CHESTER-LAND.NET - Press Archive

Linkin Park's Mike Shinoda Talks New Album

2009-12-24T13:17:00.000-08:00

Here's an interview with Mike by Spin.com about the new album.

Did Chester's going off and working with [solo project] Dead By Sunrise have any residual affect on how he's now contributing to Linkin Park?
That's a good question. I related to where Chester was at when he was making the Dead By Sunrise record. I went through the same thing with [Shinoda's side-project] Fort Minor. He had songs that he had to get out of his system; songs that the rest of the guys in Linkin Park couldn't necessarily get behind. Not because they wouldn't like them, but because they aren't right for a Linkin Park record. I think for both of us, working outside the band made us feel like we could focus better when we eventually came back.

Aside from the album, what do you guys have planned for the future?
We really wanted to start a phase in our career where we could release music more often rather than have to wait to put out a new album every four years. The demo album is sort of representative of that. But we also wrote "New Divide" for the Transformers movie. Chester put out his Dead By Sunrise record. We're working on the new album, so things are already moving along nicely. We're really trying hard to give fans the opportunity to hear new material from us more often. It's just a matter of finding the right outlets. Hopefully, those outlets aren't always in the form of albums. [More]

Linkin Park's Mike Shinoda Talks New Album

2009-12-24T13:12:00.000-08:00

With the recent release of the fan club-only rarities compilation LPU9: Demos and a Grammy nomination for best Hard Rock Performance for "What I've Done," from their live album, Road to Revolution: Live at Milton Keynes, the decade is drawing to a close nicely for Linkin Park.

Which is to say the '00s are ending as positively as they began for the California sextet, whose 2000 debut, Hybrid Theory, ranked as the seventh-best selling album of the decade. "It's been an absolutely unbelievable ten years," says Mike Shinoda, the band's resident rapper and sonic mastermind. "But I'm even more excited to find out what the future has to offer."

The near-future will see the release of an as-yet-untitled new Linkin Park album and, hopefully, some other guerilla-style goodies. Speaking on the phone from his home in L.A., Shinoda filled us in on the band's recent projects, what to expect from the new album, and his own holiday plans.

Did going back and listening to your demos for the LPU9 album reveal anything to you about the way the band works?
So we've got all this stuff on hard drives that we occasionally reference for ideas, but as time went on we realized that we like making new sounds more than listening to our old ones. So we decided that if we weren't going to mine this older material, we should put it out.

Excellent. Now what about my original question? Anything to that?
[Laughs] Yeah! Sorry I went off on a bit of a tangent there. You definitely pick stuff up when you go back and listen to older material. There were situations, for example, when I listened to the demos and realized that I loved playing with my MPC sampler -- it had a sound that I liked a lot that the samplers I was using on the new record didn't have. So I ended up using that again.

Tell us about the new album.
Well, Rick Rubin is producing it. I'd say we're about halfway done. I'm really happy with what we have so far. We're having a ton of fun in the studio. We really want to do something special and unique for the next record -- we want to redefine the band. I feel like on Hybrid Theory we wanted to introduce ourselves to the world with a certain sound. Then on [2003's] Meteora we were trying to show that we weren't a fluke and we could do the sound that made us successful a second time. By the time we got to [2007's] Minutes to Midnight, we wanted to break down that sound and go outside its confines. Now that we've done that, we feel like we can do anything.

Can you describe any of the songs?
That would be really hard for me to do. I have a tough time doing that. But I can say that it sounds brand new. The thing is, there are so many different ways to make music these days with virtual instruments, software applications, physical instruments, and computer programs. Then when you get in the position of being able to use almost any of it -- that's what we did on Minutes to Midnight . We wanted to play with as many instruments and sounds as we could. But on the new record, now that we have a sense of everything that's available to us, we can reel it in a bit and focus on just the things that we like, which so far is turning out to mean music that is more beat-driven and has a keyboard and drum machine kind of feel.

Have you picked a name for it yet?
Way too early for that.

Did Chester's going off and working with [solo project] Dead By Sunrise have any residual affect on how he's now contributing to Linkin Park?
That's a good question. I related to where Chester was at when he was making the Dead By Sunrise record. I went through the same thing with [Shinoda's side-project] Fort Minor. He had songs that he had to get out of his system; songs that the rest of the guys in Linkin Park couldn't necessarily get behind. Not because they wouldn't like them, but because they aren't right for a Linkin Park record. I think for both of us, working outside the band made us feel like we could focus better when we eventually came back.

Aside from the album, what do you guys have planned for the future?
We really wanted to start a phase in our career where we could release music more often rather than have to wait to put out a new album every four years. The demo album is sort of representative of that. But we also wrote "New Divide" for the Transformers movie. Chester put out his Dead By Sunrise record. We're working on the new album, so things are already moving along nicely. We're really trying hard to give fans the opportunity to hear new material from us more often. It's just a matter of finding the right outlets. Hopefully, those outlets aren't always in the form of albums.

What's going on with you for the holidays? Any big plans?
Usually I spend my holidays with my family. My parents still treat Christmas like I'm thirteen years old. It's super traditional. I write out a Christmas list beforehand, we eat turkey and drink hot cider. It's pretty funny.

What'd you put on your Christmas list?
That part's pretty tough! I can't ask my parents to buy me a mixing board or a Neve console. So I end up asking for a nice sweater. That's more their speed.

Source

Dead by Sunrise - More Than A Side Project

2009-12-19T17:32:00.001-08:00

“It’s extremely different. Orgy and Julien-K are both heavily based in electronica. Dead by Sunrise has more of an organic feel. We’re really playing guitar and more classic instruments,” Shuck said. “Chester is the primary writer so that makes the songs sound much different. Much different than Linkin Park as well because Mike (Shinoda) is the primarily writer in Linkin Park. I think we’ve come up with something totally new and unique, and something we can make a couple records with and create an awesome body of work that people really like.” [More]

Download the interview here.

Dead by Sunrise - More Than A Side Project

2009-12-19T17:32:00.000-08:00

Music, words, riffs, are always circulating in Chester Bennington’s mind. He’s become a world-wide recognizable star by fronting the band Linkin Park, but sometimes song ideas overflow and there is no room to contain them. Those ideas and rough songs have turned into the foundation of Dead by Sunrise, a group that consists of Bennington, Amir Derakh, Ryan Shuck, Brandon Belsky, Elias Andra, and Anthony Valcic.

“He (Bennington) came in and laid down these ideas in the studio after working with us on Julien-K. We didn’t really plan on being a band or anything like that. It was really just sort of Chester laying down some ideas. Just sort of talking,” said guitarist Ryan Shuck of how Dead by Sunrise got started. “Chester and I have always talked about doing something together, but we didn’t really know what that was going to mean. When he laid down the parts, the rough sketch of the songs, we kind of played with it and he said, ‘yeah do whatever you want.’”

Shuck did and when Bennington returned, the songs had morphed into something that Bennington liked so much that it turned into Dead by Sunrise's debut album, “Out of Ashes,” that was released in October.

“When he came back about three days later we did whatever we wanted, kind of put a band to the music and rearranged some of it and kind of made it into what later became Dead by Sunrise,” Shuck said. “Chester loved it and it sort of faded into being a band. I’ve heard him quoted in interviews, and he said that’s the moment that the songs weren’t his anymore that they were ours. From that point on he’s come in with ideas. He’s certainly the primary writer of the band. He comes in with ideas and we sort of use the same process that we used during that first initial stage of our band relationships.”

The song “Crawl Back in” cracked the top 20 on the U.S. mainstream rock category. The song “Fire” was used on the TV series Three Rivers and “Let Down” has the potential to get the most airplay.

“Let Down is one of the first songs. We certainly worked on that the longest because that was one of the first songs,” Shuck said. “We never really say this is done, and move on. We sort of work on all of them all the time. We just go back and forth from song to song over however long the process is. One of the songs that I am most fond of is of course ‘Let Down’ because it was one of our first songs. I think it’s a beautiful song. I think it’s going to be a big hit. It’s just a very special song. It sort of created the band.”

The success of Dead by Sunrise does not mean Linkin Park is in trouble. In fact, there is talk of having Dead by Sunrise open for Linkin Park on future tours.

A touring schedule has not yet been announced but, Shuck said they band could hit the road in February and for those who are wondering if this will be a one-record wonder, forget about it.

“We’re already working on material for our next record,” Shuck said. “Sometimes the songs are like a real rough sketch they need a part, and sometimes they come in with a complete vocal. The way we work is we really go through and test and try everything. We tear everything apart and rebuild it back up. Often we go back to the original idea, but as part of the process we go through and strip away every single layer and make sure it’s going to be cool.”

Shuck says the record does not sound like anything the band members have worked on before. In other words, it’s not a Linkin Park sequel or an Orgy or Julien-K sound-a-like.

“It’s extremely different. Orgy and Julien-K are both heavily based in electronica. Dead by Sunrise has more of an organic feel. We’re really playing guitar and more classic instruments,” Shuck said. “Chester is the primary writer so that makes the songs sound much different. Much different than Linkin Park as well because Mike (Shinoda) is the primarily writer in Linkin Park. I think we’ve come up with something totally new and unique, and something we can make a couple records with and create an awesome body of work that people really like.”

The response so far has been positive. The group may have started as a side project for Bennington, but it is now his current focus. Everyone involved has put aside their other interests to see where Dead by Sunrise will take them.

“We’re totally happy with how the record came out. Whenever you create a work like this that’s going to have to go and live forever you can always second guess yourself to the point of never putting the record out,” Shuck said. “At some point you have to decide on something and put it out and let your work stand so we’re extremely happy.”

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Linkin Park's Chester Bennington talks Dead By Sunrise

2009-11-21T13:10:00.000-08:00

Here's an interview of Chester with musicradar.com

Are you saying that Linkin Park isn't open to music that isn't 'Linkin Park music'?

"Well, see, this is tricky. I thought that at the time. At the moment I would say things are possibly different and that the band is super open-minded. We can go in any direction we want right now, and I'd say that's the result of working with Rick Rubin. He taught us that anything can work as long as we believe in the material."
What is the status of Linkin Park? Are you on a break?

"Linkin Park is still a band, very much so. In fact, we're recording a new record right now. I'm off to the studio today to work on some songs. I gotta tell you, I'm pretty excited. I think this next record could be our best ever. I know everybody says that." [laughs] [More]

Thanks to Linkin Lady for this.

Linkin Park's Chester Bennington talks Dead By Sunrise

2009-11-21T13:04:00.001-08:00

Linkin Park's Chester Bennington calls his new band Dead By Sunrise. But the singer-songwriter is quick to stress that the name isn't simply a slogan or a neat word grouping - it comes from a real-life struggle he's still trying to reconcile.

"I'm a drinker," Bennington says. "And for far too long I was completely out of control, leading an existence and lifestyle that I'm definitely not proud of. There have been times where I literally thought, Oh my God, I might not wake up tomorrow - that's how bad it's been. So when I got this other group together, the name Dead By Sunrise stuck."

For Bennington, who has shared stages with Paul McCartney, Jay-Z and The Doors, among others, and who, along with Linkin Park, has sold over 50 million albums, the need to record a album of his own with a new band wasn't a mere vanity project - it was a necessity.

"I had to write these songs," he says. "I had to purge them from my system. Call it catharsis, therapy - they had to come out. Linkin Park is a terrific vehicle for me, but it's not the be-all and end-all. I have a lot of different shades and textures to what I do, and thankfully I found the right bunch of guys who could help me do this material justice."

Bennington is referring to ex-Orgy guitarists Amir Derakh and Ryan Shuck who round out Dead By Sunrise (the band performs live with bassist Brandon Belsky, drummer Elias Anda and keyboardist Anthony Valcic). On their debut album, Out Of Ashes, they crash their way through raging, harrowing rock (Fire, My Suffering) but they also slow things down for some surprisingly tender moments (Give Me Your Name, Into The Darkness).

"I don't want to say I'm more proud of this record than anything Linkin Park has done," says Bennington, " because obviously I'm very happy with all we've accomplished. But as the saying goes, 'This time it's personal,' and that's what this record really is for me. It's an accurate depiction of my moods and reflections, and I really dug deep to get it right."

Bennington recently say down with MusicRadar to discuss Dead By Sunrise, the status of Linkin Park and the internal demons he says are "still a daily battle."

Why do you think the music on Out Of Ashes couldn't have been recorded by Linkin Park?

"It's complicated. I think everything was relevant to the time. In 2005, after Linkin Park finished touring behind Meteora, we wanted to take a long break - we had been touring for pretty much five years straight.

"Also, I wasn't sure what kind of music the band wanted to make. Were we going to get experimental? Which we did kind of do with songs like Breaking The Habit. At the same time, we were in kind of a box, doing the sort of music that Linkin Park fans wanted to hear. That bothered me a bit - I don't want to have to write songs to order, to so speak.

"So I had these other song ideas that were kind of grungy, kind of punky, a little more singer-songwriter-oriented, very much 'me-centric' - I wasn't sure if it would make sense with Linkin Park."

Are you saying that Linkin Park isn't open to music that isn't 'Linkin Park music'?

"Well, see, this is tricky. I thought that at the time. At the moment I would say things are possibly different and that the band is super open-minded. We can go in any direction we want right now, and I'd say that's the result of working with Rick Rubin. He taught us that anything can work as long as we believe in the material."

What is the status of Linkin Park? Are you on a break?

"Linkin Park is still a band, very much so. In fact, we're recording a new record right now. I'm off to the studio today to work on some songs. I gotta tell you, I'm pretty excited. I think this next record could be our best ever. I know everybody says that." [laughs]

They do. But that's OK - you allowed.

[laughs] "Thanks. I feel like that's such a stock line: 'Oh, it's going to be our best record, our heaviest, our…whatever. I'm just really excited about what we're up to."

At the same time, however, you're doing some shows with Dead By Sunrise.

"Yeah, as much as I can. It's hard to have two bands going a once. I feel as though I'm leading two lives, and believe me, I have trouble with just one." [laughs]

How did you hook up with Ryan and Amir?

"I first met them years ago at a recording studio. Orgy were making their second record and Linkin Park was doing Hybrid Theory. We met up in the hallway and it went from 'Hi, how are you?' to us becoming fast friends.

"We hung out, played music for one another, and when I had these other songs that I didn't feel right about for Linkin Park, my natural instinct was to try to do them with Ryan and Amir. They understood them right away and we started working together. It all happened pretty quickly, us becoming a band."

Was it easier for you to work with a small group of people as opposed to Linkin Park which has, like, 50 members?

[laughs] "Well, what's funny is, on stage there's six of us, so it's not much different from Linkin Park. But yeah, during the recording of the Dead By Sunrise album, I certainly had more control.

"These were my songs all the way, so it was more of a dictatorship than a democracy. I didn't have to compromise at all. Put it this way: in Linkin Park, if I like a song but three other guys are on the fence about it, the song probably won't make the record. In Dead By Sunrise, I didn't have that problem. I only had to please myself."

That said, you do consider Dead By Sunrise a band, not just 'Chester Bennington and some guys backing him up.'

"Oh, we're definitely a band. But as far as the album, it felt like I was making a solo record. I'm not trying to diminish the guys' input and what they brought to it creatively, but…this was my thing."

Now, Amir Derakh certainly isn't new to a fair amount of the guitar community. He's been something of a cult star for some time. What was it like working with him?

"Amir is obviously a seasoned musical veteran, and he's probably the most underrated guitar player out there. He can hang with the best of them. One thing that's important about him, though, is that he's probably more ahead of the curve musically than anybody I've ever met.

"The guy just seems to know what's going to work, or what people are going to end up listening to in the future. In that sense, because he's so tech-savvy and knows how to produce, he's able take the guitar and make it sound very unique. A lot of people strive to be innovative, but he's able to do it very naturally."

You yourself played some guitar on the record, right?

"I did. I also played synths and did some programming. The basic idea was for me to go in and play all the songs very stripped-down and make them as beautiful as possible. I was going for a vibe not unlike the first Days Of The New record, but it wound up being a big electric record because I brought in Amir and Ryan."

How would you describe yourself as a guitarist? And what kinds of guitars did you play?

"Let me put it to you this way: I am not a good guitar player. [laughs] Not at all. 'Mediocre at best' is probably a good way of describing my technique. I've never taken lessons; I've taught myself everything I know. What makes my guitar playing tolerable is that I can write songs.

"Even though I can't play very well, I can put chords together in a way that evokes a nice melody, whereas a lot of people who can play guitar brilliantly don't have an ear for melody. That, if anything, gives me an advantage over a lot of accomplished players. It's all about guts, not technique.

"As for the guitars I play, I don't know the model number, but I have a Yamaha acoustic which is absolutely fantastic. I also play Hamer electric guitars - they still make terrific guitars, and I really love playing them live. In addition, I have a great guitar that I got in Japan. It's made by a guy who works for Hamer and it's called Mystery - it's one of the best-sounding guitars I've ever played."

Of all the songs on the album, I was struck by two of them in particular, Give Me Your Name and Into The Darkness. You really write about human relationships in a raw, naked manner on these.

"Thank you. Yeah, well, that was the idea. [laughs] Those songs were experiments. Into The Darkness was more up my alley in that it was kind of a love song but it was dark and twisted at the same time.

"I don't know if anybody else finds it romantic, but when I sing 'I want to open my skin and pull you in,' I find it sexy, the idea of wanting somebody so badly that you want to become one with them; you want to inhabit their body and vice-versa. It was hard to open myself up in that way because I usually write about doom and gloom and 'poor me' shit. [laughs]

"Give Me Your Name was even further outside the box because it was a song my wife asked me to write for our wedding. She looked at me one day and said, 'You should write a song for our wedding that we can dance to.' As if that's so easy! [laughs] 'Sure, honey, I've got that one right here.'

"Obviously I'm not a love song kind of guy, but I looked inside myself and those words came out. Truthfully, it was never supposed to be for the record; it was only intended for our wedding. But it came out so good that I thought, Hey, I should put this on the record. Maybe other people will use it for their weddings." [laughs]

You sappy guy you!

"Yeah, I know. I'm a sucker for that shit." [laughs]

On a couple of other songs, Crawl Back In and My Suffering, you write pretty openly about your addictions.

"I do. I'm also a sucker for alcohol. It's an amazing thing…it was baffling to me when I was going through the throes of alcohol addiction because I'm usually a pretty even-keel guy. But when it comes to drinking, I just can't stop. The urge to drink just takes over. It astounds me how different I am when I'm drinking from when I'm not. I become this other person. Probably not a very good person, but that's what alcohol can do to some people."

Where do you think this self-destructive tendency comes from?

"You got me. But I know I'm not alone. It doesn't matter how rich you are, how successful - it can happen to anybody."

Are you currently sober?

"I am. But I'll tell you, I've had vertigo the past two weeks that I haven't been drinking. It's a hard thing to deal with. I do enjoy drinking - a lot. And I hate it at the same time. I hate that I need it. It's a huge temptation for me. It just takes over. But life is so much easier when I'm not drinking. Hey, I guess that's what we have support groups for, right?"

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Chester Bennington’s New Lease On Life

2009-10-29T09:34:00.001-07:00

Another interview with Chester about Dead By Sunrise:

SHOCKHOUND: What's the most personal song on this album for you?

BENNINGTON: Every single one of them is pretty personal, but I think the most important one for me is "Give Me Your Name.” I wrote that one for my [new] wife. We danced to that song at our wedding. I didn't write the song with the idea that it would make the album. I actually wrote it to play at our wedding, but it turned out to be a great song. "In The Darkness" is another one that is very personal for me. It's not necessarily about anything personal, but it's my song about making love and how that feels. At the same time there are songs like "Condemned" and "My Suffering" which talk about my love affair with feeling like shit, so to speak. There's a weird juxtaposition between some of the songs. Some of them have more of a deep, emotional thing, and some of them are directly about specific things like relapse or learning not to repeat the mistakes of your past relationship in a future relationship. Then there are songs that I tried to mess with a little bit lyrically because they dealt with the God and my personal feeling about God. Those were "Fire" and "Too Late". Some people kind of get squirmish when you're dealing with that subject matter, so I changed it up a little bit lyrically to make it more about a relationship between two people rather than a relationship between myself and my God. [More]

Chester Bennington’s New Lease On Life

2009-10-29T09:34:00.000-07:00

Best known as the voice of multi-platinum hard rock band Linkin Park, Chester Bennington has a multitude of other musical ideas he’d like to get off his chest. And in his six-piece group Dead By Sunrise, Bennington has found the perfect vehicle for his ruminations on life, love, loss, hope, faith — as exemplified by the diverse and emotional musical offerings of DBS' strong debut album, Out Of Ashes.
While few were aware of the project until earlier this year, Dead By Sunrise has actually been four years in the making. Bennington and his bandmates — Anthony "Fu" Valcic, Julien-K's Brandon Belsky and Elias Andra and Orgy's Amir Derakh and Ryan Shuck — have been raring to go for ages, but Linkin Park's touring and promotional duties for their mega-successful Minutes To Midnight kept the vocalist occupied for a three-year stretch.
Thankfully, a break in Linkin Park’s schedule finally gave Dead By Sunrise room to run, and ShockHound caught up with Bennington right before DBS’s recent NYC gig to chat about the group, their new album and their future. And yes, they do have one — Bennington’s already writing material for the next Dead By Sunrise release. Let's just hope we don't wait four more years for a follow-up.

SHOCKHOUND: Out of Ashes explores lyrical themes concerning loss of identity, trying to find yourself and trying to connect with other people. Was a lot of the Dead By Sunrise material written during a self-destructive period in your life?

BENNINGTON: I go through my ups and downs. There were periods during the making of this album that were pretty dark and pretty difficult. I'm an alcoholic and I battle with staying sober all the time, and that could've been part of it. Being divorced — leaving my ex-wife was not the problem, it was actually losing all my money and all my shit that really fucked me up. That was really difficult for me. I never really knew how much value I placed on all of that stuff, but I'm pretty sure if anybody went from being rich and having lots of material stuff to a year later having no money, that would pretty much fuck them up. That was difficult for me, but at the same time there were a lot of things that happened that were very positive during this period of time. But I tend to be more comfortable writing about the shitty stuff.

SHOCKHOUND: What's the most personal song on this album for you?

BENNINGTON: Every single one of them is pretty personal, but I think the most important one for me is "Give Me Your Name.” I wrote that one for my [new] wife. We danced to that song at our wedding. I didn't write the song with the idea that it would make the album. I actually wrote it to play at our wedding, but it turned out to be a great song. "In The Darkness" is another one that is very personal for me. It's not necessarily about anything personal, but it's my song about making love and how that feels. At the same time there are songs like "Condemned" and "My Suffering" which talk about my love affair with feeling like shit, so to speak. There's a weird juxtaposition between some of the songs. Some of them have more of a deep, emotional thing, and some of them are directly about specific things like relapse or learning not to repeat the mistakes of your past relationship in a future relationship. Then there are songs that I tried to mess with a little bit lyrically because they dealt with the God and my personal feeling about God. Those were "Fire" and "Too Late". Some people kind of get squirmish when you're dealing with that subject matter, so I changed it up a little bit lyrically to make it more about a relationship between two people rather than a relationship between myself and my God.

SHOCKHOUND: Isn't it funny that when you write lyrics that address God, people immediately assume that you're doing Christian rock?

BENNINGTON: Yeah, and that's kind of what I didn't want. I don't want to preach to anybody because I know that not everybody believes what I believe in. In "Too Late," there are times I feel like I want to be closer to God but wonder if I will ever be able to get there, because at times I've been so far down the other road. The reality is that I know in my heart that's completely ridiculous, because if I want that I can have it. Sometimes people lack the confidence to have that. That's what that song is about. And then with "Fire," it's about feeling alone and kind of like an island and knowing that even at that moment, when you feel that way, if you believe you can look up or look outward and know you're not alone.

SHOCKHOUND: I noticed that "Crawl Back In" was used for a promo for TNA Wrestling. Do you think that's ironic considering that song is probably more appropriate for The Wrestler?

BENNINGTON: Yeah! [Laughs] It's really funny that you say that. Yes, it probably is.

SHOCKHOUND: Is it true that during some of your recent Linkin Park concerts overseas that you performed some Dead By Sunrise songs with your DBS band during the set?

BENNINGTON: Yeah, we did. We played during the encore break of Linkin Park shows. In some cases it was a really great thing and very positive, and in some cases it was kind of crazy. It's pretty much tossing yourself into a pack of wild dogs who have no idea what they're looking at or what they're hearing. It was a really good way for us to gauge whether or not we were awesome live and if the songs were going to be received well. That's always a good way to do it, when you run out in front of a bunch of people who are expecting one thing, and they get another but have no idea what that other thing is. And if they don't completely revolt and kill you, then you're probably in pretty good shape.

SHOCKHOUND: How did your bandmates in Linkin Park react to the idea of doing this?

