The story of Linkin Park

Xero

Linkin Park began at Agoura High School, in a quiet suburb on the western edge of Los Angeles. Mike Shinoda, Brad Delson and Rob Bourdon were friends there. Mike had taken classical piano lessons from the age of six before drifting toward hip hop, while Brad started on trumpet and picked up the guitar at twelve. Rob decided to become a drummer after meeting Aerosmith's Joey Kramer at a concert. Brad and Rob had already tried a band called Relative Degree, which broke up after its first show. In 1996 the three friends got serious and called their new project Xero. It was a humble start. The first songs were recorded in a makeshift studio in Mike's bedroom.[1] [2] [3] [4]

After high school the circle grew. At the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, where Mike studied illustration, he met Joe Hahn, a Korean American DJ from Glendale who had been scratching records since his school days. At UCLA, Brad shared a room with a bassist named Dave Farrell, known to everyone as Phoenix, who had learned guitar from his mother. The singer was a friend called Mark Wakefield. In November 1997 Xero put out a four track demo tape. That same month they played their very first show, opening for SX-10 and System of a Down at the Whisky a Go Go in West Hollywood.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Brad had a useful connection. At UCLA he interned for Jeff Blue, a former lawyer and music journalist who was now a talent scout at Zomba Music. Blue liked the band and gave them a development deal after seeing a single show, but record labels were far less excited. Blue later remembered a Los Angeles club gig packed with scouts from the labels. By the third song, every one of them had walked out. Blue came to believe that Xero needed a different kind of singer. Frustrated, Mark Wakefield left to pursue other projects, and Phoenix went off to tour with his Christian ska punk band, Tasty Snax. Xero was down to four, with no voice.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The singer from Phoenix

The voice they needed was in Arizona. Chester Bennington was born in Phoenix on the twentieth of March 1976. His mother was a nurse and his father a police detective who investigated child sexual abuse cases. From about the age of seven, Chester was sexually abused by an older male friend, and it went on until he was thirteen. He was too frightened to ask for help, afraid people would think he was gay or lying. His parents divorced when he was eleven. He coped by drawing and writing poems and songs, but he also turned to drugs, from alcohol and marijuana to cocaine, meth and opium. At school he was bullied for being skinny and looking different.[1] [2] [3]

Music became his way out. In 1993 Chester and his friend Sean Dowdell formed a post grunge band called Grey Daze, which made two albums in Phoenix. His heroes were Depeche Mode and Stone Temple Pilots, and he dreamed of one day singing for Stone Temple Pilots. Before music paid anything, he worked at a local Burger King, and later as an assistant at a digital services firm. He left Grey Daze in 1998 after internal conflicts and came close to quitting music altogether. Chester said he first kicked drugs in 1992, after a local gang burst into a house where he was getting high and beat and robbed everyone inside.[1] [2] [3]

Then the phone rang. On the twentieth of March 1999, his twenty third birthday, Chester answered a call in the middle of a surprise party. It was Jeff Blue, who had been given his name by Chester's lawyer, and he promised Chester his big break. The next day a package arrived with two tapes of Xero's music, one with the old vocals and one with only the instruments. Blue wanted Chester's own take on the songs. Chester wrote and recorded new vocals over the tracks and sent them straight back. Two days later, with the blessing of his wife Samantha, he quit his job and was auditioning in the band's Hollywood rehearsal room.[1] [2] [3]

The band tried out plenty of singers. Mike later admitted that Chester's look gave them some doubts at first, but nobody came close to his voice, and Brad called him the final piece of the puzzle. With Chester on board they renamed the band Hybrid Theory, a nod to their mix of styles, and released a six song EP in May 1999, spread through internet chat rooms by an online street team. A bassist named Kyle Christner filled in for a while, before session players took over and Brad played much of the bass himself. The labels still said no. Chester said they played forty two showcases and got turned down by everybody.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Jeff Blue had since moved to Warner Bros. Records, and he kept pushing. Warner had passed on the band three times, but in late 1999 it finally signed them as a developing act. There was one condition. Another act was already called Hybrid, so the name had to change again. The band toyed with Plear and Platinum Lotus Foundation before settling on a tribute to Lincoln Park in Santa Monica, spelled Linkin so they could own the web address. The label still had doubts about mixing rap and rock. Chester and Mike both said an executive suggested pushing Mike aside to make a straight rock record. Chester refused to go along with it.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Hybrid Theory

