Shedding Light on Linkin Park

Linkin Park is responsible for dozens upon dozens of rockin’ and rappin’ tunes that display many types of styles. Everything from classical violin melody to the exotic sounds of Japanese flutes can be heard in Linkin Park’s music, which is quite popular all over the world.

And much like their rebellious but often times sweet lyrics, the band itself has an attitude of ’screw it, I’m in this for living life to the fullest’ attitude. Let’s take a closer look at Linkin Park’s biography.

The Early Days of Linkin Park
Linkin Park originally started as so many star bands do - in high school. Mike Shinoda, who has a reputation for being the front man for the band in many ways, has had a dream to succeed in music since he was very young. Teaming up with Brad Delson and Rob Bourdon was the first step to realizing that dream.

In 1996, the Linkin Park members, who then called themselves Xero, started off recording in Mike Shinoda’s home recording studio. Soon thereafter, Joe Hahn, Dave Ferrell and Mark Wakefield joined the band but a lack of success forced Wakefield and Farrell to bail out. Shortly after, the band renamed themselves Hybrid Theory.

Early 1999 marked the replacement of Wakefield with Chester Bennington, at the suggestion of Jeff Blue who was Vice President of Zamba Music at the time. The addition of Bennington also brought new material and the band renamed themselves again, this time to Linkin Park. The name was a play on the Licoln Park in Santa Monica, a very popular hang out for many people in California. Despite their new member and both changes in their name, however, the band still languished in finding a record deal.

In late 1999, the band turned to Jeff Blue again for more help. Jeff was now the Vice President of Warner Brother Records and assisted the band in signing with Warner, which marked the start of their stardom.

Progress
In October of 2004, Linkin Park released their first professionally recorded album, Hybrid Theory, a name which they obviously favored. This was, perhaps, because of the view that the band had of themselves–a malleable mixture of pop, rock, metal, rap and some other genres that hadn’t been named yet. Nonetheless, Hybrid Theory, which is a compilation of over 5 years of work, sold 4.8 million copies in its first year alone. It was also best selling album of 2001 and won Best Rock Performance at the Grammys.

Within a year Linkin Park performed at over 320 concerts and formed Projekt Revolution, a tour, which at the time featured artists like Snoop Dogg.

In 2002, former bassist Dave Ferrell returned to the band and inspired Reanimation, a remix album of much of the bands past work. It was released on July of 2002 and claimed #2 on the Billboard 200.

From the end of 2002 into 2003, Linkin Park conducted their tour in the U.S and recorded new material in their rare spare time. This led to the March, 2003 release of Meteora, which was reportedly inspired by the rocky town in Greece.
Meteora is a blend of Linkin Park’s pasteurized metal mixed with rapcore and branches out into classical and foreign instruments. It was #1 in the U.S., the UK and Australia and sold over 800,000 copies in its first week. In fact, by October of 2003, it had sold almost 3 million copies and won MTV’s Best Rock Video Award and then went on to win the Viewer’s Choice Award for Breaking The Habit.

That same year, the band formed another Projekt Revolution, this time featuring bands like Mudvayne and Xzibit. They also played the Sanitarium Tour alongside Limp Bizkit and the Deftones.

Early 2004 marked the Meteora Tour, which by now was the 3rd best selling album. By the middle of the year, however, the band seemed to take a break, during which Shinoda and Farrell worked on outside projects. This formed tension in the band and especially with Warner Brother Records. Out of the soup, so to speak, however, came the album Collision Course, which was produced by Linkin Park and Jay Z as well as the album Rising Tide which was released by Shinoda and Jay Z alone.

A new deal with Linkin Park was signed in December of 2005 and marked new beginnings without turmoil for the band. They began writing again and the band involved themselves in several charity concerts and organizations as listed below.
Hurricane Dan
Hurricane Matt
Special Operations Warrior Foundation
04 Tsunami Benefit Concerts
“Music For Relief”
Live 8

In 2006, Linkin Park won another Grammy, this time for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration. They also did Japan’s Summer Sonic 06 which was hosted by Metallica. Later that year, they returned to the studio to begin recording the work they had started since their signing. They had planned to release their new album late in 2006 but there were unresolved issues regarding which songs to include on the record.

On May 15, 2007 Linkin Park released Minutes to Midnight which sold 600,000 copies in its first week. Of course it also went to the top of the Billboard charts and inspired their 4th Projekt Tour. In July of 07, the band played at Live Earth Japan as well.

Currently Linkin Park is performing a 19 show tour in North America and the band plans to release an extension album to Minutes to Midnight and hope to gain inspiration for new work while touring America at the end of this year.

For more information on Linkin Park and its creative members, their biography, discography, news and much more please visit www.linkinpark.com and share in their blog. You can also do a Google search on the individual band member names to find great information about their upbringing and their early onset of talent as well. You will likely also stumble upon plenty of colorful and energetic merchandise which compliments the various types of music and culture that influences this popular, artistic, Californian band and helps to support their lifestyle and various causes. Rock on!

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