BENNINGTON: It was actually Mike Shinoda's idea. [Linkin Park] weren't going to go on tour, but we released "New Divide" and it kind of blew up, so we decided to do a quick, five-week world tour. That sucked up all of my pre-Dead By Sunrise time to get any touring done, so Mike suggested we play during the encore breaks during some of our shows. I was like, "Really?" I never would've suggested that. I wouldn't want to take the risk of making anybody feel uncomfortable. It would be like saying to your wife, "Hey honey, do you mind if I invite my girlfriend over?" The only difference is that these guys all know that I have this other group, and they're all very comfortable with that and all excited about the record. They like what I'm doing, but a big part of that is because we're all very close friends. Everyone knows where my loyalties lie. Everyone knows that I will not do anything to jeopardize what we have in Linkin Park or take advantage of it. Within that comes a sense of calm, but at the same time I never would've been like, "Hey, can I take these guys out and play during our set?" That would be totally ridiculous.

SHOCKHOUND: So after all the stuff you've been through, what have been the biggest life lessons that you have learned, and what do you think your fans would be surprised to learn about you?

BENNINGTON: I don't know. Some people think that the music I write, especially with Dead By Sunrise, is cathartic, open and honest, and they find that refreshing. Some people find me narcissistic and unable to think of anything original. The interesting thing is I often feel both ways about myself. I just want to make music. My goal in life is to make music that people like, and hopefully when I put stuff out there, more people like the music than not. I'd be heartbroken if I found out that I really suck at writing songs and I'm only good at singing. I play a specific role in Linkin Park, and I'm totally comfortable with that. I like leaving the bulk of the songwriting to two of the most prolific artists of our time, Mike Shinoda and Brad Delson. Everyone else in the band pitches in as well, but my personal opinion is that when you have someone who's that talented and so good at what they do, you don't want to step on their toes because you want to go do it, too. At the same time I'm really good at singing and really good at writing melodies, and I wanted to give my songs a chance. The songs are a little different from what people might be used to with Linkin Park. So far a lot of people seem to like it.

source

Interview and Article

2009-10-27T11:42:00.000-07:00

Here's a new article/interview of Chester about Linkin Park's new album and the process, and an interview about Dead By Sunrise.

MTV Shows

"It's like, 'Oh, let's go and make this giant opus that no one's ever done. It's going to cost billions of dollars and take forever.' And we're like, 'Wait a second, it's going to cost billions of dollars and take forever,' " he laughed. "[So] we might need to just make a record and still try to do a concept but figure out a way to do it without actually waiting another five or six years to put out a record, to try to pull off all the grandiose insanity we were thinking of doing. And we're doing that. So I would imagine, I'm guessing even conservatively, that we'll probably have a record out by June of next year." [More]

And...

Do you plan on touring with Dead by Sunrise?

Yeah, we like to tour as much as we can. It's gonna be more difficult to tour with Dead by Sunrise than with Linkin Park, simply because Linkin Park is No. 1 and they take the highest priority. So if I need to go in the studio or if I need to go tour with Linkin Park, that's going to stop whatever Dead by Sunrise is doing. But I'm confident that we'll be able to do plenty of shows to go around and play as much as we can for people who are fans of Dead by Sunrise. [More]

Special thanks to Ana A from Mike Shinoda Clan for these.

Chester Bennington of Dead by Sunrise and Linkin Park

2009-10-27T11:40:00.000-07:00

In 2005, while writing songs for Linkin Park [ tickets ]'s album "Minutes to Midnight," lead singer Chester Bennington [ tickets ] began penning tunes that were outside the realm of what the multi-platinum, two-time Grammy-winning band hoped to accomplish.

That laid the groundwork for Dead by Sunrise [ tickets ], Bennington's new project, whose debut, "Out of Ashes," hit stores Oct. 13. The set's first single, "Crawl Back In," was one of the most-added tracks at rock radio for four weeks spread across late August and early September.

Dead by Sunrise--Bennington on vocals, guitarists Ryan Shuck and Amir Derakh (from Orgy/Julien-K), bassist Brandon Belsky, drummer Elias Anda (also from Julien-K), and keyboardist Anthony Valcic--performed last week at MTV's first annual "Ulalume" Halloween festival at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, MD, alongside Paramore, AFI and Kid Cudi. Their performance will air during a Halloween-themed week on MTV, MTV.com, mtvU, and mtvU.com.

Bennington spoke to LiveDaily via telephone from Beverly Hills, CA, about the timing surrounding the Dead by Sunrise album, the band's plans for a tour and the new Linkin Park album.

Why was now the time for Dead by Sunrise?

Interesting question. Now's a good time because I have time to do it. Starting a new band wasn't really something I planned on doing. The music is just kind of a little outside the spectrum of Linkin Park. So the songs kind of told me to do something different with them. In doing so, I have to work around Linkin Park's schedule. We started writing songs in summer of 2005. Then we worked for a few months, got a lot of the record done and then I stopped working on the record to go make [Linkin Park's] "Minutes to Midnight." We toured "Minutes to Midnight;" that sucked up three years. Now that that's over, we went back in the studio last year, finished making the record with Howard Benson, now we're putting it out. Linkin Park is in the studio working on our new record. If there's gonna be a time to do it with this record, this is the time. So I made it happen.

Were you writing songs specifically for Dead by Sunrise, or did you find you were writing songs that were not very appropriate for Linkin Park?

I wouldn't say they weren't appropriate. The guy in the last interview actually made a good point. He was like, "The Beatles made music all the time"--I'm not comparing us to The Beatles--"that was totally different than what they made in the past. It didn't really matter what style it was. They just made their records." I think that that's the case for us now in Linkin Park.

If I had started bringing these songs in the band now, they may have fit better into the idea of what we're doing in Linkin Park. At the time, close to four years ago, we weren't really in that frame of mind. We were still juggling the idea that we had to make hip-hop metal. When you write a Spanish-influenced song in 6/8 time with a little bit of swing and swagger, it doesn't really fit in the hip-hop realm with metal.

Once we got past that, we got over ourselves, and we were told by somebody we respect in Rick Rubin, that if you like the music and you think it's great, then you should be able to put it on your album. That opened our minds a lot in Linkin Park. The timing of this album was [that it] just happened at the time when it wasn't quite into the realm of what Linkin Park was ready to do. That's just the reason it worked out the way it has.

Do you plan on touring with Dead by Sunrise?

Yeah, we like to tour as much as we can. It's gonna be more difficult to tour with Dead by Sunrise than with Linkin Park, simply because Linkin Park is No. 1 and they take the highest priority. So if I need to go in the studio or if I need to go tour with Linkin Park, that's going to stop whatever Dead by Sunrise is doing. But I'm confident that we'll be able to do plenty of shows to go around and play as much as we can for people who are fans of Dead by Sunrise.

How did you come up with the title 'Out of Ashes'?

It just kind of seemed to fit how I feel about where I am today. There are times in people's lives where you have to go through and clean house. I feel like I've gone through one of those periods of time, coming out of the ashes, so to speak.

What was it like to work with Howard Benson?

Howard is actually a very cool guy, really fun to be around. He's smart. He's a noble kind of guy. It was really cool. He was very focused on the vocals and making the vocals pop on this album. So, he was cool. The guys I'm working with in Dead by Sunrise are all talented musicians and very talented in the studio, in terms of being engineers and producers. So when it came to record music, [Benson] was kind of like, "You guys do your thing. I trust you." So Howard and I spent most of the time working together, while the other guys worked in the studio on their own. It was kind of cool to have that freedom.

What do you think he brought out in the band?

Well, producers always come in and tell you whether they think a song is decent or not. A good producer will maybe push you to maybe change melodies or write better lyrics. Maybe there could be a better post-chorus musically. There's got to be some kind of build or dynamic in the music. That's what good producers do. When they come in and help bring a song to a life they didn't have before. That's what good producers do.

How long have you known the guys in Dead by Sunrise?

I've known Ryan and Amir for probably 10 years now, maybe more. We've been good friends for a really long time. They started a band called Julien-K. I met Brandon probably five or six years ago. It's very cool to be in a band with them. We get to hang out and make music together.

How's Linkin Park's next album coming along?

I always get kind of nervous answering questions like that. It's truly my opinion, but ... I am the luckiest motherf----r to be in this band. That's all I have to say. Just curiously, crazy good songs in the studio right now. It's kind of crazy. There's some magic happening in there. Something's happening with us and it's good.

source

Linkin Park Album Will Be 'Grandiose Insanity'

2009-10-27T11:36:00.000-07:00

MTV Shows

After nearly five years in the incubator, earlier this month, Chester Bennington finally released Out of Ashes, the debut disc from his long-gestating side project Dead by Sunrise. Let's just say he's not waiting that long to get back to his day job.

"Linkin Park are in the studio right now," he told MTV News backstage at this past weekend's Ulalume Festival in Columbia, Maryland. "And we've got a sh-- ton of music. I mean, really, it's ridiculous."

Bennington said LP are once again working with producer Rick Rubin — who produced their last effort, 2007's Minutes to Midnight — on the new album. And, yes, they're still sticking to the concept Bennington had first mentioned last year, only, you know, with a slightly different, slightly more realistic twist.

"It's like, 'Oh, let's go and make this giant opus that no one's ever done. It's going to cost billions of dollars and take forever.' And we're like, 'Wait a second, it's going to cost billions of dollars and take forever,' " he laughed. "[So] we might need to just make a record and still try to do a concept but figure out a way to do it without actually waiting another five or six years to put out a record, to try to pull off all the grandiose insanity we were thinking of doing. And we're doing that. So I would imagine, I'm guessing even conservatively, that we'll probably have a record out by June of next year."

Bennington said that, in keeping with Linkin Park tradition, the new album will be sonically adventurous and that it might even feature a few tunes he'd intended for Dead by Sunrise's follow-up to Ashes.

"It's kind of funny, because I wrote a song, and I was positive it was a Dead by Sunrise song, and I was in the studio playing it, and [LP guitarist] Brad [Delson] goes, 'You are putting that down right now!' " he said. "And I was like, 'Well, apparently that's a Linkin Park song.' The song is called called 'F---ing Awesome,' by the way."

Sounds rad. And though he's pushing hard on the new Linkin Park album, Bennington's not quite finished with Dead by Sunrise — not by a long shot, it would seem.

"We are going to tour, and we are going to make more records," he said. "And we're actually talking about doing a festival of just the bands we're in, so it will be Linkin Park, Orgy, Fort Minor, Dead by Sunrise, Julien-K, Circuit Freq, JK-DJs — it's a pretty good bill. It'll have to be called the Narcissist Tour."

Source

Chester Interviews

2009-10-25T17:59:00.000-07:00

Here are two interviews of Chester about Dead By Sunrise:

Is it neat to have another debut album come out? Most musicians only get one.
It is pretty awesome. This one was as nerve-wracking as when [Linkin Park’s debut] Hybrid Theory came out. It is really cool to not know what’s going to happen. [More]

And...

FROMAN: Out of all the years of being a musician what was your favorite year?

CHESTER: This one by far. [More]

Source: Sunrise On Fire

Artist Interview: Dead By Sunrise

2009-10-25T17:00:00.000-07:00

Dead By Sunrise is Bennington, Ryan Shuck and Amir Derakh, formerly of Orgy and current Julien-K members, Brandon Belsky, Elias Andra, and Anthony “FU” Valcic. “It was just me writing the lyrics this time around, so I was very straight to the point, very forward, and very personal with the lyrics for this record,” Bennington says of his first endeavor outside Linkin Park. “I got to the point where I thought, ‘Okay, it’s time to be real.’”

FROMAN: Dead by Sunrise has more of a metal feel to it than Linkin Park, is this a sound you are looking to pursue?

DEAD BY SUNRISE (CHESTER): I wouldn’t say it’s metal so much...I think it has more of a grungy sound to it, but there are metal elements to the record, and that’s a style we also like.

FROMAN: Everyone has a couple guilty pleasure songs mine is Boz Scaggs- Lido Shuffle, I love that dumb ass song. What's your favorite guilty pleasure band/song?

CHESTER: You Spin Me Right ‘Round – Dead Or Alive

FROMAN: If you were to go to the P section in the artist list on your ipod, what would the first artist that comes up?

CHESTER: Proxy

FROMAN: Out of all the years of being a musician what was your favorite year?

CHESTER: This one by far.

Source

Linkin Park's Chester Bennington branches out with Dead By Sunrise

2009-10-25T16:58:00.000-07:00

From classic rockers such as Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton to Jack White and Dave Grohl today, musicians have long had side projects in addition to their usual bands. The latest to moonlight with another group is Linkin Park singer Chester Bennington, who teamed with members of Orgy and Julien-K to form Dead By Sunrise. The new band issued its debut album, Out of Ashes, this week, and our Brian Truitt says the songs — some of which deal with Bennington’s own struggles with divorce as well as drug and alcohol addiction — are darker, more dynamic and less hip-hop-influenced than Linkin Park’s. Brian talked with Bennington, 33, right after a sound check on Wednesday, so read below for their conversation and check out a music video for the new single, Crawl Back In.

Is it neat to have another debut album come out? Most musicians only get one.
It is pretty awesome. This one was as nerve-wracking as when [Linkin Park’s debut] Hybrid Theory came out. It is really cool to not know what’s going to happen.

Do you wonder how Linkin Park fans will embrace these new songs, especially since they’re so personal?
All around, stepping outside of something as big as Linkin Park, one thing is that expectations are really high. When you do something different, a lot of people wonder why or is it going to be good. In terms of the lyrics, the fact that I’m not lying about what the songs are about in press and being really open to what they’re about, that freaks me out a little more than anything else. To be open and honest about things, to put your whole dysfunction out there so people can see how raw you really are, that’s something I really didn’t think through so much. And 200 interviews later, this is what everybody’s focusing on.

Because your voice is so distinctive, is there a worry that someone not in the know may think these are a bunch of new Linkin Park songs?
Yeah, it is, actually. I know my voice has a very distinct sound and when I sing, I sound like myself, no matter what. That’s why I really wanted to make sure that I didn’t change too much from the original versions of the songs in terms of style. These songs are grungy, and some of them are kinda punky and pretty straightforward in terms of the rock element. That’s the thing that gives DBS our unique quality that’s different from Orgy and Linkin Park. In doing so, naturally my vocal style lends itself to the style of the song, so even though I sound like myself, it also sounds like I’m singing a little differently. You put all that together, and it equals a record that doesn’t sound like Linkin Park.

When you were younger, you grew up on Depeche Mode and Stone Temple Pilots. Did you go back and listen to those kinds of bands when you were figuring out what kind of sound you wanted to create?
No. I actually don’t listen to much music at all when I’m writing. I tend to write songs that sound like what I’m listening to. That in itself turns me off and bothers me. Usually when I’m writing, which is all the time, I don’t really listen to too much music from other people, and the style of stuff I like is so different from the style of stuff that I actually write that typically I don’t have to worry. I’m not going to write a song like the Metrics, I don’t sound like Phoenix, not too much of my stuff sounds like Depeche Mode. But a lot of my stuff is grungy, so anything that lands in the grunge era, yeah, you could probably make a connection to. But that’s the stuff I like to write and the stuff I listen to the most.

It seems a lot more musicians these days have side projects — for example, your own Linkin Park bandmate Mike Shinoda has Fort Minor, and Jack White is in three bands at the same time. Being on the frontlines, do you have any insight? Is it cool to have side projects?
I don’t if it’s cooler – I just think maybe bands are more comfortable with themselves. I know for me, if I felt anyone in Linkin Park were at all not happy with me doing this, I wouldn’t do it. I would have found a place for the songs somewhere eventually, and maybe not doing a completely whole other band. The Foo Fighters probably don’t have to worry about not being the Foo Fighters. Dave Grohl goes around and plays with Queens of the Stone Age and he’s now doing something with John Paul Jones and Josh Homme, but they know he’s going to come back and do another Foo Fighters record. And it’s kind of his band, too. [Laughs] Jack White can do whatever he wants because he’s going to make another White Stripes record, he’s gonna do more Raconteurs. A lot of bands are doing it because they maybe are communicating better within the group, or maybe they just don’t give a [fudge].

You have four kids, the oldest of whom are 12 and 13. Did you try out the new album on them to see what they thought?
Family’s tricky because they’re always going to tell you that they like it. But sometimes kids can be extremely honest. My wife is a really good gauge of honesty, too — she’ll tell me if she doesn’t like something.

In the next year, you’re planning to tour with Dead By Sunrise and finish a new Linkin Park record. Do you thrive on that kind of busy schedule or do you steel yourself to not being home for a while?
Even though I am pretty busy, I feel like I do make sure that I spend enough time at home – well, I guess it’s relative. I try to spend as much time as I can with my family. Whether my kids feel like I’m at home enough, that’s for them to say. But at the same time, they’re the most important thing in the world to me and I definitely do not want to take away from that too much. I’m at home as much as I’m gone.

Source

Chester Bennington on divorce, drugs, and Dead By Sunrise

2009-10-20T15:50:00.000-07:00

Then again another interview with Chester about Dead By Sunrise:

In our interview you talk about partying hard. What do you mean by that?
It could have meant going to a strip club and having a few drinks. It could have meant staying at home and watching the waves break and drinking Jack and Cokes all day. Or it could have turned into a four- or five-day drug-and-alcohol binge, pushing yourself to the limits of your mind. I think the one common denominator in all that stuff is no matter what I was doing, there was always alcohol…and there was a lot of it. I would sit there with my guitar all day and write songs and get drunk. And when you’re drunk, if somebody said, “Hey let’s go do this particular drug, or that particular drug, or a combination of all of them,” you’re like, “OK.” [More]

Thanks to Dead By Sunrise Fansite for this.

Chester Bennington on divorce, drugs, and Dead By Sunrise

2009-10-20T15:33:00.001-07:00

In Revolver’s December issue, we interview Linkin Park vocalist Chester Bennington on new project Dead by Sunrise’s debut album Out of Ashes (WEA/Reprise), which trails the extremes of his emotions from divorce and alcoholism to the joy of marrying again. For those of you who didn’t get enough (or are too cheap to buy the magazine), here’s the best of the rest of our wide-ranging chat.

REVOLVER The hiatus in 2005 was the first time Linkin Park has taken a break in 10 years…
CHESTER BENNINGTON Meteora and Hybrid Theory both had 24-month touring cycles, so we were on the road for a really long time. We weren’t really happy with how Warner Bros. had treated us at that point. It was a pretty frustrating time. It was like, “Here we are, we sold 20 million albums” and they’re still telling us, “You’re a fluke.” We sold 10 million records, how much do we have to prove?

In the print interview, you talk about your divorce. Is this when you started losing your shit?
I just completely lost my mind. Over the course of the next 12 to 18 months, I was just a trainwreck.

Did it start on one day or was a crescendo?
The day it started was the day I knew I was gonna move out.

In our interview you talk about partying hard. What do you mean by that?
It could have meant going to a strip club and having a few drinks. It could have meant staying at home and watching the waves break and drinking Jack and Cokes all day. Or it could have turned into a four- or five-day drug-and-alcohol binge, pushing yourself to the limits of your mind. I think the one common denominator in all that stuff is no matter what I was doing, there was always alcohol…and there was a lot of it. I would sit there with my guitar all day and write songs and get drunk. And when you’re drunk, if somebody said, “Hey let’s go do this particular drug, or that particular drug, or a combination of all of them,” you’re like, “OK.”

And in the middle of this you had to go play Live 8? What was that like?
Live 8 felt like this thing that was way bigger than me. It was important and getting a message out. But at the same time my brain was firing all kinds of electrical signals into the wrong places. Another thing I had to do because it was important and bigger than me [was a Music for Relief show]… I had no idea what my money situation was like. I was living in this little apartment. And it was like, “Hey, we need you to go to Thailand to go for Music For Relief to talk about all the stuff that’s going on over there with the tsunamis.” You guys can’t think of a-fuckin’-nother person that might be better suited for this right now? I don’t have any fucking clothes! All my stuff’s at my ex-wife’s house! She’s not letting me in! You want me to go? I don’t have a couch! … Life doesn’t fucking stop going because you decided you’re having a bad day—or a bad year.

What happened?
Unless you’ve had it happen to you, it’s kind of difficult to grasp. They started prescribing me Klonopin for anxiety. Taking that and drinking as much as I was drinking, it’s a combination of the two things that will kill you if you stop doing them suddenly.

My left arm would start to bounce, and then my head would start to twitch. I was embarrassed by it. There was only a few people who had seen me like that. Talinda [Bentley, Bennington’s current wife] would have to come in and comfort me and talk me out of it, and I would have to get something to drink to bring myself down. It was crazy. I got hospitalized a couple times. Finally I sat down with her and a couple of my friends in Dead by Sunrise and said, “I need to go into treatment.” On the way to treatment the night before, I was like, “Let’s get fucking hammered! This is my last time.” No one else got hammered with me. They just sat in a room and watched me. It was pretty pathetic. Went into treatment, was there for 30 days, got out. Three weeks later I was drinking again. I drank more. That was when my wife pretty much had a complete nervous breakdown over it, called everybody in Linkin Park. Couple hours later they were all at my house. Told me how much they loved me. I got on the plane and went back to treatment again.

It was a real intervention?
Yeah! I was sitting there going, Fuck… If I had just not picked up that first drink again. Went back to treatment. Came out in a much better place. Stayed sober for about a year. Relapsed. Went right back into hitting the program hard. Seven months later relapsed. That’s been the case for me.

You had demoed much of the Dead by Sunrise album in 2005. But when you re-recorded the vocals in 2008, were any of the songs hard to record?
“Let Down,” for example. That was in the middle of the divorce and that’s what that song was about. When I wrote the demo, it was really fucking good. That was harder to redo in the studio when I’m happily married and got a lot of success and I’ve got stuff again. It was hard for me to go back to that place because I didn’t feel that way; I didn’t feel that desperation. It was harder for me to do the final recording for that song because it was hard for me to tap into those emotions.

When you listen to the record now, do you feel like a different person?
I know I talk a lot about it, but the reality is, I came out on the other side. I made a great record with Linkin Park, made a good record with Dead by Sunrise. I’m good dad, I’m a good husband, I have a lot of friends. The bad thing would had been if I had died or continued to do that to myself. And ended up somewhere in the shithole. The good story is that didn’t happen. I get to keep making music.

Interview by Christopher R. Weingarten

Chester Bennington has new project, Dead by Sunrise

2009-10-19T09:13:00.001-07:00

Here's another interview with Chester about Dead By Sunrise:

"People will get a little bit more of a personal glimpse into my life and maybe see the kind of songwriter I am," he says.
It's not about being honest for the first time - he's always done that.
"I've always been pretty up front, especially lyrically, with my music. I think that's the one real similarity between LP and Dead By Sunrise." [More]

Thanks to Sunrise on Fire for this.

Chester Bennington has new project, Dead by Sunrise

2009-10-19T09:13:00.000-07:00

Chester Bennington has a taste of power and it's making him nervous.

The Linkin Park singer has taken temporary leave from his multi-platinum safe haven to try his luck leading his own band, Dead By Sunrise.

And he's finding things are different when you're in charge.

"In Linkin Park I have a role I play - I come in, I hear music, I can say whether I like something or not, but I leave it up to the guys who play the instruments to do their thing and work through the motions of writing the music," Bennington says.

"Then, once they get something really dope, I do my job - I write some lyrics, I make melodies.

"In Dead By Sunrise, I'm really playing more of an all-round bandleader position, where I'm writing the songs, I'm dictating a lot of the style, but I'm letting everybody insert their opinions or give their feedback or do things the way they might think is cool. So it's really different for me to have my fingers in everybody's soup, so to speak."

But the position of bandleader doesn't sit all that easily with him.

"It makes me kinda nervous. If this doesn't do well, it's because my songs aren't good, because these are the songs I brought in. That's reality," he says.

"So that's a little frightening, to think that's a possibility. But I really feel like we've made a good record and so far the people who have heard it like it. Unless everybody's blowing smoke up my ass, which I hope they aren't."

Dead By Sunrise (or DBS as Bennington is already calling it, just as he calls his other band LP), has been a long time coming.

Bennington began working on a solo project in Linkin Park downtime in 2005.

By the time he was promoting that band's most recent album, 2007's Minutes to Midnight, Dead By Sunrise had a name and had become a band - the two integral cogs of which are former Orgy members Ryan Shuck and Amir Derakh.

But it's taken until now to get Dead By Sunrise's album, Out of Ashes, out of the studio and out of storage.

"It feels like we've been working on this thing forever," Bennington says with just a little understatement.

Though there's no chance of hearing the band and not recognising it as the work of "that Linkin Park guy", it has its differences.

It's a far more straight-up rock proposition for a start. And though Bennington's lyrics in Linkin Park often need to tell a story in tandem with what the band's MC Mike Shinoda is writing about, in Dead By Sunrise Bennington was free to shovel his own dirt.

"People will get a little bit more of a personal glimpse into my life and maybe see the kind of songwriter I am," he says.

It's not about being honest for the first time - he's always done that.