Finding a producer was hard too, but Don Gilmore, who had engineered Pearl Jam's Ten, agreed to take them on. He went to one rehearsal, heard Chester sing in a cramped little room, and knew the band had something special. Recording began at NRG Recordings in North Hollywood in March 2000. Gilmore pushed hard, asking for rewrites again and again, and the band often got frustrated and angry. That frustration went straight into the first single, One Step Closer, which had the working title Plaster. When Chester screamed its famous bridge, shut up when I'm talking to you, he knocked down the little vocal booth Gilmore had built around his microphone.[1] [2] [3]

The songs drew on Chester's teenage years, the drugs, the fighting at home and his parents' divorce. He called Crawling the most literal lyric he had ever written, a song about losing control to drugs and alcohol. Mike drew the cover himself, a soldier with dragonfly wings in a stencil style inspired by early Banksy. There was one more fight with the label. Warner saw a hip hop track called High Voltage as a risk and made the band choose between keeping that song or keeping Mike's rap verses on In the End. They kept the verses. Hybrid Theory came out on the twenty fourth of October 2000.[1] [2] [3]

It started modestly, entering the Billboard album chart at number sixteen with about fifty thousand copies sold. Then it simply refused to stop. By the end of 2001 it had sold around four point eight million copies in America, more than any other album that year, ahead of records by Jay Z, NSYNC and Britney Spears. In the End, released as a single in October 2001, climbed to number two on the Billboard Hot 100, still the band's highest peak. Its video, directed by Joe Hahn with Nathan Cox, won Best Rock Video at the MTV Video Music Awards. Phoenix was back on bass by then, and the band played over three hundred and twenty shows in 2001 alone.[1] [2] [3] [4]

At the Grammys in February 2002, Crawling won Best Hard Rock Performance, and Joe became the first Korean American to receive a Grammy. The band lost Best New Artist to Alicia Keys and Best Rock Album to U2. That year they launched their own touring festival, Projekt Revolution, with Cypress Hill and Adema, and they had started a fan club, the Linkin Park Underground. Mike then oversaw Reanimation, a remix album of Hybrid Theory with guests including Black Thought, Jonathan Davis of Korn and Aaron Lewis of Staind. Released in July 2002, it reached number two. Hybrid Theory itself went on to sell more than thirty million copies worldwide.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

Meteora, Jay Z and side roads

Linkin Park wrote on the road, roughing out around eighty demos in eight months and building songs on a studio set up in their tour bus. The second album was named after Meteora, the towering rocks in Greece topped by monasteries, because the word sounded huge. Gilmore produced again, now alongside the band, and the sound grew, with a Japanese shakuhachi flute on one track and live strings on another. Security was intense. Hybrid Theory had been one of the most pirated albums online, so reviewers got no advance copies and had to listen at the label's offices. Meteora arrived on the twenty fifth of March 2003.[1] [2] [3]

It sold about eight hundred and ten thousand copies in its first week in America and went straight to number one. Singles kept coming for more than a year, among them Somewhere I Belong, Faint, Numb and Breaking the Habit. Breaking the Habit became the fifth single from the album to top the Modern Rock chart, a run no other act has matched. Behind the scenes, Chester was unwell. While filming the Numb video in Prague in June 2003, he was hit by severe abdominal pain and had to fly home for surgery, so the band's scenes were shot in a Los Angeles church instead. That video later became the most viewed rock video on YouTube.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In the summer of 2003 Metallica invited them onto the Summer Sanitarium tour. Then came an unlikely partnership. MTV asked Jay Z to choose an act for its Ultimate Mash Ups series, and he picked Linkin Park. Mike and Jay Z swapped ideas by email, and rather than just blending old recordings, they performed the parts again to fit the new beats. The whole thing came together in four days in July 2004. Collision Course came out that November and went to number one. Its single, which fused Numb with Jay Z's Encore, won a Grammy in February 2006, and at the ceremony Paul McCartney joined them, weaving in verses of Yesterday.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The middle of the decade was busy. After the Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004 the band set up a charity, Music for Relief, and in 2005 they played Live 8 in Philadelphia with Jay Z. Mike launched a hip hop side project, Fort Minor. Its album The Rising Tied, with Jay Z as executive producer, came out in November 2005, and the single Where'd You Go reached number four in America. One song, Kenji, told the story of Japanese Americans held in internment camps during the Second World War, as members of Mike's own family had been. Meanwhile the band's relationship with Warner soured over trust and money, until a new deal was struck in December 2005.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Chester's private life was in turmoil. Fame arrived fast, fans gathered outside his house, and he fell back into heavy drug use, partying with everyone on tour. He later said he and his first wife Samantha, whom he married in 1996, were toxic for each other, and they divorced in 2005. He began a darker side project with friends from the bands Orgy and Julien K, first called Snow White Tan and later Dead by Sunrise. He said the name came from a self destructive time when he was not sure he would make it to the next day. At the end of 2005 he married Talinda Bentley, and in July 2006 he said he had quit drinking.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Rick Rubin and reinvention

