СТАТЬИ
Believe it or not Linkin Park's so called overnight success took over 5 years. It all started as a glimmer in emcee Mike Shinoda's eye in 1996. He started out recording in his small bedroom studio and eventually enlisted his high school friend Brad Delson to help the compositions come together guitar-wise. The Linkin Park name came much later, but for the time being the "band" was called Xero. Shinoda and Delson quickly enlisted a power drummer named Rob Bourdon, who attended high school with Mike and Brad and suddenly there was a real band coming together. When Mike shipped off to Art Center College in Pasadena, he met a guy named Joseph Hahn, a DJ, and Hahn showed interest in joining the group, which improved the group's sound, while expanding it's amount of members. Meanwhile, Brad Delson had chosen UCLA as his college, and while he was there he shared an apartment with a guy named Phoenix (Dave Ferrell), who quickly became the band's bassist.
With an emcee, a guitarist, a bassist, a drummer, and a DJ in place, Xero was solid, and at their was booked at the Whiskey, opening up for an unsigned band called System of a Down. Xero was signed to Zomba Publishing right after their first show. However some time later, as the band grew more and more serious, they noticed labels simply were not paying attention to them. The group decided there was something missing in Xero, and no one could quite put a finger on what, until Xero realized error of their ways. In their opinion, most bands at the time either had a great emcee, who wasn't the best singer in the world, or a really fabulous singer, who couldn't hold his own in a freestyle rap competition. Xero sought out to have both, so they quickly started searching for a singer to pair up with Shinoda and complete the puzzle that was Xero. Chester Bennington was a singer in a band called Grey Daze. He grew up in Arizona, singing along to his tapes pretending that he was the 5th member of Depeche Mode or a member of Foreigner. As a youth, Chester would run around the house singing to his tapes and telling anyone who would listen that he was going to grow up to be a rockstar. Chester had a very wide spectrum of music he liked in his teen years, from hardcore rap, to punk, to Stone Temple Pilots, and Foreigner. He married his wife Samantha when he was only 20 years old.
At the time Xero was seeking their perfect singer, Chester was still living in Arizona and singing fir Grey Daze, a group he'd lost hope in. He met the guys in Xero through mutual friends of theirs in Xero's law firm. The lawyers sent Chester a Xero demo tape, and asked him to make up some lyrics and record his bits over the songs. Chester must have been impressed with Xero's tape, because he actually skipped out on his own birthday party to go into a professional studio and cut his vocal tracks, which he then had mixed. When he was done, he called up the guys in Xero and asked if he could fly to California and join them. Chester didn't want to wait on the postal service to deliver the tape, so he played the tape for Xero over the phone. Needless to say, they were floored and wanted him to their area immediately. Chester moved to California, became a permanent member of the band, and the band that was Xero changed their name to Hybrid Theory. The band's bassist, Phoenix, went on leave temporarily to tour with a band called Snax.
Once Chester was in the newly named Hybrid Theory, the band spent all their time working on making demos and using their connections at Zomba to shop the tapes to people who would listen. Eventually, a serious buzz started and Warner Brothers signed the band. Hybrid Theory had to change their name due to legal hassles with another band of the same name. They decided to call the band Lincoln Park after the park in Santa Monica, CA (A refuge for the homeless that caught Chester's attention on the way to band rehearsals). However, when they looked into buying the internet domain www.lincolnpark.com, it was already taken and very expensive. So, the band is now called Linkin Park.
Linkin Park inked a contract with Warner Brothers in the spring of 2000, hit the studio, and started preparing to record their debut album, which they had the good sense to title Hybrid Theory. When it came time to choosing a producer, the band met a lot of people that they liked, but Don Gilmore (Pearl Jam, Sugar Ray) really stood out, and the band thought he would help them work harder as songwriters, so they brought him on board the Linkin Park ship. Together they meticulously put their debut together. When Hybrid Theory saw the release on October 24th of 2000, the band's mixture of rock, hip-hop, techno, and dance styles had the music industry insiders thrilled with the notion of Linkin Park and the new flavor they were bringing to the music scene. The band shot a video for their first single, "One Step Closer" and MTV ate it up with a spoon, playing the video nonstop. Linkin Park was making tons of new fans daily, and if the video wasn't cementing the band's name in every household, their live performances were: Linkin Park got on their bus and toured with EVERYONE. Partnering up with bands as varied as Taproot, Mudvayne, Slipknot, Disturbed, The Deftones, Papa Roach, and even The Ozzfest 2001 (on the main stage no less), The Reading Festival (alongside Eminem), and finally Linkin Park earned the middle slot on The Family Values Tour in 2001, right alongside headliners, and Chester's idols, Stone Temple Pilots, and specifically singer Scott Weiland.
Live performances of "One Step Closer" on the Late Night with Conan O'Brien television show, and on MTV's Video Music Awards 2001 were rapidly spreading the Linkin Park phenomenon as scores of kids across the US were buying into the Hybrid Theory. With the band's names on the cover of just about every music magazine in the World every month, the band grew their fan base even larger with super slick videos for "Crawling" and "In The End." The videos hit MTV and were greeted with even more open arms than "One Step Closer" was. The video for "In The End" features the band in an almost sci-fi setting, with Chester singing high atop a tower. Linkin Park mania had officially set in. During the Family Values tour Linkin Park took time in between shows to do even more shows: While playing at a radio festival alongside The Deftones and Staind, LP's guitarist Brad Delson became increasingly frustrated with technical difficulties he was having with his equipment. At the end of the set he went backstage and kicked a steel door. Reportedly he then wound up in the hospital with a cast covering a newly broken foot. While he was hobbling and could barely move around onstage, Linkin Park did not miss a single show. Linkin Park wrote a bulk of their forthcoming second album while on tour with The Ozzfest, and didn't rest for a minute immediately going out on their Countdown to Revolution Tour the second the Family Values Tour ended. The band announced that they would take a much deserved rest after the tour and then work on their album. But Linkin Park then announced dates for their own Projekt Revolution tour which immediately followed the Countdown to Revolution Tour, this time featuring Cypress Hill and Adema. The band also took time to do a charity gig for Trinity Kids Care, an organization in Los Angeles providing care for Terminally Ill children.
Now an all remixes album of Hybrid Theory is slated to hit stores with many versions of Linkin Park tunes remixed by artists such as Jay Gordon, The Chemical Brothers, and many other huge names. Staind's Aaron Lewis will lend his voice to a remix of "Crawling" where the framed voice behind "Outside" adds vocal harmonies to Chester's performance. Linkin Park is shooting for a May release date for the record. After wrapping up their Projekt Revolution tour, presumable to finally get to work on that second album of theirs, Chester joined a league of vampires, at least in spirit.
Chester lent his voice to Korn singer Jon Davis' work on the soundtrack to the movie version of Anne Rice's novel, Queen of the Damned. The film's plot features a vampire named Lestat who becomes an 8o's rock star. Originally, Davis and former Oingo Boingo keyboard player Richard Gibbs co-wrote the song that the Lestat character would sing in the film, with the intention that Davis would provide the vocal parts. When Davis' record company had a problem with this, veteran rocker Jeff Soto (who did the vocal bits for the soundtrack to Rock Star) was slated to take Davis' place, but now the soundtrack features famed singers such as Marilyn Manson, Orgy's Jay Gordon, Disturbed's David Draiman, Static-X's Wayne Static, and finally Linkin Park's Chester Bennington, who provided his vocal talents to a song called "System." In the film the songs are performed by the Lestat character, with his fictional band Satan's Night Out.
