Pedal to the metal
By Ron Brownlow
STAFF REPORTER
Wednesday, Jul 08, 2009, Page 14
Taipei Times: In the late-1990s, after listening to a demo, you quit your job and moved your family to California to join Lincoln Park. What made you do that?
Chester Bennington: A little man that lives inside my head [pauses for effect]. I’m a very emotional person, I’m a very gut kind of guy. I would say that in a lot of ways if you looked at how [Linkin Park’s other frontman] Mike Shinoda looks at things and how I look at things, we probably look at things in two different ways but we somehow come to the same conclusion. So I didn’t analyze it very much. I find that when I just go with my gut and I just go with the whisper that’s in my heart, in my head, it generally tells me the right choice to make. When I over-analyze I find myself in trouble. So when I heard the demo I was like, “I’ll go out there.” When I heard the music I knew right away that it was nothing like anything I had ever heard before. That sometimes can be really bad [laughs]. In this case it was really good, and right when I heard the music all sorts of really great melodies started popping into my head and I was like, “This is a sign. I need to go, I need to do this. I need to go out there. This is the real deal.”
And when I moved out there I did see that it was the real deal. From the very first day of practices we were already a kick-ass bad. I was like, “This is a no-brainer. This is my chance. I’m only going to get one opportunity to do this. I want to do this with my life and if I don’t take chances to make it happen then it’s not going to happen.” So I quit my job, moved out, moved to Mike Shinoda’s couch, lived in the back of my car, in a really shitty apartment that had the roof cave in on it. And while doing that pretty much made a record that changed six guys from various parts of southern California and one guy from Arizona’s life completely for the rest of their existence [laughs]. It could have very easily turned out to be nothing at the same time. It could have been a fine experience and I could tell my grandkids, “Yeah, at one time I moved out to California to try to be in this band.” It could have been one of those things too. But I knew somewhere inside, something told me, “This is the one, you need to go.”
Someone write me a young, struggling LP fic please?
This interview is pretty interesting. Tell us some anecdotes of Linkin Park when they just started out, how they rose to fame with their effort and Chester's own hard time back in 05, 06. Also, it's confirmed that Rick Rubin will be their producer for the next album. Rick is a great producer and with MTM, he surely got to know Linkin Park, so we could only hope that the boys will pull off an uber amazing album this time and don't let the fans down. Read the rest of the interview HERE for more information.
Labels: article, interview, news: Bennoda, news: Linkin Park, quote