By now Chester felt changed. He said therapy, rehab and his new family had freed him from the monster he had been, and that he no longer felt the urge to scream. The band wanted change too. Mike said they had exhausted the old sound, which was easy for them and other bands to copy. They hired Rick Rubin, the producer behind the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Johnny Cash, to work alongside Mike. It took fourteen months and more than a hundred song ideas. Named after the Doomsday Clock, Minutes to Midnight came out in May 2007, sold about six hundred and twenty three thousand copies in its first American week, and went to number one.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The lead single, What I've Done, played over the end credits of the film Transformers and reached number seven in America. Rubin wanted it raw, with rougher drums and guitars and vocals that were no longer tripled, and Brad played the band's first guitar solos. The album had surprises. Given Up opens with Brad jingling his keys over layers of handclaps, and it holds a scream Chester sustained for about seventeen seconds. Mike said it was an accident. Chester did not know how long the section was, so he held the note as long as he could, and Mike rebuilt the song around it. Shadow of the Day was the band's first song in a major key.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

On stage Chester was fearless. In Melbourne in October 2007 he broke his wrist jumping off a platform and still finished the whole show before going to hospital. That year's Projekt Revolution went green, giving a dollar from every ticket to American Forests and running the buses on biodiesel. In 2008 the tour featured Chris Cornell of Soundgarden. Every night Chester joined him for Hunger Strike, and Cornell came out to sing Crawling with the band. The two became close friends, and Chester became godfather to Cornell's son. That summer, at the Milton Keynes Bowl in England, Jay Z joined them on stage, and the show became a live album.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Their next move was a leap. A Thousand Suns, released in September 2010 and again produced by Rubin and Mike, was an electronic record about fear, war and the atomic bomb. Its title came from the Bhagavad Gita, in a line made famous by J. Robert Oppenheimer, and it sampled speeches by Martin Luther King Jr. and Oppenheimer himself. Critics compared it to Radiohead's Kid A, and it split the fans, just as Phoenix had predicted. In 2011 the band played Red Square in Moscow at the premiere of the third Transformers film, which used their song Iridescent. Russian fans held up placards reading Wisdom, Justice and Love, the title of another track.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Living Things followed in June 2012. The band called it a blend of everything they had learned, and it went to number one with the single Burn It Down. Mike said that song was partly about how pop culture builds people up and then tears them down, something the band felt they had lived through themselves. They toured with Incubus, and in 2013 they teamed up with the producer Steve Aoki on A Light That Never Comes, the centrepiece of Recharged, a remix album in the spirit of Reanimation. The injuries kept coming, though. In 2011 Chester hurt his shoulder on a tour of Asia, and doctors sent him for surgery, ending the tour early.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Louder, then softer

In 2013 Chester finally lived his teenage dream. Stone Temple Pilots had fired their singer Scott Weiland, and in May they brought in Chester. He debuted with them at a Los Angeles radio festival and recorded an EP, High Rise, released that October. He called it a no brainer, a chance to front a band he had grown up with. He stayed until November 2015, leaving on good terms to focus on Linkin Park, and Weiland died of an accidental overdose on his tour bus the next month. Meanwhile, Mike had written a batch of polished, poppy demos for the next Linkin Park album. Listening back after a tour, he hated them and threw them all out.[1] [2] [3]

