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17:41 · 2,814 words of transcript · watch on YouTube
- The scale is easy to forget: the band's catalogue has sold more than 100 million copies worldwide, and they spent most of a decade as one of the biggest acts in the world.
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- They began in 1996 as Xero, formed by high school friends Mike Shinoda and Brad Delson around the idea of fusing hip hop and rock, with Joe Hahn joining from art college.
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- Over three years Xero was rejected by every major and independent label in the business, which is what led to replacing their original vocalist.
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- Chester Bennington arrived through Zomba's Jeff Blue, who sent him an instrumental to sing over, and he was in the band's rehearsal space in Hollywood days later.
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- Labels kept passing because nu metal was saturated and the band did not sound different enough, and they changed their name again to avoid confusion with an electronic group called Hybrid.
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- Hybrid Theory was written and recorded in four weeks, largely polished versions of the same demos every label had already turned down.
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- What separated them inside the genre was subtraction: no corny personas, no profanity, which also meant no parental advisory sticker, and radio and parents both welcomed that.
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- It was the best-selling album of its year and has since passed 30 million copies worldwide, certified diamond.
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- A Thousand Suns is the one the video rehabilitates, a concept record about nuclear war built from spoken-word samples, synth loops and industrial and house elements, and it works as a whole rather than as songs.
▶ 00:08:20
- The last reinventions came from scrapping work. Shinoda threw out a finished set of demos, Rick Rubin did not return, the electronic side left with him, and The Hunting Party aimed at 2014 with a sound the band should have made years earlier.
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