Linkin Park join Zane Lowe in-studio on Apple Music 1 to discuss the 20th anniversary of their acclaimed second album ‘Meteora’ and reflect on the impact and legacy of the late Chester Bennington.The group recalls Chester’s commitment to the band and resisting the industry’s aims to change the DNA of the group, why they ultimately decided to release a 20th anniversary edition of ‘Meteora’, what makes the album remarkable and how making it differed from the process of creating their debut ‘Hybrid Theory', the influence of Depeche Mode, rumours the band were manufactured like a boy band, working with Rick Rubin, and forgotten song “Lost” and why it’s an incredible time capsule.
Linkin Park Recall Chester Bennington Resisting The Industry’s Aims to Change the DNA of the Band…
The story that I go to immediately, just because it's a me and him, it's exemplary of the way he saw our dynamic, was that during Hybrid Theory, there was a question from the label like, "Well, the singer's so good." At a certain point, they kept trying to meddle in our creative process and change the DNA of the band. And at one point, there was a suggestion, "Well, maybe you just have the singer sing and you don't do any rapping," which to all of us was an offensive suggestion. But they kind of back-doored it to him and went directly to him. And the sell, the pitch was, "We're going to build a new thing all around you. You are the star. You already are the star, it should be all about you.” So just like whatever about these other guys. We don't need them… we sat in the kitchen at NRG Studio and he took us aside and he's like, "Hey, you guys, you need to know, they did this to me today. They said these things to me." And he recounted the whole conversation. And we were all like, "Holy shit" In my mind, I'm like, "Oh, boy. This is the beginning of the end." Right? Because they're right, he's incredible, and we need him. I don't know if he needs us. So they went to him and they said these things, we were like, " Well, what did you say?" And he goes, "I told him to go f**k themselves." I was like, "Yes." Like, okay, he has our back, we have his back. That was the start... To me, that was a real galvanising moment. That was the start of all for one and one for all.
Linkin Park Tells Apple Music Why They Decided To Release a ‘Meteora' 20th Anniversary Edition...
Mike Shinoda: Part of the reason that this 20th anniversary thing came together… from my perspective, when the question was asked, like should we do a 20th anniversary package for the second album, I was like, "I don't know," like, "I don't want to feel like I'm milking this thing." The album was the album and everybody knows the story. But we started to uncover the stuff that hadn't been released. And one of the great things about it was we made a point starting mid-Hybrid Theory, because of some of the things people were saying, was well…Well, "they just don't know". The only problem is that they don't know. So let's show them... Let's help them know. And so we brought our... Dave's childhood friend, Mark out on the road with us. He was like filming everything. We were capturing more stuff. And so that's why the Meteora 20 package is what it is, because we started capturing everything. It's like other bands weren't really filming everything at the time. Filming wasn't super easy. You didn't have camera phones. We may have started from maybe of a defensive kind of position, but it quickly became something else. The idea of work in progress became one of the themes of the album. It's like, yeah, we are a work in progress. Our music is a work in progress. All the stuff that we're making, we were aware, maybe in 10 years we won't love it as much as we do right now, but we love it right now. So let's just show people what we're doing.
Linkin Park Reflect on What’s Remarkable About ‘Meteora’...
Brad Delson: ...what was both so liberating and terrifying about Meteora is no one effed with us on Meteora… this album was the total pure expression of just this is us delivering what we want to make. And it was really a fun album to make. Hybrid Theory was stressful. This album was awesome. It was so great, though. I think what's remarkable about Meteora, looking back on it now, is it really was... It was a good problem to have, and yet it was a problem, that Hybrid Theory did become the biggest album in the world, and we were like 10 years old. I didn't even know what jet lag was. We were so young and we did have so much success. And the question was always like, "What are you going to do now? Is there a lot of pressure?" And we'd answer like, "No," but the reality was like there was a lot of pressure, and it's not made better by the fact that people kept asking us that. And so to actually have that platform, and have that challenge, and to be able to create this album that we were so proud of was miraculous. No one actually saw us at that point and signed us. Yeah. So to be able to make this record and solidify our identity as a band was really triumphant. And it's amazing, 20 years later, that we're still here talking about the album.