What replaced them was loud. Mike and Brad produced The Hunting Party themselves, writing in the studio with nothing planned in advance. Mike called it a nineties style rock record made by adults rather than teenagers, and he took a swipe at modern rock radio, which drew a sharp reply from Lauren Mayberry of Chvrches. For the first time they invited guests onto a studio album, including the rapper Rakim, Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine and Daron Malakian of System of a Down. The drumming was so demanding that Rob trained with weights and went running to prepare, then played ten hours a day for a week and hurt his back.[1] [2] [3]

Chester arrived late, straight from touring with Stone Temple Pilots, and was stunned by how heavy it all sounded. The album came out in June 2014 and reached number three, and Kerrang called Linkin Park the biggest rock band in the world. But in January 2015 Chester hurt his ankle playing basketball. He tried to perform on crutches and a knee scooter, but the tour was cancelled after three shows so he could have surgery. By late 2015 he had started drinking again. He went back into treatment, and friends later said he suffered a three day relapse in the summer of 2016, during which he blacked out.[1] [2] [3] [4]

For One More Light the band changed its whole method. Every song started with the words and the story, and they wrote with outside pop songwriters such as Julia Michaels, Justin Tranter and Eg White. There were no screams and few heavy guitars. The first single, Heavy, featured the singer Kiiara, the first time a female voice had appeared on a Linkin Park studio album. Chester said its opening line, I don't like my mind right now, described him twenty four hours a day. Critics were harsh and many fans called it a sellout. Even so, the album went to number one in May 2017, the band's fifth studio album to top the American chart.[1] [2] [3]

Chester did not take the criticism quietly. In one interview he told anyone who said the band made the record for money to meet him outside so he could punch them in the mouth. Corey Taylor of Slipknot gently advised him to be grateful people still came to the shows, and Chester agreed, saying he sometimes took things too personally. Then, in May 2017, his close friend Chris Cornell took his own life after a concert in Detroit. On Jimmy Kimmel Live, the band swapped Heavy for One More Light, a song about losing a friend, and Chester could barely get through it. Days later he sang Hallelujah at Cornell's funeral, with Brad on guitar.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The twentieth of July 2017

The European tour that summer went well. The band's touring director said it was the most alive and present Chester he had seen in fifteen years. Chester told a friend he had been sober for six months, but he also described fighting addiction hour by hour. In July he was on holiday in Arizona with his family, then came home alone, saying he needed to work. On the morning of the twentieth of July 2017, he was found dead at his home in Palos Verdes Estates, California. The coroner ruled that he had hanged himself. He was forty one. It was the day Chris Cornell would have turned fifty three.[1] [2] [3] [4]

That same morning the band had released the video for Talking to Myself. Mike confirmed the news on Twitter, saying he was shocked and heartbroken, and the North American tour, due to start a week later, was cancelled with refunds for every ticket. The autopsy later found only a trace of alcohol and no drugs in his system, and there was no suicide note. The coroner noted a history of suicidal thoughts. Reports on the coroner's file said Talinda had told investigators about an earlier attempt, in 2006, when he left the house with a gun after drinking heavily. Chester left his wife and six children.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The shock reached far beyond rock. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline reported a fourteen percent rise in calls the day after the news broke. Fans covered the fence outside his home with flowers, drawings and guitar picks. Chester had filmed an episode of Carpool Karaoke six days before he died, and his family allowed it to be broadcast that October. Artists from Chris Martin of Coldplay to Jay Z paid tribute on stage. His funeral took place on the twenty ninth of July at the South Coast Botanic Garden in Palos Verdes. Donations to Music for Relief were redirected to a new One More Light Fund in his memory.[1] [2] [3]

On the twenty seventh of October 2017 the band played the Hollywood Bowl in his honour. A microphone stand dressed with a wreath stood alone in a spotlight as they began with Numb. Mike told the crowd it was probably the hardest thing they had ever decided to do. Friends sang Chester's parts, among them members of Blink 182, Korn, System of a Down and Avenged Sevenfold, and Alanis Morissette stepped in when Gwen Stefani of No Doubt withdrew. Talinda spoke about his battle with depression. The concert ran over three hours and streamed on YouTube. It was the last show with Rob Bourdon. That November the band dedicated an American Music Award to Chester.[1] [2] [3]