"I've always been pretty up front, especially lyrically, with my music. I think that's the one real similarity between LP and Dead By Sunrise."

On this album, Bennington is a cathartic kind of songwriter. The band's name and the album's title refer to his descent into, and his eventual rise out of, a period in which he was doing - as he puts it in PC terms - a lot of partying.

He was self-destructing, he was addicted to booze and various other substances, and his first marriage was falling apart (he divorced in 2005).

"I've seen the devil in a smile, I've found salvation in a vial, my happy ending exists only in my dreams," Bennington sings on My Suffering.

"When I was going through it, I was actually trying to hide it - at least in my mind I was trying to hide it. I don't know if I did a very good job of hiding it," he says. "But I didn't want everyone to know how bad I'd really gotten. So a lot of the more revealing stuff was written afterwards, looking back, like 'OK, I'm cool with this now, I can handle being more open about my experiences over the past couple of years'.

"So that was really freeing for me. It was really interesting to look back and have that kind of perspective."

But some of the songs were written he says "while I was going through all the craziness . . . stuff that had nothing to do with that downfall, the downward spiral kind of thing".

Nowadays, of course, Bennington is happily remarried with a "litter of children".

The four kids in his house not so long ago became five - "One of my nieces moved in with us, which is pretty cool. So I guess I did acquire a 14-year-old girl somewhere along the line . . ."

It makes one wonder what his wife, Talinda, makes of all the darkness on Out of Ashes.

"At first it might have been a little disarming," Bennington says of his wife's reaction. "Like, 'Do you really want everybody to know all this stuff?'

"Honestly, what do I really have to hide?

If I can't be honest about what I'm experiencing and about my life, then what am I going to write about? Make up stuff?

If you do it tastefully and you do it in a way that's not like pornographic, if it doesn't come across as being dirty and kind of creepy, then I think that's OK."

But was it ever coming across as being dirty or creepy?

"No," Bennington says with a laugh. "I'm totally 100 per cent pure, never done anything wrong or weird in my life."

Though tearing out his heart in his Dead By Sunrise songs unburdened him, Bennington says it wasn't what saved him.

"The biggest epiphany for me during this period was realising how much value I had put into the stuff I had. That was the hardest part for me, discovering I had actually associated my success with the things I had accumulated, like money and cars and houses, things like that.

"When that's all gone, when that all disappeared, I kinda felt like maybe I was no longer successful, and I felt like a failure. And that was really tough to feel that way.

"That was really the beginning of the cascading downfall of my mental state for a little while. Then I got my s--- together and pulled myself out of it, with the help of my friends and my family and my beautiful wife."

These days, Bennington counts success as just living. "Success is if you can make it through life - you've figured something out, you know what I mean?" he says with a laugh.

"I'm still doing what I love to do, I get to be with my family as much as I want to be, I get to work whenever I feel like working, and I get to stop working when I'm over it.

"I don't have to get up and go to a job I hate every day, like a lot of people have to do to pay the bills. So I'm totally fine with that."

His other job, Linkin Park, is still simmering away in the background.

They've already been writing for a follow up to Minutes to Midnight, and their singer is more than positive about its direction. "We're always trying to do something that's different from what we've done before, and now we finally have the balls to do it," Bennington says.

"We're in a place where we're writing a lot and a lot of it's really good."

But it's unclear when any of that new Linkin Park music will emerge and Bennington will have to put Dead By Sunrise on the shelf.

"Get back to me in a year and I'll let you know how this is all working out," he says.

"I'm just starting to put all this stuff together and figure out how I can work on Linkin Park and tour with Dead By Sunrise and manage to be home enough to spend time with my kids so they don't feel like I'm a big jerk who always leaves the house."

His Linkin Park mate Shinoda at least has some wisdom to pass on, having been through this side-project thing himself with his hip hop-flavoured Fort Minor album The Rising Tied in 2005 (while Bennington was using the downtime to, ahem, party).

It wasn't a bad album, but it didn't do big business. So Shinoda has helped Bennington temper any grand expectations.

"He's given me a lot of good advice," Bennington says. "Don't go out there expecting to be treated like you're Linkin Park, which I think a lot of the guys in the band may assume - 'We're gonna go out there and have another project and it's gonna be HUGE!'

"I appreciate that. Mike is one of the coolest people I've ever known. He's one of my best friends. I love him to death, he's an amazing guy, super-talented, so anything he tells me, I pretty much listen to."

So what are Bennington's expectations for Dead By Sunrise?

"It just became this thing that is something pretty special for me. So all I really care about is that people, when they get the album, that they like the album from beginning to end," he says.

Source

Interview with Chester Bennington: Dead By Sunrise Thrive In The Moonlight

2009-10-13T10:04:00.001-07:00

Here's an interview with Chester about Dead by Sunrise:

What was the song selection process like? For instance, ‘Morning After,’ which is also a great song isn’t not on the record?

That was done, because I already released ‘Morning After’ on the Underworld soundtrack. I felt that if I put that on the record, it would kind of be cheating. So we basically took some songs that didn’t quite make the cut, and we’re reissuing, because the version that is on Underworld II is kind of a remix, it has some guitars taken out, and a more danceable beat to kind of fit the mode of the soundtrack a little more. This is more of a direct, straight rock version, and I believe that is actually going to be on the record if you get it as an import from Japan or some parts of Europe. So if people want that on the Dead By Sunrise record, [there’s] that, and we did a cover of the Misfits’ ‘20 Eyes’ like as extras. [More]

Thanks to Sunrise on Fire for this.

Interview with Chester Bennington: Dead By Sunrise Thrive In The Moonlight

2009-10-13T10:04:00.000-07:00

Chester Bennington of Linkin Park notoriety has ventured outside of his trusty, hit-making hub for a tryst with guitarists Ryan Shuck and Amir Derakh (Julien-K and Orgy), bassist Brandon Belsky, drummer Elias Anda (Julien-K) and keyboardist Anthony Valcic to form Dead By Sunrise. Their debut album, aptly titled Out of Ashes, plucks every possible emotional note on the human scale. It also reveals a new level of lyrical nakedness for Chester who’s backed by a more blossoming instrumentation. Bursting with punk rebellion, some gothic transfusions and villainous rock megalomania, Dead By Sunrise can allure fans from Depeche Mode to Velvet Revolver. In short, Dead By Sunrise would still a prove a worthy and addictive adventure even if names like Linkin Park and Orgy weren’t part of their linage.

Before embarking on a club tour, Chester who also owns the tattooing chain, Club Tattoo, told the Aquarian Weekly that he attributes the more ominous aspects on the record to the torment he was experiencing from a bitter divorce while the ballads are a tribute to his twin flame and current spouse. His candor mirrors the honesty displayed on Out Of Ashes which makes it such an exciting and refreshing listen.

The record is so well rounded; you really get something new from it with each listen. The sense of darkness and deep disappear is immediately striking, but there’s also the pure rock elements, the anger, a few great love songs, and acceptance. What contributed to that, were the songs written over a long stretch of time and so you had all these emotions to draw from?

The record was written over a long period of time, because when we started the record it was late 2005 or mid-2005, so I started writing it then and we worked till end of the year. Then I started working on Minutes To Midnight. So I took the next three years off basically from working on the record [Out Of Ashes]. After that, I started picking it back up again after we finished touring for Minutes To Midnight.

I had a bunch of new songs, I wrote other new songs in the process of recording with Howard Benson. So there are phases of writing in different periods over the last four years. A lot had happened in that time, you can imagine, a lot of things have happened to yourself in four years, so there’s plenty of stuff to draw from. Some of these songs are about when I met my wife and fell in love with her. That’s where the love songs come from. At the same time, I was having tough times in the middle of a long, drawn out divorce that was draining and pretty much put me on a downward spiral just because it was so…there was so much going on during that period of time, that you get songs like ‘My Suffering’ and ‘Condemned,’ and the heavier, darker stuff was all derived from the phases of that experiences. But yeah, there was a lot going on.

Yeah, because an outsider looking in on you could say, ‘Oh, Chester is in Linkin Park, and he has Club Tattoo, his life must be a dream.’ So the depths of despair on the record are shocking.

My life is a dream, but unfortunately, I am an asshole sometimes. I can be very selfish or my perspectives can be off, but there were a lot of really stressful things that happening over that period of time. Like waking up one day and having a lot of money and a big house, and a year later, not having a single dime and living in a seven square foot apartment in Santa Monica. That can make you go, ‘Okay, none of this stuff is actually going to be here for very long.’ That freaked me out, and that spun me into a place of like drinking every day. Kind of like, ‘How did this happen? All I did was not want to be married anymore and now, I have nothing.’

It was kind of crazy, but the thing that kept me going through the whole process was that I did fall in love again. I did find myself, because I knew that I had a lot to live for. Like you were saying, I do have this really blessed life. I do have Linkin Park, I do have Club Tattoo, I have a beautiful wife and a beautiful family, and all this great stuff. I put too much focus on the materialist things in life like money and houses. Yeah, families, everybody has got one and some suck, I kind of have a mixture of both, but I really consciously understand how much value I had placed on things that didn’t really matter. It was pretty tough and that’s what the record was inspired from. It was a combination of all those things.

Hence the title?

Right (laughs). I torched the life I had and started a new one.

How did you meet up with the guys in the band?

Well, Ryan, Amir and myself have been friends for ten years or maybe more. We met when Orgy was on its second record, Vapor Transmission, we [Linkin Park] were recording Hybrid Theory. We were working in studio called NRG, and there are multiple studios that bands can work in, and Ryan heard me screaming some parts I was working on for the record. He came walking down the hall and was like, ‘Who are you? And what are you doing here?’

He was very funny, and I told him who I was and honestly, like an hour later, we were best friends. We’ve spoken at least once a week since then. So when I was writing songs, after Meteora was finished, Ryan had heard me play some of these songs, and he kind of gave me the push to convince Linkin Park that they weren’t Linkin Park songs, which obviously they aren’t or do something else with them. I thought about that, he didn’t say, ‘with me,’ he said, ‘with them.’ It was going to be my solo album, and I was going to do pretty much everything that I could with the exception of play drums, and it very quickly turned into Ryan and Amir asking if they could manipulate the song structures or maybe playing things a little different. I just gave them full reign, ‘You guys can do whatever you want to the songs.’ That’s kind of how it started, and I knew the rest of the guys in the band from them being in Julien-K. The other half of the band, they are engineers or producers, so they are all working behind the scenes, most of them and we came together through friendship.

A few years ago, on a Family Values tour you did a duet with Scott Weiland and you easily went toe to toe with him. I realized that you weren’t only a great vocalist, but you’re a great singer. That’s really evident on this record, because you can really hear your range.

In Linkin Park, the thought process is like me and Mike share half percent of everything, so if I am doing stuff that only I could do in the band, then it kind of restricts us. No one else in Linkin Park is a vocalist, so we can’t do three part harmonies or anything like that.

Whereas in Dead By Sunrise, I have Ryan, I have Brandon, Elias, and they have all been singers in other bands before, so I have a pretty good arsenal who can do three part harmonies with me. Also this is probably the real truth, Howard Benson is just like, ‘I don’t give a fuck. This is your record, so we are just going to do it. People want to hear you sing.’ So he really kind of pushed the envelope in a lot of ways. It wasn’t just singing a harmony to a part, it was singing a harmony and then doing harmonies to harmonies which separate sections that cross in different ways and layering those. It was very complicated—it was the most layering I have ever done on any record. I think that it’s something that will really set it part from sounding like a Linkin Park record.

What was the song selection process like? For instance, ‘Morning After,’ which is also a great song isn’t not on the record?

That was done, because I already released ‘Morning After’ on the Underworld soundtrack. I felt that if I put that on the record, it would kind of be cheating. So we basically took some songs that didn’t quite make the cut, and we’re reissuing, because the version that is on Underworld II is kind of a remix, it has some guitars taken out, and a more danceable beat to kind of fit the mode of the soundtrack a little more. This is more of a direct, straight rock version, and I believe that is actually going to be on the record if you get it as an import from Japan or some parts of Europe. So if people want that on the Dead By Sunrise record, [there’s] that, and we did a cover of the Misfits’ ‘20 Eyes’ like as extras.

Why that song in particular?

Well, I actually started playing that song when I was in a cover band called Bucket of Winnies for a little while. I play it with Bucket of Winnies and Camp Freddy sometimes, it’s just fun to go play with a bunch of guys and play cover songs. So we started playing ‘20 Eyes,’ we recorded it and we really liked it. There’s nothing we’ll ever be able to do with it, so we thought that this was kind of good way of letting people have it.

You’re playing the MTV Halloween gala, is that the launch of a huge tour?

We’ve actually kind of gone back and fourth a little bit on how we wanted to approach touring. I was thinking festivals, maybe a couple of touring bands, and then I felt like I don’t want to do that. Maybe next year after the band has been around for awhile we could do that, but I really want to go play for people. Have their faces really close and loud and sweaty and right in people’s faces, and have them see the band in that way at first. I really want to build fans in a more grassroots way, not just because I’m in Linkin Park [and] the other guys have been in Orgy that we deserve to go play these amazing tours. I think we really need to earn our place. The goal is to go out and get people to fall in love with the band the old fashioned way.

Are you especially eager to do that, because it seems with Linkin Park, you guys just skyrocketed to the top?

I just feel like it’s the right thing to do. I feel like I don’t want to take Linkin Park fans for granted, and I know that the other guys don’t want to take Orgy fans for granted. I feel like hopefully, they will like this music that we’re doing, but those are fans of those respective bands, and we can’t just like leech off that.

It really feels like the right thing to do, and I actually if there is anyone else in the band who put in a little more time before things took off for Linkin Park, I have been doing this since I was fourteen. I made my first record when I was 16-years-old. I was in a band [Grey Daze] for seven years before I was in Linkin Park. We played with hundreds of national acts, and by the time we were finished and broke up, we were drawing anywhere from 1000-2000 people every one to two weeks.

That’s a pretty big deal for a band that’s never going to go anywhere. That was frustrating to me, so I feel like I have paid my dues. I don’t feel like I need to go out there and prove that, but I do think that it’s important not to just be like, ‘Oh, I am in my famous band, I can go play arenas,’ that’s ridiculous. ‘Or I deserve to have this great support slot just because I am Chester.’ It doesn’t make much sense to me.

Getting to the actual songs on the record, ‘Fire’ sounds like an open letter to someone who has passed.

That song took a few different lyrical changes. It started out one way that was really like a sad story using interesting metaphors and that’s where the name ‘Fire’ came from. The lyric that inspired the title was, ‘There’s a fire in our hearts that’s the reason why the tears keep falling, to put out the fires that our hearts are starting.’ That’s where it came from, [but] the melodies didn’t quite seem to fit. So I started over, and kind of just ran with that, and went with a more spiritual path of getting through the tougher times.
Some people may look at that song and just say, ‘Oh he must have wrote that about someone who passed on.’ Or, ‘Wow that’s really sad.’ Or some people may see it as a spiritual thing, looking up at the heavens, and you know that there is something greater than yourself that’s with you all the time. This is probably one of those songs that is written with a Linkin Park sort of a touch, because it’s more open in general.

Songs like ‘Condemned’ and songs like ‘Inside of Me’ are pretty straightforward—there is no question as to what those songs are about. This one the fact that it can be seen in so many different ways is what makes it special, and I think that’s what going to give it the ability to connect with people in a much deeper way then perhaps other songs on the record. Oh, and by the way, ‘Give Me Your Name,’ I wrote that song for my wife for our wedding.

That’s my favorite song on the record.

That’s my favorite song on the record as well. That one and ‘In The Darkness,’ those are my two favorite songs. Those are both written with love about the relationship I have with my beautiful wife. So I wrote that for her, and we danced to that at our wedding.

How did you meet?

We met through a friend, and we never actually crossed paths. Ryan was friends with her for many years. Almost for as long as I have [been friends with him], and we had known of each other for the same amount of time, but I have never met her for some reason. If she was at a party, I didn’t make it. We had never met and eventually, after I had split up with my ex-wife, we met at a party.
We hit it off right away, like instantly. Ever since we met—I think it was like four or five days before we’d see each other again, and we have been together ever since. I think she moved in with me about a week-and-half after I met her. We met, and that was it.

Out Of Ashes is out now. Dead By Sunrise performs at Gramercy Theatre on Oct. 14. myspace.com/deadbysunrise.

Linkin Park singer forges side project from ashes

2009-10-12T09:29:00.001-07:00

Here's another article about Dead By Sunrise

Dead By Sunrise began as a solo side project that turned into a project with two of his best friends, Amir Derakh and Ryan Shuck, members of the bands Orgy and Julien-K. The band also includes Brandon Belsky, Elias Andra and Anthony "Fu" Valcic.

Shuck was best man at Bennington's wedding, and Derakh met Bennington when Linkin Park was recording its debut album in the same studio as Orgy a decade ago. "We always thought Chester would do something like this -- just not with us," Derakh said. [More]

Linkin Park singer forges side project from ashes

2009-10-12T09:29:00.000-07:00

If Chester Bennington's track record is any indication, you'll be hearing his voice plenty on Utah rock stations in the coming months.

The vocalist's main band is the multiplatinum Linkin Park. In his downtime, he fronts Dead By Sunrise, which will release its debut album, "Out of Ashes," Oct. 13.

Even if you don't know his name, you've heard Bennington's voice all summer. His anguished vocals were featured on one of the hottest radio songs of the summer: Linkin Park's "New Divide," from the "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" soundtrack.

Before then, he and Linkin Park sold more than 50 million albums; Bennington joined the Southern California-based electronic rock band in 1999.

In an interview, Bennington said he isn't dissatisfied with his role in Linkin Park and the band believes its best music is yet to come.

Dead By Sunrise began as a solo side project that turned into a project with two of his best friends, Amir Derakh and Ryan Shuck, members of the bands Orgy and Julien-K. The band also includes Brandon Belsky, Elias Andra and Anthony "Fu" Valcic.

Shuck was best man at Bennington's wedding, and Derakh met Bennington when Linkin Park was recording its debut album in the same studio as Orgy a decade ago. "We always thought Chester would do something like this -- just not with us," Derakh said.

In 2005, Bennington was noodling around on the guitar and recorded some homemade demos he played for his friends. "It was a lot different that when he did in Linkin Park, and a lot different than what we had done," Derakh said.

"From my perspective, the songs are pretty grungy, straightforward rock," Bennington said of his demos, which had a different approach from Linkin Park's signature rap-meets-rock blended with electronic elements. "Some have the punk-rock vibe."

It reminded Bennington of his first band, Grey Daze, whose sound was influenced by the grunge movement of the early 1990s. It was a young band -- Bennington joined when he was 14 -- and the band fizzled out. He was a novice penning tunes at that point, but over the years he has worked with Linkin Park's Mike Shinoda -- whom Bennington called "the most talented songwriter of our time" -- on developing his songwriting craft.

Despite the different sound of Dead By Sunrise, the lyrics still have the same anger and bitter regret that are hallmarks of Bennington's lyrical imagery in Linkin Park. "That's what I do," he said of his personal, probing lyrics. "It's not a surprise. No one knows [us] as a party band."

Success, money and fame aren't littering the path to happiness and shouldn't be considered "a cure for life," he said. "S--- happens regardless of the things you have."

Now that the album is done, the band wants to tour before Bennington, Derakh and Shuck return to their primary bands. On the phone, Bennington almost sounded happy about finding another creative outlet. Well, mildly happy, because after all, his happiness isn't like anyone else's happiness.

And that's what sounds good on the radio, in Utah and everywhere else.

Source

The spotlight's on Dead by Sunrise

2009-10-09T11:50:00.001-07:00

Here's an article by Orange Pop about Dead By Sunrise

"While we were playing," remembers Ryan Shuck, the band's guitarist, "people were yelling 'TOOL!' It was one of the hardest shows … but we didn't expect it to be easy. Between all of us (in the band) we've sold 57 million records, and we didn't get there by going in front of a bunch of people and expecting not to have to fight for it." [More]

Thanks to Sunrise on Fire for this.

The spotlight's on Dead by Sunrise

2009-10-09T11:50:00.000-07:00

At this point, with only a single in rotation on KROQ and an album still a week away from being released, some might be inclined to write off Dead by Sunrise as nothing more than a side project from Linkin Park vocalist Chester Bennington.

It's an impression further deepened by the group's debut at the end of August before a Southern California audience of more than 30,000, when, in the middle of Linkin Park's set at the first Epicenter festival in Pomona, DBS unveiled a handful of songs.

"While we were playing," remembers Ryan Shuck, the band's guitarist, "people were yelling 'TOOL!' It was one of the hardest shows … but we didn't expect it to be easy. Between all of us (in the band) we've sold 57 million records, and we didn't get there by going in front of a bunch of people and expecting not to have to fight for it."

What some might not realize, however, is that this band has been almost decade in the making. At the turn of the millennium, when Linkin Park was first breaking big, Bennington met Shuck and Amir Derakh, who were also enjoying success with their band Orgy, riding high off their rocked-out version of New Order's "Blue Monday."

Though the trio soon went different directions professionally – Linkin Park quickly became one of the biggest rock acts of the era, while Orgy disbanded in 2004, leading Shuck and Derakh to form a new band, Julien-K – they stayed in touch, often getting together in their time off for barbecues and to mess around with music.

These days, Bennington shares his time between Newport Beach and Phoenix. Shuck and Derakh now live in Long Beach but got their start in Orange County; Shuck owns a couple of local restaurants, Lola Gaspar in Santa Ana and Gypsy Den in Costa Mesa.

While at a get-together five years ago, Bennington pulled out a guitar and started playing some songs he had written that didn't fit the Linkin Park mold. Shuck says he immediately heard potential in the songs and wanted to help Bennington put them on record. The guys had always said they should play together – this seemed like a good start. Already Bennington was considered the unofficial fifth member of Julien-K, given how often he would stop by the studio to offer pointers.

So Shuck and Derakh were excited when one day Bennington asked them to return the favor, handing them a disc with new guitar parts and vocals to see what they might add. The result of their three days of tinkering ultimately became the basis of Dead by Sunrise. The duo soon brought in Julien-K bassist Brandon Belsky and drummer Elias Andra, later adding keyboardist Anthony "Fu" Valcic to the project.

"It's really incestuous and extremely complicated in the way that it all pencils out," Shuck says of the lineup. "The 'Reader's Digest' version is that we were all just really good friends who play music together … and create all sorts of different sounds."

"Out of Ashes," the band's Warner Bros. debut, drops Oct. 13. The following Monday DBS plays to its hometown crowd at the Roxy Theatre in West Hollywood.

"I'm totally excited," Shuck says, "because we've been working on this for, like, five years. We've finally found a window (of time) to get this record out. We feel like we've been carrying a baby for five years and now it's finally being born."

Although all pre-production was done by the band in Shuck's home studio in Long Beach, big-time producer Howard Benson – noted for his diverse work, ranging from Motörhead and Papa Roach to Kelly Clarkson and Daughtry – was called on to polish the record.

"It could have probably been released the way it was," Shuck figures, "but when you work with someone like Howard, he's going to sit there and take an objective look at it. He's going to dig into things that matter, zero in on them – make it into something that really pays off. … This project deserved that sort of respect after all of the sacrifice and dedication that went into working on it."

As to what critics might think of Dead by Sunrise – or whether people will take the group seriously or bet on it fading away – Shuck says they're all out of their heads.

"This is a real band and it's going to be something that stays around," he insists. "We're not going to just go away – and no, it's not cutting into Linkin Park time. We're looking at it as bringing people double the Chester."

Source

Chester Bennington: 'Now I Can Write About Anything I Want'

2009-10-06T14:02:00.000-07:00

UG: The concept behind Dead By Sunrise certainly seems to be a completely unique venture from your past work. Were any of the songs originally intended for Linkin Park? Or had your intent always been to create a distinctly separate solo project?

Chester Bennington: The original idea was definitely to pitch these to be Linkin Park songs. Originally when I first started writing them, there were obvious differences. They were a little too grungy. They were a little too acoustic guitar based. They were really nice, but they would say, “I don’t know where we could use them without changing the songs.” I said, “That’s cool. I totally get it, and you’re right. This stuff is too much like that – but that’s what I like about it.” So if it had been 20 or 30 other songs that I kind of wanted to do and the guys were just like, “Ah, it’s okay.” I would have been like, “Okay. Let’s move on.”
Everyone was like, “This is a great song. I just don’t know what we can do with it. Maybe you should sell it someone else?” I was like, “That’s a great idea. I’m going to sell it to myself!” Once I had that conversation about a couple songs it was like, “I don’t think we should keep having these conversations because these songs all have that thing that the other two had.” It just grew into a compilation of this kind of sound. Now I know how to write for Dead By Sunrise and how to write for Linkin Park. [More]

Special thanks to JoeHahn.org for this.

