As a band, Linkin Park has achieved unbelievable success,
but as individuals, they’ve dealt with plenty of highs and lows…
including having to send one obsessed fan to prison. Who was it? Keep watching to find out.
Linkin Park has a fairly humble background. Guitarist Brad Delson,
vocalist Mike Shinoda, and drummer Rob Bourdon were in the same high school in California,
which is where they first met and decided to start a band called Xero in 1996. The band grew in a
short period, when bassist Dave Farrell, DJ Joseph Hahn, and singer Mark Wakefield agreed to join.
But things were rough in the beginning, and it was difficult for them to get noticed.
It would take them a couple of years to get a breakthrough and find Chester Bennington.
Bennington was originally with a band called Grey Daze, a group that helped him understand
who he was. According to music journalist Tom Bryant, Grey Daze did well locally in
Phoenix but failed to make a mark at the national level. By the time Bennington was 22 years old,
he was working for a digital services company and not thinking about music.
However, things changed when Wakefield left the band, and Shinoda and his bandmates
started looking for someone who could sing for them. Record producer Jeff Blue, who had
kept in touch with the band after first hearing their demo, contacted Bennington and told him,
"I'm going to give you your big break. I have a great band for you."
Bennington wasn't sold on the band's hip-hop elements, but he gave it a shot anyway, and
recorded his vocals over their demo. While he was sure the gig was his, the band had other ideas.
"What's up, my peoples."
They had lined up a series of auditions with other singers,
so when Bennington showed up to meet them, he had to sing in between other auditions. Shinoda
told Bryant that while he thought Bennington looked, quote, "like a cheesy guy from an
Arizona nightclub bar," there was no denying his incredible vocals. Bennington got the job.
After changing the name of the band to "Hybrid Theory," which was the name of their debut album,
they changed the name again to avoid legal issues.
According to the book Linkin Park by Greg Saulmon, Bennington was the one who thought
of naming the band Lincoln Park, which was a well-known spot in Santa Monica, California.
Unfortunately, there was no way they could afford a domain name that was
already registered by someone else. But they were very keen on establishing their online presence.
Mike Shinoda told Yahoo! Music,
"We wanted our own website, 'cause our main channel to talk to our fans was on the web."
Lincoln Park turned into Linkin Park, spelled
L-I-N-K-I-N, so that it was easier for them to get their website up and running. They
had no idea that the name would be associated with cities across the entire country, though.
Dave Farrell said in an interview at the ESPN Sports and Music Awards,
"There's been radio stations in Chicago that have said, 'Here's this local band, from Chicago,
Linkin Park' — and that's actually been happening all over the country.
In every major city you go there will be a Lincoln Park that's either a park,
or a community… For a while, everybody thought we were local, like a support act."
Linkin Park officially entered the music industry with their first album, Hybrid Theory, in 2000 and
ended up becoming popular in a short period: the album was declared a bestseller by the next year.
"We love like electronica music, trance, hip hop mainly, anything experimental—”
However, the band members had been hustling behind the scenes to make things happen.
In fact, Mike Shinoda told Louder Sound,
"We did get a reputation for being a business rather than a band.
But that was because we were so focused on getting our stuff done. It wasn't in the name
of business – it was in the name of building up this thing we had worked so hard to create.
We were prepared to do everything in our power to be successful on all levels."
Shinoda wasn't joking: Linkin Park didn't leave any stone unturned to get noticed by a label.
Bennington recalled that nobody had wanted to take a chance on Linkin Park,
but the band members were confident about their potential.
Bennington told Louder Sound that they auditioned in front of 45 labels, explaining,
"We just kept pushing. Most bands probably try out in front of three labels,
get rejected, and give up."
Linkin Park eventually scored a deal with Warner Bros., but making their first album
was an uphill battle. Mike Shinoda revealed to Louder Sound that they had to fight for their
vision of the record and that the label's stance was clear: they were waiting for
Linkin Park to impress them before giving the band the chance to work on an entire album.
The band members fought to stay true to their goal, but the worst came when the label tried
to replace Mike Shinoda with a rapper from New York. Chester Bennington told Louder Sound,
"These guys sat me down and were like, 'Oh, you've got such an amazing voice,
you could be such a shining star.' They wanted to see if I would pull a coup to get Mike out."
But the band stood firm. According to Bennington,
"Mike's one of the most productive songwriters of our era, I think. God knows how many Number
Ones we've had, but if he wasn't in the band, we wouldn't have had any of those!"
"We said, like, 'oh, let's see if we can make these lines better.'"
Linkin Park wanted to establish an original sound, instead of being categorized as a "nu-metal" band.
According to the book Linkin Park,
Mike Shinoda once said that the band genuinely didn't think too much about the nu-metal label
and only tried to come up with songs that were appealing to the band members. He explained,
"Rather than writing to be part of a genre, we just write what we feel moved by."
"We're actually living it up, rockstar style, some travel scrabble."
For their album Meteora, the band brainstormed over 50 song concepts,
eliminating the ones they weren't happy with.
