"The Source" Newspaper - April 2004

A dream comes true with help from friend

Bryan Martins met his favorite band, Linkin Park, after he was diagnosed with cancer.

When Sterling Heights resident Bryan Martins was in third grade, he began listening to the nu-metal group, Linkin Park. It didn't take long before he became an all-out fan of the group and his friends all knew it.

One friend in particular, Elise DeLuca, remembered his love of Linkin Park and when things got difficult for her friend, she decided her gift to him would be meeting the band.

"In September we found out Bryan had bone cancer," said his mother, Cindy Martins. "His leg had been swollen and ached a lot."

The news was devastating to DeLuca, who decided she needed to do something to make things better. It took persistence and patience, but the reward was worth the wait.

"I sent Linkin Park letters and e-mails telling them about Bryan and waited," DeLuca said.

DeLuca began writing to the band in November and by January her hard work brought her friend some happiness in the midst of his fight. Eventually someone contacted DeLuca and told her where she needed to call.

"On Jan. 5, the manager contacted me, and gave me more information and asked how they could help," she said.

On Bryan's 14th birthday, DeLuca was able to give him the gift that dreams are made of. While in the hospital undergoing chemotherapy treatments, Bryan got a call from his favorite band.

"I just burst into tears when I found out what was going to happen," DeLuca said.

"It was really cool," Bryan said. "They called and I got to talk to Chester (Bennington, vocalist). They sent a care package and I got a signed picture, a CD, stickers. And it was all sent on my birthday."

Bryan also received autographed drumsticks and posters.

The Jeanette Junior High School student also received tickets to see Linkin Park live in concert. He and DeLuca were considered guests of the band, and asked to go backstage where they hung out with their favorite group.

"I got to hug Chester," Bryan said. "That was the best."

Bryan's parents moved to seats further away from the stage so that Byran's other friends could join DeLuca and himself in the fourth row.

"The band was very cool and very down to Earth," Cindy said. "I think that's really important to say, because they really went out of their way and our understanding is that they try to do things like this at every concert."

DeLuca, Bryan and their friends are all still big fans of Linkin Park, and contacted the group after the concert to thank them for the gift. The group will be playing at DTE Music Energy Theatre on July 26 during its Projekt Revolution Tour.

By Anne Cron - Staff Writer

Thanks to lostprophet for the article!

  Blender Magazine - March Issue 2002

Bring the Pain
The anguished persona of Chester Bennington, a former drug addict and victim of abuse, has helped turn Linkin Park into an unstoppable, five million-selling rap-rock juggernaut. This is how he did it...

The bigger the band, the bigger the security guy, so Linkin Park employ a cartoonishly immense handler named Jake. Built like an upended couch stuffed with sides of beef, Jake sports the classic cue-ball noggin and Harley Davidson?approved beard of minders the world over.

“You the guy writing the article?” he says in a Midwestern drawl that would make “Happy birthday, Mom” sound like the prelude to a savage beating.

"Er, yeah."

“Make sure you write how levelheaded these guys are,” Jake says, pointing to the red suitcase he’s wheeling from their dressing room. “They packed their own clothes. Bands never do that. They’re the best guys I’ve ever worked with.”

Linkin Park are in Kansas City, Missouri, to play the Hale Arena, a 6,000-capacity barn normally used to meet the city’s demand for rodeo. It’s the third night of the band’s Countdown to Revolution road trip, a precursor to January’s Projekt Revolution tour with bong lords Cypress Hill and nü-metal contenders Adema. Soft-spoken Linkin drummer Rob Bourdon chats with the band’s business manager over baked potatoes and fried chicken. “Nothing to worry about,” he says of the meeting. “Everything looks good.”

Indeed it does. In November 2000, shortly before the band’s first tour, lead singer Chester Bennington bullishly decided to have blue-and-red flames tattooed from his wrists to his elbows — a strict no-no in the fast-food industry and other career avenues he’d grudgingly explored while playing with his first band, Grey Daze, in his hometown, Phoenix. Having heard a Linkin Park demo — the band was then known as Hybrid Theory — Bennington caught a flight to try out for the Los Angeles five-piece a few months earlier. Things worked out, and their debut album, an eclectic rap-rock concoction christened Hybrid Theory, was cut in four weeks. Today, propelled by the well-manicured rage of singles “Papercut,” “One Step Closer,” “Crawling” and “In the End,” and a rigorous 12-month tour that has included slots on Ozzfest and Family Values, Hybrid Theory has sold 5 million copies. It’s been a year of stupefying success from which the band is proud to have emerged, to use Bennington’s words, as “ordinary dudes.” No cause to regret that ink job, then?

“One tattoo leads to two, and two leads to 20,” says the 25-year-old Bennington, hitching up his jeans to reveal a green dragon above his right ankle. It’s the latest addition to a collection now numbering 10, which includes a huge, gothic LINKIN PARK etched across his lower back and the cover of Hybrid Theory — a flag-bearing soldier with dragonfly wings that was designed by his cofrontman, 24-year-old rhyme-buster Mike Shinoda — on his left calf. “I still don’t know what to think about that,” muses Shinoda. Asked if he might one day regret wearing the band’s colors so indelibly, Bennington insists it’s never crossed his mind.

In Bennington, Linkin Park have found a frontman to lift them high above the angst pack. Shinoda is an enthusiastic MC, and the band — guitarist Brad Delson, 25, bassist Dave “Phoenix” Farrell, 24, drummer Bourdon, 22, and DJ Joe Hahn, 24 — is ferociously tight live, but Bennington’s surprisingly versatile voice and anguished back story provide the star power. Like Korn’s Jonathan Davis, Bennington was shattered by the divorce of his parents and abused as a boy. Unlike Davis, though, Bennington insists none of Linkin Park’s material is autobiographical. “The songs can relate to anybody’s situation,” he says. “Like on ‘One Step Closer’: there’s nothing in my life that drives me to ‘the edge’ . . . except trying to write the lyrics.”

“Chester’s the emotional leader — he brings a real fire to everything that goes on,” explains bassist Farrell, who once played with now defunct Christian-rock crew the Snax. “Mike and Joe are the creative forces in the band. Rob and Brad handle the business stuff. I’m the one who doesn’t have a talent,” he quips.

Were the Snax akin to white-bread Jesus-rockers Stryper?

“No, more like P.O.D., which is to say the focus was positive, and not about screwing chicks and pounding 40s.”

Linkin Park, it turns out, share Farrell’s former band’s message of uplift, minus the son-of-God shout-outs. “We’re not saying that everything has to be like The Partridge Family,” Shinoda says, “but if things are going to sh*t, you want to stay optimistic. That doesn’t mean you have to have a good time when things are going poorly; just look at the big picture.”

“We’re smart, we’re serious and we’re not here to f*ck around,” adds Delson. “People think when you get a record deal all your problems will go away. We know that the bigger we get, the more problems we’ll have. I guess Puff Daddy was somewhat — what’s the word? — prophetic in that respect.” In the band’s second dressing room, reserved for anyone who wants a discreet beer or a smoke, Bennington fiddles with a new purchase, a $25,000 Pro Tools recording rig, and gushes about his wife of six years, Samantha, a realtor he met when he was manning the grill at Burger King. Their first child, Draven Sebastian Bennington — named after Eric Draven, Brandon Lee’s character in The Crow — is due in April.

Does your wife worry that you might take liberties with female fans?

“I think that’s natural for any woman with a husband who travels a lot, but we really don’t have a problem with it. I’m a pain in the ass, and she’s perfect.”

Bennington’s attempts to set up his Pro Tools unit are hampered by the fact that he ignores the manual and has just sucked down a fat doobie. “If I don’t have pot on the road, I will f*cking kill somebody,” he explains.

Linkin Park’s only recreational drug user, Bennington’s need for weed is mild compared to the narcotic meltdown of his youth. “I was on, like, 11 hits of acid a day. I dropped so much acid I’m surprised I can still speak! I’d smoke a bunch of crack, do a bit of meth and just sit there and freak out. Then I’d smoke opium to come down.” His arrest for marijuana possession when he was 18 wasn’t the only sign that he needed to get a grip. “I weighed 110 pounds,” he says. “My mom said I looked like I stepped out of Auschwitz. So I used pot to get off drugs. Every time I’d get a craving, I’d smoke my pot.”

Bennington appeared to be a normal, happy kid. The son of a policeman and a nurse, he did well at school, enjoyed theater and thought The A-Team ruled. One day when he was 11, he came home from school, “and Mom wasn’t there anymore — she left. I took the divorce pretty badly — started sleeping in class, getting high. I just wanted to get away. . . . I was going through the molesting part of my life then, too.”

For someone who has made no secret of being abused as a child, it seems unusual that Bennington sometimes wears a T-shirt bearing the logo of Hustler magazine’s unsavory comic-strip deviant Chester the Molester.

“That’s just a name people have always called me,” he says. “When somebody meets me and I go, ‘Hi, I’m Chester,’ they go, ‘Chester the Molester!’ ”

What exactly happened to you when you were younger?

“I’m over it. I mean, what exactly happened is a lot.... just.... certain situations....”

Bennington stares at the floor. “I don’t know..... I don’t really want to talk about it.”

A few uncomfortable moments later, Bennington shakes off the silence with a smile. “It’s all good. It sucks when those things happen, but going through them made me who I am today. And I’m a pretty decent person, I think.”

Immediately after their encore — which climaxes with the “Shut up when I’m talking to you!” refrain from “One Step Closer” — Linkin Park quickly towel off and stand behind the security barrier at the front of the audience. For the next 30 minutes they sign autographs for any fan who wants them. It’s just before midnight when they get back to their bus. Girlfriends are phoned, cookies eaten. Bennington walks in, mock-punches Blender in the stomach, fetches sodas for both of us and slouches into a bench seat.

What’s the strangest request you’ve ever received from a fan?

“Someone once asked me for my pubic hair,” he replies. “That was pretty sick.”

Did you comply?

Bennington recoils in mock horror. “We’re just normal dudes,” he says with a shrug, then smiles. “For God’s sake.....”

By Ben Mitchell

Thanks to Anya!

  Circus Magazine

All last year on tour with his band, Linkin Park's Chester Bennington refused to sing a top-requested song from his latest album, "Meteora." The man of black horn-rimmed glasses and seasonally shifting hair color didn't write "Breaking the Habit"; Mike Shinoda, his co-writer and co-vocalist in the multi-platinum L.A. sextet, did.

But it spoke volumes to Bennington because of his dark personal history. Clutching my cure/I tightly lock the door./I try to catch my breath again./I hurt much more/than anytime before./I have no options left again.

"When Mike wrote it, I said, 'I swear to God you wrote this song about me.'" says Bennington, phoning from Columbus, Ohio, on a break from a tour with support acts P.O.D., Hoobastank and Story of the Year.

About 10 years ago, the famously high-pitched shrieker had a substance-abuse problem, which he supported by working at a Burger King in his native Phoenix. He had to skateboard to the job because he couldn't afford a car. Or even a bicycle.

Bennington -- the youngest of four whose childhood was a blur of shuttling between homes rented by his divorced parents -- owned nothing bigger than a milk crate, which is where he kept all his possessions.

"I regret being an idiot, I guess that was the case," Bennington says of his drug habit, which involved him with people he watched get pistol-whipped and hunted by angry dealers.

"But do I regret experiencing agony from that? No, because it's made me the person I am today."

At 28, Bennington now channels that agony into his stage show, where he breathes fire into the revered songs from his band's debut album, "Hybrid Theory" (the No. 1 album of 2001) and its multi-platinum follow-up, last year's "Meteora." Those songs now include "Breaking the Habit."