The long silence

For weeks Mike barely left his house. The first time he did, paparazzi cornered him with questions about Chester. He began painting, then playing music again just to steady himself. In January 2018 he released the Post Traumatic EP, three songs about his grief, under his own name rather than as Fort Minor or Linkin Park. A full album followed that June, and he played his first solo shows, including Reading and Leeds that August. He called it a journey out of grief, not into it. Talinda Bennington, meanwhile, launched a mental health campaign called 320 Changes Direction, drawn from thirteen years of watching Chester struggle.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Mike said he would never want it to feel like they were replacing Chester, and that any new singer would have to happen naturally. Quietly, the band began to regroup. In 2019 Mike, Phoenix and Joe started making music together without any announcement, and Brad soon returned. Rob did not. According to Mike, Rob said he wanted to put some distance between himself and the band, and gradually stopped turning up. That same year they met Emily Armstrong, singer of the Los Angeles band Dead Sara, and invited her to a three day try out. They also began writing with a drummer and producer named Colin Brittain.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Meanwhile the vaults opened. In 2020 a twentieth anniversary edition of Hybrid Theory came out with a lost 1999 song, She Couldn't. That summer the band sent a cease and desist over the use of In the End in a Donald Trump campaign video, and fans dug up Chester's 2017 tweet calling Trump a greater threat than terrorism. Mike won a Grammy in 2022 for his remix of the Deftones song Passenger. In 2023 a Meteora reissue brought out Lost, a finished song shelved in 2002 because it sounded too much like Numb. Fans heard Chester's voice on something new for the first time in years.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Not everything was nostalgic. In November 2023 Kyle Christner, the stand in bassist from 1999, sued the band, saying he had helped write and play more than twenty songs from that era, some of them sold on the Hybrid Theory reissue, without being paid. The band's lawyers argued the deadline to sue had long passed. In March 2024 both sides announced an amicable settlement, and the band praised his contribution at a pivotal time. In February 2024 they released Friendly Fire, a One More Light era song with Chester's vocals, and in April a greatest hits album, Papercuts. Then Billboard reported that the band was weighing a 2025 tour with a female singer.[1] [2] [3] [4]

From Zero

In August 2024 a mysterious countdown appeared on the band's website. On the fifth of September, at a livestreamed show on a Warner Bros. studio lot in Burbank, Linkin Park came back. Emily Armstrong was introduced as joint lead singer alongside Mike, with Colin Brittain on drums, and they played a new song, The Emptiness Machine. The new album was called From Zero, a nod to the old name Xero and to starting again. Days later Brad said he would skip touring and work behind the scenes, with Alex Feder playing guitar on stage. Emily later said that hearing Chester on One Step Closer was what first made her want to sing and scream.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Within hours came a backlash. Emily had been raised in the Church of Scientology, and in 2020 she had attended a court hearing for the actor Danny Masterson, a Scientologist later convicted of rape. Cedric Bixler Zavala of the Mars Volta, whose wife had accused Masterson, reposted an old attack on her. Emily said she went to one early hearing as an observer to support someone she then considered a friend, soon realised she should not have, and had not spoken to him since. She said she did not condone abuse and felt for the victims. Chester's son Jaime accused Mike of erasing his father's legacy, and Chester's mother said she felt betrayed.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Mike told fans the return was not about erasing the past but about starting a new chapter. On stage, many were won over. At the Kia Forum in Inglewood on the eleventh of September 2024, around seventeen thousand people roared their approval. The Emptiness Machine reached number four in Britain, their highest ever, and topped the German chart for eleven weeks. From Zero came out on the fifteenth of November 2024 and went to number one in more than ten countries. A 2025 world tour followed, with their first show at Wembley Stadium, and on the thirty first of May 2025 they opened the Champions League final in Munich.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

A deluxe edition in May 2025 added new songs, including Unshatter. That November, From Zero was nominated for the Grammy for Best Rock Album, and The Emptiness Machine for Best Rock Performance. The band was also named to headline the Download festival in England in 2026, the first time a female fronted band had topped the bill there. The From Zero World Tour finally ended in Zurich on the thirtieth of June 2026. By Billboard's count it sold two point two million tickets over eighty shows and grossed two hundred and fifty one million dollars, the biggest of their career. Joe directed a documentary about the comeback, Unshatter, which opens in cinemas on the thirtieth of September 2026.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]

