Mixing up rock and hip hop, LINKIN PARK’S Hybrid Theory captured a generation of fans.
… it’s as simple as that. Linkin Park’s debut album gatecrashed the mainstream, redefining heavy music and capturing the minds of a generation
hey seemed to appear out of nowhere. Fronted by the unlikely tag team of rapper Mike Shinoda and unassuming-yet-ferocious screamer Chester Bennington, Linkin Park fused together cuttingedge electronics, gleaming pop melodies and riffs slung lower than a pair of baggy jeans. Their debut album, Hybrid Theory, cut across genres so confidently that it became a runaway mainstream success following its release on October 24, 2000, racing up the charts and launching the band to fame in spectacular fashion. The following year, it would be the biggest-selling record in the world, defining a generation and introducing countless people to the world of heavy music. Recounted by those who were there, and including archive interview quotes from Chester, this is the incredible story of Hybrid Theory.
inkin Park started in the bedroom of Los Angeles resident Mike Shinoda. He wrote the bones of Hybrid Theory while he was still in his teens, and his band, Xero, would spend weeks and weeks writing and demoing to perfect their new blend of hip hop and rock. With an ambitious streak, a strong work ethic and some good connections, they were steadily moving towards their goal. But they were missing something: a defining voice.
Over in Arizona, Chester Bennington had been fronting much-loved local band Grey Daze. During his 23rd birthday party, he received a call from a contact who knew
A&R man Jeff Blue. Jeff asked Chester to lay down some vocals over Xero’s demos, and when he heard the results, he immediately flew the singer out to meet the band.
Mike Shinoda: “The very earliest incarnations of the songs from Hybrid Theory were written at my parents’ house when I had just finished high school. A Place For My Head was one of those first songs, but I wasn’t thinking of writing an album – I was barely considering starting a band! I had a four-track recorder, a guitar that we plugged directly into a tiny little amp, and a vocal mic. The whole set-up was maybe worth $300. We actually sent out a bunch of tapes of those recordings, including to a guy who we knew had signed Korn. Amazingly, he called us back! When I told him about my set-up, he was like, ‘That doesn’t make any sense – these songs sound really good!’ And even though he was never in the position to sign us, that was really the start of it.”
Chester Bennington: “I had basically decided to retire from music. I’d got a job in real estate and thought that while I would probably still
make tunes for fun, I would need to find something else to do full-time. A dude who had been working with my old band [Grey Daze] gave me a call, going, ‘I’ve got these guys and they’re writing this great music but they really need a singer.’ I immediately was asking all sorts of questions, like, ‘How old are they? How long have they been doing this?’ because I didn’t want to waste my fucking time. He said, ‘Well, I’ll just send you this demo’, which turned out to have two tracks on one side and instrumentals on the other. I listened to the instrumental side first and immediately I was like, ‘This is it, these are the ones.’ The next thing I know, I’d flown to California and was sat outside Zomba
Music Publishing, opposite Whisky A Go Go on Sunset Strip.”
Jeff Blue: “Chester had such an iconic crack and tone in his voice, that basically every crack told a story. And it was so believable. I just knew at that point that this is the chemistry I was looking for. Because I always knew the band could be huge with the right complement.” Chester: “When I finally met the guys, I remember that they seemed very nice, very smart, very serious and, most importantly, they had a plan, which was pretty refreshing.”
he plan was to get signed, but it was a hard slog. The band put themselves in front of every label they could, their self-belief never wavering in the face of indifferent suits who didn’t understand how to market them.
While they waited for their big break, Mike and Chester got to know each other, forging a bond that would become crucial to the evolution of the band. Chester opened up about the tough times he’d gone through in Arizona: the breakdown of his parents’ marriage, sexual abuse, resulting drug and alcohol dependencies.
The pair poured these feelings of anguish into their lyrics, creating empowering songs “that people from all sorts of different backgrounds could relate to”.
After a year, Jeff landed a job at Warner Bros. and signed the band – then named Hybrid Theory but soon to be Linkin Park – to the label. Later, critics would seize upon the fact that Chester was recruited by execs, labelling them a manufactured band.