"It took me a long time to be able to perform the song," Bennington says, "because I had such an emotional connection. I would break down in tears."

An obsession-verging fan of the Stone Temple Pilots and Depeche Mode, Bennington was singing in an unknown band at the time. When Grey Daze started to draw large Arizona crowds, and L.A.-based attorney was hired to get its demos out to labels.

"I always just wanted to make a record," Bennington says. "That was a huge goal in my life."

That goal wasn't achieved with Grey Daze. But in 1999, the band's lawyer hyped Bennington to an impressive L.A. outfit looking for a new singer.

"I listened to the demo and really thought it was something," Bennington says of Xero, which changed its name to Hybrid Theory, then Linkin Park. (Most cities have a Lincoln Park, so people would take them for a local band where ever they played. The misspelling meant they wouldn't have to buy someone else's Web site address.)

Propelled by a trio of rock radio singles ("One Step Closer," "Crawling" and "In the End"), "Hybrid Theory" shocked the music world (and Linkin Park) by selling 4.8 million copies. New studio releases by both Britney Spears and 'N Sync didn't come close.

"I never imagined this type of success," says Bennington. "I don't think I've ever really dreamt about being as big as we are."

Still, not everyone reveres Linkin Park. Fox-TC recently banned the group's songs (along with those of Korn and several other rock artists) from being performed during auditions for "American Idol." No explanation was given.

"I think it's awesome they're not letting them do that," Bennington says. "It's great that they banned our music. I think it's very thoughtful of them. I wonder why they did it. Maybe our music is too modern."

Bennington and Shinoda are currently penning new songs "American Idol" hopefuls won't be able to sing. Their tour bus is loaded with ProTools songwriting and recording software.

"We work together and separately, but we make sure that when we start writing that we're on the same page so we know what we're writing about and we understand where the focus of the emotion for the music is going to be," Bennington says, adding that it's too early to reveal song titles.

"We just let to music do it's own thing and come together the way it wants," he says.

Linkin Park also plans a summer tour to go up against OzzFest.
"It's gonna be amazing," promises the man who can't think of what he might be doing if not music.

"If I wasn't who I am in this band, I would still be in a band somewhere else making music and having a good time," Bennington says. "I've always done this, I will always do this."
Now, Bennington says his revised career goal is "to make good music and hope other people like it."

"We're no different from any other band in the world that wants to create song and go play them for fans," he says. "We're just blessed"

Thanks to Soma!

  Hit Parader: September 2002

Linkin Park

Conspiracy Theory

By William Brooks(Hit Parader Magazine)


Two attractive female fans clad in identical Linkin Park T-shirts-and little else-were doing thier best to "talk" thier way past an elderly area security guard to get themselves backstage at one of the band's recent Projekt Revolution tour stops. Despite the guard's best efforts to ignore them, the pair continued to cajole and canoodle, using every ounce of thier feminine charm in thier attemps to convince the stoic guard that they "deserved" a place in the band's private pantheon.

"C'mon let us in," one moaned, "we're thier biggest fans." Her sentiments were soon echoed by her friend who added "We have all of thier albums." Slowly but surely the verbal and physical barrage began to wear the guard down though he remained vigilant in his efforts to limit the backstage entrance only to those who wore a specific "All Access" pass. Finally after an half an hour as the guard turned around to check the credentials of a group of local radio contest winners, the pair bolted through the closed security door and headed for the supposed shelter of Linkin Park's dressing area. When he realized what happened the exasperated guard could only offer a shrug and a small smile. "Oh well, I'm not gonna chase after them," he said. "They don't exactly look like terrorists to me. I only hope they find who they're looking for; these guys much be really special."

There can now be little doubt that Linkin Park do represent something very special in the rock and roll world. What they've achieved over the last two years goes well beyond the fact that this California based unit has sold more then seven million copies of thier debut album, Hybrid Theory. It goes beyond the immediate accliam afforded thier new remix disc, Reanimation. The notion that vocalist, Chester Bennington, vocalist Mike Shinoda, guitarist Brad Delson, bassit Pheonix, keyboardist Joseph Hahn and drummer Rob Bourdon have reinvented the "rock star" image for the 21st Century. And it goes beyond the thought that in thier bold synthesis of metal, rock and rap elements this unit has succesfully reinvented the rock and roll "wheel." Indeed, despite all that they've accomplished during thier brief time in the spotlight, the impact that Linkin Park has had upon the contemporary music scene has yet to be fully comprehended.

"Don't ask us to explain it," said a smiling Shinoda, "Our job is to make the music, not to analyze why it was successful. We hope the reason is that people liked what they heard and were able to relate to the lyrics presented in our songs. Maybe there's something deeper to it, but that's not really for us to say."

Whatever the true reason is for Linkin Park's incredible success might be, the simple fact is that this band now stands at the very pinnacle of rock and roll acclaim. Not only did thier debut disc earn the honor being the biggest-selling album of 2001, but the group's rich blend of hip-hop and hard rock ingredients helped to resuscitate a form that has fallen into a state of commercial disarray due to the simplistic, fun-loving approach utilized by the likes of Limp Bizkit. With thier Grammy nominations, thier award-winning videos, and thier industry-wide acclaim as the "saviors" of the rap/metal style, it does indeed seem like Linkin Park have quickly emerged as one of the most significant bands of thier era.

"It's hard for us to explain what's happened, Delson said, "We're just a band that made music that we believed in our heart and evidently it touched alot of people the right way. There's really nothing more to it. We didn't set out to sell millions of albums. We were thrilled when Hybrid Theory went gold. Everything else has been a little beyond our comprehension."

While the members of Linkin Park may yet not fully comprehend all that they've accomplished, countless media types with too-much-time-on-thier-hands have already taken a shot at trying to explain the unprecendented "Park Phenomenon." Depending on whom you listen to, the band's success stems from either the accessibility of their sound, or the accessibility of thier image. Come to think of it, it's probably a lethal combination of both that has led them so swiftly down rock and roll's primose path! After all, when you can write and record such songs as Crawling and One Step Closer while maintaining a guys-next-door image you certainly have pulled off the rock and roll equivalent of a royal flush. In an era dominated by shock rockers like Marilyn Manson and Slipknot, Linkin Park have come along to drastically-and perhaps permanently-alter the way in which we look at contemporary music performers. With this unit, everyone's focus has clearly remained on thier music, rather than on thier appearance or off-stage attitude.

"When Linkin Park's album was first released, nobody knew what to expect from it," said a band confidant, "They weren't one of those super-hyped bands that everyone was talking about. Fans in California knew who they were, but that's about as far as it went. I know the label was psyched, but I imagine they always get excited about a new band that just got signed. But once the album came out, there was an almost-immediate 'buzz' created by thier music. Radio got behind them, and so did the print media and MTV. I remember them getting a Hiy Parader cover about two months after the album came out, and alot of people we're still asking me who Linkin Park was. They sure found out in a hurry!"

Indeed they did. Hybrid Theory went platinum six months after it's release...double platinium a month after that...quadruple platinum in mid-2001...sextuple platinum by year's end. Even now in middle 2002, the disc continues to sell an astounding 100,000 copies a week. In fact, the album's ongoing success has made it somewhat difficult for the Linkin Park patrol to begin focusing on the writing and recording of thier second album. Originally it was hoped that thier sophmore disc would be out by year's end, but a variety of success-generated delays have now apparently pushed that release schedule back until early 2003. Somehow, we have a distinct feeling that the guys in the band will find a way of putting that extra time to very good use.

"One of the best things about having a big album is that it allows you total freedom with what you want to do next," Shinoda said. "I know we're going to try some very interesting things on the next album-so get ready."

-
Excerpted from Hit Parader: September 2002

  Kerrang!: "Boys in the bubble"

This article was taken from Kerrang! March 15th issue

You may not be aware of it, but it the proposed and perhaps inevitable invasion of Saddam Hussein's Iraq is not the only military-style operation planned for the period where winter bleeds into Spring. There's something of equally unsmiling proportions planned for the month; something planned and conceive in America with possible repercussions for millions of people. It might not be, as Cuban President Fidel Castro famously described the Manic Street Preachers' much-hyped gig in Havana in 2001, louder than war (or at least not in this war) but it will still be pretty loud. It should be huge and people will be talking about it. It goes by the name "Meteora", and it's the new album from one of America's premier, blue-chip corporations: Linkin Park.

To get people talking about their new album, first Linkin Park have to start talking themselves. Which is why vocalist Chester Bennington is walking into a sumptuous, split-level, pastel-coloured suite at the opulent but tastefully reserved Hyatt Hotel in the freezing but stunning northern, German city of Hamburg today. On this Thursday afternoon he's here to meet a posse of European journalists. I've been fortunate enough to secure an interview alone with Bennington and the co-vocalist Mike Shinoda, but it doesn't happen until tomorrow. Today Chester and two of his bandmates (guitarist Brad Delson and drummer Rob Bourdon) are due to sit for a half hour session with a group of writers from various European magazines, writers who haven't been quite as fortunate as this one. In a move designed to kill - or at least, placate - six hacks with one stone, Bennington, Delson and Bourdon will sit for questions for half an hour before half a dozen writers all asking their own, individual questions in a round table format. The writers will then be able to use the quotes in their magazines. And Linkin Park will have gained six stories inside of 30 minutes. None of the writers seem to mind being shunted in and shunted out as if they are cattle. Perhaps they are in awe.

So when Chester Bennington makes his appearance - dressed in a khaki coloured cardigan and cream trousers; with his shaven head and designer spectacles - it's difficult to quell the temptation to begin applauding. Even though it's nearly teatime, Bennington hasn't had his breakfast yet and so sits himself down for a meal of scrambled eggs and griddled sausage. He drinks coffee with two sugars. As a room full of journalists try not to stare - or salivate - while he eats, Chester tells a story of a dream he had last night. He had a gun, a rifle, and he was trying to shoot someone, the problem was, the rifle kept jamming. Fortunately the god of dreams had also supplied the singer with a handgun, a handgun which worked as a handgun should. Chester Bennington makes a pistol shape with his thumbs and the first two fingers of each hand
"Bam, bam," he snaps, jerking each wrist upward.
"Bam, bam -man, I was shooting that f**ker."
Who were you shooting at?
"Some guy."
Why?
"Because he was a crazy f**ker."

This is by far the most interesting, and the most revealing thing Chester Bennington will say to this group of journalists today, because he and Linkin Park have made an art - a fine art - out of talking and talking for hours on end. And saying nothing. Absolutely nothing at all.

Let's try and see it from the band's point of view. Last year Linkin Park destroyed the competition. Their debut album, 2001's `Hybrid Theory`, continued to sell not only past the point attained by their friends and competitors - Papa Roach, Alien Ant Farm, Staind - but continued to sell long after the band had finished promoting it. The last concert of the "Hybrid..." tour came at the Long Beach Arena in Los Angeles a year ago this month, and that was supposed to be that. But in America at least, Linkin Park's debut album kept selling. And selling. And selling. So much so that the next time "Hybrid Theory" turns platinum will be when it sells 10 million copies. The only bands of a similar type to reach this number in the past 15 years are Metallica (with the "Black" album) and Creed (with "Human Clay").
"The overwhelming success of "Hybrid Theory" is exactly what it is," says Chester Bennington. "It's over-whelming.”Hybrid Theory", I think, came out at a time when it was just right for the thing that it was. The stars aligned and something magical happened. And to repeat that - or to assume that you can repeat that - is just ridiculous. It's also extremely pompous in my opinion. To assume that we have that type of fan-base, or that we should expect something like that is just not something we think about."