As of 2026, Linkin Park have sold more than one hundred million records. Hybrid Theory is certified diamond in America, In the End was the first nu metal song to pass a billion Spotify streams, and the Numb video became the most viewed rock video on YouTube. A 2015 study of how well hits are remembered placed Numb and In the End among the most timeless songs of their era. Artists from Billie Eilish to Bring Me the Horizon name the band as an influence. And for many listeners the lasting picture is still Chester, singing plainly about pain, and making millions of people feel less alone.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The people around Linkin Park

Chester Bennington and Mike Shinoda. They were opposites who made the band work: the troubled singer from Phoenix with the soaring scream, and the calm suburban rapper, producer and designer. They wrote lyrics together and traded vocals on nearly every hit. Mike admitted he had never lived Chester's darker story. Chester stood by Mike when a label executive wanted him sidelined, and after Chester's death Mike poured his grief into Post Traumatic.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Chester Bennington and Chris Cornell. They became friends on tour in the mid two thousands and grew close on the 2008 Projekt Revolution, singing Hunger Strike and Crawling together each night. Chester became godfather to Cornell's son. When Cornell died in May 2017, Chester wrote him an open letter and sang Hallelujah at his funeral. Chester died two months later, on Cornell's birthday.[1] [2] [3]

Linkin Park and Jeff Blue. Brad Delson interned for Blue at Zomba Music, and Blue gave Xero a development deal and years of blunt advice. He found Chester for them, then moved to Warner Bros. Records and signed the band after the label had passed three times. He executive produced Hybrid Theory and later wrote a book about those early years.[1] [2] [3]

Linkin Park and Don Gilmore. Gilmore produced Hybrid Theory and Meteora. He pushed the young band hard, asking for rewrites again and again, and the tension fed straight into One Step Closer. He said Chester's singing gave him chills, one of only a handful of times in his career, and that the Meteora sessions were far easier because trust had grown.[1] [2] [3]

Linkin Park and Rick Rubin. Rubin produced Minutes to Midnight, A Thousand Suns and Living Things with Mike Shinoda. He encouraged the band to strip back and experiment, urged Brad to play more solos, and told them for years to focus on songwriting rather than sound. Chester called the Rubin and Shinoda partnership the band's golden ticket.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Linkin Park and Jay Z. Jay Z chose Linkin Park for an MTV mash up special, and the result became Collision Course, a number one EP in 2004. Numb and Encore together won a Grammy. He then executive produced Mike's Fort Minor album, joined the band on stage at Milton Keynes in 2008, and later performed their mash up in tribute to Chester.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Chester Bennington and Talinda Bennington. Chester married Talinda at the end of 2005 and they had a son and twin daughters. He credited the relationship, along with therapy and rehab, with helping him change. After his death she spoke at the Hollywood Bowl tribute and launched 320 Changes Direction, a campaign against the stigma of mental illness, saying she had watched him struggle for thirteen years.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Chester Bennington and Samantha Bennington. Chester married Samantha in 1996, so broke he could not afford a ring, and she backed his leap to Los Angeles in 1999. Fame and drugs strained the marriage, and they divorced in 2005. Chester later called her a great friend and mother and regretted what he had said about her. In 2024 she publicly disputed his mother's claims about the band.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Chester Bennington and Stone Temple Pilots. As a boy Chester dreamed of singing for Stone Temple Pilots. In 2013, after the band fired Scott Weiland, he became their frontman and recorded the EP High Rise. He left on good terms in 2015 to focus on Linkin Park. Weiland died weeks later, and Chester was texting bassist Robert DeLeo days before his own death.[1] [2] [3]