Chester Bennington: 'Now I Can Write About Anything I Want'

2009-10-06T14:00:00.000-07:00

Linkin Park is doing what many bands strive for in their careers: Defy all genres. The band’s last album Minutes To Midnight created the kind of buzz that could certainly make a record exec either exceedingly happy or nervous. Jettisoning the "nu metal" label that accompanied their debut, the members of Linkin Park proved that they had no intention of creating carbon copies of their previous albums.

Frontman Chester Bennington has taken that idea one very big step further. With an arsenal of songs that weren’t the right fit for Linkin Park’s sound, Bennington decided to create a side project that suited whatever musical whim might come his way.

Dabbling in everything from pop ballads to grungy rock anthems, Bennington’s new side project Dead By Sunrise has been several years in the making. Although his personally inspired lyrics (touching on topics such as his divorce and alcohol addiction) will certainly grab an audience’s attention, it should also be noted that the singer paved the musical foundation for the bulk of the material, which veers greatly from the typical songwriting process in Linkin Park. Dead By Sunrise’s first record Out Of Ashes hits shelves everywhere on Oct. 13, and in the meantime the video for the band’s first single "Crawl Back In" debuted on Sept. 8. Bennington recently talked with UG writer Amy Kelly about his transition into Dead By Sunrise and the much-anticipated next album from Linkin Park.

Chester Bennington: The original idea was definitely to pitch these to be Linkin Park songs. Originally when I first started writing them, there were obvious differences. They were a little too grungy. They were a little too acoustic guitar based. They were really nice, but they would say, “I don’t know where we could use them without changing the songs.” I said, “That’s cool. I totally get it, and you’re right. This stuff is too much like that – but that’s what I like about it.” So if it had been 20 or 30 other songs that I kind of wanted to do and the guys were just like, “Ah, it’s okay.” I would have been like, “Okay. Let’s move on.”

Everyone was like, “This is a great song. I just don’t know what we can do with it. Maybe you should sell it someone else?” I was like, “That’s a great idea. I’m going to sell it to myself!” Once I had that conversation about a couple songs it was like, “I don’t think we should keep having these conversations because these songs all have that thing that the other two had.” It just grew into a compilation of this kind of sound. Now I know how to write for Dead By Sunrise and how to write for Linkin Park.

Had you conceived the melodies even before writing the lyrics?

In some cases, yeah. In probably about 98 percent of everything that I write, the melodies come first. I’ve always found it very difficult to sit down to start writing down the lyrics, ever since I was a kid. I would sit down and write lyrics all day. So I would have 100 pages of lyrics and when I would go to band practice, I would bring all my lyrics with me. I would be like, “Wow, look at all I’ve accomplished. I’m a fucking badass!” I’d be flipping through all the pages to find what would work with the song instead of writing over a song. I wasn’t writing to the melody. I was writing melody to the lyrics to fit the song. With Linkin Park, I did the opposite. We wouldn’t even talk about lyrics until we had the song. Then when we had melodies, we would start working on the lyrics. Then we would have melodies that would work with the lyrics, and the melody would evoke the story.

Did you already have an inclination that Ryan Shuck and Amir Derakh would be the perfect musicians for Dead By Sunrise? What was it about them that was a good fit for your vision?

I’ve been friends with Ryan and Amir for 10 years now – and close friends. We hang out. When I’m not touring with Linkin Park, I’m with Ryan and Amir. We have plans today where we’re hanging out at the pool. They’re more family than anything else. If I’m at home and they’re around and I play songs, Ryan will be like, “What the fuck is that?” I go, “That’s a song I have.” He’s like, “You need to do something with that.” Timing is always everything as well. The guys were no longer in Orgy, and they were starting with their new band Julien-K. It was kind of like, “We can do this if we wanted to.” When there was time, it kind of all came together.

On your MySpace page there are several webisodes that show you crafting the songs with an acoustic. There are certain artists who call songs “their babies” and might have a problem with other musicians adding too much input. After you wrote the foundation of the songs, did you welcome input from Amir and Ryan?

Very early on, I had been writing on my acoustic guitar. It is just me with four chords singing the melody. If a song is good like that, you really don’t need to fuck with it a lot. In a sense I was like, “Let’s not overcomplicate this stuff. It doesn’t need to be overcomplicated.” In that clip when I said, “If I can sit down and play one note and I never have to change playing that one note, the song is great because the melody is awesome and the lyrics are great. Why do you have to start throwing in a bunch of chord progressions?”

That was kind of a goal. Let’s not detract from what makes the song great. In that sense, I very much stuck to what I wanted to accomplish. I would go in, sit down with my acoustic, play the chords and melody, and then leave for the first couple of tracks. Ryan would call in and say, “Hey, do you mind if we started messing with this thing a little bit?” I said, “You guys go crazy. Do whatever you want. I want you to do whatever it is you think you want to do with the song. I want to see what you guys end up with.” So they went in, and they came back out with the first version of “Letdown.” I was like, “I love this. This is great.” It’s using that electronic/pop/alternative style of music with this grungy guitar singer/songwriter type of song. If we can find a way to balance that out, we will have created something special.

There is almost a punk vibe to the single “Crawl Back In.” When you compare a song like that to any given Linkin Park track, one can imagine there was a pretty different approach to songwriting.

I think there are a few things that are different in the way I approach songs with Dead By Sunrise as opposed to what I do with Linkin Park. My role in Linkin Park is to come in after the music is written and start humming melodies until I find something that is great. With Dead By Sunrise, I can hear anything in my head and sit down and play it on the guitar. If I like it, I’ll take it in. If it’s a really mellow song, then I’ll bring it in. I don’t care if it’s folksy and mellow.

For example, when I wrote “Crawl Back In” I heard that (sings melody) in my head. I was like, “This is cool.” So I sat down and wrote it out. I put the pieces together and brought it in, and we started working on it. I was just like, “I like this thing. I like the sound of it. It’s cool.” If you listen to “Too Late” and “Crawl Back In,” they are completely different. They are so different in so many ways that it doesn’t seem like it could be on the same record. It’s kind of crazy. If I like it, I’m going to fucking write it. That’s basically how I work. I don’t care if one song is a death metal song and the next song is like a pop ballad.

For Out of Ashes, you worked with producer Howard Benson, who has never collaborated with Linkin Park in the past. What made you decide on Howard over Rick Rubin (producer of Minutes To Midnight)?

For one, Rick was already working on two other projects. So that kind of took him out of the running right away. Plus, I just worked with him in Linkin Park, and I’m pretty confident that we’ll work with him again. I didn’t want to dip in that well too many times. I think that’s smart. I looked at the list of producers that I wanted to work with, and timing is everything. I am in Linkin Park, and we were going to start working on something.

Howard was on the list and said he was available to do it and work on it with me. I had met with a couple producers before. One I don’t want to name who it was because I don’t want to talk bad about him. It was the most uninspiring meeting that I’ve ever had. It was like, “Wow. I would rather cut my face off than to go through this again!” The other one was kind of cool, but the guy is also in a band. The time wouldn’t work out. Then I met with Howard, and he got what we were doing. He was excited about it, he wanted to work on it, he liked the band, he liked the people in the band, and we all talked about stuff. He was smart about gear and how the songs come together. We all walked out and were like, “Fuck yeah!” That’s what you want in a producer. You walk out going, “This is going to be fucking great. Even though we don’t have ideas and we don’t have songs, this guy is going to help us find them.” That’s what you want, and that’s what we got with Howard.

You cover plenty of personal topics in Dead By Sunrise’s lyrics, including your divorce and alcohol addition. How difficult was it to talk about those subjects, and was there one song that might have been particularly difficult to write?

I think going through it was difficult, but I’m pretty good at writing about stuff. Once I came out with being abused as a child, a lot of those doors opened for me. Now I can write about anything I want. Nobody knew about it until that day. My parents were going, “What?” It was like, “Okay, if I can write about that, I can pretty much write about anything.” I would say that I wasn’t writing songs about my particular problems while I was going through them during this record. I was writing songs about falling in love, and I was kind of skating around the subject a little bit.

After I went through all of that, that’s when I started writing very clear and very forward songs about what I went through. “Crawl Back In” talks about relapsing and how hard that is. “Condemned” is about that love affair with feeling like shit. It was very strange for me because these ideas just started coming. I don’t know if I could have done it if I had was in the middle of it. I try not to change things that much in my songs. If it comes to me, then it comes to me. If it doesn’t, then I’ll wait a couple of days. After that, I’ll just let it go. It’s not worth it.

I noticed that you play both guitar and keyboards on Out Of Ashes. Had you tracked those instruments on any past Linkin Park records?

I think that’s a thing that most people probably don’t know about me. I actually can play instruments. I’m not great, but I can play them good enough to write a song. I’m not Mozart by any means, but I can put things together to make good songs. I wrote some guitar tracks on those that came from demo sessions. I play quite a bit of synth, too.

Do you foresee yourself playing synth or guitar on future Linkin Park albums?

There are some pretty serious musicians in Linkin Park. There are moments during a Linkin Park session where I’ll say, “Hey, can we change this part?” On “Shadow of the Day,” there is a guitar part that’s at the end of the song. I walked into the studio, and Brad had been there two days straight. I said, “How you’re doing?” He said, “I can’t do this. I can’t break the code on this one.” I said, “Play it for me. I want to hear what you’re working on.” He played it and I go, “I’ve got an idea.” I go in the other room, played the part on the piano, and I go, “Play this.” He played it, and that’s what we kept. That’s what we do. That’s what being in a band is about. Brad said, “Ah! Why couldn’t have you been here two days ago?” I go, “Because it was supposed to happen right now.”

Linkin Park’s next record isn’t slated for release until 2010, but can you give us some idea of what we’ll be hearing? I read a quote from Mike Shinoda stating that the album will be “genre-busting.”

Mike, with that comment, every interview I’ve done they’ve asked me specifically about that quote! Thanks, Mike! From my perspective, I agree with him. The longer Linkin Park is around, the more difficult it is to find a place that we fit in best. Are we a pop band? Are we an alternative rock group? Are we a modern rock act? Are we a metal group? Or are we something else? Nobody knows what the hell is going on with us anymore, and I think that’s something that will propel us into being a better band in the future. I think it sets us apart.

I do believe this record is definitely going to help make that more difficult for people to understand. In terms of how it sounds, we’ve got 40 songs. A handful of them are amazing. A dozen or so are really good, and the rest could have potential. The ones that are pretty amazing and the ones that everyone is pretty much like, “As long as the lyrics are great, the song is a masterpiece” – they are really fucking good. It’s kind of nuts. From my perspective when I hear them, I can’t believe that I’m in this band. I can’t believe this is the stuff that I’m a part of making. I’m sharing the same stage as some of the most talented people in the world and have one of the best producers in the history of music. We’re making groundbreaking stuff, and it’s very strange to be part of that.

Mike’s quote was certainly an intriguing one that piqued our curiosity.

That quote is so not Mike’s personality. He’s a really pretty humble guy, and he doesn’t like to toot his own horn. For him to come out and say – “ Yeah, it’s genre-busting” – it’s kind of like, “Well, all right!”

Interview by Amy Kelly
Ultimate-Guitar.Com © 2009

Chester Bennington talks to ARTISTdirect.com

2009-10-06T09:26:00.001-07:00

If Out of Ashes were a movie, what would it be?

[Laughs] I don't know! That's interesting…I think there are a lot of movies that may have similar elements—like if you put them all together it could make a cool movie. Maybe if you mixed a little bit of Trainspotting with When Harry Met Sally and you smashed those together, that's the movie it'd be [Laughs]. I don't know; I'm trying! That didn't make any sense, but it's funny [Laughs]. I have no idea what movie this record would be. [More]

Chester Bennington talks to ARTISTdirect.com

2009-10-06T09:22:00.000-07:00

Interview: Dead By Sunrise
Dead By Sunrise are just what pop culture needs right now.

Fronted by Linkin Park vocalist Chester Bennington, Dead By Sunrise make unapologetic, down and dirty riff rock that's got soul.

On their Warner Bros. debut, Out of Ashes [Due out October 13, 2009], Chester rips and roars with an undeniable fire. His voice and lyrics hit like a .44 magnum, blowing a hole right through all expectations and conventions. Dead By Sunrise isn't afraid to go into outer space either. With a little help from Amir Derakh and Ryan Shuck [Orgy, Julien-K], songs like "Fire" ascend into vibrant, spacey soundscapes that beg for repeat visits. Bringing Bladerunner-esque electronics into a grungey gutter, Out of Ashes is pure cyber punk paradise.

While shooting a video for the album's next single, "Let Down," Chester sat down with ARTISTdirect.com editor Rick Florino to discuss his rebirth Out of Ashes, the difference between Dead By Sunrise and Linkin Park, how he writes lyrics and mashing up Trainspotting and When Harry Met Sally…

Do you feel like Dead By Sunrise is balancing old school grit with a spacey, ethereal sentiment?

Yeah, it's good rock that's a bit grungey and dirty, but, at the same time, it's still really clean and poppy in places. Some of the songs have this really interesting, like you said, ethereal vibe going on. It's cool that you felt that way, because that's exactly what we were going for [Laughs].

The record starts off unexpectedly with those strange textures at the beginning of "Fire."

"Fire" opening up the record really sets the tone for sure.

Given the amount of raw attitude on Out of Ashes, is this your outlaw record?

I don't know if I'd say that. For me, it was really about sticking to what the songs were telling me to do. The whole reason why the project even started was because I really liked the songs the way they were. If there was anything that needed to be added, it simply became a nice addition to what was already there. We didn't have to take anything away from these songs. I knew that if Linkin Park was working on these songs, the grungey, punky and real straightforward rock element probably would've been taken out and replaced by another form of it. That's how I feel about the record. I'm not sure if it's my outlaw record. I really didn't break too many rules on this one. I went for simplicity. I started out with the guitars and the melodies. If I could sit down with my acoustic and sing it and it sounded good, then the hard work was already done. It was merely a matter of finding a style and a vibe at that point.

You come through in these songs more than anything else. Is it the most personal music you've recorded up to this point?

The fact that I was the only one writing lyrics on the album was really crucial to that. With Linkin Park, Mike [Shinoda] and I both have to really connect to the lyrics. So if I'm writing about something Mike has never experienced—like an addiction problem or something along those lines—the only way for Mike to relate to it lyrically is if we take the actual story out and only leave the emotional attachment to it. We end up doing a lot of character roles with Linkin Park, whereas with Dead By Sunrise I'm the only character to relate to. In a lot of ways, it is very personal, but with Linkin Park I also write in a very personal way. We just generalize it more in Linkin Park, by taking very specific kinds of words out of the songs. With Dead By Sunrise, I was able to be very forward about what the songs were about, especially within the lyrics themselves.

Did you feel a certain amount of freedom having this blank slate?

There was a lot of freedom in the fact these were my songs and this was my thing. They're my words, so I got to do whatever I wanted. But, at the same time, that is probably the scariest part of it. The reality is if people don't like this record for whatever reason, then it all comes back to me. I don't get to share the blame with anybody else but myself [Laughs]. I feel like this is a great record though—the songs are strong and the melodies are good. The lyrics are important to me, and I feel like that gives them validity. I was involved with every aspect of making the album—from the songwriting to the programming to performing with various instruments. I think that opened me up even more creatively than simply being the guy who comes in and does melodies and lyrics.

Lyrically, the album is very poetic and visual. Were you reading a lot or watching movies while writing?

When I write, I'll watch a lot of movies, and I will read books. I stay away from music. Usually when I'm writing, I don't listen to anything because I end up writing songs that sound like what I'm listening to. If I'm listening to Alice In Chains, then I want to be in Alice In Chains because they're awesome. Then I end up writing songs that sound like Alice In Chains, and that's not good. They need to write Alice In Chains songs—not me! I need to write Linkin Park and Dead By Sunrise songs; that's what I'm supposed to do. When I was writing the lyrics for Out of Ashes, I tried to use sentences that were really visual and words that inspired people to see a moving picture in their heads. That way, listeners can really catch the vibe of what the music is about. In doing so, there's a more colorful flare to the lyrics. That also allows people to feel how dark a lot of the record is. I think the darker thing are, the more they make an impact on you. In terms of writing, I definitely went a little more poetic on this album than normal.

By delving into that darkness, you give fans more of yourself, especially in a song like "Inside of Me."

I wrote that song specifically about being away from my family and my wife, and how I really don't like that. I get into a very dark place. I'd battled relapse at that point. I'd been away from her for so long that I was like, "I'm not doing well—I want to drink or do something." That's the kind of thought process that my brain goes into—well, it's bad, let's make it worse. That's not cool, you know? That song is exactly about that. "Fire" is the only song where I didn't go directly to something with me, but after I wrote it, it actually related to me. In a lot of ways, that song is about doing some soul searching and trying to feel that greater power out there in the universe—knowing you're connected to that. Some people feel like it's a sad song about losing somebody and having them look down on you. You always imagine, after someone passes, that they're up there looking down at you and watching over you—that brings comfort to people as well. In that way, I think that song does connect in many different facets. Every song on this record is about a specific thing that happened to me—that I dealt with over the past four or five years.

If Out of Ashes were a movie, what would it be?

[Laughs] I don't know! That's interesting…I think there are a lot of movies that may have similar elements—like if you put them all together it could make a cool movie. Maybe if you mixed a little bit of Trainspotting with When Harry Met Sally and you smashed those together, that's the movie it'd be [Laughs]. I don't know; I'm trying! That didn't make any sense, but it's funny [Laughs]. I have no idea what movie this record would be.

Why'd you call the album Out Of Ashes?

I thought the title really fit where I am now. I look back at the past five years, and I realize that I've built an entirely new life for myself. In order to do that, I really had to wipe out everything else that was going on before. In a way, it's a metaphor for the idea of cleansing yourself through fire. I felt that it fit.

Each song is like its own rebirth.

It's not really all about one thing. It's about some dark stuff. It's about falling in love. It's about looking at the world from an outside perspective. All of those things add something a little different to the record. It does tell a story but, at the same time, each song does have its own life. I like the ebb and flow that the album has from the first song to the last.

Are you writing more music now?

Basically, Dead By Sunrise and Linkin Park work really similarly. We never stop writing. Through the process of making this record, I did turn something on. I'm writing a lot more frequently. I used to write something like 15 or 20 songs in a year. Now I could probably do that in a week or so. Things have really progressed and everything's been kick started. We're not going to turn it off.

source

Kerrang Interview: Come out and play!

2009-08-05T20:21:00.001-07:00

Here's an interview with Chester by the Kerrang! Magazine. Special thanks to Chestington for the transcript.

Last year's Milton Keynes Projekt Revolution show has become a landmark show for you. Can you top that?

"I don't know! There are certain shows in our career that I believe were very pivotal kind of groundbreaking shows, and that show in particular was in my opinion a very special day. The energy at Milton Keynes was amazing that day, so hopefully Sonisphere will be great. We always show up with the same state of mind for every show, which is to go out there, kick as much ass as possible, and if there are bands playing after us, making sure they wish that they didn't have to play after us! (Laughs)" [More]

Kerrang Interview: Come out and play!

2009-08-05T20:21:00.000-07:00

Are you looking forward to playing at such a huge new festival?

"Yeah, we're about it, it's going to be a lot of fun. We're playing what should be a lot of great shows this summer, and this is definitely going to be one of the top shows for us to play, which we find very exciting."

Last year's Milton Keynes Projekt Revolution show has become a landmark show for you. Can you top that?

"I don't know! There are certain shows in our career that I believe were very pivotal kind of groundbreaking shows, and that show in particular was in my opinion a very special day. The energy at Milton Keynes was amazing that day, so hopefully Sonisphere will be great. We always show up with the same state of mind for every show, which is to go out there, kick as much ass as possible, and if there are bands playing after us, making sure they wish that they didn't have to play after us! (Laughs)"

Is there any new material on the horizon?

"We're actually working on the record right now. We've got a ton of music already, and I'd say very conservatively that by this time next year there will be another Linkin Park record. Where we're at right now isn't necessarily where we're gonna be in six months, so there could be a lot of stuff right now that we're really into which may not even make it. But, where it stands right now, I'd say if we took Minutes To Midnight and Hybrid Theory and took all of the best stuff from those two records and mashed them together in a psychedelic, post-apocalyptic kid of very dark metal hip-hop pop - that's what's going on right now. It's really cool!"

Chester Bennington to Preview Dead by Sunrise in Linkin Park Show

2009-07-30T16:04:00.001-07:00

Here's an article about Chester bringing Dead By Sunrise on tour with Linkin Park.

During the band's current overseas tour, Bennington has brought his new band with him. During Linkin Park's set, he and Dead By Sunrise will perform a three-song show. "I will be coming out at some point during the Linkin Park set performing new music by Dead by Sunrise, and we'll come back and do Linkin Park," he tells Noisecreep. "It's just kind of, 'Hey, here's what I'm doing, check it out.'" [More]

Chester Bennington to Preview Dead by Sunrise in Linkin Park Show

2009-07-30T16:04:00.000-07:00

Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington has made sure he has the full support of those bandmates in launching his new project, Dead by Sunrise. And now the rest of Linkin Park are going to show that support by giving over a portion of their live show to Bennington and Dead by Sunrise.

During the band's current overseas tour, Bennington has brought his new band with him. During Linkin Park's set, he and Dead By Sunrise will perform a three-song show. "I will be coming out at some point during the Linkin Park set performing new music by Dead by Sunrise, and we'll come back and do Linkin Park," he tells Noisecreep. "It's just kind of, 'Hey, here's what I'm doing, check it out.'"

Fans in North America who want the Bennington two-fer will have to trek to Southern California's Pomona Fairplex August 22, when LP and DBS share the stage with Alice in Chains, Wolfmother, Atreyu and Tool, among others, as part of the first Epicenter Festival.

For Bennington the chance to be a part of that lineup is something he relishes for different reasons. "We've never played with Tool before, so that's exciting for me," he says. "It's always interesting and a challenge to perform with bands that you may have felt like they wouldn't necessarily fit on the same bill as us. I like to put to the test our statements that very confidently we can play with anybody; I don't care if it's Beyonce to Paul McCartney or Tool or Slipknot, we can fit on all those bills."

While they've never shared a bill with Tool, Bennington is well aware of what Alice in Chains bring to the stage. "Jerry [Cantrell] is a friend of mine, he's an amazing talent, wonderful guy, and everyone else in the band is just absolutely stellar," he says. "And honestly, if people haven't seen Alice in Chains since they introduced [new vocalist William Du Vall], he's a bada--. He's the real f---ing deal and you are going to see an Alice in Chains show, it's Alice in Chains up there. It's not like they're out there just trying to make bucks. They take it seriously."

So it's obvious Bennington means it when he says, "If I wasn't on [the show], I'd go see it."

But for those who are anxious to see Dead By Sunrise and can't make it to Pomona, Bennington says they will tour, though with Linkin Park working on a new record, it will be tricky. "We're gonna tour this record as much as possible, and at the same time I'll be working on the new Linkin Park record, which I don't know how I'm gonna do it," he says. "I'm just gonna do it."

Source

Chester Bennington Tells: Side Project 'Dead By Sunrise' Inspired By Drinking Problem

2009-07-27T15:00:00.001-07:00

Another interview of Chester talking about the upcoming album of Dead By Sunrise, the story behind it and the things he went through.

"There's a lot of different elements of my life that I wrote about on this record that have occurred in the last 4 years," Chester told Andrew G.

"A lot of which were self destructive and negative and heart-breaking in some points, and at the same time I also experienced the greatest love I've ever experienced in my life, getting closer with my family and overcoming the self destructive pattern in my life." [More]

Thanks to ACDaalgard once more for this.

Chester Bennington Tells: Side Project 'Dead By Sunrise' Inspired By Drinking Problem

2009-07-27T15:00:00.000-07:00

Take 40's own Andrew G caught up with Chester Bennington of Linkin Park fame last week to find out all about his new side project, 'Dead By Sunrise'.

Chester revealed that he's been able to be more involved in the songwriting process in Dead By Sunrise than in Linkin Park, and that much of the material on their forthcoming debut album Out Of Ashes was inspired by his former struggle with drugs and alcohol.

"There's a lot of different elements of my life that I wrote about on this record that have occurred in the last 4 years," Chester told Andrew G.

"A lot of which were self destructive and negative and heart-breaking in some points, and at the same time I also experienced the greatest love I've ever experienced in my life, getting closer with my family and overcoming the self destructive pattern in my life."

"All of those things are being represented on the record... and so (the band name) Dead By Sunrise is actually... literally from my feeling like I'm not going to make it to tomorrow. Am I gonna overdose tonight? Am I gonna have seizures from alcohol withdrawal? Am I just gonna wanna quit playing music altogether and go be a recluse somewhere?"

"Those are all things that were very real to me at certain times in the last few years, and then at the same time there's times where I was more happy and more clear than I've ever been... so it's a very weird juxtaposition that you feel on the record."

Dead By Sunrise release their first single 'Let Down' shortly and Andrew had the chance to check out the filming of the video clip! See below for a little sneak peek from G's handy-cam!