Still, you can bet it's something that somebody is thinking about, and not just the journalists with their predictable questions about "the pressures of following-up a massively successful album" (with equally predictable answer of "the only pressure we feel is the pressure we put on ourselves", from Mr. Bennington). Part of the media circus that is the Linkin Park promotional road-show this week, features a listen to the very impressive and extremely slick "Meteora" at the Warner Brothers building at the centre of Hamburg. To even be permitted into the same room as the CD - which is being protected from internet piracy as if these pirates were actually about to burst into the building with cutlass in hand and parrot on shoulder - requires a surrender of coat, bag and the consent to a body search before the door will be opened. This, it's explained, is because one copy of "Meteora" has already found its way onto the World Wide Web. Fortunately the CD was watermarked and thus traceable. It was traced back to the office of Managing Director of Warner Music. Not laughing as you hear this story doesn't win you a prize, even if it should.

Elsewhere Linkin Park will do "bits" for German television and European MTV, will pose for photographs for two separate sessions (the band hate having their photo taken and have the attention span of Ritalin addicted puffer fish), will visit the offices of internet provider America On-Line (a corporate partner to the band's record label) and play a concert for 2,000 people at the downtown hall the Dock. And, yes, they will sit in two separate groups of three before more than half a dozen journalists and patiently answer questions simply breathtaking in their banality.

At one point Chester Bennington is forced to explain why it is that his band are not political. This is much like explaining why it is his band are not black. But he does his best. It is, he says, because he finds political songs restrictive, that they belong only to the time and subject they were written about (although nobody told The Clash and The Specials) and that he would prefer to write music that's more timeless. Then, perhaps realising he's sounding stupid (and Chester Bennington is anything but stupid; you can't be this guarded and not have your wits about you) he tries to offer something else, something potentially revealing.
"People have said that our album cover is..."
Brad Delson looks his way and speaks quietly but quickly.
"No let's not go there."
"You don't want to go there?"
"No."
"Okay."

All the time Linkin Park have the people faffing and fawning around them, people acting as if their job was to protect the Lord Jesus from the marauding Romans. It's as if Linkin Park were made of glass and the journalists are drunk and wielding hammers. Down at the wonderfully decrepit Dock - a quick limp from the famous sex maze that is the Reeperbahn - it takes a mammoth effort to decide whether or not the band can spare 20 minutes next week for an additional photo shoot. It takes a finger-pointing explosion of anger from K! Photographer Ross Halfin to get a record company employee to stop nagging about how we're running out of time. And requests to photograph the whole of tonight's concert - as opposed to the one song every other lensman is allowed - may or may not require a phone call to management in Los Angeles to decide. Apparently, that's not a band decision.

It's not that any of this is necessarily known to the band themselves; indeed the next day Mike Shinoda will tell me "It actually freaks me out that you've told me that". Still, when I'm ushered downstairs to the catering room at the Dock to meet Linkin Park, the atmosphere could be cut with a spoon. The introductions are made; the band are seated around tressie tables, eating fillet mignon (bloody) and coconut and mushroom soup (delicious apparently), I'm standing up, feeling like a c**t. Stuck for something to say, I say how I've head a few tracks from the new Metallica album. I say this because Linkin Park are touring with Metallica on this year's US "Summer Sanitarium" tour and might be interested, And thus might give me a great interview. Or something.
"How does the album sound?" asks Chester Bennington.
Fast and heavy.
"Is it as heavy as "Ride the Lightning?”
Heavier.
"Is it as heavy as "Rush?" asks DJ Joseph Hahn. Someone laughs. This is clearly an in-joke and I'm clearly on the outside. I ask Hahn if he likes "Rush," but he doesn't answer. And these are the only words he speaks. Or they would be, were it not for the fact that he spoke to me an hour earlier in the band's people carrier, transporting them from the Hyatt Hotel to the Dock. I was told it would be okay to ride with the band, so in I clambered. Hahn offers a look that is so disdainful that I assume he must be joking,
"Could you ride in the other van?" he says with an inflection that makes the question mark unnecessary.
Okay.
(It's later explained to me, by one of Linkin park's "people" that Hahn didn't mean to sound rude, but the band wanted to approve a video and that they were just "ultra secretive".)

So far, so not so very good. But the next day Chester Bennington and Mike Shinoda go some way ruining the effect created over the previous 24 hours. The time is 11:30 and the pair of them walk into another sumptuous suite at the Hyatt, order another breakfast and sit down for another interview. However with just three people in the room - no-one worrying, no-one cajoling, no-one making things more complicated than they need to be - you sense that the pair are as unmasked and as unguarded as they're likely to allow themselves to appear before a stranger with a tape recorder.

Bennington - with an accent that makes the word "lyrics" sound like "leerics" - talks about his horror stories from stays at "fashionable" hotels with ease and charm. Shinoda - in a black cap and black t-shirt - laughs and gracefully gives way for others to enter the conversation. For a moment - if only for a moment - it's easy to forget that here are two young men who in two years have earned millions of dollars.

Mike Shinoda tells a story as a way of explaining how it is that his band have come to be perceived by those around them. The band were filming the expensive video clip to "Somewhere I Belong", "Meteora's" first single. Because he hadn't played for a while, Shinoda kept cutting his fingers on the guitar strings. Normally when this happens his band-mates would come over and tell him that the injury "sucked" and that he should "get over it". On this occasion three crew members rushed over with medical aid kits and offers of help. They did this, Shinoda realises, because this is what people do around "really famous people". And if they don't do it then they get fired.

Mike Shinoda says that it's strange being "a celebrity" - actually he says that he hates being a celebrity - but both he and Bennington admit that this is what they are (even if the rest of Linkin Park remain remarkably faceless). But if they hate being celebrities then they certainly don't mind conducting interviews in the manner of celebrities, which is to say as little as possible. It takes some effort to get the pair away from stock answers you feel come as naturally to them as to the career politician - and Linkin Park owe much more to New Labour than Nu-Metal - and onto something they haven't prepared in advance, something that isn't a cliché. I put it to the duo that they seem to view the press as the enemy.
"What you have to remember," Mike Shinoda says, "is that the people that write about us are representing us through themselves, or through the magazines they write for. And magazines don’t always care about the bands they write about. The only thing magazines care about are the ads. But it can be okay, and I do have some respect for what the press does. But if you’re reading about us you need to remember that it’s us plus another person. If you buy our album or see us play them you’re seeing us in our purest form. Period.”
Do you like doing press?
“Sometimes.”
Does it bother you that no-one seems to think that you can repeat the commercial success of “Hybrid Theory”?
“Not really”, says Bennington, in just the same way as he said “not really” when asked if it bothered him that advance word on “Meteora” was lousy. “It’s an obvious thing to focus on. It’s like, ‘you sold 10 millions records! Do you except to sell another 10 million records? No. Would it be nice? Yeah. Is it reality? No, it’s not.”

Of the millions of people who bought “Hybrid Theory” how many would you consider to be true Linkin Park fans?
“I don’t know, that’s a tough question,” says Bennington. “I’m not sure I’d be comfortable putting a figure on it.”
What’s your house like?
“None of your business,” says Shinoda.
What’s the most extravagant thing you’ve bought with your money?
“I wouldn’t use the word extravagant,” says Shinoda (no, of course he wouldn’t) “but I’ve just bought a dog.”
When you fly, what class do you fly?
“Depends,” says Shinoda. “If we’re flying from New York to LA then there’s no point flying anything other than coach (economy) because the seats are just the same. But if you’re flying from LA to Singapore – like, 21 hours – then sometimes you have to think about what you want to do. But it’s pretty hard to justify a $15,000 plane ticket.”

The interview with Shinoda and Bennington lasts an hour, and the pair are nothing but jocular, accommodating and polite in spirit. They are friendly and likeable, but this seems to come in place of being revealing or candid. I put it to the pair that interviewing them is like how I would imagine interviewing Tiger Woods to be. And Mike Shinoda and Chester Bennington look at each other and smile. They smile the most knowing of smiles.

Perhaps this shouldn’t be a surprise, though. Throughout our day-and-a-half in the company of Linkin Park, the thing that seemed to obsess the band most was their desire to be seen as universal; an instinct, it seems, that informs everything the group does. There’s no better place to see this than in the band’s lyrics, which as focused as they are – with their tales of rage and woe, confusion and alienation – refuse to focus in on any one issue or subject. So what may appear to be a single love song may well be about something else entirely. It’s the emotion that matters to them, and not the specific source of that emotion. And in that this context it’s possible to relate their troubles to almost anything that may be happening within your own life.

If Linkin Park are willing to cater their music to this end then it’s hardly a surprise that they pursue an agenda of generality, cliché and soundbite with the press. It would be interesting to know what the elevation of being unknown to being perceived as un-missable feels like, but the answers are not here. It would be enlightening to know how it really feels to have the shadow of a truly phenomenal album casting a pall over your forthcoming release, but the question is batted away like an insect at a picnic table. But it is an irony – in an age of confessional interviews and press catharsis – that Linkin Park’s seeming lack of individuality is one of the things that makes them truly individual.

Like the song says: “They just glide down the surface of things.”

Written by Ian Winwood.

  Kerrang!: December 2004 Issue

The Revolution will not be televised
Linkin Park are back, collaborating with rapper Jay-Z on their bravest release yet. But for vocalist Chester Bennington, holed up in Rome, the spotlight is a lonely place. And what he won't tell you about the rock-hip-hop meeting of minds reveals as much as he will...

Rome is buzzing. The air is thick with hype, hotel corridors thick with celebrities. Everywhere you look, guerrilla film crews are setting up in front of fountains, arcades, avenues and glorious buildings. In front of them stand perma-tanned, preened and posing presenters from all over the world. Swedish mingles with German mingles with Japanese, but, deep down, the words are all the same. They are saying the same things that English TV presenters are saying: "this is special, this is the biggest gathering of white toothed celebrities we'll see this year and we're going to bring it all to you. Stay tuned and you can have all the backstage gossip, the hidden asides and all the hair product endorsements beamed straight into your homes.” And they hang around on every corner hoping for a glimpse of Beyonce's heel or Ozzy Osborne’s coat as it sweeps into the distance.

Because these are the MTV Europe Music Awards. And awards shows don't get bigger than this.

Everywhere you look there is electricity-it's in the faces of thousands of tourists who have descended on Rome to say they were there; it's in the monsterous displays and neon electric stages that sparkle around the capital, one almost putting the coliseum in the shade as it blinks and whistles in front of it. Electricity lines the avenues on which grandstands have been erected for those who haven't got the credentials to get into the awards themselves-and even those have been sold out months in advance by the clamouring to get near music's most glamorous night out.

Nowhere is the electricity more obvious than in the exclusive hotel lobbies in which the stars are hiding. Occasionally there's the odd waft of fame as someone famous swishes through the palatial entrance halls of the five-star hotels and heads all turn as one.

Mostly, though, the quietly humming hallways throng with record company executives, hangars-on, management and gophers as they panic about their star's "needs", about whether the "right" people have paid the right amount of money to ensure their charge gets the right amount of coverage. These people are running on adrenaline, placating their stars so that no last-minute hissy fit can be thrown.
Because this is a cyclone: a tornado of wealth, intrusion, buisness and money making all wrapped up in an awards show. The actual business of who wins what, it seems, comes a very distant second to the first place of gaining exposure and being seen.

