battled the liver disease. Then he went on a tour,, and after returning from there, he started drinking again.
The bassist says his condition worsened to a critical point, and the doctor warned him that if he doesn’t stop drinking, he will die. After successfully undergoing a liver transplant in 2017, Rivers recovered and rejoined Limp Bizkit in 2018.
