The sad story of Linkin Park and death of Chester Bennington
0:00 - Early Years
14:48 - Hybrid Theory
23:04 - Meteora
31:28 - - Minutes to Midnight
33:30 - Final Decade/Chester's Death
SIGN UP for 10 of the Craziest Stories in Rock N' Roll [Secret Playlist]: bit.ly/3vVPAEF
Check out our Top 25 Favourite Albums Here
rockandrolltruestories.com/
Have a video request or a topic you'd like to see us cover? Fill out our google form!
bit.ly/3stnXlN
----CONNECT ON SOCIAL----
Instagram: / rocknrolltruestories
Facebook: / rnrtruestories
Twitter: / rocktruestories
Blog: www.rockandrolltruestories.com
#linkinpark #chesterbennington #mikeshinoda
I cite my sources and they may differ than other people's accounts, so I don't guarantee the actual accuracy of my videos.
Linkin Park’s celebrated debut album 2000’s Hybrid Theory would come out during the peak of the nu-metal’s popularity. Linkin Park over the next several years became inescapable if you listened to rock radio or watched MTV. What came next is truly amazing. Linkin Park did something that so few bands could do, their popularity eclipsed trends in music and they soon ventured into uncharted territory, much to the chagrin of some of their fans. But sadly their nearly two decade run came to an abrupt end following the death of frontman Chester Bennington. Today, let’s take a deep dive into the career of Linkin Park.
Linkin Park’s story begins with Rapper/vocalist/guitarist/keyboardist/producer Mike Shinoda. Shinoda would be born to a japanese father and a white mother with the musician telling Howard Stern that being mixed race resulted in him not really knowing where he belonged in school. His mother would encourage him by the age of 6 to take up piano lessons thinking it would look good on his college applications. In addition to music lessons Shinoda would tell the shock jock that he he spent a lot of his time as a young child painting and doing artwork with the idea that perhaps someday he’d become an artist
It was by the time he became a teenager he soon started to get into the blues, jazz and hip hop. Shinoda by the mid 80’s would be hugely influenced by Run-DMC’s second record King of Rock and Beastie Boys' License to Ill as well as LL Cool J's Bad in addition to Public Enemy and NWA. It would be the collaborations and blending of rock and rap that gave Shinoda an idea of what he wanted to pursue musically telling Rolling Stone “The first show I went to was Anthrax and Public Enemy. They did ‘Bring the Noise’ together, and I was like, ‘That’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever heard.
Wanting to follow in the footsteps of his music idols who sampled popular rock music in their songs he would ask his musical teacher to teach him how to do just that recalling to to Rolling Stone. When I was about thirteen, I told my teacher, Eileen, I wanted to get more into playing jazz and blues and maybe hip-hop. She said she couldn't help me out with that because that wasn't her training. She said, "Maybe you just wanna get a keyboard and start learning those things on your own." I thought that was really big of her to say, and definitely led to an important point in my life where I bought a keyboard. Then I got a sampler, started making beats and playing around with MIDI and digital-based music.”
Shinoda would tell Stern that prior to Chester Bennington fronting Linkin Park the seeds of the band began with him and a childhood friend of his named Mark Wakefield who he first started making music with recalling to the shock jock “the band was just originally me and Mark and i would mostly do all the rap stuff and he would do most of the rock stuff and then we’d teach each other the other side. Mark also happened to be living next door to guitarist Brad Delson with Shinoda adding “Almost like a TV Sitcom they were next door neighbours and there windows were across from each other…We’d be in mark’s room playing sega genesis and you’d hear brad playing metallica on the guitar from the other window.” Delson was also a schoolmate of Shinoda Agoura High School in southern california. The trio soon recruited a bandmate of Delson, drummer Rob Bourdon, who played with him in the band Relative Degree.“ Bourdon, got his start drumming in the third grade after his parents took him to an aerosmith concert. Fun fact . (Bourdon’s mother, Patty, was a high school girlfriend of Aerosmith drummer Joey Kramer, who he credits with coming up with the band name.
It was following high school Shinoda attended Pasadena’s California’s Art of College Design where he studied illustration. Shinoda would refer to the school a