Linkin Park are in the middle of all of this-in town ostensibly to present an award. Except it's not Linkin Park- it's singer Chester Bennington and sample/decks dude Joe Hahn. And the reason they're here isn't so much that they have an overriding urge to present someone with an MTV statue, but because they have product to promote. Of course.

Their collaboration with Jay-Z on the recent 'Collision Course' EP was surprising for two reasons. One that it happened in the first place- who would have seriously predicted that six months ago- and two: how good, albeit slick and produced it.

It's also likely to be the last we see or hear of Linkin Park for a year. The world knows it too. Within an hour or two off stepping off the plane from America they are ensconced in interviews, facing down European TV presenters' microphones, the rock press, the gutter press, gossip press and tabloid press- even Britain's own 'The Sun' is here to chat, that's how much of a household name Linkin Park are now.

Its a hectic schedule and the good grace with which the pair answer the same questions over and over again belies their incredible patience, strength of will politeness, the numbing effect of jet-lag, or, more likely, the dedicated professionalism for which Linkin Park have become a byword.

It's something that takes its toll. After day one's duties are concluded, Bennington eventually stumbles to his beautiful five-star hotel room to prepare for an exclusive meal later in the evening. He’s travelled here with his wife and, while the pair are getting ready, the door handle to the hotel bathroom falls off. He calls the front desk who send up three repairmen to fix it.

Three hours later, and with a gloriously Italian sense of diligence, the repair men are all sat on their arses in Bennington's room with the door handle no closer to being repaired than the workman are to the dark side of the moon. Bennington snaps. He demands to move hotels: why should he and his wife be expected to put up with this? why should they be forced to be late for their meal because of the incompetence of Italian workmen? So he moves hotels and gets over it. Problem solved, no big deal.

This, of course, is the way that he tells it. From the other side, amid the employees of his record company, it's a disaster because no one knows what’s going on. Emails and phone calls are flying from mobile phone to hand held palm-pilots: ”Chester’s unhappy, call me urgently." No one knows why he has thrown a celebrity tantrum? Will he still want to present tomorrow? Will the scheduled interviews and press still take place? The adrenaline begins to mount again.

This is the atmosphere in Rome- the whims of the stars are at the forefront of everyone's mind because this is the talent, this is the money and if things don't happen then people's jobs are on the line. MTV can make or break a career like that. And nobody wants to let on to a journalist what's happening because their stars have to be seen to be perfect, to be beautiful people, not to have tempers or to succumb to the effects of tiredness, of talking about yourself all day, of being inconvenienced by lazy workmen.

By 10 o'clock the next day it all seems like exactly what it was: a storm in a teacup. Bennington and Hahn are doing their interviews in the hotel they were originally staying in. They're splitting their time between the basements, under which a great glass floor reveals ancient Roman relics and ruins, and the rooftop restaurant, from which there are immaculate views across the Rome skyline, into private bedrooms and terraced roof gardens. For now we're on the roof, on a mild and sunny day. A camera crew is setting up in one corner, a water polishing glasses in another.

The lift pings open and Linkin Park's security men swagger out, checking whether the venue is suitable for the photo shoot and TV interveiw. The lift pings again and Chester Bennington walks out.

He looks fantastic, in black pinstriped trousers, black T-shirt and shades. His closely cropped hair works well against it all. Perhaps one of the reasons for the intake of breath from everyone around have become so used to the Bennington image: that of the slightly geeky, pasty, scrawny guy in glasses and pulled-down cap. "I had laser eye surgery," he says as he chats animatedly with the record company and security people. "It completely changed my life." One of them says they fancy doing the same and, off-handedly, he replies "I'll put you in touch with my doctor, He'll give you a freebie if you say I sent you."

The lift pings again, but no one really notices. Joseph Hahn meanders out, standing on the fringes for a minute before saying hello. It's not that he looks bad, it's not that he's any less important to Linkin Park, it’s more that compared to Bennington today, he could be ...well..anyone. There's none of the star presence; in fact he looks just like everyone else in a T-shirt, Trainers, jeans and over-gelled hair. But the pair are close, they stand for photos and laugh together then move over to the TV interview where they are laughing again, Bennington urging Hahn to talk, sitting back patiently then leaning forwards and reinforcing the sampler's points.

Then the whole operation moves downstairs, into the cavernous basement. A table of coffees, teas, sandwiches, and other foods are waiting, but the pair ignore everything but the coffee. Bennington is in high spirits ("Why do they put in the coffee here?" he asks. "I had a few cups yesterday to keep me going and I was buzzing for hours.")and he talks excitedly to Hahn about a satirical cartoon show he saw in America, laughing in-between sentences, "They had this little pig with weird powers-ha ha ha!- it's supposed to be all sad and everything! ha ha! But these little oriental kinds come up and say ' Please Mr Pig, stop making those shoes, we work in a real sweatshop and you're taking our money'. The pigs like,' Fuck you'. HaHa! So an army of sweatshop kids kick the shit out of him, dude...HaHa!"
He giggles manically while Hahn looks on bemused, trying to understand what his friend's going on about. But Bennington's on a roll.

"It's the funniest thing I've seen in my life."
Hahn is still nonplussed.
"...maybe you need to see it," Chester admits. But he's in high spirits and talkative; and that, from what is written about Linkin Park is rare. But as soon as the questions start he's serious, even though, at first, the questions are innocuous enough. He also seems to want to take Hahn under his wing. In order to get the ball rolling, you ask how the Linkin Park AND Jay Z project came about and there's a long uncomfortable pause as if you've just asked whether the band inject crack into their rectums.

"...oh," says Hahn, looking a little uncomfortable. "Someone in New York put together this mash-up between 'One Step Closer' and Jay Z's '99 Problems'...", but Bennington is twitchy and cuts in with a fuller explanation;

"There is this DJ in New York, he does that sort of thing in a late night show. He mashes together hip-hop and rock songs and, when he played the Jay-Z and Linkin Park one the phones went off the hook. MTV in New York heard about it and came up with the idea of doing a show based around it. The idea was for one song I think , and it spiralled from there."

And this is how it goes for the next half-hour. When Bennington lets Hahn take a question, he patiently waits for him to give his answer before jumping in and giving his own answer. What emerges is, you suspect, the official line. Linkin Park are very good at not giving much away about themselves. They do give good quotes and soundbytes, but they're often the same quotes that everyone else gets. It means that, in the past, and with good reason, interviews with them have been compared to interviews with people like Tiger Woods: you get a good line in answers but you realise they don't actually mean that much, they don't give anything but already-established facts away. The reason for this, though isn't some sort of Machiavellian plat, an inter-band arrangement about exactly they will say. More its a result of talking about themselves so much that when constantly faced with the same questions it's hard to come up with a new line or a different angle every time.

It's also because they are professionals in every sense of the word. They understand the responsibilities of doing press, of putting in the appearances at awards show, in-stores and record signings. It’s an attitude they also put into their music. It's an attitude they certainly put into the 'Collision Course' EP.

It started when Linkin Park came off tour. Mike Shinoda headed straight into the studio to start putting tracks together. The band then started rehearsing them. The whole process took about a week, which is fairly staggering. ”Well," says Bennington, "we are very professional but it was also something that came together fairly easily. I think that's because of the artists involved. We're at the top of our game and Jay-Z is at the top of his game."

Then Jay-Z flew in to lay down his vocals, which says Bennington,was a nerve racking experience. ”I was thinking, 'I hope he doesn't think we're a bunch of idiots'. I have a silly sense of humour when I'm working in the studio and I know the other Linkin Park guys understand it. There was a moment when there was a weird track on the mixing desk. I was saying, 'turn down the poop track'. Then Jay-Z shows up and I'm wondering if he's looking at me like, 'What the fuck are you on?'"

The next day the band rehearsed with Jay-Z for an hour and a half and the day after played a full set in The Roxy on Sunset Boulevard,Los Angles. The entire process, from the minute Jay-Z walked into the studio to the end of the gig, took just 72 hours. Again, Bennington wants to stress, "Thats how professional we are".

The story, as they tell it, sounds sensationally easy. There are however, hints that it wasn't quite like that-not that either Bennington or Hahn come close to admitting it. The first thing is that, the moment the gig finished, Jay-Z walked straight out of the venue, straight into a car and went straight to the airport to get out of there. It might have been a busy schedule of course, but it seems strange he didn't want to hang around a minute more than he had to. It's led to accusations that both Jay-Z and Linkin Park were essentially trying to cash in on each other's audiences, to grab a few of each others' fans for their obvious mutual benefit.

"Honestly, it’s not like we took a big cheque from MTV to do this," protests Hahn, but he hasn't quite answered the question. "Hey, it's not like we're Marilyn Manson trying to go urban", says Bennington, taking over. "We've always been a band with a diverse crowd. I've been stopped on the streets by people saying,’ its so cool you've done this because it's so unexpected'. They said it's opened their eyes to Linkin Park and to rock music. We’re doing this because it's interesting, because we enjoy it. We’re doing it because people who enjoy music enjoy having their ears opened. We may gain some fans and I guess we risk losing a few." But, having said that, the singer then goes on to say:

"Jay-Z said it really good on the documentary. We had actually screened the fans at the show because we wanted to make sure all the fans we brought enjoyed Jay-Z's music. We told Jay that we'd put out a questionnaire on our website asking who our fans' favourite groups were. If they said Jay-Z and Linkin Park, then we knew we'd give them tickets. And Jay said' yeah, and if they say 'we don't want to hear any of that rap shit,'then they aint comin'."

None of which, admittedly sits very well with Bennington's assertion that he wants to open people's ears to other forms of music. Another sign that the project wasn't the easiest for Bennington in particular was that it meant a lot of lyrics' meanings became worthless, that he was forced to sing in happier keys that eroded the bleakness and intended catharsis of his original words.” It definitely took some pride swallowing," Chester admits. "I'd agree that, perhaps more than anyone else in Linkin Park , I've come from the most rock background. While we were doing it I was thinking ' I don't know if this is going to work’. I was thinking all the darkness was being sucked out of the song."

This is a rare lack of confidence from the singer: for most of the interview his answers have been positive and a little bland..like this, ”It worked very well”, ”It was a real challenge to do something different" and "We've always collaborated with people: it really expands our understanding of different aspects of music". Suddenly he realises that his last answer was hardly the assertive statement of a man happy with his work, so he adds: "But I went along with it because musically it worked. It was also interesting to try something different for the sake of our art." And we are back on steady ground.

And that is about all of interest that Linkin Park are saying on the project, which is a shame, really, because this should be almost the definition of Linkin Park. Marrying hip-hop and rock is something they've always done and, as such, you feel they should be in a jubilant mood. The EP also presents a few different sides to Linkin Park. There's humour in opening the album with Bennington's white-boy screech of" I ordered a fucking frappiccino", there’s the relief of seeing Linkin Park ditch their political correctness by using Jay-Z's "99 problems but a bitch ain't one' lyric and there's the confirmation that Linkin Park are highly skilled musicians that can put a project like this together, complete with a live show, in such a short amount of time.

As they prepare to face another microphone they look slightly withered. They also say, with some relief, that they'd be immensely surprised if there was another Linkin Park album within the next 12 months. Its a relief, you sense, that's born from not having to talk for a little while and from being able to rest a little from the road. There they sit, ever so slightly crumpled. Then they turn on their smiles for the next interview.

Thanks alot to BustedSuck88!

  Kerrang!: Week of July 27th

This was supposed to be one of the greatest summers in Chester Bennington's life. Linkin Park's second album proper, 'Meteora', has become a fixture in the upper reaches of the 'Billboard' charts and sold more than five million copies worldwide already. There were festivals in Europe to play with his band, and a video shoot for the band's song 'Numb' was scheduled for Prague, Czechoslovakia. Most importantly for Bennington, with Linkin Park hitching a ride on Metalica's Summer Sanitarium tour, it meant a few months in the sunshine with wife Samantha and son Draven to play happy families.