Source

Chester Bennington Opens Up About His Past Addictions

2009-07-20T16:11:00.001-07:00

Here's an article about Chester explaining how he went through alcohol and drugs addiction, and how this helped him artistically.

In 'My Suffering, which he describes as a song "literally about [how] being an alcoholic and a drug addict has paid off for me in many ways," he discusses how his addiction has helped him creatively. "I have been able to tap into all the negative things that can happen to me throughout my life by numbing myself to the pain so to speak and kind of being able to vent it through my music," he said. "'Crawling,' for example, by Linkin Park, is probably the most literal song lyrically I'd ever written for Linkin Park and that's about feeling like I had no control over myself in terms of drugs and alcohol. That feeling, being able to write about it, sing about it, that song, those words sold millions of records, I won a Grammy, I made a lot of money. I don't think I could've been inspired to create something like that by watching someone else go through that. So in a lot of ways that's been very constructive for me." [More]

Chester Bennington Opens Up About His Past Addictions

2009-07-20T16:11:00.000-07:00

As part of Linkin Park, Chester Bennington writes lyrics that both he and his band mates can relate to and feel comfortable singing. But in his own project, Dead by Sunrise, a collaboration between himself and Julien K that Bennington is fronting while on some down time from LP, the vocalist is holding nothing back, especially lyrically.

Among the themes he explores heavily is his own battles with addiction. "My life was falling apart in many ways that I was writing about on this record in terms of getting divorced, in terms of diving very hard into alcohol and drugs throughout this process," he confessed to Noisecreep.

In 'My Suffering, which he describes as a song "literally about [how] being an alcoholic and a drug addict has paid off for me in many ways," he discusses how his addiction has helped him creatively. "I have been able to tap into all the negative things that can happen to me throughout my life by numbing myself to the pain so to speak and kind of being able to vent it through my music," he said. "'Crawling,' for example, by Linkin Park, is probably the most literal song lyrically I'd ever written for Linkin Park and that's about feeling like I had no control over myself in terms of drugs and alcohol. That feeling, being able to write about it, sing about it, that song, those words sold millions of records, I won a Grammy, I made a lot of money. I don't think I could've been inspired to create something like that by watching someone else go through that. So in a lot of ways that's been very constructive for me."

A lot of artists would never be that frank about their addiction, but Bennington said that's not his style. "I'm not one of those guys who thinks being anonymous is all that great," he said. "I don't have a problem with people knowing that I had a drinking problem. That's who I am and I'm kind of lucky in a lot of ways cause I get to do something about it. I get to grow as a person through it. It's kind of a cool thing. It's not cool to be an alcoholic, meaning it's not cool to go drink and be a dumbass. It's cool to be a part of recovery. This is just who I am, this is what I write about, what I do, and most of my work has been a reflection of what I've been going through in one way or another."

source

Chester Bennington talks about staying creative

2009-07-16T17:23:00.001-07:00

Here's a new MTV Interview with Chester where he talks about Dead By Sunrise and Linkin Park:

MTV Shows

"I don't want to be a caricature of myself, just kind of rewriting the same song over and over again, to get people to buy it," he continued. "I'd rather take a chance at doing something new and different and lose a few and gain a few rather than keep the same ones around. You can't make everybody happy."

And to that point, though Ashes will finally hit stores in September, Bennington isn't about to forget his Linkin Park duties anytime soon ... in fact, he's trying very hard to combine Dead by Sunrise with LP. Literally.

"I'm actually taking these guys out with me. [Linkin Park] is leaving for Europe and Japan, and Dead by Sunrise is going to be joining us on tour, and we're actually going to be jumping in the middle of LP's set, playing a few songs, then jumping out and letting LP finish out the set," Bennington said. "And that was actually an idea that was brought up by the guys in Linkin Park. I think it's going to be amazing. Exhausting, but amazing." [More]

Special thanks to Chestington for the tip.

Chester Bennington talks about staying creative

2009-07-16T17:23:00.000-07:00

"There are songs about being in love and there's songs about hating people," singer says.

Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington has already described his Dead by Sunrise side project as being "really dark ... like post-apocalyptic 'Blade Runner' meets LSD," so he's not exactly afraid to talk about the rather dark period in his life that birthed his new band.

"I came up with the band name because in the beginnings of making this album, I was partying ... we'll call it partying. It wasn't much fun, but we partied a lot. And there was a lot of times where I was kind of in a really self-destructive place, and sometimes it felt like you weren't sure if you were going to make it to the next day," he explained. "The name kind of evolved from that lifestyle, and the title of the record, Out of Ashes, is kind of coming out of that self-destructive path I was on, and rising from the ashes, so to speak."

And so, like most of the songs on Ashes, "Crawl Back In" — for which Bennington recently shot a video in California's Vasquez Rocks Natural Park — is plenty dark: full of churning, burning, grunge guitars. But it's not pitch-black: Lyrically, the song details Bennington's slow climb back into the light — a climb that started with some serious self-discovery.

"It's a song about questioning your authenticity. I do that every once in a while; I wonder how many of my own thoughts are really my own, and how much influence do the people around me have on the person I am," he said. "There's a lot of that on the record. There's a very dark side [to it], and there's a very light side on it. There are songs about being in love and there's songs about hating people. It's a very strange juxtaposition. And that represents what had been going on in my life over the past couple of years — really great moments happening at the same time as these really terrible things were happening."

And, admittedly, most of those "really great" moments had to do with his other band, Linkin Park. And while Bennington is eternally grateful for all that LP — and their fans — have given him, he's also not afraid to push either away with Dead by Sunrise.

"I think that being in Linkin Park, our sound is so different from song to song and record to record that I really was forced to stop worrying about what I might think our fans want to hear, as opposed to just writing music that I like," he said. "I think that if you get into a place as an artist that is focusing on outside opinions of people you don't even know — like, 'What does the 15-year-old kid in Cleveland think of this song?' — I really don't know, and if I focus on that, I almost end up biting myself to ensure that I keep giving them what they want, and that's a dangerous place to be in.

"I don't want to be a caricature of myself, just kind of rewriting the same song over and over again, to get people to buy it," he continued. "I'd rather take a chance at doing something new and different and lose a few and gain a few rather than keep the same ones around. You can't make everybody happy."

And to that point, though Ashes will finally hit stores in September, Bennington isn't about to forget his Linkin Park duties anytime soon ... in fact, he's trying very hard to combine Dead by Sunrise with LP. Literally.

"I'm actually taking these guys out with me. [Linkin Park] is leaving for Europe and Japan, and Dead by Sunrise is going to be joining us on tour, and we're actually going to be jumping in the middle of LP's set, playing a few songs, then jumping out and letting LP finish out the set," Bennington said. "And that was actually an idea that was brought up by the guys in Linkin Park. I think it's going to be amazing. Exhausting, but amazing."

Source

Dead by Sunrise — New Band from Linkin Park's Chester Bennington

2009-07-09T13:34:00.001-07:00

Another article about Dead By Sunrise where Chester talks about their sound.

Bennington says that the music he wrote for Dead by Sunrise is darker, sexier, and more personal than anything he's done before. "It's got me all over it," he says. "This is the music I hear in my head." Indeed the creative freedom that Bennington felt making OUT OF ASHES is evident on songs like "Crawl Back In," "Let Down," and "Walking in Circles." "There are no hip-hop influences at all on this record, which is obviously a big difference," he says. "Also, the amount of vocal layering and use of harmony really showcase my voice in a new way. I was involved in the entire process of making the record, including the programming and the production, which was not only a great educational experience, it was very empowering. I'm really excited that the album is finally going to see the light of day!" [More]

Dead by Sunrise — New Band from Linkin Park's Chester Bennington

2009-07-09T13:34:00.000-07:00

CHESTER BENNINGTON, lead singer for multi-platinum, two-time Grammy-winning rock band LINKIN PARK, has put the finishing touches on OUT OF ASHES, the debut album from his new band DEAD BY SUNRISE. The album is tentatively scheduled for a fall release through Warner Bros. Records.

The band, which is Bennington on vocals, guitarists Ryan Shuck and Amir Derakh (from Orgy/Julien-K), bassist Brandon
Belsky, drummer Elias Anda (also from Julien-K), and keyboardist Anthony Valcic, recorded OUT OF ASHES in Los Angeles with producer Howard Benson (Motorhead, My Chemical Romance).

The songs on OUT OF ASHES began to take shape during some downtime Linkin Park had before the band began recording their double-platinum 2007 album Minutes to Midnight.
"I came up with a few songs that felt and sounded really good, but I knew they weren't right stylistically for Linkin Park," Bennington says.

"They were darker and moodier than anything I'd come up with for the band. So I decided to work on them on my own rather than turn them over and have them transformed into Linkin Park tracks."

Bennington says that the music he wrote for Dead by Sunrise is darker, sexier, and more personal than anything he's done before. "It's got me all over it," he says. "This is the music I hear in my head." Indeed the creative freedom that Bennington felt making OUT OF ASHES is evident on songs like "Crawl Back In," "Let Down," and "Walking in Circles." "There are no hip-hop influences at all on this record, which is obviously a big difference," he says. "Also, the amount of vocal layering and use of harmony really showcase my voice in a new way. I was involved in the entire process of making the record, including the programming and the production, which was not only a great educational experience, it was very empowering. I'm really excited that the album is finally going to see the light of day!"

Bennington has been busy as of late, having spent the past 18 months touring with Linkin Park in support of Minutes To Midnight, which has sold more than six million copies worldwide since its release in spring of 2007. One of the most successful rock bands to emerge this decade, Linkin Park has sold more than 45 million albums worldwide.

They've scored a remarkable string of chart-topping hit singles, a pair of Grammy wins, and earned an international fan base whose members number in the millions.

Source

Pedal to the metal

2009-07-08T15:53:00.001-07:00

Chester talks about the new album, Rick Rubin, New Divide and a bit of the story of the band.

TT: Mike Shinoda recently said your new album is going to be so unique that “they’re going to have to come up with a new genre name for what this record is.”

CB: It’s going to be called Space Rocks. No, I’m just kidding [laughs]. It’s going to be called Old Metal [pauses] … No, actually, it is definitely going to be more difficult to place us in terms of genre. I think that in the beginning we were considered a metal band. Then we kind of became an alternative band. And now we’re kind of both and a hip-hop group. It’s becoming increasingly more difficult also to be in this band and write songs simply because we’ve written so much stuff, so much material that no one’s ever heard, that only us and our producers have heard.

Now Rick Rubin’s working on this record with us as well. If he thinks he hears anything he heard during the process of making Minutes to Midnight or ever before he’s like, “That’s done. That song is gone.” So we all kind of look at things like that now because we don’t want Rick to go, “That sounds like so-and-so from 10 years ago.” [More]

Thanks to JoeHahn.org for the link.

Pedal to the metal

2009-07-08T15:53:00.000-07:00

Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington talks about how the Internet is changing music,his solo project Dead by Sunrise, and the new album his band plans to release next year

By Ron Brownlow
STAFF REPORTER
Wednesday, Jul 08, 2009, Page 14

A little more than a decade ago, Chester Bennington was flipping burgers at Burger King and was so poor that a skateboard was his primary means of transportation. Then he joined nu-metal band Linkin Park, and in 2001 their debut album, Hybrid Theory, a radio-friendly blend of hip-hop and heavy metal, shot to the top of the charts, where they have remained ever since. Their three studio albums, Hybrid Theory, Meteora (2003) and Minutes to Midnight (2007) have all been No. 1 on the Billboard Charts in the US, and have sold more than a total of 250,000 copies in Taiwan, where they first performed in 2007 in front of 40,000 fans at Taipei’s Zhongshan Football Stadium (中山足球場), in what organizers touted as the country’s highest-selling foreign concert since Michael Jackson.

Staff Reporter Ron Brownlow recently spoke via phone with Bennington, Linkin Park’s lead singer, ahead of his band’s return visit to Taiwan as part of next month’s 2009 Summer Rock Summit (夏日搖滾高峰會).

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.”

TT: That demo, is this something we’ve heard before?

CB: There’s got to be some versions of the song out there. The demo was part of an EP they had already made as a band. They sold it at shows and passed copies around. The songs that I heard were on there. The difference was that the copy they sent me on one side had just music, and the other side had music with their old singer on it. When I listened to the music the first time, I listened to it without the vocals. One song ended up being on Hybrid Theory but we changed all the melodies to it.

(Later during the interview, a media handler says the name of the song Bennington referred to was Forgotten, from Linkin Park’s debut album, Hybrid Theory.

Linkin Park got its start in California in 1996 when high school friends Mike Shinoda, Rob Bourdon and Brad Delson formed a band. After high school, the three added Dave Farrell, Mark Wakefield and Joe Hahn to their group, which was called Xero. Later, when Wakefield, the band’s vocalist, and Farrell left, the band changed its name from Xero to Hybrid Theory, and Bennington was brought on as the new vocalist based on a referral by Jeff Blue, vice president of Zomba Music. At Bennington’s suggestion the band changed its name again, this time to a purposefully misspelled version of the name of a park in Santa Monica, California. They posted MP3s to their Web site and enlisted a “street team” of fans around the world to help them promote their music. After numerous rejections from record labels, Linkin Park signed with Warner Bros Records, where Blue was now vice president, in 1999. Hybrid Theory sold 14 million copies and was the world’s top-selling album in 2001.)

TT: In one case someone at a record label told you, “We wouldn’t sign you for a fucking million dollars.” What made you keep pushing with this band even when people weren’t signing you?

CB: There was no question in our minds that we did not suck. We thought definitely that the people that were meeting with us were questionable in their ability to identify music that did not suck. We were just like, “They don’t get it yet. They don’t get it. We kick ass and we know that. And people are listening to us and people are coming to our shows.”

We didn’t play a lot of shows, we would sit in our rehearsal space and write songs and rehearse the songs we wrote and see how they were performed live. And if we didn’t like it we would go back in the studio at Mike’s house and rewrite them. We basically wrote and we didn’t play until we had songs that didn’t suck. And so when we’d play we’d invite our friends and 300 people would show up and they would go tell their friends, “This did not suck. You have to see this band.” Then the next thing you know 600 people would show up. It wasn’t like we were up there every week playing a lot of live shows like a lot of bands do. So when we go turned down we were like we had already made up our minds that we were going to do this. And we just decided that we’re going to have to do this without a label. We’re going to have to do this on our own.

So we started a street team, we followed the hip-hop street model of kids on the street passing out mix tapes. We did that with our music, we passed out CDs with our music on them. At concerts we had kids going to shows with the bands they liked and handing CDs to people at the show. They’d end up handing the CD to their friends. If their friends liked it we told them to tell their friends to contact us, and we’d make them part of the street team and we’d start sending them CDs to pass out. By the time we released Hybrid Theory, I think we’d passed out over 250,000.

TT: Mike Shinoda recently said your new album is going to be so unique that “they’re going to have to come up with a new genre name for what this record is.”

CB: It’s going to be called Space Rocks. No, I’m just kidding [laughs]. It’s going to be called Old Metal [pauses] … No, actually, it is definitely going to be more difficult to place us in terms of genre. I think that in the beginning we were considered a metal band. Then we kind of became an alternative band. And now we’re kind of both and a hip-hop group. It’s becoming increasingly more difficult also to be in this band and write songs simply because we’ve written so much stuff, so much material that no one’s ever heard, that only us and our producers have heard.

Now Rick Rubin’s working on this record with us as well. If he thinks he hears anything he heard during the process of making Minutes to Midnight or ever before he’s like, “That’s done. That song is gone.” So we all kind of look at things like that now because we don’t want Rick to go, “That sounds like so-and-so from 10 years ago.”

(Rubin, who produced Linkin Park’s most recent album, Minutes to Midnight, is famous for co-founding Def Jam Records with Russell Simmons while Rubin still a college student, and for getting hip-hop Run-DMC and rock group Aerosmith to collaborate on a cover of Aerosmith’s Walk This Way. Rubin is also known for rejuvenating the late Johnny Cash’s career with a series of albums on Rubin’s label American Recordings, and, more recently, for producing albums by U2, Green Day and Metallica. Rubin and Linkin Park are currently working on a new album slated for release early next year.)

TT: What are some of the cohesive elements in your new album?

CB: The idea that the beats need to be really unique and interesting, the idea that starting a song off simply to be something atmospheric and beautiful and really psychedelic and crazy is totally acceptable. We play with every kind of keyboard, loop it, record it, effect it, sample it, play it back through pedal, through another keyboard with an electric wand, and we sit there fucking through la-la land in music; we filled the studio up with balloons so we could live in a surreal environment. We’ve done some pretty crazy shit, so as a result we’ve allowed ourselves to be free-thinking rather than “write a song that’s gonna be a hit,” because we can do that, we know how to do that, and that’s fun and we’re good at it, but let’s do that but let’s do it in a completely fresh way that challenges us. That’s the hard part — and that’s also the most fun.

TT: The song [New Divide] wrote for the new Transformers movie soundtrack, is that any indication of what your new album’s going to sound like?

CB: It’s kind of a little bit of both yes and no. Yes in the sense that we wrote that song with these ideas in our minds: OK, we don’t need to have a hip-hop beat, we can have a really tom-driven, four-to-the-floor, synth-based [sound] and effect-distorted vocals and all that stuff. And out of that came some pretty dope music. I mean the music in New Divide is pretty sick, it’s pretty original. [Linkin Park also helped write the score for the movie.] The electronic-based element is something that is so pronounced on New Divide. I think definitely the electronic element of our next record will be elevated for sure.

TT: Tell me about your own solo project, Dead by Sunrise. How did you come up with that name?

CB: I came up with the name after experiencing many days where I thought I was not going to live to the next day. I was definitely going through a very rough time in my life during certain phases of making this record. One [phase] was in the beginning process of making this record, being divorced. My band was on hiatus and fighting with the record company ... in 2005, 2006 ... and around that period I was drinking whisky like ... it was ridiculous. I literally was not leaving my house, I locked myself in my closet, suffered from delirium tremors, on a daily basis; I thought I was really going to die. I was gray and sickly looking, on the verge of turning yellow, and my liver was swollen. It was horrible.

And then I got remarried and figured out that that was not the way to live. And at the same time while going through all of that, I was also experiencing new, beautiful things — a great, healthy relationship in a loving environment, rediscovering my bandmates through sobriety, and finding out who I really am through all of that, too. So there’s a very dark element to the record, a very personal element to the record, and there’s a very bright shiny element to it as well.

TT: When you play Taipei are you going to play any songs from your solo album?

CB: [Pauses.] Does my silence give you the answer?

TT: On your blog you wrote that your solo album is going to be “a lot more straightforward rock, with a little bit of an electronic element to it, lots of keys and snyths and stuff like that,” and that “there are a few elements where I think you’ll be able to see what my influence on [Linkin Park] is.” Can you elaborate?

CB: I grew up at a time where I was a child of many different things going on that were awesome. There was the New Romantic movement with all these great electronic pop bands coming out of England, there was great dark music coming out of not only the alternative scene all over the world but also in the grunge era and punk re-emergence in the 1990s. All that stuff has made a huge impact on me as an artist, and I drew from all of those elements.

TT: You were one of the first bands to make it big using the Internet. How have changes in the way people consume music — such as buying ringtones, downloading individual tracks instead of buying entire albums — affected how you make music?

CB: [Laughs.] You know we laugh about what people think about the music business, the idea of what that even means. Sometimes we joke, “Oh this is going to make a great ringtone,” but it hasn’t changed the way we write music. I think one thing we would like to see happen for us in the future and what may be kind of a cool thing is, is an album actually relevant? I’m not even sure anymore if making a record is even necessary. What if it’s cooler to release four, five songs every few months? Or every six months? Or release three songs at a time, so you can be touring and creating and releasing music on a regular basis? Why not focus on three great songs, make them as great as you can, and release them in ways that not only give fans what they want but also give bands an opportunity to stay working rather than go disappear for two years?

I think that’s one thing the Internet has [changed] in terms of how people get music, because most people buy singles now. They hear a song on the radio and they go, “Oh cool!” and they go to whatever site they go to to get music and they buy it. And if there’s more songs by the band they haven’t heard, they listen to it for 30 seconds and go, “That song sucks. That song sucks. Oh I like that one! I’ll get that one too.” And they make their minds up the same way record executives do [after listening to] 15 seconds of a song. I mean you can tell, dude. You’re a fan of music. If you listen to 15 to 20 seconds of a song, if it doesn’t have you in those 20 seconds then you don’t like the song, right? It’s turned the world into one giant record company with 3 billion critics. That’s really cool! Forcing people to make better shit and deal with having a very small niche of followers. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s where most bands are anyway.

Linkin Park, Hoobastank, and The All-American Rejects play Banciao Stadium (台北縣立板橋體育館) on Aug. 13 at 6pm. Tickets are available through ERA ticketing outlets, online at www.ticket.com.tw, or at 7-Eleven ibon kiosks.

Source

Chester Bennington's Dead by Sunrise show on fire

2009-07-05T14:31:00.000-07:00

I added an article of the performance of Dead By Sunrise in the Opening of Club Tattoo in Las Vegas.

"You guys are going to hear something special," Bennington said as he settled on stage. "This set is acoustic, but the album is not. The album rocks. But you guys will hear something that you never will again."

The band was made up of two acoustic guitar players, a bassist and a keyboard player, with Bennington sitting on a stool in the center, in a black T-shirt, pinstriped pants and knee-high Doc Martins. The band trotted out two melancholy songs, "Crawl Back In" and "Walking In Circles." When Bennington introduced the third song, he brought on a few audience chuckles.
"This next song is a love song," he said. "No, it really is. I know my stuff is usually, um, a little dark, but I really wrote a love song this time. It's called "In the Darkness." [More]

Chester Bennington's Dead by Sunrise show on fire

2009-07-05T14:28:00.000-07:00

Though Steve Wyrick and Chester Bennington's "Death Drop" on the strip was more of a fizzle than a flame when it suddenly went wrong outside of Planet Hollywood July 4, Bennington's performance with his band Dead By Sunrise in the Steve Wyrick Theatre was the only thing supposed to be on fire--and was.

After the crowd waited for 30 minutes for the trick to go off, Bennington and Wyrick came out and introduced the show. Wyrick was supposed to get into a trunk, be hoisted into the air where Bennington was to set the ropes aflame. Wyrick planned to escape before the ropes burned through.

But a curtain around the set caught on fire instead, with Wyrick still supposedly in the trunk. People on hand put out the fire with fire extinguishers, but the crowd was left wondering what happened to Wyrick and what was the trick all about?

After stopping over at Club Tattoo to see if this examiner could find out what happened, a source with Wyrick after the show said he was fine, the trick went wrong, he did not go to the hospital, and only had to take a few puffs of his inhaler to feel better. Club Tattoo is owned and operated by Sean Dowdell and Bennington of Linkin Park doing promotions for his band, Dead by Sunrise, and Club Tattoo.

Later on, about 300 people gathered in the Wyrick Theatre for an acoustic set of songs off of Dead by Sunrise's forthcoming album, set to drop in September. The band performed in May at Club Tattoo in Tempe, AZ.

"You guys are going to hear something special," Bennington said as he settled on stage. "This set is acoustic, but the album is not. The album rocks. But you guys will hear something that you never will again."

The band was made up of two acoustic guitar players, a bassist and a keyboard player, with Bennington sitting on a stool in the center, in a black T-shirt, pinstriped pants and knee-high Doc Martins. The band trotted out two melancholy songs, "Crawl Back In" and "Walking In Circles." When Bennington introduced the third song, he brought on a few audience chuckles.
"This next song is a love song," he said. "No, it really is. I know my stuff is usually, um, a little dark, but I really wrote a love song this time. It's called "In the Darkness."

After continuing with, "Let Down," Dead by Sunrise wrapped up the set with one more song, "Morning After."

"We don't want to give the whole thing away, so this is the last song for you tonight, but we do plan on playing in Pomona ... and the album drops in September, so thanks for coming out."

Source

Dead By Sunrise Articles

2009-06-25T09:46:00.000-07:00

I added two articles about Chester's band Dead By Sunrise to the archive:

"There's a stylistic thing that's different. With Linkin Park, we have a signature sound — you know it when you hear us. [Dead by Sunrise] does not have that feel. It has a completely different feel. Trying to describe that difference is like trying to describe the difference between Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, you know?" he said. "They're both rock, but they're different styles. I'm confident in saying this next record is going to be the most challenging ... and complex and intriguing music that has come out of the Linkin Park camp. It's really dark. It's like post-apocalyptic 'Blade Runner' meets LSD."
"I have to say, I'm really proud of Chester — he has his own style. ... You know how they say you can turn on Pink Floyd and 'The Wizard of Oz' and they go together?" Shinoda added. "You'll want to put this record on with 'Blade Runner' and 'Tron.' "
"Or 'Blade Runner' and 'Tron' and 'A Clockwork Orange,' all at the same time," Bennington laughed. [More]

Stylistically Chester says the album will appeal to Linkin Park fans but has plenty of diversity to demonstrate the singer’s vocal abilities.