Mike Shinoda and Brad Delson. High school friends who founded the band with Rob Bourdon, they became its creative engine. Together they started the record label Machine Shop, produced The Hunting Party and One More Light, and ran much of the band's business side. When the band returned in 2024, Brad chose to stay in the studio while Mike led the band on stage.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Emily Armstrong and The Bennington family. Emily's arrival split Chester's family. His son Jaime accused the band of erasing his father's legacy, and his mother Susan said she felt betrayed. Chester's first wife Samantha disputed parts of Susan's account. Emily, who said Chester's voice on One Step Closer made her want to sing, has said she hopes to do him proud.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Chester Bennington and Sean Dowdell. Friends since their teens in Phoenix, they played together in two bands, including Grey Daze. Dowdell later owned Club Tattoo in Tempe, where Chester promoted and worked on designs. Chester was planning a Grey Daze reunion when he died, and Dowdell finished their songs with his original vocals, releasing the album Amends in 2020.[1] [2] [3]

Rare facts about Linkin Park

• Before his music paid the bills, Chester Bennington worked at a Burger King in Arizona. Chester held down a job at a local Burger King before becoming a professional singer. By the time Linkin Park called, he was working as an assistant at a digital services firm.[1] [2]
• Before settling on Linkin Park, the band considered calling themselves Plear or Platinum Lotus Foundation. Warner asked them to drop the name Hybrid Theory to avoid confusion with another act. They chose a tribute to Lincoln Park in Santa Monica instead.[1]
• The band spelled their name Linkin so they could buy the website address. They first wanted to call themselves Lincoln Park, after the park in Santa Monica. The unusual spelling let them secure linkinpark.com.[1]
• Xero's very first show was opening for System of a Down at the Whisky a Go Go in November 1997. The band also shared the bill with SX-10 at the famous West Hollywood club. It came in the same month as their four track demo tape.[1] [2]
• Warner Bros. Records passed on the band three times before finally signing them in late 1999. Before that, the band played forty two showcases for labels. Chester said they were turned down by everybody.[1] [2]
• Warner made the band choose between the song High Voltage and Mike Shinoda's rap verses on In the End. The label saw the hip hop track High Voltage as a risk. The band dropped it from the standard album and kept the verses, which helped make In the End their biggest hit.[1]
• Chester Bennington initially disliked In the End and did not want it on Hybrid Theory. When it became their signature hit, he decided he was no good at picking singles. He later said he came to love the song.[1] [2]
• The Hybrid Theory cover soldier was drawn by Mike Shinoda, inspired by early Banksy stencils. Mike had worked as a graphic designer before the band took off. Chester said the dragonfly wings on the tough soldier stood for the mix of hard and soft in their music.[1]
• Hybrid Theory is the only Linkin Park album on which Phoenix does not play bass. Phoenix was away touring with Tasty Snax during recording. Brad Delson and session players Scott Koziol and Ian Hornbeck covered the bass parts.[1] [2]
• The working title of One Step Closer was Plaster. The song grew out of the band's frustration with producer Don Gilmore's constant requests for lyric rewrites. Chester channelled that anger straight into the performance.[1]
• While screaming the bridge of One Step Closer, Chester destroyed the vocal booth built around his microphone. Don Gilmore had built a small enclosure to deaden the sound. He said Chester sang so hard he knocked its walls down and almost broke the microphone.[1]
• The Crawling lyric Fear is how I fall came from producer Don Gilmore mishearing the line. Mike Shinoda said the original words were Fear is powerful. Gilmore heard it wrong, and they liked his version better.[1]
• Linkin Park played about three hundred and twenty four shows in 2001 alone. The touring year included Ozzfest, the Family Values Tour and their own headline dates. The band kept an online journal of the road on their website.[1] [2]
• Journalists were not given advance copies of Meteora and had to listen at the record label's offices. Hybrid Theory had been one of the most pirated albums online. Meteora was protected by round the clock security, even during mastering.[1] [2]
• The eerie intro of Somewhere I Belong is Chester's guitar playing, reversed and chopped up. Chester felt his guitar part sounded too folk rock. Mike and Joe added effects, played it backwards and cut it into four pieces, creating its sweeping sound.[1]
• Breaking the Habit was the fifth Meteora single to reach number one on the Modern Rock chart. No other act has matched that run from one album on the chart. It was also animated in an anime style by the Japanese studio Gonzo.[1]