And then it all went to hell in the space of half an hour. "I thought I was gonna die," says Bennington today, sounding very matter-of -fact about a ferocious viral infection that landed him in hostpital. He looks up into the blue skies of Los Angeles, reflecting on his extended stay. Today, Linkin Park are at the city's First Congregational Church, located in the Korean district, substituting this very Gothic church for those of Prague. They were forced to reschedule everything once their lead singer was taken ill over a month ago. Inside, among the pews, guitarist Brad Delson, bassist Phoenix, vocalist Mike Shinoda and drummer Rob Bourdon are being put through their paces by the video's director and LP DJ, Joe Hahn. But Bennington isn't needed for the moment, and he relaxes outside in a rather sparsely adorned courtyard.

"It was werid," says the bespectacled singer, smiling a bit ruefully. "I was in peak phyiscal condition a few months back, I was ready to go, and then, on that one morning, I wake up with a slight ache in my back. Two hours after that, I feel like I'm going to die! Over the next nine days, I lose 17 pounds. I'm still having problems with my energy."
Bennington is hardly the most strapping young lad in rap-metal, and seemingly never was. It's actually difficult to imagine his thin frame losing the extra 17 pounds, and still being able to stand up. Today, clad in East LA-style gangster wear for the video, he speaks in a soft voice, occasionally emitting a slight cough, that befits his slow recuperation. Maybe he was the victim of a voodoo curse? Which god exactly did he offend?

"All of them!" he chirps excitedly, laughing. Bennington sits back in his chair. Linkin Park are famous for their non-commital interviews with the press, resorting to well-rehearsed answers that amount to empty calories. But there must be something in the air today that allows Bennnigton to let down his guard, and talk about some of the things he's kept to himself for a long time. Of course, what better place than a church for a confession?

As many Linkin Park fans are aware, Chester Bennington was last to join the Californian band. Unlike the others, he wasn't from or a resident of Los Angeles, instead growing up in Phoenix, Arizona, Before his parents divorce(when Chester, the youngest of four children, was 11 years old), the Benningtons moved from home to home constantly.

Why did your parents move around so much?
"I don't know why, probably because they weren't really that good with money or whatever. I probably lived in every city there - Scottsdale, Tolleson and Tempe."

How did your parents divorce affect you?
"It threw me. I was used to having my mom wake me up in the morning, making breakfast...and then my dad would come home from work in the evening. Normal kind of crap. Kids need routine, you know? I was an athletic kid but I just stopped caring about it, and I stopped doing well in school. I started smoking weed and going to parties. I think I was 11 when I started smoking pot."

After the split, Bennington lived with his father, a police officer and detective, but his father wasn't prepared to deal with a son harbouring a burgeoning rebellious streak. Like some anti-drug propaganda warning, pot was soon leading Bennington towards harder substances. Unhappy with his family, distancing himself from his brothers and sisters, he embraced all forms of illicit intake, ranging from LSD, to methamphetamines, to booze.

Were you using drugs to escape your reality at this point?
"I don't know if I was trying to escape everything in my life, I just liked the feeling. I liked to get f*cked-up. Those years shaved a few layers off the pencil."

Did you ever fall foul of the law?
"I was actually too nice. I didn't steal anything. Well...the only things I would steal were from people who knew I was stealing from them, so that they could claim them on their insurance and get reimbursed. These would be like 'inside jobs', so they weren't really like stealing."



Ethically Dubious deeds aside, Bennington's escapades with drug abuse slowed when his mother, a nurse, saw the then-17-year-old and was horrified by her son's desiccated, 115-pound appearance. "She said, 'You look like you stepped out of Auschwitz'," he says "by then, I wasn't smoking a lot of pot anymore, because, you know, pot's for hippies. I was on the verge of becomming a junkie at that time, because I was thinking, 'well, what else is there to do? Oh, maybe I'll go shoot up something'." Those days of crime and self-punishment began to ebb once Chester Bennington began to take music more seriously. He was a huge fan of Depeche Mode and Stone Temple Pilots, and his Phoenix-area group, Grey Daze, were starting to draw a small following on the Arizona club scene. Grey Daze hired an LA based attorney to help send their demos to the major labels, but never succeeded in gaining much interest. But there were other rewards to playing clubs: one Grey Daze fan would eventually become Mrs Chester Bennington.

What was your life like when you first met Samantha?
"Everything I owned was kept in a milk crate, and I had a futon. I worked at Burger King part-time so that I could practice all night. I didn't have a car, I didn't even have a bike. I had a skateboard and that's how I got around."

How did she respond to this lifestyle?
"She was alright with it. I said , 'This is what I'm going to do, and if you can handle that, that's cool. If you can't, then you should probably date someone else'. (Laughs) And she married me!"

Along with this romantic development, there were other incentives for Bennington to start weaning himself off of the hard stuff. He detalis one scary story in which he witnessed several members of the 'Mexican Mafia' as they broke into his friend's home - with Bennington visting at the time - tearing the place apart and pistol-whipping several of the inhabitants. The gangsters left him alone, but he had seen the writing on the wall. "I had watched another one of my friends leave the state because some big drug dealers were out to kill him, because he owed them tens of thousands of dollars," he remembers. "All of this was making me think, 'you know, maybe I don't want to hang out here anymore...'."

By the time he was in his early-20s, Chester Bennigton had turned much of his life around. Although they were by no means well off, he and Samantha owned two homes in Arizona, and were working in a local real estate market. To learn more about the business world, he would sneak into classes at Arizona State University without paying the required tuition fees (unlike the rest of Linkin Park, Bennington doesn't have a college diploma.) And although Grey Daze were but a fading memory, Bennigton stayed in touch with his attorney in California. At 23, Bennington would recive the opportunity of his lifetime by hearing about a young LA band named Xero, who desperately needed a singer. With his wife's support, Bennington flew out to meet them, and in a matter of months, Xero would become Hybrid Theory, and later, Linkin Park. Bennington knows that his son will be watching him throughout the rest of his life, and as the singer in one of the most popular bands of our time, he wants to maintain an even keel on his creativity and sanity. But instead of feeling great, his body just won't cooperate: he continues to struggle with acid reflux disease, an aliment that forced him to cancel shows two years ago, due to an infected pharynx in his throat. He jokes that even water makes his stomach upset. Then there was this years infection that sent him to intensive care at LA's Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre. The onset of the attack was frigtening. He suddenly found himself losing feeling in his fingers, followed by his arms, feet and legs. His wife found him passed out in his home, collapsed on the floor, which he still doesn't recall happening to him. At hospital, he was administered morphine("the black shroud of death" as he describes it), and the pain medication Dilaudid. Through it all, surronded by his family and friends, Bennington says that he was angry with himself for his body failure to stay healthy.

Was your stay in hospital painfull?
"Hospitals suck dude. I would only sleep, like, three hours a night and couldn't sleep at all during the day. Every few hours, someone would come in and poke me with a needle and take more blood. I still have pain in my lower back, and no-one knows what's causing it. They're like, 'you have a degenerative back problem'. Well yeah but who f*cking doesn't?"

Has being ill made you regret the abuse you put your body through in your teenage years?
"I don't know if it taught me anything other than the fact that someone could die from them. Living that way is fun for a little bit, but drugs hurt when you come off them. It's really fun when your high, and not fun when you're not, so you always have to be high no matter what. Some drugs just hurt worse than others. And I think every drug addict wants to be a rock star."

We don't get a chance to speak to Chester Bennington's bandmates today. Everyone is beavering about in their own little Linkin Park world, and soon Chester is called back to the set. Even while he sits here in the church courtyard, his singing comes flying down the corridors, singing verses from 'Numb': I've become so numb/I can't feel you there/Become so tired/So much more aware..'.

What do you think of Linkin Park's astounding success?
"I've always belived that this was what I was going to do with my life, so I feel like I would have been successful anyway. It just so happens I found these guys. I think it would have turned out the same way even at some later date, that I would have found these guys eventually. That's just the way life works. But if not, I wouldn't have quit. Twenty years time I could have gone down in history as Phoenix's longest-running loser musician."

Has your recent illness made you re-examine your life?
"It kind of wakes you up a little bit. I thought I was going to die, and something like that can remind you that no matter how healthy you are, or how often you work out, or how successful or happy you are, you can still die for no reason. Being in Linkin Park is really cool, but when the time comes and I'm not in Linkin Park, at least I'll be alive, and that's fine with me. I love being who I am and doing what I do, and all the great stuff that comes along with it is awsome...but reality's real. (laughs) Yeah, man, reality's really real!"

You're clearly quite the student of philosophy.
"No way. My philosophy is 'Always pass the joint to the left, and don't drink and drive'."

Thanks to PtsOfAthrtyLP17 for posting this article!

  Meteora Release Article

Click here to view the article.

  PasadenaStarNews.com - Rapper sets up Art Center s

PASADENA -- Linkin Park rapper and Art Center College of Design alumnus Mike Shinoda has established an endowed scholarship at the college, it was announced Thursday by Scarlett Osterling, senior vice president of institutional advancement. The scholarship will be generated by proceeds from the sale of a skate shoe designed by Shinoda and DC Shoes.

The collaboration between Shinoda and DC Shoes is the first alumni-corporate partnership made to endow an Art Center scholarship. DC Shoes, a skateboard shoe company, commissioned Shinoda to design and customize their product as part of their Remix Series line. Mr. Shinoda will donate 100 percent of his proceeds from the sale of the shoe to the scholarship, with DC Shoes matching his contribution dollar for dollar.

The Michael K. Shinoda Endowed Scholarship will be awarded to entering graphic design or i llustration students based primarily on need. As an endowed scholarship, Shinoda's gift will create educational opportunities for students in perpetuity.

Shinoda graduated in 1998 with a bachelor's degree in illustration.

He is providing DC Shoes with his own hand-drawn artwork for their limited edition DC Clientele Remix Shoe. His artwork will be featured on the insole, hangtag and shoebox. The shoe will be available in late October.

Thanks to JJ79 for the article!

  Rolling Stone Magazine-March 14th,2002

Linkin Park

The Magnitude of Their Revenge and the Worst-Case Scenario

By David Fricke

Chester Bennington answered the phone on March 20th, 1999, at his home in Phoenix. The guy on the other end of the line, Jeff Blue, vice president of A&R at Zomba Music in Los Angeles, came straight to the point: "I'm going to give you your big break. I have a great band for you." The band was called Xero, and they needed a singer. The date happened to be Bennington's twenty-third birthday; Blue called him in the middle of a surprise party.
The next day, Bennington -- whose L.A.-- based attorney had recommended him to Blue -- received a Xero package in the mail: a demo with the group's previous singer and one with just the instrumental tracks. Blue told Bennington, "I want your interpretation of the songs." Bennington wrote and recorded new vocals over the band's playing and sent the results to Blue by FedEx.

Two days after that, Bennington was in L.A., formally auditioning for Xero at their Hollywood rehearsal space. He arrived with his favorite microphone, some clothes and the blessing of his wife, Samantha, who had stayed behind in Phoenix. He had also quit his job as an assistant at a digital-services firm.

"There was a lot of fear," Bennington admits, smiling with love and relief at Samantha, seated next to him in a cozy booth in a restaurant across the street from the beach in Santa Monica. "We had a lot to lose - our credit to destroy, a relationship to destroy." Both are in fine shape. Chester and Samantha, who were married in 1996, just bought a new home down in Redondo Beach and are expecting their first child, a son, in May.

