I was 10 years old when Linkin Park released Hybrid Theory. In my then short life, I had never heard anything like it.
Before Linkin Park, the only music I’d been exposed to was the pop chart – at the time largely polluted by novelty songs and S Club 7 – and a handful of CDs from my parents’ collection, an enjoyably confusing mix of boogie-woogie piano, ’70s disco and pub rock classics.
Happily sandwiched between ‘Boogie Wonderland’ and ‘Who Let the Dogs Out?’, I wasn’t desperately searching for a groove of my own, but Linkin Park kicked down the doors of my life anyway. A band engineered for maximum impact, there was no way an impressionable youngster like me could have ignored them.
It’s tempting to mythologise one’s reasons for liking Linkin Park. It’s tempting to say that their anger and anguish reflected that of my own, that I too was misunderstood and outcast, and that Hybrid Theory offered the sanctuary that I couldn’t find in my own life. It wasn’t like that at all, though I’ve no doubt that this was the case for many Linkin Park fans.
I liked Linkin Park for what they were: loud, aggressive, catchy and cool. It was superficial, but though I wasn’t seeking emotional solace in their music, it excited me like nothing else had.
Consider ‘Papercut’, the first song on Hybrid Theory.
It opens with a tight electronic beat that hooks you in, layered with a hypnotic, digitally-crunched ostinato. Then: bam. The guitar drops, and there goes the roof.
But wait, rapping? I didn’t really have much of a context for rap at the age of 10, but it sounded awesome over the heavy riffing. And the lyrics, the imagery – it was so evocative, especially when it came belting from Chester Bennington’s lungs: “I can’t stop what I’m hearing within/The face inside is right beneath my skin”.
And that was just the first track.
Hybrid Theory is wall-to-wall bangers. Four singles, ‘One Step Closer’, ‘Crawling’, ‘In The End’ and ‘Papercut’, made Linkin Park a household name, but for me, it was all about slotting Hybrid Theory into the CD player, putting on the headphones and disappearing into it.
From then on, it was music or nothing. Linkin Park lit a fire underneath me, instilled an endless hunger for the loud and a sensitivity towards the tender. Music gave me an identity; it was all I was interested in. If nothing else, Linkin Park made Christmas easy for my distant relatives – “Didn’t we give Richard a t-shirt with guitars on it last year? Ah well, can’t have too many of those.”
Linkin Park didn’t just make me love music, they made me want to make it. My best friend and I decided to take guitar lessons. We started writing songs, formed a number of terribly-named bands, played a few gigs around town. We went to music college, studied production, learned how recording studios worked, how the music industry worked, how music itself worked.
Though neither of us pursued it professionally, it’s still a huge part of our lives. We went to see Radiohead together a few weeks ago. I still play in a band to this day. It all started with Hybrid Theory.
I fell out of love with Linkin Park a long time ago. As nu-metal turned from generation-defining genre to mildly embarrassing footnote, I found myself drifting between pop guitar bands like Red Hot Chili Peppers and Muse, and the heavy metal music that no doubt inspired Linkin Park – Metallica, Megadeth, Iron Maiden.
After Chester Bennington’s death, I went back and listened to Hybrid Theory again. Unlike a lot of music from that era, it still sounds contemporary. It’s still heavy. It’s still unique. It’s still powerful. Knowing what we know about his early life and the circumstances of his death, Chester Bennington’s vocals and lyrics take on a new vigour, the decibels of pain in his voice raised a little higher.
Linkin Park survived the nu-metal era by moving with the times, evolving their sound. This came to a head with ‘Heavy’, the lead single of their latest (and what sadly may well be their last) album One More Light. It was, to say the least, anything but heavy: Linkin Park had abandoned the sound that made them global superstars.
The band caught a lot of heat for steering the good ship Linkin Park into the clear blue waters of pure pop, but now that Chester is gone, it all seems so redundant. Bands should be free to work and express themselves in whatever medium they choose. That’s what music is: freedom.
Chester Bennington’s death is tragic, and the only hope we can take from it is that he found the freedom that he otherwise couldn’t, but what we’ll remember him for is the freedom he gave to others through his music. The freedom to be angry, to be sad; the freedom to be inspired, to create; the freedom to be yourself.