Linkin Park on Why Revisiting ‘Meteora’ Was Less Painful Than Revisiting ‘Hybrid Theory’...
Brad Delson: I mean, it's definitely easier to listen to things now having had some space from that moment. We did celebrate the 20-year anniversary of Hybrid Theory, and I think that was a more painful charge of emotion… there’s more lightness and joy for me personally in revisiting this album at this moment in time. And so the fact that we're actually here 20 years later, not only celebrating this moment in time and this album, but really celebrating an old new song … It's like, it sounds like it's of the period, it sounds like it's an integral part of this Meteora experience, and it also feels like right now to me. And so I'm just like ... I love the song. I listened to it probably like 50 times when we first unearthed it.
Linkin Park on Expanding The Group’s Sonic Palate With ‘Meteora’ Coming Off The Back of the Success of ‘Hybrid Theory’…
Mike Shinoda: I think, with Meteora, there were layers to expanding the palette. Like Hybrid Theory had our first... We got 12 songs at Defining the Palette to you. And then one of the benefits of having a second album is to double that number, to say, "Okay, cool. You understand this much about us. Let us fill in a lot of gaps and add a whole bunch of other colors." So, all of the sudden you have programmed elements on the record, like Faint, like some of the sounds on Numb, and then especially Nobody is Listening, which is a rap song based on a Japanese flute sample. You've got Session, which references Aphex Twin and Squarepusher and electronic music we liked. And most importantly, most importantly, you've got Breaking The Habit, which when we made that, we said, "We're going to do a song that's going to be dark, emotional. It's a single. It's going to be no heavy guitars. It's going to be no screaming. It's just going to be a powerful Linkin Park song.”
Brad Delson: It's a great point because it's easy to think about how Meteora connects with Hybrid Theory, and it's also easy to forget how risky that was and how expansive it was ... to, yeah, Breaking the Habit. Perfect example. That never could have been on our first album.
Linkin Park on How ‘Meteora’ Helped Solidify The Group as a Touring Band…
Brad Delson: And at the end of the hybrid theory cycle, we were headlining arenas. This promoter would come in and say, "What's the plan?" We'd be like, "How long do you have slotted for us to play?" He'd be like, "90 minutes". And we'd be like, "What?" How are you a headliner when you only have 37 minutes of material? We could do the album twice. We toured relentlessly. I think we toured two and a half years on Hybrid Theory and maybe two years straight on Meteora. And so having actual material to play on stage, I think this album helped solidify us as a touring band.
Linkin Park Reflect on the Contrast of Chester Bennington’s Vocal Approach...
Brad: I remember hearing his voice on the demo. We had a demo without vocals. And I remember hearing, I think it was "Picture Board". I remember hearing his voice and it sounded like, on the same song, it sounded like almost like a girl singing. The verse had a very vulnerable, delicate quality to it. And then the chorus had this guttural scream. I think both of those elements are present in the song “Lost”. The verse is so... You're talking about dynamic elements of a personality, there's the delicacy of the verse in the song “Lost" and then the chorus couldn't be more…Eruptive.
Linkin Park on Depeche Mode’s Influence on The Band...
Brad Delson: Chester idolized Depeche Mode, first of all. I feel like he would probably have said, " This is my favorite band about maybe multiple bands." And I'm sure Depeche Mode was definitely, this is my favorite band. I love Depeche Mode. I feel like Depeche Mode has this particularly strong influence on “Lost”. I really hear Depeche Mode influence.
Linkin Park Reflect on The Band’s Early Days…
Mike Shinoda: It wasn't like, I know 20 guitar players. I knew Brad. Right? We all knew each other and we knew we got along and we knew this was a style of music we all liked.