"But when I got that tape," Bennington says, "we looked at each other and went, 'This is it, this is the one. It's gonna happen, even if it takes five years.' " He was way off. Three years after he took that phone call, Bennington - a slender dynamo with black-rimmed eyeglasses, a ring piercing his lower lip and a shrapnel-laced howl that sounds like it comes from someone twice his size -- is the singer in the hottest new band in rock.

After he joined, Xero changed their name to Hybrid Theory. They are now called Linkin Park.

The arithmetic is breathtaking. Released by Warner Bros. in October 2000, Linkin Park's debut album, Hybrid Theory, has sold 6 million copies in the U.S. and more than 11 million worldwide. Twelve songs of compact fire indivisibly blending alternative metal, hip-hop and turntable art, Hybrid Theory was the best-selling record in America last year -- trumping albums by Jay-Z, 'NSync and Britney Spears -- and still sells nearly 100,000 copies a week.

Linkin Park -- Bennington and founding members guitarist Brad Delson, rapper Mike Shinoda, drummer Rob Bourdon, DJ Joseph Hahn and bassist David Farrell, a.k.a. Phoenix -- are also up for three Grammys on February 27th, including Best Rock Album and Best New Artist. The band's maiden DVD, Frat Party at the Pankake Festival, is a Top Ten seller, and an official fan club, launched in November, already has 10,000 members. "Each week, we're in awe," Bennington, 25, says with a deep gulp of air.

Executives at other record companies must be in tears. For three years, Linkin Park were rejected by every major label in the business and by a lot of indies, as well. Warner Bros. passed three times before finally signing the band in late '99. Blue, who gave the group a development deal in 1997 after seeing just one show, recalls a Xero club date in Los Angeles packed with A&R scouts. They had all fled by the third song. "The place was empty," says Blue, now a vice president of A&R at Warner Bros. and the executive producer of Hybrid Theory. "You could hear crickets." When Bennington arrived in 1999, the band played forty-two showcases for labels and, the singer says, "got turned down by everybody."

It is hard to imagine how the suits blew it. At a soundstage in North Hollywood, where Linkin Park are rehearsing for their current Project: Revolution Tour with Cypress Hill, they romp and roar with an invention and intensity free of gangsta affectation and devil-metal posturing - closer to classic Faith No More than mere electric Eminem. Delson, a wiry paragon of concentration who wears a bulky set of headphones as he plays, colors his power chords in "Crawling" and "Papercut" with ringing harmonics that betray his affection for U2 and the Smiths. Hahn scratches custom-pressed discs of his own samples (he does not use other artists' records) with ambient brawn, often charging behind Delson like a second guitar. Over Bourdon's tumbling funk in "Runaway," Bennington and Shinoda shoot and share rhymes like they're joined at the lip, their bodies rocking in spasms of conviction.

"We hit a lot of roadblocks - we could have easily given up," says Delson, 24, during a chicken-dinner break at a nearby Popeyes. "But we said, 'We know what we have is great. We're gonna keep going until someone else thinks so.' It should be inspirational for people to know that if you really go for something and are willing to bust your ass, then you can make it happen."

It is clear, in their manner and chatter, that Linkin Park are wrestling with the magnitude of their revenge. Hahn, a twenty-four-year-old Korean-American who conceives and directs videos for the band, talks about success with a guarded tone. "It has been a blessing to get to this point," he says before rehearsal, trying to steady himself in a broken chair. "But when you're an outsider looking in, it seems like a bigger deal than when you're in it. It's like when you graduate high school: You wait for that day to come, and when you actually get there, you're like, 'OK, what next?' "

Farrell, 25, turns to Hahn in mild surprise. "I don't know if you remember this," the bassist says, "but three or four years ago, we asked ourselves, like every other band, 'What do we want out of this?' We all went home and wrote down goals. Mike came back with his list of goals, and one of them was 'I want to win a Grammy.' We were like, 'Wow, that's crazy. It's cool, but it's crazy.' "

Bennington, who had already done hard time with a Phoenix band called Grey Daze, is a charming mix of bull-elephant certainty and childlike astonishment. Before Hybrid Theory's release, he made a bet with Myra Simpson, national promotions manager at Warner Bros. "She had a triple-platinum Stone Temple Pilots plaque," says Bennington, a huge STP fan. "She said, 'If you go gold by Christmas, I'll give it to you.' I said, 'Cough it up.' " He laughs. "I was joking."

Sure enough, Hybrid Theory was gold by Christmas 2000. "And I got my STP plaque," Bennington says, beaming. He slept with it in his bunk on the tour bus every night. "Nobody touched it."

"I'll tell you the worst-case scenario." Shinoda, 25, is sitting under a patio umbrella outside a Starbucks. The rapper - a second-generation Japanese-American whose father, as a young boy, lived in a U.S. internment camp during World War II -- is explaining how he juggled his course load at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, with shows and rehearsals in the growing-pain days of Linkin Park.

"I'd do classes from nine to four, four to seven and seven to ten at night," he says over the swish of traffic from the Ventura Freeway half a block away. "I'd go from there to band practice in Hollywood for two or three hours, then all the way back to my parents' house and work on paintings until I couldn't do it anymore. Then I'd get up in the morning and do it all again."

"A week could be awful," Shinoda goes on, "especially if we had a show on Friday. I'd try to get my friends to come, and they'd go, 'Screw you, I've got a triptych due on Monday. I can't get the second or third painting done if I go to your show.' "

Everyone in Linkin Park has a version of that story - of balancing school, jobs and the DIY demands of being in an unsigned band. Bourdon, 23, waited tables, worked in a bowling alley and studied accounting at Santa Monica College. Hahn also attended Art Center, where he met Shinoda, but left after a year to be a freelance illustrator, designing monsters and robots for the movies. Delson split his time between UCLA (where he received a degree in mass communications), songwriting in Shinoda's bedroom and an internship at Zomba Music, where his boss was Jeff Blue. "Brad took in the entire atmosphere of what it takes to get an act signed," says Blue. "He helped me send out Macy Gray demos and set up her showcases."

Linkin Park are not only one of the best-educated bands in new metal (Farrell, a native of Massachusetts and Delson's roommate at UCLA, holds a degree in philosophy); they are surely one of the best organized. Each member, according to his expertise, is in charge of some aspect of the group's artistic and business interests. As Hahn puts it, "We're the only guys that really get it. This is our career, and we take it seriously."

He and Shinoda are the visual generals; they created the drawings for the cover of Hybrid Theory. Delson and Bourdon specialize in finance and marketing. Bennington designs a clothing line and writes all of the lyrics with Shinoda. Farrell, who left the band before the making of Hybrid Theory but returned just prior to its release, writes a regular tour report for Linkin Park's Web site -- no small chore: Linkin Park played 324 shows last year, almost a gig a day.



Excerpted from RS 891, March 14, 2002

  Spin Magazine - May 2003 Issue Cover Story

Linkin Park are more than the eight-times-platinum "nice guys" of nü metal. They're crusaders who'll endure any torture--even near-death spider bites--to bring salvation to a nation of teenage anger prisoners. And their new album, Meteora, might just save your life, too...

This one time, at band camp--okay, it was actually Ozzfest 2001, but it really felt like being at camp, and there were bands there, and it was summer--this huge spider bit Linkin Park's Chester Bennington on the ass. Bennington is one of Linkin Park's two singers, the one who does the real singing and most of the screaming. The spider was, like, a black widow or something. The welt--which Bennington shows off, with a mix of pride and terror, on Linkin Park's best-selling DVD Frat Party at the Pankake Festival--is awe-inspiring in a Jackass kind of way: black and blue and about the size of an orange.

Things got very gross very quickly. The glands in Bennington's neck and armpits swelled up; then, as the poison permeated his bloodstream, he found hard, painful lumps all over his body. "I thought I had cancer," he says now. He was delusional; he couldn't put a sentence together. He'd be walking, and a wall would come out of nowhere and smack him. Bennington's doctor prescribed Cipro, an antibiotic now known for treating inhalation anthrax, but the singer was so confused that he kept addressing his physician as "Dr. Cipro." Dr. Cipro ordered him to sit out the band's last two Ozzfest dates, but Bennington refused.

Even under the best circumstances, Linkin Park's live performances are emotionally and physically brutal, and Bennington would not dial it down--"I don't like to hold back," he says, "because that's how you hurt yourself." So, for two shows, poisoned and confused, he let out that lung-shredding rebel yell--the sound of a man ripping Band-Aids off his very soul--the way he always does, and jumped off the risers and the amps and the DJ booth, the way he always does. But he had Cipro battling spider venom in his blood, and something about that cocktail made his depth perception go all goofy. "He fell on his face a couple times," Bennington's co-frontman, Mike Shinoda, says, "like he didn't expect the ground to be there so soon."

If you ask Linkin Park about why they do what they do, about their apparently bottomless commitment to the work of being a band, they'll say the things big rock bands always say--that they're in it for the music and for the fans. They're a big rock band--it's their job to say these things. But there's talk, and there's action, and if, in the course of this story, Linkin Park seem like they're just talking, think about Bennington performing with poison in his blood, because even if a lot of the people in the heat and dust of the crowd were just there to pound Bud Light all day and heckle Ozzy's wrinkly warlock ass all night, there might have been someone out there who shelled out 37 bucks because they really needed to scream along.

Rapper/producer Mike Shinoda is living proof of just how far an art-school education can take you. When Shinoda, 26, was attending Pasadena's Art Center College of Design, he was also playing music all night with friends Brad Delson (now Linkin Park's guitarist, then a UCLA communications major) and Joseph Hahn, who met Shinoda at Art Center and is now Linkin Park's DJ. Bennington joined later, after leveling all comers at a 1999 audition. The band's 2000 debut, Hybrid Theory--which included a liner note shoutout from Shinoda to his former neighbors, "for putting up with us recording this screaming in my bedroom"--became the best-selling record of 2001, thanks to a series of tunefully tortured singles ("One Step Closer," "Crawling," "In the End") and tireless touring, from Ozzfest to Family Values to the band's own Projekt Revolution.

"They're really serious guys who keep control of their sh!t," says fellow Ozzfester Jacoby Shaddix of Papa Roach. "I made good friends with Chester on tour. He's a punk kid like me, from a f-cked-up small town. I'd have to sneak him away to go party--the other guys in the band would be like, 'Keep it straight,' but I'd pull him away."

In 2001, Shinoda and Hahn appeared on the X-ecutioners' single "It's Goin' Down," helping the New York City turntablist crew score a surprise pop hit. Last year, Linkin Park released Reanimation, an ambitiously weird remix album on which Shinoda, Hahn, and hip-hop producers such as Kutmasta Kurt took a digital razor to Hybrid Theory. Underground MCs like Aceyalone and Phoenix Orion showed up to spit, and rock vocalists like Staind's Aaron Lewis and Korn's Jonathan Davis showed up to vent. The band gave all the tracks new names--"Pushing Me Away" became "P5HNG ME A*WY"--which made sense, because the record itself sounded like a generation making up a new rap-rock language by scrambling its own codes.

"They're true fans of the art," the X-ecutioners' Rob Swift enthuses. "They're not like, 'Let's have Mr. Hahn here as a DJ for the looks of it.' It's a real thing with them. I study Hybrid Theory whenever I want to get some inspiration for things I want to do."