“It is a very big sounding record so I hope people like it,” he continued. “I think there is enough stuff in terms of the heaviness and grimy, gritty vocals that Linkin Park fans will be wanting but at the same time there is a lot of great melodies and beautiful vocal work on there also.” [More]

Linkin Park Frontman Prepares New Band

2009-06-25T09:43:00.000-07:00

Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington has told Rock Sound about his new band Dead By Sunrise.

What started off as a solo project has turned into a full band also featuring Ryan Shuck and Amir Derakh formally of Orgy.

Produced by Howard Benson (P.O.D., Skindred) ‘Out Of Ashes’ according to Chester is “a nice blend of electronic 80s pop mixed with a good 90s grunge rock vibe.”

He told Rock Sound: “One of the song I wrote for my wedding to be played at my wedding with my beautiful wife and at the same time another song was written about my divorce from my previous wife. It’s a very interesting record kinda showcasing the tearing down and rebuilding of my life.”

Writing for the record started back in 2005 when the vocalist realised some of the songs he was writing weren’t suitable for Linkin Park.

Stylistically Chester says the album will appeal to Linkin Park fans but has plenty of diversity to demonstrate the singer’s vocal abilities.

“It is a very big sounding record so I hope people like it,” he continued. “I think there is enough stuff in terms of the heaviness and grimy, gritty vocals that Linkin Park fans will be wanting but at the same time there is a lot of great melodies and beautiful vocal work on there also.”

The band play an acoustic set in Las Vegas on July 04 and plan more shows later in the year. Expect the album to drop in September.

Linkin Park meanwhile have begun work on the follow-up to ‘Minutes To Midnight’ with Rick Rubin.

www.myspace.com/deadbysunrise

Source

Linkin Park Moving On From Style Of 'Transformers' Track

2009-06-25T09:41:00.000-07:00

'Over the next year or so, you're going to get a lot of different LP music,' Mike Shinoda says.

Say what you will about "New Divide," the brand-new Linkin Park track featured in the upcoming "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," but you can't accuse the guys of departing from their time-tested formula.

The big, rocket-launcher guitars, the electronic fireworks, the vocal gymnastics — it's very much classic Linkin Park, the kind of tune that's helped move millions of albums and pack arenas around the globe. And if you're an LP fan, you should probably savor it, because from the sound of things, Linkin Park might be leaving songs like "Divide" behind for good.

"We've got this song for 'Transformers,' and then sometime soon after this, Chester's going to be releasing a solo record called Dead by Sunrise, and that will be out towards the end of this year," Linkin Park MC Mike Shinoda said. "And then early next year there's going to be another Linkin Park record too. We've been writing a lot and all the stuff we've been experiencing and stuff we've seen — that stuff is all going into the songs. Over the next year or so, you're going to get a lot of different LP music, and I think you're going to get a lot of takes on everything that's been going on."

And that "different" music starts with Bennington's Sunrise, a long-in-the-works project that the singer says will finally see the light of day in September. And in keeping with what Shinoda was saying, Bennington is warning Linkin Park fans to prepare to be shocked by what they'll hear. Oh, and to fire up their black lights too.

"There's a stylistic thing that's different. With Linkin Park, we have a signature sound — you know it when you hear us. [Dead by Sunrise] does not have that feel. It has a completely different feel. Trying to describe that difference is like trying to describe the difference between Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, you know?" he said. "They're both rock, but they're different styles. I'm confident in saying this next record is going to be the most challenging ... and complex and intriguing music that has come out of the Linkin Park camp. It's really dark. It's like post-apocalyptic 'Blade Runner' meets LSD."

"I have to say, I'm really proud of Chester — he has his own style. ... You know how they say you can turn on Pink Floyd and 'The Wizard of Oz' and they go together?" Shinoda added. "You'll want to put this record on with 'Blade Runner' and 'Tron.' "

"Or 'Blade Runner' and 'Tron' and 'A Clockwork Orange,' all at the same time," Bennington laughed.

And then there's the matter of Linkin Park's new album, the follow-up to their ultra-successful 2007 epic Minutes to Midnight. Already described by Bennington as being a semi-conceptual piece, it now sounds as if the band is pushing the boundaries even further.

"With working on Minutes to Midnight, we really broke out of our shell — we really discovered that we can lose our minds in our music, and we're going to keep going with that for this new one," Bennington said. "We're all creative in a lot of different ways. If you have more than one thing you're good at, or you have more than one style of doing one thing in particular, it helps keep the creativity fresh and new and keeps things rolling in a positive direction. If I was Bob Ross and I painted a forest scene every day, I'd get really good at painting a forest scene, but I don't know if I'd be very good at doing anything else."

Source

Linkin Park: 'We'll take Muse's title of best live band in the world at Sonisphere'

2009-06-24T16:13:00.000-07:00

I just added an article/interview of Chester with NME where he talks about kicking some asses on the Sonisphere Festival.

Bennington said the he thinks Muse are currently the band to beat in the live arena, but he's confident that Linkin Park will be able to equal the Devon trio's high standards when they headline the Sonisphere festival on August 1.

"They're one of the best - if not the best - live performing bands in the world at the moment," he said about Muse, adding "We need to fucking kick some ass." [More]

Linkin Park: 'We'll take Muse's title of best live band in the world at Sonisphere'

2009-06-24T16:10:00.000-07:00

Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington has told NME.COM that he believes his band's headline slot at this year's Sonisphere festival provides them with the perfect opportunity to become the best live act in the world.

Bennington said the he thinks Muse are currently the band to beat in the live arena, but he's confident that Linkin Park will be able to equal the Devon trio's high standards when they headline the Sonisphere festival on August 1.

"They're one of the best - if not the best - live performing bands in the world at the moment," he said about Muse, adding "We need to fucking kick some ass."

The singer also singled out Metallica – who headline the second day of Sonisphere on August 2 – as friendly rivals, saying: "I think those kind of bands elevate you as a player. You either need to shoot up and show up or you need to put your tail between your legs and hope you get through it."

Taking place at Knebworth, Sonisphere features the likes of Nine Inch Nails, Bullet For My Valentine, Machine Head and Mastodon.

Referencing Knebworth's status for staging iconic concerts in the past by the likes of Oasis, Led Zeppelin and Queen, Bennington admitted that he feels the gig is a hugely important one for Linkin Park.

"There are definitely shows that either make or break you. And I do think [Sonisphere] could be one of those shows," he revealed.

"I know that it's [Knebworth] a legendary venue where legendary acts have played, from Zeppelin to Queen and many, many more. To perform there means you better show up with your kickass pants on."

The frontman also confirmed that Linkin Park will play new single 'The New Divide' at their Sonisphere gig. The band are currently in the studio with Rick Rubin, recording the follow up to 2007 album 'Minutes To Midnight'.

Source

Las Vegas tattoo shops go upscale

2009-06-02T15:13:00.000-07:00

A new article about Club Tattoo has been added to our Press Archive:

"I've been friends with Sean and Thora for far longer than I've been making records," Bennington says. "I helped put the paint on the walls of the very first Club Tattoo 14 years ago." [More]

Las Vegas tattoo shops go upscale

2009-06-02T15:11:00.000-07:00

Just behind a large plate glass window, Cazzie Luz is getting inked. A weekend visitor to Vegas, Luz is getting the University of Arizona's "A" logo tattooed onto his right leg.

There's no garish neon sign in the window announcing the shop is "Open." The bright lights -- far stronger than the 40-watt bulbs one might expect to find -- make that obvious. Also missing are the bongs and rolling papers found in seedier tattoo parlors. Instead, the display cases are stocked with designer handbags and jewelry.

"Don't call it a parlor. It's a tattoo studio," Thora Dowdell, the heavily inked co-owner, says as she greets me at Club Tattoo, inside the Miracle Mile Shops at Planet Hollywood.

Thora, her husband, Sean, and then-fledgling musician Chester Bennington opened their first store in Phoenix in 1995. Since then, Bennington has risen to fame as lead vocalist for the popular rock band Linkin Park.

"I've been friends with Sean and Thora for far longer than I've been making records," Bennington says. "I helped put the paint on the walls of the very first Club Tattoo 14 years ago.

"We have a very, very, very highly respected business within the tattoo community internationally. And honestly, in terms of opening up our store here, it had nothing to do with Chester Bennington of Linkin Park opening up a tattoo store. It was Club Tattoo opening [another] studio."

No one, however, disputes that Bennington's fame is good for business. When Club Tattoo opened earlier this spring, it became the fourth such business on or near the Strip with celebrity ties. Freestyle motocross racer Carey Hart began the trend at the Palms in 2004. (He's since moved to the Hard Rock.) Mario Barth, creator of the Biggest Tattoo Show on Earth, operates out of Mandalay Bay. And another rock star -- Vince Neil of Mötley Crüe fame -- runs a shop inside O'Sheas Casino.

From Alicia Keys to Sylvester Stallone to Terrell Suggs, celebrities from various walks of life have been inked at these upscale salons.

"A.J. [McLean] from Backstreet Boys was here the other day," Thora Dowdell tells me.

"Is he still considered a celebrity?" Bennington interjects with a laugh.

The growing number of famous folks sporting tattoos has no doubt helped to bring the ancient art form out of the shadows. Fashionable salons can further help to dispel the notion that tattoo parlors are the domain of low-rent districts.

"Our goal has been, from the very beginning, to remove the stigma of what people had thought of tattoos and tattoo artists, that they're kind of dirty, tough guys [working on] convicts, bikers [and] military guys overseas," Bennington says. "Our goal has always been to elevate the image of the tattoo industry as a whole."

Club Tattoo is striving to change public perceptions by putting the tattoo artists in its front window, although back rooms exist for patrons who need privacy for their tattoos or piercings.

Dowdell says the shop -- sandwiched between an art gallery and an upscale cookware store -- offers "tens of thousands of [design] images." They can be viewed at high-tech computer kiosks that also allow customers to create their own visions.

Terin Blachard didn't come to Vegas in search of a tattoo. In fact, he says he and his wife, Robin, stumbled on Club Tattoo during their recent long weekend in Sin City.

Blachard, visiting from North Carolina, says he discussed his desired image -- a stylized Christian cross -- with artist Eric Alvino before Alvino got down to work with his electric stylus.

"I've had milestones in my life. I like a tattoo to signify these events," Blachard says. "The cross, to me, is a symbol of strength, moral strength, to stand up and do the right thing."

Alvino spent about 90 minutes inking the cross into Blachard's skin at a cost of $450. It's his third tattoo -- a far cry from the number of images sported by the shop's owners, whose bodies are covered with various designs.

"I have over 25 tattoos, and I'm going to keep going," Bennington says. The biggest are a pair of dragons, each 14 inches long, that cover much of his back. Below them sits a particularly meaningful design.

"I promised myself that if I ever was in a band that sold a million records, I'd get the band's name tattooed on me. So I have a Linkin Park tattoo on my lower back," he explains with pride.

source

Linkin Park Rocks 'Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen' -- Exclusive Single Art

2009-05-18T11:31:00.001-07:00

Being the premiere of "New Divide" here's an article about it and it mentions Chester there:

"New Divide" is likely the only new music fans will hear from Linkin Park this year as the band--which also includes vocalist Chester Bennington, drummer Rob Bourdon, guitarist Brad Delson and bassist Dave "Phoenix" Farrell--is still working on the follow-up to the six-times-platinum "Minutes to Midnight."

"I would love to have the next Linkin Park album out in the first half of 2010," Shinoda said. "Originally, we wanted it to be later this year, but instead, Chester's solo project, called Dead By Sunrise, will be out in stores this year. His first single should be coming out sometime in the fall or winter. [More]

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Linkin Park Rocks 'Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen' -- Exclusive Single Art

2009-05-18T11:28:00.000-07:00

For Linkin Park's Mike Shinoda, there couldn't have been a more perfect task than co-writing the theme song and contributing to the score of the forthcoming action film "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen."

"Transformers were some of my favorite toys when I was young," Shinoda told Noisecreep. "When we heard about contributing to the first film, I was thrilled. This experience has been even better."

The original 2007 "Transformers" film featured the Linkin Park hit "What I've Done." For the Shia LaBeouf-helmed sequel that opens June 24, Linkin Park specifically penned the song "New Divide." The track is slated for a worldwide radio premiere on May 18 and will be available for purchase on iTunes immediately thereafter. It will also appear on the Warner Bros. Records soundtrack album, which drops June 23.

"We met with (director) Michael Bay," Shinoda said. "He showed us scenes from the new film, and we tried to write something that was both true to the spirit of the movie and true to the spirit of our band in some way." (See exclusive photos from the film on Cinematical.)

"Michael is not fond of showing parts of the movie unfinished and out of context," Shinoda continued. "I totally get it; I hate playing anyone our rough songs before each one is done, out of the context of the album. But he knew it would give us the best shot at trying to capture some of the emotions in the movie, so we did it. After we wrote 'New Divide,' we met with (Oscar-winning composer) Hans Zimmer and (composer) Steve Jablonsky, and they asked if we would help incorporate various themes from our song into the film. The musical themes ended up being placed in a lot of important scenes in the film. I'd tell you which scenes, but I don't want to give away the story."

The video, directed by Linkin Park DJ Joe Hahn, will debut around the time of the single's release. Shinoda was coy about the clip's direction.

"You'll have to ask Joe Hahn, who's directing it," he said. "He's planning on using a lot of really interesting cutting-edge visual techniques, blurring the line between our performance and some kind of digital/mechanical reality. I'm not really sure--he's either being secretive about it, or it's way over my head, so he's just skipping the explanation."

"New Divide" is likely the only new music fans will hear from Linkin Park this year as the band--which also includes vocalist Chester Bennington, drummer Rob Bourdon, guitarist Brad Delson and bassist Dave "Phoenix" Farrell--is still working on the follow-up to the six-times-platinum "Minutes to Midnight."

"I would love to have the next Linkin Park album out in the first half of 2010," Shinoda said. "Originally, we wanted it to be later this year, but instead, Chester's solo project, called Dead By Sunrise, will be out in stores this year. His first single should be coming out sometime in the fall or winter.

"The new Linkin Park music is going really well. We've probably got about half the album written. Artistically, I feel like we're shooting really high with these new songs. Whereas the last album was more of an experiment to see how many different new sounds we could make, I think this new album is going to establish a brand new, cutting edge sound for the band. If we do it right, it will be the type of album that makes you say, 'Wow, I've never heard anything like that, but somehow I still recognize it as Linkin Park... and I love it.'"

Source

Rockers roll out for Rancho Vista teachers, students

2009-05-11T11:08:00.000-07:00

The school’s annual spring carnival on Sunday, March 15 gave the community a reason to come out that afternoon as the musicians signed posters, guitars, T-shirts and took photos for about two hours, charging a nominal fee that will go to save teachers and maintain programs at the school.

“We just happened to have all of them home — Pennywise just got off tour, so we’re very lucky to have Fletcher [Dragge] here today. Chester [Bennington] is in the middle of recording a new album, so is Stephen [Carpenter], so we are very blessed that they could take one of their only days off to be away from their loved ones and to come and do this for their loved ones and family, and of course, the community and children,” said Samantha Bennington.

Samantha and Chester have a son together, Draven, who is a first-grader at Rancho Vista, and Carpenter, guitarist for the Deftones, is Draven’s godfather. [More]

Thanks to Linkin Lady for this article

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Rockers roll out for Rancho Vista teachers, students

2009-05-11T11:05:00.000-07:00

By Rebecca Villaneda, Peninsula News
Thursday, March 19, 2009 11:36 AM PDT

The starting price was $800, but when the bidding frenzy was over and done with, the signed Deftones guitar went for $2,900.

Add that, plus other signed memorabilia and the line of music fans that gathered to meet members of Linkin Park, Deftones and Pennywise and you get a hefty $10,000 going toward Rancho Vista Elementary.

The school’s annual spring carnival on Sunday, March 15 gave the community a reason to come out that afternoon as the musicians signed posters, guitars, T-shirts and took photos for about two hours, charging a nominal fee that will go to save teachers and maintain programs at the school.

“We just happened to have all of them home — Pennywise just got off tour, so we’re very lucky to have Fletcher [Dragge] here today. Chester [Bennington] is in the middle of recording a new album, so is Stephen [Carpenter], so we are very blessed that they could take one of their only days off to be away from their loved ones and to come and do this for their loved ones and family, and of course, the community and children,” said Samantha Bennington.

Samantha and Chester have a son together, Draven, who is a first-grader at Rancho Vista, and Carpenter, guitarist for the Deftones, is Draven’s godfather.

“Most of the musicians that I know are always actively involved in something,” said Chester. “Most bands have a cause or something that they really support and get behind. I don’t know many musicians or any at all that aren’t involved in some kind of community or charitable service.”

Silent auctions to win a bowling date or pizza with a teacher, plus games and a large slide were among the other money generators, but the bands were the big draw.

“It’s one of our biggest turn outs,” said Rancho Vista mom and PTA vice president, Rebecca Sommerstein. “We’re hoping to raise $40,000 to $42,000, because we want to keep some of our teachers … Our P.E. teacher is in jeopardy, our nurse is in jeopardy and another teacher, [and] our librarians are gone.

“We love our teachers and this is a good way to show that the community is supporting the public schools,” Sommerstein added.

“This is good education. The teachers here are phenomenal and our principal [Debra Loob] is amazing,” Samantha said. “We can have him in a private school and why when this community is so in touch with their children … This whole community is tight.

“We’re taking some big hits here and I’m glad everyone is coming together,” she added.

Since Samantha grew up with members of Pennywise, including Dragge, it was an easy favor for him to come out to the carnival.

“What else are we going to do on a Sunday? Drink beer?” the guitarist said. “It seems like all the kids are having a good time. It’s funner almost doing stuff like this when the kids are younger than dealing with raging maniac drunk men. It’s a more relaxed atmosphere.

“It’s a good cause and all the people who put it together are real cool as well,” Dragge added.

source

Two new articles

2009-05-08T19:00:00.000-07:00

I added two new articles to our archives about Linkin Park and their new song "New Divide" for the upcoming movie of Transformers: The Revenge of the Fallen.

Whenever a major movie production is in preparations to see the light of day, such as is the case with “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” those few artists who get to collaborate on the musical score are guaranteed to have a hit track on their hands upon release. On this note, Linkin Park has just announced that it would be writing a song for one of this summer’s biggest blockbusters, “Transformers.” [More]

If it wasn't clear already, "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" is going to be big — big robots, big explosions and now, big music. Linkin Park has been tapped to write the theme song for the highly anticipated sequel to Michael Bay's 2007 summer blockbuster. [More]

If you have any new or old article you want to share with the site, feel free to send it to us to chesterlandsite@gmail.com credits will be given.

'Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen' Soundtrack To Feature Linkin Park

2009-05-08T18:50:00.001-07:00

'The opportunity to be creatively involved with one of the most anticipated films of the summer is pretty exciting,' Mike Shinoda says.

By Eric Ditzian

If it wasn't clear already, "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" is going to be big — big robots, big explosions and now, big music. Linkin Park has been tapped to write the theme song for the highly anticipated sequel to Michael Bay's 2007 summer blockbuster.

The song, called "New Divide," is set for a worldwide radio premiere on May 18 — more than a month before "Revenge of the Fallen" hits theaters — and will be available for purchase on iTunes. The track will also appear on the official soundtrack, due in stores June 23 — the day before the movie hits theaters.

The multiplatinum-selling Linkin Park will also be contributing to the "Revenge of the Fallen" score, which is being composed by Steve Jablonsky (the first "Transformers") and executive-produced by Oscar-winner Hans Zimmer ("The Dark Knight").

This won't be the first collaboration between the California band and Bay — Linkin Park's song "What I've Done" was featured in the first "Transformers" and appeared on the official soundtrack. The single went double-platinum and appeared on the band's multiplatinum album,

Source

Linkin Park and Hans Zimmer Working on ‘Transformers’ Score

2009-05-08T18:50:00.000-07:00

Whenever a major movie production is in preparations to see the light of day, such as is the case with “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” those few artists who get to collaborate on the musical score are guaranteed to have a hit track on their hands upon release. On this note, Linkin Park has just announced that it would be writing a song for one of this summer’s biggest blockbusters, “Transformers.”

Writing on the official web page, Mike Shinoda has confirmed previous rumors that, indeed, the band would return to the franchise with a new track (Linkin Park is also featured on the score of the first film). Moreover, Shinoda says, the song will not be just any Linkin Park-type of track, but a collaboration with music composer and multi-Oscar winner Hans Zimmer, so what fans should expect is truly something big, music-oriented publications point out.

“Although I wasn’t at liberty to say it before, the song I’ve been referencing here on mikeshinoda.com in the past few weeks… is actually being done for Michael Bay’s new Transformers film, due out June 24th.” Shinoda says in a post on his official website. “In addition – and probably ever cooler – we have been offered the unique opportunity to help score the film. The song we wrote is being used as one of the themes, and we will be writing various interpolations on that theme, and trying out some other thematic ideas as part of the (very large) team scoring the film.” the rocker adds.

In an earlier post also on the same website, Shinoda revealed that the upcoming track was “built on layered, heavy synths” and “create[d] a nice interplay between the organic feel of the rhythm track and the more robotic feel of the keyboards,” although, at the time, he refused to say what the track was for. As of now, it is not yet known whether Zimmer’s involvement will extend to the track as well, or whether it will be limited only to the score of the film.

“Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” is scheduled for theatrical release in June this year. Meanwhile, somewhat behind director Michael Bay’s back, Paramount and DreamWorks also set the release date for the third film in the franchise for July 2011.

Source

Men of Style

2009-05-05T17:03:00.000-07:00

How would you define your style?
Ryan: Dark lean silhouettes, tight silhouettes, hints of post punk and goth...I dunno what do you think Chester?
Chester: That's like asking somebody what their music sounds like.
Ryan: Ya, it's tricky. I like to look like a couture road warrior like I am a dark conquering general, like Comme des Garcons designed for Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome, that's what we're going for.

Do you have any wardrobe essentials?
Chester: V-neck t-shirts in plain colors with no logos...
Ryan: LnA, they're our girls! Good pair of black jeans that fit and you can wear everyday
Chester:...Chuck Taylors, and a great pair of boots you can wear with everything that you never have to polish.
Ryan: Ya, on tour, I wear the same pair of awesome black boots with a pair of April 77 jeans every single day of the week for three or four months. [MORE]

Men of Style

2009-05-05T17:00:00.001-07:00

Recently Chester Bennington from Linkin Park, Ryan Schuck from Orgy, and fellow bandmates Amir Derakh and Brandon Belsky stopped by REVOLVE to shop and talk style.

In between trying on sweet leather jackets and digging through black skinny jeans, we had a chance to ask the fashionable lot a few questions about staying incredibly good looking while on tour.

How would you define your style?
Ryan: Dark lean silhouettes, tight silhouettes, hints of post punk and goth...I dunno what do you think Chester?
Chester: That's like asking somebody what their music sounds like.
Ryan: Ya, it's tricky. I like to look like a couture road warrior like I am a dark conquering general, like Comme des Garcons designed for Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome, that's what we're going for.

Do you have any wardrobe essentials?
Chester: V-neck t-shirts in plain colors with no logos...
Ryan: LnA, they're our girls! Good pair of black jeans that fit and you can wear everyday
Chester:...Chuck Taylors, and a great pair of boots you can wear with everything that you never have to polish.
Ryan: Ya, on tour, I wear the same pair of awesome black boots with a pair of April 77 jeans every single day of the week for three or four months.

What do you take on tour with you?
Chester: I think it kinda changes. On stage its hard to wear stuff that's really dope because for me I'm jumping around a lot, so I need things that move...I also like to pack as little as possible. I used to pack everything, like 20 pairs of shoes and all my pants, then I realized it's a pain. Now I pack as few things as possible that can be mixed and matched with everything else.
Ryan: It's hard because it depends on how long you're going on tour. Sometimes you have to pack for every climate. You have to predict, like if you leave in July and come back in December...
Amir: Even the weather changes from state to state. You can be in the middle of summer and then it's off to somewhere cold. You kind of have to carry a lot of stuff. I actually had a suitcase that I called "the closet," it's a big black heavy duty suitcase that I pack all my extra stuff that I wouldnt wear everyday. So depending on what time of year it is, I might have heavy coats and things like that in there that I know I might not wear every day, but we might go North and it'll be freezing and I still want to look stylish.
Chester: And layers are great if you don't want to lug around a jacket.

Do you have any favorite brands?
Ryan: Attachment, Number Nine, Ann Demeulemeester, Comme des Garcons, LnA, April 77, Corpus is great for every day, Superfine, Ever has great travel clothes cause they're stylish and fit well.
Chester: Ya Ever is great, fits really well. Also Superfine, G Star, Chronicles of Never...
Ryan: With Ever you can wad it up in a ball and sleep on it in an airport, and then it still looks great afterwards.
Chester: Pretty much anything that doesn't need to be ironed and looks good wrinkled. I prefer things looking more distressed, Modern Amusement stuff is great too.