Chester: “No one wanted us, but we knew we had something fucking special. We just kept pushing. Most bands probably try out in front of three labels, get rejected and give up. We played in front of 45 but our attitude was, ‘These guys are fucking stupid if they can’t see what we’ve got.’ We knew what we had and never doubted it.”
Mike: “We showcased for every fucking label there was, and they all turned us down.” Chester: “I think we confused people. Nobody really knew what to do with us. They were thinking, ‘How do we promote this? Where does this go at radio?’ I could see how they thought it was just too much work. It was a pain in the ass, but it gave us time to figure out who we were as a band, and gave Mike [Shinoda] and I time to get comfortable with one another.”
Mike: “We did get a reputation for being a business rather than a band. But that was because we were so focused on getting our stuff done. It wasn’t in the name of business – it was in the name of building up this thing we had worked so hard to create. We were prepared to do everything in our power to be successful on all levels.”
arners booked them two months at north Hollywood’s NRG Recording Studios, with producer Don Gilmore, who had previously worked with pop-punk bands Eve 6 and Lit. Chester recalled the sessions as “intense” – at one point the label tried to ditch Mike (“which is probably the funniest thing in the world,” laughed Chester) – with vocals being tracked at the 11th hour.
While working on the song that would become One Step Closer, Chester ended up pacing the studio lobby, punching the walls in frustration at Don’s repeated requests for him to improve the chorus. The band also had a fight on their hands when it came to convincing the label of their vision.
Don Gilmore: “The demos were brought to me through my manager and I thought it
CHESTER BENNINGTON
was good. I didn’t necessarily think it was amazing, but I liked that they were trying to do something unique. So I met with them – they were looking at some other producers – and I went to a rehearsal, and Chester started singing and I was just like, ‘Oh my god, this is really special.’ I’d never really heard somebody sing that incredibly just in a little crappy rehearsal room.”
Chester: “I just wanted to punch that dude [Don Gilmore] in the face. I was so pissed – nothing I did was good enough for him. I thought, ‘Man, everything you say to me takes me one step closer to the edge… and I’m about to break.’ And then I thought, ‘Wait, that might actually work!’”
Don: “When I’d ask for these things and I’d push them to do better, they would. They would maybe get frustrated and angry, but the results were insane.”
Chester: “We would rewrite lyrics, like, 75 times,” says Chester. “It was crazy. But because we didn’t take the short cuts, it ended up meaning more. We believed in what we were doing so much, and we were like, ‘Fuck, why can’t anybody else see this?’ But when the album came out, I guess they saw it…”
Mike: “There was a guy at our label who, essentially, didn’t like us, but he was a mixer and producer. We wanted Andy Wallace [who did eventually mix Hybrid Theory] to do the record, but this guy demanded One Step Closer from us to show us ‘what it should sound like’. We gave him the song and he basically tried to completely restructure it, putting the ‘Shut up when I’m talking to you’ part at the start – which obviously totally ruins that moment – then gave it back to us, all like, ‘Check this shit out.’”
Chester: “These guys sat me down and were like, ‘Oh, you’ve got such an amazing voice, you could be such a shining star.’ They wanted to see if I would pull a coup to get Mike out. These dudes were so fucking stupid, man.
They told me I’d be the face of the band and that Mike had no story ’cos he was just some kid from Agoura – all these dumb, superficial things. They wanted some fucking rapper from New York who no one knew to come and do vocals on the record. I just wanted to punch those idiots in the face because they couldn’t see that golden fucking teat of awesomeness that was right in front of them. Mike’s one of the most productive songwriters of our era, I think. God knows how many No.1s we’ve had, but if he wasn’t in the band, we wouldn’t have had any of those!”
ybrid Theory was released in the US on October 24, 2000, and went to No.16 in the Billboard chart. Chester bet a friend that the album would sell 500,000 copies by Christmas; it actually reached that figure by Thanksgiving, at the end of November, and kept rising (“Eighteen months later we were still selling 100,000 copies a week, and you are thinking, ‘Holy shit, this is some Michael Jackson shit, I don’t understand what’s going on!’”).