In a genre known for gratuitous nastiness, Linkin Park are an exception--they're the band you'd trust to escort your sister to a movie, except they'd probably stand her up to log some extra studio time. Bennington takes pride in Linkin Park's workaholic rep. "This is a business of love and labor," he says. "You're constantly trying to prove yourself, even after you've made it. And you have to love it--you have to love what you do, or else you're going to hate it."

Love of labor brought Linkin Park here, to Studio City, the farthest you can get from anything resembling Hollywood while remaining in Hollywood. The neighborhood is full of businesses that mind their own business: a smog-check place, a shuttered El Salvadoran restaurant, a 7-Eleven. A head shop across the street advertises GLASS PIPES, HUGE SELECTION in sun-faded psychedelic cursive, but otherwise, the area is largely free of distractions, which is how Linkin Park prefer it. They're rehearsing for an upcoming tour--they're working. The snack table is heavy with energy bars; the fridge is stocked with protein shakes. Each member has a manila-folder "mailbox" on the production-office door, where printouts of email memos from the band's management either accumulate or don't, depending on how diligent the Linkin Parkers are about retrieving them. Bassist Phoenix's envelope is empty; Bennington's is full.

Journalists who visit Linkin Park's record label to hear Meteora are subjected to everything short of a cavity search; in that same cautious spirit, today, the band will practice behind a locked door. But they're a little overprotective of their record because they're proud of it and because of the 18 months of hard-rock labor that went into its creation. "We probably wrote enough songs to do a second album and then a third album," Shinoda says. "The songs that aren't on this album--I hope that no one ever hears them, because they're awful."

If you're one of the millions who purchased Hybrid Theory, the songs that did make the cut won't disappoint--there's plenty of rocket-launcher guitar, pounding hip-hop beats, and moody electronic frippery. The album's not a departure--when your last record went platinum eight times over, just try convincing yourself, or your record label, that a departure is a good idea. But it's definitely an improvement. While Hybrid Theory's rap/metal sound clash was sometimes awkward, the new album's jagged edges fit together with jigsaw precision. "Hit the Floor" could be a Rage Against the Machine hockey-barn burner produced by Dr. Dre; on "Breaking the Habit," Bennington emotes like a Pet Shop Boy over stuttering, proto-jungle beats. And although Bennington and Shinoda's angst springs eternal, their writing has matured. When Shinoda barks, "I took what I hated / And made it a part of me," or when Bennington pleads, "Let me take back my life," Linkin Park sound like the band most likely to chuck nü metal's bad-childhood baggage and take off for someplace new.

Linkin Park began hammering out Meteora during Ozzfest 2001--after shows, between Halo tournaments, they would lay down riffs and melodies and half-finished songs on the Pro Tools digital-recording rigs they travel with. ("They convinced us that we should have a studio on our tour bus," says Papa Roach's Shaddix.) Shinoda insists that Linkin Park had "a lot of fun" while rolling with Ozzy's dark caravan, but it's clear that he and his bandmates view the extracurricular aspects of rock--the drinking, the groupies, the dwarf-tossing--as a necessary evil.

"Even when I was in high school," Shinoda says, "parties were like, everything is just so played out. You go, people are drinking, people hook up, you talk to the same people who say the same stupid crap. It's boring. And rather than do that, I could go hang out with my friends and write a new song. And who knows what that's going to be like?"

Back home, they started arranging and rearranging, rerecording, micromanaging. Linkin Park never jam. "There's something to be said for doing it that way," Phoenix says, "but for us it's just counterproductive." Instead, they come up with ideas alone or in pairs; the collaboration begins in the studio, where ideas are tweaked and focus-grouped until everybody's satisfied. "If one person's not happy," Shinoda says, "you gotta go back and start over." The fact that Meteora sounds like an actual rock band playing together in an actual room is, ironically, the product of endless clicking and dragging, endless discussion, the kind of ego-destroyingly, brain-meltingly democratic collaboration you'd think would drive even the closest-knit group of musicians utterly batshit.

"When Joe and I were in art school," Shinoda says, "you'd put your stuff up in front of a class of 30 kids. And some people's criticism would just feel so bad, so wrong, because you knew they didn't really care about you or your work. Here, you're dealing with six guys who really care about each other."

Even the lyrics--which Shinoda and Bennington write together, usually after the music is finished--are put to the test. For the track "Somewhere I Belong," Shinoda says, "we tried 40 choruses. It was just agonizing--you can't even imagine writing ten, and we were writing the tenth one, and in our minds, it was done. And people would come in and say, 'Yeah, it's cool.' And that's not the response you want. You want, 'That's the greatest thing I've ever heard!' In our heads, we were thinking, 'Damn it--we gotta go on writing.'"

Linkin Park prefer to talk about their music this way, in terms of envelope-pushing and creative bar-raising and the satisfaction of a job well done. They don't disclose other details, like what (or who) the songs are actually about. They would rather talk about how the songs resonate with the fans, the people who come to the meet-and-greets and pass them long letters about how Hybrid Theory kept them from running away from home, kids who don't just dig the songs but really rely on them. They would rather talk about the girl they met who got through eight hours of brain surgery with help from their record. "They can't do the surgery when the person's knocked out," Shinoda explains, "so they ask her, y'know, 'What do you want to hear, to keep you up while we're doing this?' And she said, 'Hybrid Theory

"For eight hours," Bennington says, "that was what she listened to. And, like, four hours into it, the doctors are like, 'Okay, we gotta change it.' And she was like, 'If you change it, I'm falling asleep.'"

By design, your average Linkin Park song contains very few pro-nouns, aside from the narrative "I" and the all-purpose, unspecified "you." Bennington and Shinoda write by talking about their own experiences, their own feelings; but as the process progresses, they ruthlessly strip away anything that's too specific, anything somebody else couldn't identify with, digging for the universal emotion that anyone could take and use if they needed it.

"There are a lot of weird things that go on in our culture," Bennington says, sitting down to lunch at a cheese-steak place around the corner from the studio. "A lot of girls get sexually abused when they're younger--that's an epidemic in this country. And there's a lot of kids who grow up without fathers. That's why it's hard to talk about the songs and just say, 'This is what it's about.' Because there are all these different things that can trigger the same emotions--getting kicked out of school, having your parents get divorced, or losing a boyfriend. All of those things can trigger anger, depression, aggression, self-doubt. When I'm writing, I'm constantly thinking about myself, because it's the only experience I have to draw on. And I don't see an exact reflection of myself in every face in the audience, but I know that my songs have validity to them, and that's why the fans are there."

Bennington may be the only true rock star in this unassuming outfit. Everyone else is around 25 and seems younger; Bennington is 27 and seems older. He's from Phoenix, not California, and he's the only member of the group who auditioned for his slot; to some extent, he still seems like the adopted kid in this band of brothers. When Shinoda talks about Linkin Park's music, it's in the passionate but sober terms of a young CEO. When asked which bands inspired him, he names Run-D.M.C. and the Beastie Boys and then U2 and the Police. Perfect--raucous rap-metal and life-affirming, messianic arena-rock sweep. Bennington cites Depeche Mode and the Smiths, misfits who sang about other misfits, about being freaked out by their bodies and their hearts. It was Bennington who told an interviewer early on in the band's career that he'd been sexually abused as a child, then saw many of the journalists who wrote about the band interpret their lyrics through that prism.

That last part may explain why the members of Linkin Park are so cagey when they talk about themselves, why it feels like you could shake them by their ankles until their chain wallets fell out of their voluminous pants and still extract no personal details. It may also explain why, at one o'clock in the afternoon on a sunny Wednesday, Bennington is talking about the importance of honesty while wearing sunglasses. Indoors. He and Shinoda are a study in contrasts. Shinoda is stocky and Japanese-American and wears his fitted baseball cap low, covering his eyebrows. Bennington's got nothing on his head but five o'clock shadow. There's a distracting divot in his lower lip where the little golf-tee spike he usually wears is supposed to go. His black hoodie and Dickies shorts hang off his slight frame. In conversation, Shinoda is articulate and precise; Bennington's the same, but there's a sense that he's keeping a less sedate energy in check. Shinoda seems like the kind of guy who organizes his sock drawer by color; Bennington seems like the kind of guy who organizes his sock drawer by color because he won't be able to sleep otherwise.

They're very different people, but they agree on one thing: They don't want anybody--even their fans--to know that much about who they really are.

"I understand the impulse," Bennington says, "but--"

"Think about when you were younger," Shinoda says. "I used to think, y'know, 'I wonder where Bono lives.' And I'd wonder what it was like to be on tour and all of that, because that, to me, was like the most exciting thing."

"I never really wanted to meet anybody that I idolized," Bennington says. "I didn't want my image of them to be altered if they didn't live up to the craziness I expected. I like mystery. You look up to somebody and their music--there's a mystery that surrounds them. If the mystery's gone, it's not as fun. People don't want to imagine anymore--they want all this information, they want to know what everything feels like."

Back at the studio, later that afternoon, Bennington is sitting outside on a folding table, limbering up his vocal cords with a Camel Light and talking about the album. "I think there's a definite hint of optimism that wasn't there [on Hybrid Theory]. Meteora's still a dark record, but it's a different kind of dark. It's not pitch-black--there's a light at the end of the tunnel."

In the 2001 cult movie Donnie Darko, a blow-dried blowhard of a motivational speaker (played by Patrick Swayze) calls the perpetually seething, death-haunted Donnie an "anger prisoner." The scene's a joke, as anything involving Patrick Swayze inevitably is. But the phrase sticks with you--it's what Linkin Park sounded like on Hybrid Theory, and it probably describes many of the people who buy their records. Bennington hasn't seen the movie, but he gets the concept.

"There's this underlying anger in this country," he says, "especially in young men. Nowadays, it's not like you're weird if you're the only kid on your block who has divorced parents--you're weird if your parents live together. And because it's a relatively new problem, people don't know how to deal with it, and a lot of kids feel like they're misunderstood. And just the fact that we talk about these kinds of things lets people know that they're not the only ones feeling this way and that it's all right to question yourself and question the people in your life and to want to reevaluate things."

Break's over. Duty calls, and besides, Bennington has talked about himself enough for one day. He puts out his cigarette and goes back inside the rehearsal room, where his friends are, and shuts the door behind him. Back to work. For you, if you need him.

Thanks to relative.degree for finding this and posting it!

  The Guardian

The Guardian
Friday March 21, 2003
Siobhan Grogan


Meteora rise: Linkin Park are (l-r) Dave Farrell, Rob Bourdon, Mike Shinoda, Brad Delson, Chester Bennington and Joseph Hahan. Photo: Christopher Thomond


The man mountain at the door is frisking journalists as if they are entering a war zone rather than a playback of the new, hotly anticipated Linkin Park album, Meteora. Assuming (wrongly) that some of us have the wages and technical wherewithal to own mobiles capable of doing anything more than send a text message, he double-checks that we have left our phones behind before standing aside.
Welcome to the music industry in the 21st century. Paranoid and more than a little delusional, the powers that be are all too aware that a song leaked on to the internet before an album's release can be heard around the world in minutes. And so Linkin Park, on the brink of releasing their make-or-break second album, find themselves on uneasy middle ground, running scared of the very medium that got them here in the first place.

Linkin Park are a truly modern success story. The six twentysomethings from southern California nurtured a flourishing internet fan base before signing a record deal. When they finally released their debut album, Hybrid Theory, it sold a staggering 14m copies, making it the world's bestselling album of 2001. Unofficial estimates suggest that figure would have been 20m were it not for internet piracy - which goes some way to explaining the security surrounding its follow-up.