Brad Delson: I mean, for a good couple years, we slept in the same bed. I think it was a bunk bed.
Linkin Park on Pushing Chester Bennington Beyond His Influences as a Vocalist...
Mike Shinoda: ..he would in the studio sometimes sing a thing and one of us or some of us would know, I know it's coming from his Dave Gahan fandom. This sounds like The Cure. This sounds like Zeppelin. This sounds like Jane's Addiction. You know what I'm saying? So we'd have these exercises probably more later on in our career, that weren't developed yet in the Meteora era. And the exercises tended to be, if he was stuck in one of those where it really felt like the influence was coming through maybe too much… in the cases when it was too much, you do this fun thing with him. I'd go, "Okay, cool. That sounded great. Now do it like so-and-so. Literally do it like Adele. Do it like Michael Jackson." And he'd do the exact same. Yeah. And it would rip him right out of that thing. And then he'd listen to it back and go, "Oh, okay, okay, okay." And then he'd sing it. Because what we were looking for is for him to sing it himself, a hundred percent.
Linkin Park on an Early Rumor in the UK Press That The Group Were Manufactured Like a Boy Nand...
Mike Shinoda: …this is part of the story of this album. It's towards the middle and end of Hybrid Theory, the rumor began because the band was so popular. So this rumor started in Europe, probably England, in the press. And I remembered reading it for the first time. They're like, "Oh, this is a manufactured band, like a boy band.” And they said, yeah, the band members didn't know each other. They got assembled by a record label, manager or whatever. Somebody else wrote the songs…
Linkin Park on the Importance of the Band’s Visual Element...
Brad Delson: the visual element of the band was never like the second thought of like, oh, how are we going to bring this music now to life and have a visual component? Like Mike and Joe went to Art Center, which is one of the best art schools in the country. I took high school classes with Mike there, so you can tell where my ceiling is reached. And even working with Frank at Warner Brothers, who we've worked with forever, and Delta on the Meteora wall, the visual art was always primary in the band's mind. And I think this is one of the most beautiful expressions ... of that.
Linkin Park on Fighting To Be Presented as a Full Band in the Media…
Mike Shinoda: It was a little bit of a fight. I remember having a couple conversations with our publicist at the time, saying… It was definitely like a conversation about the band is six guys. Like, we don't want to see just me and Chester on the cover, if we can help it. And the other side is saying, "Well, we sell more magazines if it's fewer people, and if their faces are bigger." In fact, by the way, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, they'll tell you the same thing. The bigger the singular faces in the square, the better it performs. It was a push and pull.
Linkin Park on Working with Rick Rubin…
Mike Shinoda: I think that's why we worked with Rick Rubin though. I think we headed into Minutes of Midnight and into that relationship with Rick because we knew he was a well of information beyond music.
Brad Delson: …when he met with us, he very kind of gently opened up the possibility for us to do something completely different than what we had done before. And that never... it wouldn't have entered my mind. I would've seen our trajectory as a line, and I think he saw it as three-dimensional.
Linkin Park on “Lost” as a Forgotten Song and Why It’s an Incredible Time Capsule...
Mike Shinoda: I felt like... I described it to people as finding a photo you'd forgot you'd taken. I felt so good. Because I remembered the song. It was an important song while we were making the record. The album ended up being 12 songs... And it was number 13.
Brad Delson: But it wasn't... I think what's so interesting about the song is it wasn't because it was the 13th best song on the album. It was one of our favorite songs. So what was so weird is the song that we loved when we were working on, I recollect, when we were working on the sequence, we didn't know or it didn't make sense where it would go. So the weird thought was like, "Okay. Let's actually hold the song off the record, because we have Numb, Numb will hopefully have its moment in the sun. And then maybe at some point, this song, Lost, will have its moment." And then we actually forgot we made the song.
Mike Shinoda: I had the same feeling that a lot of fans had, which was like, "Oh man, that is a moment in time. What an incredible little time capsule that is.”