Any embarrassing fashion moments?
Ryan: There's a whole lot...try the last 22 years.
Chester: Ya, just look on the Internet! The thing with fashion is it's usually hit or miss, and when you hit it's awesome and when you miss it's hilarious. I mean, going through my hip hop/punk phase at the same time was pretty hilarious.
Ryan: Some of the early Orgy look for me, I shaved my eyebrows and drew on one. That was f*#$ed up. I put gel in my hair and let it stay gelled so its all PFFT and like I dunno...
Chester: There's some pretty tasty bad fashion moments, most people dont have them documented as much we do. Now, my wardrobe consists of black, gray, army gray, and navy blue. Anything that looks military is a good thing.

Any style advice for all the new bands touring?
Chester: I'd say to all the young bands starting out, beware of the shwag box that you get! What ends up happening is that it's difficult for guys who are just starting out and dont have any money for clothes, and none of the brands that are awesome are just going to give you stuff. So the brands that do give you stuff usually make for those photo shoots that fall in the category of fashion faux pas-everyone in the band is wearing the same skate shirt and hat and shoes and pants because it's free and they send you a lot of it. Just beware and don't fall in the trap!

Source

WELCOME

2009-04-01T21:52:00.000-07:00

Welcome to CHESTER-LAND's Press Archive. Here you'll find a list of titles of Interviews and Articles related to Chester or Linkin Park. We'll be constantly updating this site so please keep checking it back. If you have articles or interviews that aren't listed on our site and want to donate it, please feel free to contact us to chesterlandsite@gmail.com.

Chester Bennington opens Club Tattoo at Planet Hollywood

2009-03-30T16:03:00.000-07:00

The salesman behind the counter showing body jewelry and the new line of fashions looks vaguely familiar. The man with the paintbrush and the laborer on his knees laying tile trigger more recognition. Yes, in fact, the guy with three job titles at the new Club Tattoo in Planet Hollywood’s Miracle Mile is none other than rock star Chester Bennington of Linkin Park!

He is not shy as an investor owner in pitching in to help out and do whatever duty calls. Rock group frontman Chester is partnered with Thora and Sean Dowdell in the lifestyle boutique, which is their fifth store. They opened the first one in Phoenix 14 years ago and expanded with three more in Arizona. The Las Vegas outpost, the most ambitious to date, has just been unveiled, and they plan to keep on going.

During construction of all the stores, and Vegas was no exception, Chester was on his hands and knees helping lay tile, and he happily helped paint walls. The very first day it opened, he was behind the counter selling merchandise as fast as he could!

I talked with the trio as our contributing photographer Erik Kabik shot this exclusive photo gallery for Vegas DeLuxe. Here’s our exclusive conversation:

Chester Bennington: Sean and Thora are the main people who run the shop and deal with all the dirty work. I get to hang out and look cool all day long. I’ve been promoted to VP in charge of sales!

Thora Dowdell: I caught him selling jewelry to some hottie in our store yesterday, so he works, as well.

CB: It is always funny because I come in and I automatically switch gears and go into Club Tattoo mode. I greet customers and try to get them to make the right decisions. I ask if I can help them find a size.

TD: I have actually taken photos of Chester offering a customer a bottle of water, and that truly is what makes Club Tattoo so special. He has been with us in the trenches. This morning and yesterday, he has been in the store, he feels our pain, he knows things operationally, things that are going on; he comes in and is passionate about it. Club Tattoo is not just a tattoo studio: It is a lifestyle. Because of the fashion, we embrace every walk of life. There is something for everyone at Club Tattoo. There was a gentleman yesterday who didn’t recognize who Chester was, and he became the salesman again. That shows that Club Tattoo is very well rounded and shows that is a part of this lifestyle.

Robin Leach: How did you all get hooked up? How did you decide what products and merchandise should go in the store?

CB: Sean and I met when I was just getting into high school, and he was pretty close to getting out of high school. We started a band Grey Daze based out of Phoenix. We were in a band for probably six years during that time. We did well for ourselves. There was a really great club that we would play at all the time, and Sean decided he wanted to open the first Club Tattoo right next to it. That was the first one 14 years ago. Sean was solo at that time, and I was working at Burger King and riding my skateboard back then. But I laid the tile and did the painting, and that’s how it all started.

RL: Why did you wait so long to come to the No. 1 city in the world for tattoos?

CB: It’s a good question. We wanted to take things one step at a time. When you start up a business, you start shooting from the hip, you have to go through the trial and error in terms of the kinds of artists working for you, working out all of the kinks. They did a good job with the first location, and it became very successful, so they opened a second location. They asked me to be a partner in it, and I turned them down. I still kick myself in the ass now and then for that one.

But I joined as a partner for the third, fourth and now the fifth. It was five, six years ago we opened store No. 3 and about three years ago opened store No. 4. The plan when we started talking about opening the third store in Mesa, we had our sights on Las Vegas. We knew that we wanted to take our shops and make them internationally known and an incredible chain. We know that the world is a big place, so instead of putting stores up all over the world, why not just put a store in the place where everybody comes from all over the world.

TD: It took us three years to arrive in the Vegas market. We originally were trying to work something out with the Hard Rock, but we didn’t find our calling there. We signed a lease with the Cosmopolitan … we laugh about it now because they still haven’t opened … as we were working through that, we found the Miracle Mile was a better brand for us. Great amounts of traffic, and the patronage here is a good indication of who our clients are. We decided to come over and seize the opportunity here at Miracle Mile. It took us a year to build the store to the day, and it is fabulous. We have a beautiful store. We have talented artists working for us. We currently offer five tattoo stations and one private piercing room in our 3,500-square-foot store.

RL: Why is there such a popularity with tattoos, and since this city has one on every corner, do we have too many of them? Is there such a demand?

TD: There is not a tattoo studio or store in the United States that compares to Club Tattoo. We are a retail fashion boutique, as well as doing tattoos and piercings. We also have the largest collection of body jewelry ever. Nothing compares to our store. Las Vegas has 180 shops, but they are typical smoke shops that add in some tattooing.

Sean Dowdell: Why would they keep building casinos here? Because if the next one is better, it becomes the next hottest property. That is what we did. We did the hottest tattoo studio in the world. We did it in a hot property, and we did it as well as we could, so it won’t be touched for a long time. We have also been doing it for the last 14 years in Arizona, starting off with a modest shop that has grown into the premiere tattoo, body piercing and clothing store in our genre anywhere in the world. We really enjoy competition, but we pride ourselves on setting the bar for everybody else to try and follow.

RL: When it comes to body jewelry, what is the most expensive and the least expensive?

TD: One of the most expensive pieces is a 14K gold diamond naval gem, which you can pretty much find on three out of five females in any given city. We have some handmade mother of pearl for ears that are ornate and organic. There are horns and cow bone and mother of pearl, things of that nature. The gold is the most expensive; we use real diamonds. They can run anywhere from $3,000 to $7,000 depending on what you have in it.

RL: People are spending that kind of money today on body jewelry?

SD: Surprisingly, there are many different kinds of people from many different financial backgrounds who not only get tattooed, but get pierced. The same woman who would walk into a jewelry store and spend $7,000 on a ring, if she has her bellybutton pierced, why would she not spend the same amount on quality to go there, as well?

RL: Has that become a modern-day engagement ring?

TD: No. The tattooing, however, on the ring fingers is a popular memento to that. As far as tattooing in these economic times, people prioritize tattooing a little different than they do other things in their lives. It is a permanent fixture, and your average tattoo is $300 to $800 to $1,000. Committing to that $800 tattoo is a little different than maybe having an $800 night on the town and eating and drinking. Prioritizing when someone is getting a permanent adornment to their body, they obviously know when they walk into Club Tattoo what they are paying for. We have price lines that cater to all different walks of life. We have people come in and want their ears pierced, too, or they’ll just buy $38 T-shirts or spend as much as $1,000 on a jacket. We have jewelers who make some really great jewelry that you can’t find anywhere else.

It is one of a kind. We have one designer who makes all of her jewelry by hand. The jacket that Chester is wearing today and our handbags, they are all one of a kind made especially for our store.

RL: Has Vegas become more rock over the past couple of years? I know you are going to say, “Come on, The Joint has been there for ages,” and “The Pearl at the Palms.” But are we suddenly getting more rock in Vegas than ever before?

CB: I think that when your choices have been for a band like Linkin Park, for example, The Joint was a great place to play. The Pearl is much bigger, but when you start playing arenas, there aren’t many choices here. There is the MGM, which is a huge pain, Thomas and Mack, and no one goes there anymore, so bands when given the choice to play Vegas or Phoenix, we would play Phoenix. I think that is the reason why a lot of these places have kicked up the ante in the places they are building. There are going to be some pretty amazing spots that can cater to 5,000 to 8,000 people, and Hard Rock is building an amazing room right now. There will be more options for bands to play in. I think that is something that has really shifted in a positive direction. Vegas, for locals, there are only so many times you will go see Cirque du Soleil, or do anything at all that is Vegas-esque. To drive more locals into the venues, they will have to do that.

RL: Is Linkin Park still out there on the road?

CB: We stopped touring as of last year, as we have been working on a new record. We are well ahead of the game in terms of preparation for the next album. I just finished a solo record. I have a band called Dead by Sunrise. We just finished the record, and we are looking at late summer, early fall for that.

RL: Is this Chester’s first visit to the Vegas Club Tattoo?

TD: Yes, his first visit to the finished store, but he was here through the building stages. We all got together and hired a great designer and architect to build the store. We chose all the merchandise together. I do the buying for the store. Chester and I are very much into fashion, and we are on the same page with what we like to represent Club Tattoo. We do intend on having a grand opening gala sometime in the summer after some of these other venues have had their time to launch. We don’t want to have a pool party when other things may interfere in this market. So sometime this summer, we will have a celebration that represents Club Tattoo. Every year we have an annual party for Club Tattoo.

SD: We have bands, professional skaters come out. We take over a bar and a parking lot. Our regular customers come out and get drunk and listen to good music. We intend to bring the parties to Vegas once we work out everything we need to work out.

RL: Is Linkin Park still out there on the road?

RL: Is this Chester’s first visit to the Vegas Club Tattoo?

Photo: Erik Kabik/Retna/www.erikkabikphoto.com

Club Tattoo owners Thora and Steve Dowdell and Chester Bennington.

RL: Chester, do you have any tattoos? Where’s the most intimate one?

CB: I have many, many tattoos. I don’t have them anywhere it would be unspeakable. My back is covered, I am working on sleeves, I have some great tattoos on my legs. Our goal the entire time we have been in business is to lift the stigma that tattoos and body piercing had in the past. We did that by having a sketch artist work for us and the world’s best body piercer work for us. I think the fact that technique and the ink, the different types of needles we have today that weren’t available 30 years ago, really open up our artists to truly do works of art and masterpieces on people’s bodies. For a long time, it was uncool to have a tattoo.

I think more people are opening their minds to a tattoo, as well as I think there is a right of passage you go through when you get pierced or tattooed. It is painful, so there is dedication and commitment, and I think people are looking for something they can hold on to and commit to even if it hurts a little bit. I think the reality is that tattoos have become better; there are better artists. You can get a replica of the Mona Lisa on your back that is going to look exactly like the real thing. The possibilities are endless, and the interaction between the artist and client is special. We try to do all of this better than anyone else. We hope to turn tattooing into a popular, more acceptable form of art.

TD: The art of tattooing and body adornment is thousands and thousand of years old if you go back to early Egyptian times. I think it is artwork you can take with you your entire life and to the grave. In the 1800s, when you had a portrait commissioned for you, that is the way they immortalized art. In today’s world, you can get a portrait of that grandmother, or child, you can take that art with you. It is not going to get pawned or end up in a garage sale. It is art that you can take with you and wear proudly.

I am a woman running an empire. I can walk into a room and I feel beautiful and decorated even if I am in my sweats with no makeup. For me it is no different than doing my hair and makeup. I am adorned all the time. It makes me feel like I have a place to show that beauty and intelligence can walk together, and it doesn’t have to be abrasive or biker-ish.

CB: She has some of the most beautiful artwork I have seen anywhere.

RL: Then it’s time for you all to roll up your sleeves and take off your shirts for the camera!

Robin Leach has been a journalist for more than 50 years and has spent the past decade giving readers the inside scoop on Las Vegas, the world’s premier platinum playground.

Source

Gili Shani

2009-03-30T16:02:00.000-07:00

Our friend JoeyDC interviewed the photographer Gili Shani, to see the pictures he took of Chester go here. All credits goes to CCBennington.

JoeyDC: When and where took this photo shooting with Chester Bennington place?

Gili Shani: We shot this pic at the hotel that Chester was staying in Berlin after their concert just before they moved on to the next city in Germany for another concert.(I forgot the name of the hotel, sorry)

JoeyDC: Why and how did you get to work together? Did you just ask him or how did he know about you?

Gili Shani: The photo shoot was taken for a magazine called BLVD, at the moment its only an online magazine. Thomas Clausen was the guy who made all the details about the shooting and he is part of BLVD magazine and the guy that made the interview with Chester.
The pictures were shot for a story about VE'CEL from Chester and that's why we shot him with the VE'CEL t-shirt.

JoeyDC: Was it easy/fun to work with Chester Bennington and were those pictures somewhere else published? Like in a magazine?

Gili Shani: Working with Chester was amazing, for this kind of shooting we get only 20 min to do the shoot, Chester came down and was super friendly and of course the first thing he said: "Relax, we have time to shoot," so we spend about 40 min together talking about his clothes, compare tattoos and having fun :). He was very easy to work with! And actually he also gave us all the shirt he was shooting with, i got the one he was wearing the night before on stage, and no it's not for sell!!! :)) The story did not published yet in the magazine, and we are waiting with the story until the magazine will come out in a print version.

SMNnews 15 min Interview with Phoenix

2009-03-30T16:00:00.000-07:00

SMNnews managed to sneak in a quick 15 minutes with Linkin Park bassist “Phoenix” - also known as “Dave”. He talks about recording for the new album, possible collaborations with Jay-Z and other metal artists, his beard, as well as the next step and musical direction for the band.

Where are you right now?

Southern California.

Fun. Enjoying your time off?

Absolutely. We toured through mid-September in the US, so we’ve just been taking some time off, and come November we’ll be back working on the new record. I’m enjoying being home, kicking back and just doing some promotion for the Road to Revolution CD/DVD.

November 25^th right?

Yes.

In terms of your writing for the new album do you have a preference for how you want to sit down and get it hammered out?

Well, we are done writing at this point. We had a little break in the summer, like 6 weeks at home where we started working on it a lot. We are just waiting to get back in the studio now to begin writing some more and begin recording, there’s still a lot of work to do. Our fans know we are slow writers, but we hope to have less of a layoff with this album.

It was 2 years between albums last time, yea?

Yea. The big part was we didn’t know how long it would take to be proud of. For Minutes, we took time off of after Meteora, and it took a year and a half to write and record.

Do you have a producer in mind?

For now, we’ll just have Mike produce it. Potentially other people, but at this stage up it is up in the air.

What about Timbaland?

He is not on the radar.

So…have to ask. ‘Phoenix’, do I call you that?

It’s comfortable for me.

Well, I would hope so, considering that’s your name in the band. Do you have a preference though?

Nah, I honestly don’t have a preference. My family calls me Dave.

That also makes sense…so, Milton Keynes…fantastic venue, fantastic crowds - why there for the DVD?

We knew going in to the show we were recording it, we knew it was gonna be a special show for us and we figured it would be something we really like the rest of the world to see. Having seen the footage and the largest Project Revolution show abroad, it made sense to edit it and put it out.

We always have our own video guy, Mark, who does our internet stuff and website video editing and capturing - we have him film it all. For Milton Keynes, we had a full crew, and a full on shoot.

Right on. Any nifty behind the scenes DVD easter eggs you can tell me about?

There’s surprises in there. At his point there’s a ton of stuff to still be put together. We haven’t figured what’s included yet. The best way to keep up to date on that, is linkinpark.com - that’s gonna have up to the minute info.

Nice plug. What sort of additional content you looking for?

We’re still messing with it.

What about one good, hearty drinking tale that wasn’t included?

I have to apologize, I mean, is it a bad sign if I can’t remember anything? We’ve had couple of doozies.

This is a stupidly vague question, but what’s the best crowd slash fan situation you came across?

Hard to say, not being PC here, but everywhere we go there’s a different thing the crowd does. Like Europe in general, specifically in the UK, they bounce up and down, where in the US, they pit - lateral movement. Asia is insane, even there it’s so different. Japan is crazy to play, because there’s a built in respect in the culture where when we are not playing the crowd will go deadly quiet…just to hear what Mike and Chester have to say, even if they don’t understand, the crowd will go dead quiet and listen. You’re used to screaming, and loud, but Japan is unique that sense.

That is pretty intense stuff. Keeping in league with intensity, I know Jay-Z appears in the mix for a few tunes, what’s the jigga man like in person?

He’s a good guy, and we have got a chance to work with him quite a bit. Ever since we got that Collision Course CD, he came out to LA, and brought his entourage with him. Our crew and his crew got along well from the start. I think Jay is the one, if not the best MC, of our time. Crazy work ethic.

Will he perhaps appear on a track or two on the new one?

Doubtful, only because when we do studio albums, we never have worked with any guests. We keep it to be our own stuff.

Does he constantly bombard you with pressure to wear his Rocaway clothing line?

No (laugh). I don’t think he’s ever talked about it. I asked if he could get me a pair of shoes, and he ignored me and laughed at me.

You also collaborated with Bustah - what’s next on the collaboration circuit? Any metal artists per chance?

Not really. No plans. Just us.
Minutes to Midnight is a far cry from past material, and has perhaps alienated your ‘heavier’ audience - will we see a proverbial return to form?

For us, we don’t sit down with a direction, we just begin with writing music, and it works towards whatever we gravitate towards - its wherever the album goes. For us, it would not work with an idea of where you want to finish. It kills the creative process. Having said that, we all love the stuff we’ve done, we love heavy music and we are sure we aren’t gonna abandon that. But we want to push new ways to stay energized for ourselves and fans.

Touring: tell me more - US/UK, what’s the plans? More festival type gigs, smaller venues, what’s what?

Right now, we finished in the September. The touring cycle ended for Minutes to Midnight, and there’s literally not one show on the calendar. We are purely back in the studio and are going to write and focus on the new record. Having said that I wouldn’t be surprised, next summer we’ll do some shows and if we were to do that, it would be Europe.

Thanks for your time…as a final question…are you ever going to shave your beard?

I’ve been thinking about it! My hair and beard is a product of my laziness. I haven’t touched a razor on my face in 10 years. It’s only been clippers without a guard, that’s it. An actual razor, it gives me razor burn, I decided if I’m gonna play music and its ok for me not to have that.

Long live beards. Thanks Dave.

Source: PHAN

Linkin Park Revs it up

2009-03-30T15:58:00.000-07:00

SANTA ANA, CALIF. — Tool. Foo Fighters. Red Hot Chili Peppers. Rage Against the Machine. Chester Bennington would love to tour with any or all of them someday.

But "a lot of it has to do with the bands," he said by phone last week, touring with Projekt Revolution 2008, once again headlined by Bennington's band, Linkin Park. "When you put together bands like us and Red Hot Chili Peppers, somebody has to headline and somebody is gonna be the supporting act, and a lot of times bands don't see eye to eye on those things."

So for now, the group — one of the most successful outfits in action, and arguably the most salable hard-rock band of its generation — continues to promote its third proper album, Minutes to Midnight, by carrying on with Projekt Rev, as Bennington refers to it.

For the outing's fifth incarnation, the band has enlisted former Soundgarden and Audioslave vocalist Chris Cornell, New York synth-rock group the Bravery and Ashes Divide (featuring A Perfect Circle's Billy Howerdel). The tour arrives at The Woodlands Pavilion at 1 p.m. Sunday.

Q: What's better about going out on Projekt Revolution as opposed to your own tour, or is it better the other way around?

A: I like playing arenas a lot more than playing outside. I just feel like whether it's freezing outside or whether it's hot, you're in a place where you can control the elements. It's dark. Everyone gets a light show. But the advantage to playing outside is that you can have more bands. It's kinda the lesser of two evils. There's a reason why we only do it once a year (laughs), not all year long.

Amphitheaters are a tricky thing to play. Only the last two bands that play get to really take advantage of production, so nobody gets a light show until the headliner. Second, if it's 100 degrees outside, and 90 percent humidity, it's a tough day — which can deter people from wanting to come.

Q: Has it dawned on you that you're really one of few bands these days that can carry a tour like this?

A: Yeah, you know, we do understand that. For us, this is the one place where you can go and it's diversified enough and has a really cool feel. That's really been our vibe the whole time — we want to bring lots of different styles of music together, and give people a really good show.

Q: Does it get harder as the years go by?

A: It does, because, you know, there are bands that are available that you've toured with before that you want to tour with again, but we don't ever want to wear something out. A lot of bands we wanted this year had already made plans.

Q: Do you have dream lineups?

A: For sure. We've been trying to work something out with Rise Against for a long time, but they've always been already committed to something else. I think doing a tour with Rage would be pretty awesome. I'd love to tour with the Chili Peppers. I'd love to tour with Foo Fighters. I'd love to play with Tool.

Q: Any plans for you to do something apart from the band?

A: Yeah, I'm going into the studio after we're done here. Finish up my record and simultaneously start work on the next Linkin Park record.

Source: Chron.com

Chester Interview with Arizona Republic

2009-03-30T15:55:00.000-07:00

Question: You’ve been doing the festival since 2002. How has it evolved as the years have passed?

Answer: We started out in arenas with a few bands and we’d bring in some break-dancing crews, some emcees (whom) people hadn’t heard of. It gradually grew, and we brought it out into the amphitheater world, where we could actually have 10 or 12 bands. We try to keep it with as many bands of different styles and different levels of success as possible.

Q: It appears one of your main goals has been that wide variety of acts.

A: A lot of touring festivals are very one-sided - it’s a metal tour or an alternative tour or a hip-hop tour. We try to mix that up and bring a little bit of all that stuff out here.

Q: The band was out of the studio for a while before Minutes to Midnight came out. What were you up to?

A: We really didn’t take much of a break. After the release of (2003’s) Meteora, we were on tour for almost two years. . . . We took about seven months off. When we started recording Minutes to Midnight . . . we were in the studio for 18 months. We weren’t expecting that.

Q: Do you write much on the road or prefer to be at home for that?

A: I like to write on the road sometimes. When I hear something in my head, I try to write it down or pick up my guitar and play something. But when we’re in the studio mode is when I do my best work. I can sit down and spend a lot of quality time on things.

Q: What does the amphitheater setting allow the band to do, as opposed to arenas?

A: Outdoors is great for a number of reasons and not so great for a number of reasons. The good things are we can get a lot of bands out. We can set up two stages. We have a lot of stuff for people to do, like the batting cages . . . video games. The things that are kind of a drawback are, one, people are standing outside all day, which kind of turns people off a little bit. Most of the bands are playing in daylight, which limits their production.

Q: You’ve played for some massive crowds, including Live 8 and overseas festivals. Do you ever get intimidated?

A: I wouldn’t say we’re intimidated by them because we usually get pretty pumped up when the crowd is really big. It’s like, “OK, we are here to kill. Let’s go do it.” But we’re still like, “Holy crap. I can’t believe there are 100,000 people here.” It’s impressive when you show up to a place like China and you play a stadium for your first show.

Q: Recent reviews say your onstage interaction with Mike has gotten more intense and theatrical. Could you talk about your performing relationship?

A: It’s interesting that you say that because I’ve been feeling that I almost neglect Mike a little bit. We’re so in a pocket, we don’t even come across each other. The whole band is moving fluidly, we’ve been playing so many shows that we are kind of like a machine up there. . . . On this tour we broke the production down. It’s (simply) a backdrop and lights. It’s all about the band.

Q: You got a little political on Minutes to Midnight with songs like No More Sorrow. Any reason for that decision at this time?

A: We had stayed away from politics because we didn’t feel we were educated enough to really speak about it. It’s very difficult to talk about political or social things without having an agenda, without expressing your opinions on people. It’s kind of like the idea of freedom of religion: It’s OK to believe what you believe, but it’s not OK to force what you believe on other people. The same rules apply to lyrics, in our opinion.

We’re mature enough now to understand what we’re talking about and do it right. . . . Some people believe that No More Sorrow is a direct “point your finger at George Bush,” and maybe that’s so. (But) there’s a lot of people that song could be about, on all sides.

When you’re talking about crusades and trading money for lives . . . you could name a number of governments and organizations and companies that the finger could be pointed at.

Q: You still have ties in Arizona with Club Tattoo (tattoo studios), friends and family. How much do you get back?