The band members themselves will not be drawn into defending or even discussing this secrecy. Backstage at their Manchester concert - one of two low-key UK dates before the release of Meteora - there are amused smiles and a telling silence when security is mentioned. "Well, obviously, the record label feels that's what needs to be done. We can only say how we feel, and that's excited that people are hearing the record," vocalist Chester Bennington says finally. He's the owner of the almighty, angry roar that characterises Linkin Park songs, the one most likely to be pinned on teenage girls' walls and the one inclined to scowl exasperatedly at the prospect of an interview.

Preposterously skinny, he is wearing a light grey woollen zip-up top (some might even venture to call it a cardigan) over a white T-shirt and dark blue jeans. He has a shaved head and thick black glasses that seem less rock star, more nerdy student, and is polite but guarded, intent on answering only the questions he chooses - whether they are asked or not.

He is joined today by rapper Mike Shinoda and guitarist Brad Delson, while bandmates DJ Joe Hahn, drummer Rob Bourdon and bassist Dave Farrell remain downstairs in catering, glued to The Simpsons and eating mashed potato.

Bennington, Shinoda and Nelson are trying to work out how to turn up the primitive electrical fire. The band's requested, distinctly American refreshments are laid out on a table at one end; bagels, bags of pretzels, bottles of Snapple. The room itself is decorated in the style of a particulary tasteless English living room, circa 1976. There are patterns on every surface, brown leather sofas and strange pictures hanging at peculiar angles, all to the obvious distress of Shinoda.

"That wall treatment is bullshit," he frowns from the sofa opposite, unaware of the implications of a fierce nu-metal band expressing interior design concerns. "And that picture should be at eye level, not hung in the middle of nowhere like that. And they need a rug," he notes earnestly, shaking his head. Nelson grins, radiating laid-back cheer, in contrast to Bennington's barely disguised wariness. Equally skinny, he wears a baseball cap sideways, sports chipped black nail varnish and looks barely 16, though he's actually 25.

In the country for just a few days, the three are keen to emphasise their reasons for playing two small shows before their arena tour later this year. "It's about giving back to our fans," says Bennington. "That's what this tour's about. We like playing smaller venues, but we know how many people want to come and see us so we don't ever want to stop anyone who wants to come to a show from coming. But these particular shows are all driven towards giving back to the kids who go out of their way to support the band. We made the decision to pay them back for what they've done by putting on this tour that is free for them and isn't sponsored by anyone. We're basically paying for it all."

Linkin Park were formed in 1996 as Hybrid Theory; Bennington was the last to join the band. "I listened to a demo and quit my job to meet five guys I didn't even know," he remembers. "Half of my family's income was removed because I wanted to do this."

It was his suggestion that the band take the name of America's most common park, misspell it and use it as an internet domain name. They posted MP3 files of their early songs on the site and asked for feedback. "We'd invite people from other websites and chat rooms to come check out our stuff, and every once in a while those people would say, 'Hey, when are you guys going to play?' And we'd go to a city close to us like Arizona and play."

Word spread and Linkin Park were soon besieged by requests for more tracks and promotional material. A so-called "street team" had formed all round the world before any record company was even interested. It will be these fans (collectively known as LP Underground) who are allowed in free tonight. Later, the 70 or so concerned will also meet the band. In New York, that number was closer to 1,000.

"We had these pockets of fans all over the place. They were small but they were so dedicated," Shinoda says. "We had groups of fans in places like Sweden who would ask for stickers and tapes and T-shirts to pass on."

Bennington chuckles. "We would have to do shows just to get some money to make stuff to send to kids. Then they would go see a band they liked where they knew that the kids that were in the show would like us too and they would leave early and stand outside handing out the tapes to everyone coming out."

Typically, the music industry was the last to catch on to the phenomenon. That still amuses the band today. They're not bitter, they say, but it certainly makes the success sweeter.

"We had the anti-buzz about us," Shinoda remembers. Bennington laughs. "People would say, 'Oh! You're going to see them? Good luck . . . What a way to waste a lunch hour.' But I didn't care if we didn't get signed because that just meant all those people in the record business didn't know what the hell they were doing and we didn't need those idiots. All I knew is that I would buy our record in a heartbeat."

Delson agrees. "If we hadn't had that attitude, then we wouldn't have been here now, because we got turned down more than once by everyone."

"In some cases," says Bennington, "they would actually call and say, 'We wouldn't sign you guys for a ####### million dollars.' I'd be like, 'Wow! They really went out of their way to tell us they didn' t like us!' " He giggles his incongruous, little-boy laugh.

Linkin Park eventually wore down Warner Brothers and signed up, releasing Hybrid Theory soon after. "We clearly didn't expect it to do what it did," says Delson. "We thought we would tour for a year or so and hopefully go gold or just maybe, best-case scenario, platinum. But we were playing music before anybody cared and before there was a single penny to be made out of it. It just means now we can focus all our energy on it."

An impassioned clash of rap and rock, Hybrid Theory was the sound of sheer teenage angst, albeit with choruses and no swearing. Singles like Crawling, In the End and One Step Closer became anthems for the burgeoning nu-metal scene already spearheaded by the likes of Limp Bizkit, though critics derided the band as being manufactured; too clean-living and attractive to be the genuine article.

"We don't care," says Bennington. "There's a lot of weird stuff said. When you're working for a magazine, that's your job. You have a deadline. You have to fill so many pages."

"By talking about it, we're just promoting it," adds Shinoda. "If you really want to know what the band's about, listen to the CD or come to the show or visit the website. You can't expect to know what we're about by reading about us in a magazine."

However much the band once benefited from the nu-metal association, they are similarly keen to distance themselves from it today, now that second albums from contemporaries such as Papa Roach and Korn have failed to set the charts alight. Bennington rolls his eyes. "To pigeonhole a genre as being successful or unsuccessful is weird. There's a lot of rock'n'roll bands out there that suck! OK? Like bar-driven music that is totally unoriginal and completely worthless. There's a lot of really bad rock out there, really bad R&B and really bad hip-hop. But every once in a while, you get someone who does something really new and original that no one's ever heard before and that's what makes music really great."

"What's funny," Shinoda notes, "is that we, like every one of those bad artists, are just trying to make something that's good! So we know we like what we're doing but we're sure our intentions are exactly the same as all of those artists who are awful."

Even if Meteora doesn't take off, they insist, they have already got what they wanted. "None of us got into this because we craved celebrity or even because we wanted the sex, drugs and rock'n'roll. We didn't get into it to get groupies or for ego-driven reasons. We got into it because we love music and we love playing music with people that we like," says Bennington.

  Time Magazine: Linkin Park

They're humble. They work hard. their lyrics are clean. And they sold out more albums than anyone else last year. Who said nice guys can't finish first ?

By JOSH TYRANGIEL LOS ANGELES

***Chester Bennington was ecstatic to find a house with panoramic ocean views, but he didn't just fork over the asking price. He played it cool, comparison shopped and ultimately got the seller down to a number in the mid-six figures-" A really good price," he says, "considering the space." Bennington's discipline momentarily crumbles, however, when he contemplates furnishing his new digs. "It feels sooooo good," he moans to his wife Samantha as he closes his eyes and imagines a $3,000 Sharper Image massage lounger humming away in the livingroom. Samantha gently shakes her head, and Chester pulls himself together. "Nope. You're right," he says. "Can't do it. Three thousand dollars for a chair is just, like, ridiculous."
***Restraint is not the hallmark of most newly minted rock stars, but Bennington, 25, and his mates in the Los Angeles-based band Linkin Park are exceptional in more than mere fiscal prudence. Linkin Park shocked the record industry by selling 4.8 million copies of its debut rap-metal fusion album, Hybrid Theory (Warner Bros. Records), to eclipse 'N Sync, Shaggy and Britney Spears as the top-selling act of 2001. "we're stunned," says DJ Joe Hahn. "we expected to tour in an RV for three album cycles before anything even close to this happened."
***Like Limp Bizkit and Korn, other bands that studiously and inexplicably avoid using the letter C, Linkin Park rocks and raps about its own sense of alienation, frustration and loneliness aver a furious wall of musical fuzz. But what separates Linkin Park from the rest of the rapidly expanding n -metal field is that the band's six members - Bennington, Hahn, 24, rapper Mike Shinoda, 24, guitarist Brad Delson, 24, bassist Phoenix (just Phoenix, thanks), 24, and drummer Rob Bourdon, 23 -inject nearly everything they do (save their songs) with a sweetly humanistic approach. They may scream "Shut up when I'm talking to you" like misunderstood demons, but they don't wear goth makeup, cut themselves onstage, objectify women or encourage kids to "break stuff," as Limp Bizkit infamously did at Woodstock '99. They are earnest, middleclass guys who sign autographs until the arena lights go out, give their e-mail addresses to fans and refrain from uttering a single curse word on their album. "I think at one point I wrote, 'I can't take this f＿s＿,'" says Bennington, who shares lyrics credit with Shinoda. "And Mike just went, 'What f＿s＿?' Then I Went, 'Hmmm.'" Says Shinoda: "Let's be realistic: there are a lot worse things to worry about [than obscenity]. But as writers, we both have such better ways of describing things, I just thought, 'Why don't we explore those?"
***It is hard to imagine a band with less industry buzz than Linkin Park, circa 1998. "From the very first song we ever wrote," says Delson, who co-founded the group with junior high school buddy Shinoda, "the vision was, 'Let's create a hybrid of hip-hop and heavier music and electronic music and try to make it into one sound.' It was pretty crude when we stared." So crude that every major label a pass. Things only worse when Limp Bizkit, Korn and other fusion groups hit the charts with a similar musical formula. "We thought we had a new idea and, to our dismay, all these groups started breaking. "recalls Delson. "We were almost, like, 'We've been beaten to the punch.'"
***While the original members of Linkin Park (who named themselves after Santa Monica's Lincoln Park) were struggling to catch a break L.A., Bennington had effectively retired from singing in his native Phoenix, Arizona. "I just got tried of being in bands that weren't dedicated," he says of the apathetic Phoenix metal scene. He had taken a job transferring property maps into computer files when a mutual friend told him Linkin Park was looking for a singer. With his wife's encouragement, Bennington drove to L.A., auditioned and never left. "Another guy was trying out the same day," says Shinoda, "and he just took off when he heard Chester try out. He was, like, 'Hey, I'm not gonna try to compete with that.'"
***With the addition of Bennington's soaring vocals, the band's sound took on a richer, more dramatic tone. But rather than wait for record companies to notice, Linkin Park started building a fan base in its own. "I would assign everyone in the band to go on the Internet and recruit five or six people a day," says the business-minded drummer Bourdon. "We'd go into a Korn chat room and say, 'There this new cool band called Linkin Park, go check out their MP3,' pretending like we weren't in the band." When interested kids e-mailed asking for more music, the group sent mountains of traps and instructions to pass them out to anyone with ears. By the time Linkin Park signed with Warner Bros. in November'99, the group had fans in Scotland, Japan and Australia and s worldwide thousand-person unpaid street team.
***The accolades Linkin Park now receives are no longer just from kids in cyberspace. The band was recently nominated for three Grammys, including best New Artist. But the critics gave not yet been won over. Part of the problem is a broader perception that rap-metal fusions still a bit of a gimmick, a crass way to cash in no two markets. While considering its own devotion to both genres beyond reproach, Linkin Park concedes that some of its fellow hybridists may not be so purely motivated. On a track called Step Up, Shinoda raps, "Rapping over rock doesn't make you a pioneer/'Cause rock and hip-hop have collaborated for years/But now they're getting readingly mixed and matched up/After a fast buck and all the tracks suck