It’s hard to imagine Linkin Park without their co-vocalist approach, but there was a time early on when a person at their label attempted to have them push forward without Mike Shinoda.
Shinoda reflected on that period during an appearance on Mythical Kitchens’ Last Meals podcast. According to the musician, this took place during the making of the band’s breakout debut album Hybrid Theory.
“When you’re young and you’re new at a label, they’re doing their best to try to sell records. They want to get the thing that’s the hit. In the process of making Hybrid Theory, they weren’t hearing it. I can’t explain that. We were positive that it was good. More importantly, we felt like this is us on this record,” he recalled.
“They went to Chester [Bennington] and got him alone in the studio and were like, ‘Look man, this is all about you. You’re the star here. Let’s just build this project around you because what you guys are making, we don’t get it,’” he continued.
Bennington was the newest member of the band at the time, but Shinoda says, “Chester had come into the band with the understanding that he’s part of a band. I felt like what he wanted was that he liked the band, he wanted to be part of the band and he had way more loyalty to us than he did to them.”
As Shinoda recalled, “[Chester] went immediately from that conversation back to us and said, ‘This is what just happened.’ And we were like, ‘Oh no, thanks for telling us. What did you tell them?’ [Chester responded], ‘I told them to go fuck themselves.’”
How It Worked
“With this much space, looking back on it, it’s easy to idealize so much of it,” says Shinoda. “But there was so much strength and so many positive things that were going on. There’s also friction and disagreement. At the time, you’d be happy about the parts where things were going well and you’d be so upset about the things that were not, it was noisy.”
“So for example, ‘Which chorus do you like better? which verse do you like better? What melody should it be? Oh, I like these words. I don’t like these words.'” I think they did call me “the glue” back in the day and it was like a jokey nickname. So the good momentum, the negative feeling of friction, both things are actually very valuable to the band.”
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“There was an element of all of the adversity that we faced and having hard discussions and getting over them, getting past them were so valuable to our growth as friends and as a creative unit. I’ll speak for them and not say this for myself, but I say this for them is that my opinion of them is they are one of the most intelligent groups of people that I’ve ever spent time with.”
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