Yet the elation of their hard-earned win was marred by a gruelling touring schedule and a particularly troublesome stint with Deftones, not to mention gatekeepers who branded them a nu metal boy band.
Mike: “We had to defend ourselves from that absurd shit forever but it was totally out of left field. We never thought anyone would think something so ridiculous, but all of a sudden people were talking about it!”
Chester: “It gave us something to prove and drove us on, for sure. There was a lot of false perception about us but what we did, instead of talking about it, was make it our mission that when we played, we wanted everyone who played after us to go, ‘Fuck!’ We wanted to be the band that no one wanted to tour with because we would turn up, crush the fucking crowd and then everyone would want to leave after us. We wanted to kick people in the face.”
Mike: “That tour was one of the most stressful stints we’ve ever done. We basically followed winter around the world for six months and we were all always sick. And then to top it off,
“I WANTED TO PUNCH THE IDIOTS IN THE FACE”
the guys in Deftones started to get a bit jealous and began treating us really poorly. Steph [Carpenter, guitars] and Chino [Moreno, vocalist] said some pretty nasty things in interviews. We tried not to say anything back because we didn’t want more tension on the tour but it was pretty miserable. I even saw some fans doing heroin outside one of those shows. Totally fucking horrible shit, man. It was a dark period overall, even though things were, ostensibly, going so well.” Chester: “We wanted to create art that spoke for itself: nothing more, nothing less. We know that a lot of people didn’t like it but that achieved another thing I love – when people hate you so much they can’t stop talking about you.”
inkin Park shook off the ire of metal’s self-appointed guardians, and on sales alone (more than 20 million!) Hybrid Theory stands as a phenomenal success. But more than that, it connected with a cohort of people who had never heard anything like it. Countless bands today, from Bring Me
The Horizon to Of Mice & Men, credit the record with inspiring them to make music themselves. Like Black Sabbath, Metallica and Iron Maiden before them, Linkin Park picked up heavy music’s torch and carried it forwards, making the most influential album of this century.
While Hybrid Theory had broad appeal, it pulled off the neat trick of speaking to people on an individual level. As well as changing the lives of those who created it, it changed the lives of those who listened to it. Since Chester’s tragic passing in 2017, Linkin Park fans have held the record especially close, as a snapshot of a time and a sound that can never be recaptured.
Chester: “In my opinion, we actually kept metal alive. We played a surprise Vans Warped Tour show [in Ventura, California on June 22, 2014] and had a whole bunch of singers from other bands come up and sing with us [including members of A Day To Remember and The Devil Wears Prada]. Every one of them was either, ‘Your band was my first record’ or ‘Your band is the reason I’m playing music.’ I was like, ‘Holy shit!’ It was maybe the first time where I felt like we were the band that people looked at in the way that I look at Deftones and Metallica and Stone Temple Pilots.”
Mike: “I think that the difference between us and someone like Korn or Limp Bizkit is that, to me, a lot of that music was made for a frat party, a drunken brawl, slutty dudes taking their tops off and feeding off their own testosterone. What we didn’t connect with in that scene was that there wasn’t a lot of room for more introspective emotion. People would ask us, ‘Well, Jonathan Davis practically grew up in a morgue and was molested and all these horrible things.
What gives you the right to be angry?’ But you don’t have to have gone through the worst things in the world to be sad. I think that’s something that ultimately really connected with our fans: that you don’t have to be an outcast and a fuck-up to take something from this music on an emotional level. If that makes us dull, then fine.” Chester: “What happened with Hybrid Theory felt like someone had stuck me in a wormhole and fired me into a new dimension. And nothing was ever the same again.”
LINKIN PARK’S LATEST ALBUM, ONE MORE LIGHT,
IS OUT NOW VIA WARNERS
“IN MY OPINION, WE ACTUALLY KEPT METAL ALIVE”
CHESTER BENNINGTON