Lead guitarist Bradford Delson told Yahoo Music!,
"When we were writing, we definitely wanted to have 12 or 13 songs that relate to one another,
and also sequence them in a way that takes the listener on a journey — not
just within each song, but from the beginning of the album to the end."
The band didn't shy away from using technology to their advantage, either,
something that's especially visible in their song "Somewhere I Belong."
As a musician, Chester Bennington often turned to his difficult past to find inspiration.
As detailed by the book Linkin Park, Bennington's parents divorced when he was 11 years old,
and he used weed as a coping mechanism. As he got older, Bennington lost interest in school
and sports, but in high school, things got even worse. Two of his close friends died,
and Bennington moved on to other drugs, including cocaine and crystal meth.
As a member of Linkin Park, Bennington wanted to be true to his emotions
and write about his past. He did exactly that but allowed himself to be vague so
that Mike Shinoda could relate to the lyrics as well. As Bennington explained,
"I can't talk about this crappy thing that happened to me and expect [Shinoda] to be
able to sing it. It has to be vague enough for both of us to go, 'We can relate to it.'"
"A lot of these songs are personal. I feel like the person singing is speaking directly to me."
According to Rolling Stone, Bennington considered "Crawling"
to be the most literal song that he had written for the band. He said,
"That's about feeling like I had no control over myself in terms of drugs and alcohol."
It's true that many Linkin Park songs explore angst, grief, and pain. However, the band
has refused to indulge in profanity and chosen instead to keep their songs as clean as possible.
Chester Bennington told Rolling Stone,
"When Mike [Shinoda] and I sat down and wrote the lyrics [for 'Hybrid Theory'],
we wanted to be as honest and open as we could. [...] We didn't want to make a big
point of not cussing, but we don't have to hide behind anything to show how tough we can be."
He added that they wanted to ensure that their
listeners would be able to identify with the songs.
Shinoda admitted that they were afraid of opening up about their emotions but felt differently when
they saw that their fans could relate to the music and knew they were not alone. He said,
"We wanted to be a little more descriptive,
instead of just going 'f---' all the time. We wanted to go into detail."
As a band, Linkin Park didn't aim for fame, at least not in the conventional sense.
According to The Guardian, they knew that they were artists first
and simply wanted to keep creating more art. Chester Bennington declared,
"We aren't a manufacturer. We are artists,
and we've gone philosophically back to where we were writing music before we sold a record."
This doesn't mean that they took their success for granted. They could clearly
recall the moment they understood that they were getting noticed for their work:
they were at Bennington's father's place when they heard a Linkin Park song on
the radio for the first time. Shinoda described it as a surreal experience.
That said, fame wasn't easy to deal with and the band found themselves being wary of the press.
It took them time to feel comfortable and share anecdotes with the media. There were other issues
along the way, too. Chester Bennington had to deal with a stalker who ended up going to jail
after she hacked into his voicemails and emails and stole personal photos. Bennington said,
"It's not fun to put someone in prison.
Ninety-nine percent of fans are great. We're famous, but we're not celebrities."
Linkin Park's members have stepped up when needed and lent their voice to important causes:
they even started a charity organization called Music for Relief in a bid to reach
out to others in need. A description on the group's page states that the
organization is dedicated to providing aid to those affected by natural disasters.
"A big number of those people
experienced very traumatic loss, so it was really great to see them all smiling"
According to the book Linkin Park, the band was heartbroken when a devastating tsunami
struck in 2004, killing over 200,000 people and leaving millions of survivors homeless in several
countries including India, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and others on the east African coast.
Linkin Park decided to perform for charity and collaborated with the American Red Cross
to start Music for Relief. They donated $1 million and requested fans to chip
in, ultimately raising $236.2 million to support those recovering from the tsunami.
"This place right here? This skull between my ears?
That is a bad neighborhood, and I am, I should not be in there alone."
On July 20, 2017, Linkin Park's band members and its fans woke up to devastating news:
Chester Bennington had died by suicide. According to Rolling Stone, the musician
went through an emotional rollercoaster before his death and suffered a relapse.
In 2018, Mike Shinoda opened up in an interview with The Guardian and said that
he had learned to cope by, quote, "staying in motion." He did solo sets at music shows
especially for Chester Bennington, honoring his friend's memory and singing with fans.
Shinoda came across a plethora of experiences: fans who couldn't help
but tear up when they spoke to him, others who thanked him for his work. Shinoda said,
"The sentiment is usually, 'Thank you for the music, thank you for carrying on,
the new album is helping me, seeing you on stage lets me know that I can carry on.'"
To the disappointment of many fans, Mike Shinoda said in late 2021
that Linkin Park was not comfortable with touring yet. Speaking on the Tuna on Toast podcast,
he said he doesn't believe that it's the right time for the band to make a comeback, explaining
"We don't have the focus on it. We don't have the math worked out. And I don't
mean that by financially math, I mean that like emotional and creative math. [...] For our band,
anything that we do, it's like it's gotta be, it's gotta clear a certain bar.
So there's no, nothing has cleared the bar."
If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health, please contact the
Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness
helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.