• In 2025 fans discovered that the intro of Faint is a reversed sample from a James Bond soundtrack. The source is a cue called Tania Meets Klebb, from the music for From Russia with Love. It went unnoticed for more than two decades.[1]
• The Numb video was the first song released in the two thousands to pass one billion views on YouTube. It reached the mark in November 2018. By 2023 it had passed two billion and was the most viewed rock video on the platform.[1]
• The entire Collision Course EP with Jay Z was put together in four days. It was recorded between the sixteenth and nineteenth of July 2004. It went on to become only the second EP ever to top the Billboard 200.[1] [2]
• Joe Hahn was the first Korean American to receive a Grammy. He won as part of Linkin Park when Crawling took Best Hard Rock Performance in 2002. Joe also directed many of the band's videos.[1]
• Before Linkin Park, Joe Hahn did special effects work on The X-Files. He also worked on the miniseries Frank Herbert's Dune. Joe told MTV in 2003 that filmmaking was his true passion.[1]
• Brad Delson wears headphones on stage to protect his hearing. He once called himself a fervent opponent of guitar solos. His bandmates talked him into playing them from Minutes to Midnight onward.[1]
• The seventeen second scream in Given Up happened because Chester did not know how long the section was. Mike said Chester simply held the note as long as he could. Mike refused to touch the take and rearranged the song around it.[1]
• The clicking sounds at the start of Given Up are Brad Delson jingling his keys. Brad layered the keys with several tracks of handclaps. The song also carries Chester's longest recorded scream.[1] [2]
• Shadow of the Day was the first Linkin Park song written in a major key. It is in B major. It was also the first song where Chester played rhythm guitar live, while Mike moved to keyboards.[1]
• Chester Bennington finished a whole concert in Melbourne in 2007 with a broken wrist. He was hurt jumping off a platform at Rod Laver Arena. He only went to the emergency department once the show was over.[1]
• For The Hunting Party, drummer Rob Bourdon played ten hours a day for seven days and hurt his back. He trained with weights and ran to prepare. Mike said it was the hardest material Rob had ever played on one of their albums.[1] [2]
• Waiting for the End is Mike Shinoda's favourite Linkin Park song. He revealed it during a Twitch stream in 2020. The song topped the American alternative chart in 2011.[1]
• On Iridescent, all six members of Linkin Park sing the third chorus together. When Michael Bay asked for a song for Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Mike picked Iridescent because it was a fan favourite.[1] [2]
• A song Chester recorded for Slash's first solo album was blocked by Linkin Park's commitments. The track, called Crazy, was re recorded by Lemmy of Motorhead as Doctor Alibi. A snippet of Chester's version finally surfaced in 2021.[1]
• Chester played a doomed racist character in the horror film Saw 3D. He also had cameos in Crank, as a pharmacy customer, and its sequel. He appeared in Jared Leto's documentary Artifact too.[1]
• In 2008 a man was jailed for cyberstalking Chester and his wife Talinda. The stalker broke into their email and stole hundreds of family photos. Chester said putting someone in prison was no fun, but he had to protect his family.[1] [2]
• A song Chester started with Billy Howerdel became the title track of A Perfect Circle's 2018 album. It was called Eat the Elephant and was left off One More Light because it did not fit. Howerdel reworked it with Maynard James Keenan singing.[1]
• The band's record label Machine Shop was born in Rob Bourdon's living room. In 1999 the band packed CDs and stickers there to send to their very first fans. Mike and Brad later turned it into a proper label.[1]
• Linkin Park were the first rock band to reach one billion views on YouTube. Years later, In the End became the first nu metal song to pass one billion streams on Spotify, in June 2021.[1] [2]
• The Emptiness Machine spent eleven weeks at number one in Germany, the band's first German chart topper. It was the longest running German number one of that year. In Britain it reached number four, their highest ever singles position there.[1]
• Emily Armstrong once sang on a Hole album at Courtney Love's invitation. Love brought her to New York to sing on Nobody's Daughter in 2010. Dave Grohl once said Dead Sara should be the next big rock band in the world.[1] [2]
• Linkin Park's 2025 European stadium shows drew more than fifty six thousand fans a night. In the 2010s they had averaged about thirteen to fifteen thousand in Europe. Europe alone earned over one hundred and five million dollars on the From Zero tour.[1]

Disputed stories

These stories are told often but the accounts don't agree. Here are the versions and who says what.