A: I’m out in Phoenix all the time, but I live in Southern California. That’s where my band lives, where my kids (four sons) have grown up. I’m a West Coast guy, I’m never going to leave.

Q: What’s on the horizon for another album?

A: We’re done touring after the summer, we’re going back to China for a week and a half. Then we’ll go back in the studio to work on the next Linkin Park record and I’m going to finish my solo project, called Dead By Sunrise. Hopefully, those will both be out next year.

Q: What does your solo album sound like?

A: I think the surprising thing is how much it doesn’t sound like Linkin Park. It’s rock and roll.

-The Arizona Republic

Chester Interview with OCRegister

2009-03-30T15:49:00.000-07:00

Orange County Register: I assume it’s been a good tour for you so far. But are you able to gauge how the other bands are going over with your fans?

Chester Bennington: I think they’ve actually been received well. People are seeing a couple of these bands for the first time, so they’re not gonna be spazzing out when they’re watching. But they’re paying attention and listening. Usually it’s a good sign if they’re not throwing things at you.

OCR: What’s better about going out on Projekt Revolution as opposed to your own tour, or is it better the other way around?

CB: I like playing arenas a lot more than playing outside. I just feel like whether it’s freezing outside or whether it’s hot, you’re in a place where you can control the elements. It’s dark. Everyone gets a light show. But the advantage to playing outside is that you can have more bands. It’s kinda the lesser of two evils. There’s a reason why we only do it once a year (laughs), not all year long.

Amphitheaters are a tricky thing to play. Only the last two bands that play get to really take advantage of production, so nobody gets a light show until the headliner. Secondly, if it’s 100 degrees outside, and 90 percent humidity, it’s a tough day – which can deter people from wanting to come, especially in a bleaker economy. You’ve already got that to fight back.

OCR: Has it dawned on you that you’re really one of few bands these days that can carry a tour like this?

CB: Yeah, you know, we do understand that. We could have easily gone out and done an arena tour and played with one other band. But when we were growing up, we had Lollapalooza, we had Ozzfest – and those just aren’t happening anymore, with the exception of this year, where everyone is doing some summer outdoor festival tour.

For us, this is the one place where you can go and it’s diversified enough and has a really cool feel. That’s really been our vibe the whole time – we want to bring lots of different styles of music together, and give people a really good show.

OCR: What do you still want to do with it? And what about in the studio?

CB: You know, in terms of the studio … every new song we write is something we haven’t done before. That’s a little different – as long as we’re working, that’s all that really matters.

In terms of Projekt Rev … what we haven’t done, and where we would probably go, is to take it from a touring festival to something like a two-day festival, something like Coachella, where we can do a few nights with much more bands, other bands that are headlining-caliber acts. That could be something that could happen in the future. We’ll see.

OCR: Do you think your fans are receptive to the lineups you put together?

CB: I think so. I mean, not all the time. Inevitably there are some bands that don’t mix as well. But that’s very rare when that happens. We spend a lot of time and energy in picking the right band. So far we’ve been pretty lucky.

OCR: Does it get harder as the years go by?

CB: It does, because, you know, there are bands that are available that you’ve toured with before that you want to tour with again, but we don’t ever want to wear something out. A lot of bands we wanted this year had already made plans, or wanted to do their own thing. It was a little more difficult to put together this year than it has been in the past.

OCR: Do you have dream lineups?

CB: For sure. We’ve been trying to work something out with Rise Against for a long time, but they’ve always been already committed to something else or going into the studio or taking a break ’cause they’ve been touring forever. I think doing a tour with Rage now that they’re back together again would be pretty awesome. I’d love to tour with the Chili Peppers. I’d love to tour with Foo Fighters. I’d love to play with Tool.

OCR: Having Chris Cornell on this tour. Obviously he’s a big influence …

CB: Oh, absolutely.

OCR: I wonder if it was at all intimidating, to think, ‘Whoa, I have to go on after him?’

CB: You know, I’m pretty confident in myself. It’s more like I can’t believe that this guy is opening up for my band, ’cause this guy is a legend in my opinion. He’s a huge inspiration to me, and he’s got one of the greatest voices, if not arguably the best rock ‘n’ roll voice ever.

When it comes to other singers, I feel like, if I play after them, I can hold my own. But meeting someone like that – that’s where it can get a little nervous, ’cause you never know what someone’s gonna be like. Fortunately, Chris is an amazing guy. We’ve become really good friends. I go up on stage every night with him and perform “Hunger Strike,” and he comes out during our set and performs “Crawling” with us, and the crowd just flips out.

OCR: Mike (Shinoda) had his own side project not too long ago with Fort Minor. Any plans for you to do something apart from the band?

CB: Yeah, I’m going into the studio after we’re done here. Finish up my record and simultaneously start work on the next Linkin Park record. If it were an issue I wouldn’t do it. If Linkin had said we wanted to do a record and we had gotten our feathers ruffled about it, then Mike wouldn’t have done that either. We know that nothing we do outside of this is gonna be detrimental. We’re all confident with that.

OCR: What will be different about your solo music?

CB: It’s hard to describe. Like, describe the difference between Soundgarden and Alice in Chains, you know what I mean? It’s almost impossible. There are obvious things about it that when you listen to it, you’ll know it’s not a Linkin Park record. You’re not gonna get confused. You’ll have to hear it.

-Interview by Ben Wener

Chester Interview in ENERGY

2009-03-30T15:48:00.000-07:00

ENERGY: I bet you have done a millions of interviews. How should I start?
Chester: I cant tell you. I have no idea.
ENERGY: Or lets say whats a bad question?
Chester: I can give you examples of that questions. “How did you started”? That would be a terrible one. Or „how was the work with Rick Rubin“?
We had to answer those questions over hundret times over the last one and a half year.
Or” how did you get your band name”? “How is the german audience in comparison of the other audience?”
ENERGY: All right I dont have any of those question. If the word Linkin Park was in a dictionary what would be written undearneath it?
Chester: uuuh thats a good question. I would like to say something smart but ehhh.....maybe someone else can do that. Next question. Maybe someone smarter can answer that one.
ENERGY: “We made it” is your current single and its with Busta Rythmes. Can you tell us something about it?
Chester: Yeah we met him when we did Hybrid Theory. We were new in the business and we were excited to meet persons who were really importnant. And we met Busta and through the years we are friends. I met him at the Transformers Premier in Los Angeles and he came to me and said: “We have to do something together”.
And I was like Yeah and after 6 months we had a track and Mike and I listened to it and we both were excited. Everyone knew that its gonna be a great track and it had to be one.
We recorded our part in Taipei. And the song came out very well.

ENERGY: Can you tell me some moments when you thought “we made it”?
Chester: Well when we were at our first tour. You know being on the road with your band and have been signed.
ENERGY: Are there any other stars you want to work with?
Chester: I think I worked with the people I wanted to work with. Slash is doing a new record and he asked me wether I want to do something and maybe we will do something together. He is really cool and we are friends. It would be something special for me.
ENERGY: LIATR is you new single. What is it about?
Chester: Well everyone has his own interpretation. Mike didnt want to tell me what he thought when he wrote the song. So when I hear the song its about being at the end of the road, at the end of the life or at the end of a relationship. And you want to remember on the good and on the bad things which happened. Its a little bit more deep.

ENERGY: Are you working on a new album?
Chester: We are wroking on new music. I think we have to write about 300 songs until we finally can chose the right ones. But everything is going on well and I think that there will be a new record next year.
ENERGY: Is there any song which you wish you wrote it? Maybe a famous one?
Chester: There are a lot of songs. Classic Girl or all songs from Depech Mode. I would like to know how it would be to be in the band for example Depech Mode or The Cure. I just know how it is to be in Linkin Park. But there are a lot of great bands out there.

ENERGY: i always wanted to ask you that question. Doesnt it hurt to sing, scream like you always do. Singing that loud?
Chester: You know. Im getting older and Im asking myself: What are you doing to yourself?
My knees arent that what they used to be....also my kondition. But my voice is getting better. There is a wrong and a good way to use your voice. You feel it when you did it in the wrong way.

ENERGY: I just prepared a few quick questions for you.
Whats better? Concert or Festival?
Chester: Festival
ENERGY: The coolest number in your mobilephone
Chester: Slash
ENERGY: the worst song ever?
Chester: The Barney Children TV Show Theme Song
ENERGY: One star you want to interview?
Chester: Ronald Reagan
ENERGY: Most embarrest nickname your girlfriend gave you
CHESTER: Stinky
ENERGY: One sentence you dont want to read, hear about you?
Chester: That guys are fucking assholes.
ENERGY: Coolest woman every?
Chester: My wife
ENERGY: How do you eat your toast?
Chester: peanuttbutter and jelly
ENERGY: One thing your crazy abou?
Chester: I am in crazy...in love with Texas Holdem
Energy: If the whole world can listen to you just for a few seconds....what would you say?
Chester: War is stupid and primitive.

Transcript by JoeHahn.org

Chester Interview in Kerrang Issue #1215

2009-03-30T15:46:00.000-07:00

What prompted you to bring the amazing Projekt Revolution to the UK? I love the idea and was one of the first to buy a ticket! -Beth, Milton Keynes

"It was the fans who prompted us to bring it to the UK. We've done it in the US for the last years and a lot of fans asked why we weren't doing it anywhere else. It's one thing to have one or two kids ask, but when we were getting lots of kids coming up with the same question. If people ask loud enough and long enough, they tend to get heard and that's what happened. It's going to be even bigger and better in the UK too. It'll be nice to hook up with Jay-Z again, as well.
He's a great guy but we've never done a formal tour together, so that will be fun."

What's the biggest misconception about Linkin Park? - Helen via Kerrang.com

"Hmmm, I'm not sure. I think there used to be a lot of misconceptions about Linkin Park but it doesn't happen so much now. Do people think we are to serious? I don't know. Sometimes they think we're too nice but I promise that we do have an edge. Another misconception is that people think we don't play live. That bothers me because we really pride ourselves on our live show. I can assure you that we do play live."

If you were to switch bodies with Mike Shinoda for a day, what things would you get up to? - Joe, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne

"Mike is one of the most talented people I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. He is a genius. I'd like to be Mike in his studio for a day and work out how he does his thing so well. He's so creative, so I'd steal some of his ideas and freak him out the next day. I'd be like, 'You know that song you were thinking about? Here it is. Oh, and that painting you were thinking of doing? I already did that too'."

What are the best bits and worst bits of fame? - Rebecca, Leeds

"There are a lot of great parts about it. It's cool that people are excited to see me when I'm out and about. Although, it does bother me when people come up to me when I'm eating. Usually the first thing they say is, 'I don't mean to bother you', when what they really mean is, 'But I'm going to anyway...'. However, we're really fortunate that we're famous but we're not celebrities. Our fans are very respectful too, most of the time, and I never get bombarded by paparazzi or hordes of people. We get a lot of love. One nice thing about being the singer in a successful rock band, is that I do get to pull out the rock star card every now and again. I've phoned up restaurants and been told that they are full before. As ashamed as I am to say, I've definitely phoned them back five minutes later and said, 'I'm calling for Chester Bennington from Linkin Park'. They go, 'Awesome, how many people do you want to bring? We'll make sure you have a table'. That's quote nice!"

Chester, how did it feel having an obsessed fan stalk you and hack into your email account? - Tamara Mackie, Fife Scotland

"Well, that's the downside of fame. What was weird was that that person thought what they did was okay when it was very uncomfortable. She thought she was just being a fan when she hacked into m email account and stole my identity. She's now doing two years in federal prison and that's not cool. She just didn't understand that there was a line that she crossed. The whole experience was very scary. I put a lot of trust in people and try to think everyone is good but this is the sort of experience that makes you think again. It's not a good feeling when you find out a complete stranger has all of your family's phone numbers, your business associates' phone numbers and has been privy to all sorts of personal information."

Chester, you've spoken openly about the difficult times you went through while you were growing up. Has speaking about things, knowing that you're helping young people in similar situations helped you to put your past behind you? - Lisa, Bournemouth

"At first I didn't want to talk about what happened to me when I was growing up because I was afraid of what people might think. But, by talking about it, it's really helped me figure myself out as a person. I've talked to my kids about it, to other kids and in magazines. Hopefully that helps other people in the same situation tell others about it. In most cases, a lot of these things happen inside families and that's hard because the victim often doesn't want to break up their family. But there's a chance the person is also doing it to other people and that needs to be stopped. It's very important to talk about it. I don't know that I've necessarily helped people but, if I have, then I'm glad."

It's been rumored that you're leaving Linkin Park to front Velvet Revolver. True or false? -Paul via Kerrang.com

"I'm friends with all the guys in Velvet Revolver and have played with all of them before. I'm friends with Scott Weiland too. I think the rumour that I was going to join Velvet Revolver started because Slash asked me if I'd come play a show with them in Vegas right around the time that Scott left the band. Timing-wise, it didn't work out for me though. Maybe people assumed that invitation meant I was joining the band. It would be very uncomfortable for me to join that band because I'm friends with all of them, including Scott. If I was even going to do just one show, or record just one song with them, I'd have to know it was okay with my band, all those guys and Scott too. If I wasn't in Linkin Park anymore and I didn't know Scott, though, I'd say yes. Who wouldn't? The music is great and it would be a really cool opportunity."

LPN - Q&A with the Band

2009-03-30T15:44:00.000-07:00

Question: Which country would you like to tour most that you haven't been to yet? - maurader
Chester: Israel, South Africa, and Egypt.

Question: What's your favorite car? - Lplova
Joe: I like the Yugo

Question: If you had to pick another band to be in (other than Linkin Park!), which would you pick and why? - nicky808
Rob: I would be stoked if I was good enough to play drums with The Dave Matthews Band.

Question: What is the secret to your success? - djjenkins
Phoenix: Rob Bourdon.

Question: How do you warm up for gigs? - heyman112
Mike: Chill out, stretch, and figure out what I’m going to eat after we play. Tonight is Caesar salad and a steak.

Chester Bennington of Linkin Park talks records sales

2009-03-30T15:41:00.000-07:00

In a time of slumping sales around the world, Linkin Park continue to confound the trend and sell records. Chester Bonnington and Rob Bourdon chew on their success.

Before your latest album Minutes to Midnight was released, you said you weren't sure if the kids who were 15 when Hybrid Theory came out would still be into Linkin Park. Have they stuck around?

Chester Bennington: Yeah, now they're bringing their kids. It's cool.

Rob Bourdon: Our core fans that loved our band from the beginning are still around. That's really cool to see. It makes us feel old sometimes when they come to the meet and greet and they have kids.

CB: There's one girl in particular that we ran into. Rob leaned over to me and said, "Wasn't she like an original fan-club kid?" And I go "Yeah, she was in high school, she was a little girl when we met her".

She's been to probably 30 meet and greets. She came with her boyfriend and her daughter, and she's all grown up, she's a woman now. It's like, you recognise them but you kind of don't -- they're not kids any more. It does make me go "Oh yeah, I do have some grey hairs and I have to trim my nose hair now . . ." We're getting older. I have a litter of children myself. It's fun to watch it happen.

Do Linkin Park kids tag along on tour these days?

RB: Yeah, touring's definitely a lot different. A lot of these guys have their family and kids out. It's a lot easier than it was when we were all jammed into an RV.

Before Minutes to Midnight you hadn't done a full tour for a couple of years. Did you find you were not match-fit?

CB: I'm actually in better shape than I've ever been in my life. Me today would kick the s--- out of me five years ago (laughs). And I think my voice is better, too.

Are you wiser than you were five years ago too?

CB: We're all wiser and calmer.

Does calmer mean duller?

Both: No.

RB: It just means we get tired a little earlier. We don't hang out for as long after the show, we head back to the hotel a little earlier and watch TV.

CB: We don't get upset over the same things -- that's what I meant by calmer. We're all more mature. But I'm more fun now than I used to be.

Chester has an 18-second scream in Given Up -- is he managing to pull it off on stage every night?

RB: Yeah. The first few times I heard him do it in rehearsal, I was laughing because I couldn't believe it.

CB: When we rehearse I can do the full 18 seconds without stopping, but when we're in the show environment it's really difficult to do that, because your adrenalin's pumping, your heart's pumping. To pull off that scream I'd have to literally be like a lump on stage. It's pretty much 18 seconds, but right in the middle I do a little (inhales) and split it into two nine-second screams.

Chris Cornell supported you in Australia last year. You lot would have been prime age to be Soundgarden fans.

CB: Yeah, it's weird. There are certain groups that haven't been around as long as we have, and we feel like, OK, this is our place. But when you have Chris Cornell opening for you, it feels disrespectful to a certain degree (laughs).

RB: We like to say we're "sharing" the stage. It just happens that he's playing before us.

Don't be modest. When Minutes came out everyone was using the "biggest band in the world" tag to describe Linkin Park.

CB: Apparently we're not doing too bad. We keep growing. Our shows keep getting bigger. A lot of bands that weren't too keen on us in the beginning, we've earned their respect.

In the early days, did other artists disrespect you to your face?

CB: Oh for sure. People who don't like our band, apparently because of that they can't like us as people either, so they're a---holes to us, more than those who talk s--- about us all over the place in the press. Then when we meet 'em it's all smiles and handshakes and happy times. That's confusing to me. It's like "I thought you hated me, why do you wanna hang out with me right now?"

Usually that changed after they saw us play. Like, if we got stuck on a bill with a band that didn't really like us and had been vocal about it, and then we played with them -- we've had a few apologies (laughs).

You chose My Chemical Romance to play on your Projekt Revolution tour last year in North America. Do you see a lot of your younger selves in a band such as MCR and the stage they're at now?

CB: For sure. I see a lot of similarities in their fanbase and how they deal with their fans. And in how other bands viewed them when their first record came out and now how everybody's coming around, going "I didn't realise they were that good". It's like "Well it's OK, but yeah, they are, they're really that good".

I'm confident that as long as they keep making good music -- which I'm positive they're going to continue doing -- they'll reach a stage where they go "Nah, we're not gonna do the Linkin Park thing, we're gonna do our own summer tour" and we'll be competing with them (laughs). It'll be fun because I enjoy watching bands succeed, especially when they're cool guys.

Do Linkin Park have anything left to prove? Are there still people to set straight?

CB: I think so. Every band, once you get complacent and like "Ahhh, we can do whatever we want", that's when bad things start happening. It's important to have some tension. When you're fishing, you don't want to drop the line in and then pull it all out and just let it sit there -- you need to have some kind of tension if you're gonna catch what you want.

Also, from a fan's point of view, it's like "They better f---ing make a good record or I'm gonna be p---ed". It's a good, healthy battle that happens. On every record we lose fans and we gain. I remember when we released Somewhere I Belong as our first single off Meteora, everybody was like "What happened to the band that I love?" And it's one of the biggest songs we ever put out.

Now it's like if we don't play that song, everybody's disappointed (laughs).

The industry is in a slump, record sales have dropped. Why are Linkin Park still selling records?

CB: I dunno, man. Kanye West is selling some records, 50 Cent is selling some records, Reba McEntire is selling some records . . . and Tim McGraw seems to be selling records. There's a lot of records being sold. I think they're not including digital sales in the big picture. If you added digital sales as well as record sales and singles, I think people would notice that the big secret is people are spending more money on music now than they ever have, it's just not going to the record companies. . . it's going to iTunes (laughs). It's going to Steve Jobs.

The next Linkin Park album?

CB: It won't take as long. Unless we literally don't do anything for a couple of years, we're gonna kick one out fairly quickly.

RB: Yeah, this record took a long time because there was a lot of experimenting and we learned a lot. We have some great ideas still lingering that we can go back to and re-address and get a record out a lot sooner next time.

Source: HeraldSun.com.au

Q&A Session with Chester

2009-03-30T15:40:00.000-07:00

January 9, 2008
Linkin Park Network

Q: Who do you think are some of the best vocalists in the current music scene?
A: Ryan Shuck of Julien-K, Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age, Chris Cornell, and Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance.

Q: What was your favorite city to visit on this past Australia/NZ/Asia tour, and why?
A: Tokyo. Because it is so full of life and it’s the fashion capital of the world.

Q: What can you tell us about your solo project, Dead By Sunrise?
A: We rule! Our record is almost done and so far we’re really proud of all the songs.

Q: I love the new Club Tattoo designed Etnies Shoes! What gave you the idea for those?
A: Etnies is the original when it comes to street/skate shoes. We thought they would be the perfect fit for Club Tattoo.

Q: What's your favorite activity to do while you are on the road?
A: Golfing and eating.

Q: We just heard the news about Linkin Park's new headlining US tour with Coheed and Cambria as the opening act! What made you guys decide to invite Coheed and Cambria on tour with you?
A: They’re dope!

Q: What prompted you to start your own clothing line Ve'cel? Where do you draw your inspirations from?
A: We started Ve’cel because there are a lot of brands that look the same so we wanted to do something unique and edgy with an artistic feel.

Thanks to LPTimes.com for this.

Folhateen interview with Chester

2009-03-30T15:38:00.000-07:00

April 2, 2007
Folhateen

Translated by Ariel

The release of the most anticipated rock record of the year is close. To be more precise, 60.480 minutes between midnight today and May 14th's midnight, when 'Minutes to Midnight', Linkin Park's third record, is set to arrive at the stores.

The band doesn't sound like rap-rock anymore, at least on most of the tracks in the new record (the 'transition' single, "What I've Done", set to be released today, "Given Up" and "Bleed It Out" are the exceptions).

More melodic, the album grabs our attention with elaborated lyrics and some ballads, like "In Between", about cheating, and "Valentine's Day". On the songs about politics, the main one is "The Little Things Give You Away", one of the best songs on the CD, about the Katrina hurricane and the destruction of New Orleans.

In an exclusive interview to Folhateen, in Los Angeles, the vocalist Chester Bennington talked about the partnership with the producer Rick Rubin, about the changes on the sound and their concert in Brazil, that took place almost three years ago.

Folha: Are you excited that "Minutes to Midnight" will finally be released?
Chester: It was a very long process. We put so much energy on it. But it wasn't that easy. There was a lot of work. We tried to overcome ourselves in many aspects, but it's not like we were crazy for everything to end soon (laughs).

Folha: How do you explain the development of the band's sound?
Chester: We got into the studio with the conscient decision that we wanted to make the compositions in a different way. We wanted to show Linkin Park's essence in a new package. "Re-inventing the wheels" was a good part of the process.

Folha: What did Rick Rubin bring to Linkin Park's sound?
Chester: To be honest, he said: "Do not take the way you think Linkin Park should sound, the songs that you think you should write. There's nothing like that". In the beginning of the process, we were writing a lot of songs that could be part of our previous records, and he told us to put all of that aside".

Folha: What changed?
Chester: Before, everything was presented the same way. This time around, Mike [Shinoda] is singing a lot more. It may seem like he's not on the record, but he's doing a lot of the harmonics. He also sings a couple of songs alone. We're presenting ourselves in a different way. We've had a hair cut, clothing changes and, here it is, here is a new thing.

Folha: What about the instruments and styles? What is different? What have you done for the very first time?
Chester: We've minimized things. Experimented many guitar sounds and styles, tried many drum kits, played banjo and xylophones, a lot of crazy stuff.

Folha: What kind of subjects are you guys approaching to now?
Chester: We're older and we react in other ways now. Even the hate in this record is not necessarily the same kind of hate.

Folha: You've got some politics songs now.
Chester: We wanted to have a political point of view, but it was important that it didn't have a determined agenda. It couldn't be a song that would tell you how to think or what is right or wrong. It was something that we noticed we were testifying and thought we could tell.

Folha: "The Little Things Give You Away" is about Katrina.
Chester: It was inspired in a trip to New Orleans to do voluntary work. I talked to some people about their experiences after the hurricane and just wrote about it, on their perspective. I think it's a pretty track and tough at the same time.

Folha: It's been almost three years since you were in Brazil. How was that experience?
Chester: Incredible. It's still the largest show we've done. We did the Live8 to 800 thousand people, but everyone was there for the festival. It wasn't our show. In Brazil, I was chocked when I got onto the stage. Fantastic!

Thanks to LPTimes.com for this.

Rolling Stone Q&A with Chester Bennington

2009-03-30T15:37:00.000-07:00

April 5, 2007
Rolling Stone

Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington checked in with our Kevin O'Donnell from Disneyland -- where he was patiently waiting in line for Space Mountain with the wife and kids -- to discuss the band's new album, Minutes to Midnight, out May 15th.

So how did you guys decide to hook up with Rick Rubin? Was that your idea or did he approach you?
We -- the band -- made a list of people we wanted to work with. Rick is somebody we wanted to work with since we started making records. If you don't think about working with Rick Rubin then you're probably an idiot, you know what I mean? We decided to approach him, and after meeting with him we didn't even bother with meeting with anybody else. He seemed really into shaking things up as far as what we were going to do musically and lyrically. We were looking for a new direction and we knew he was going to get us there.

Which of the songs best encapsulates the results of working with Rubin?
"In Between" is a track that probably best captures what I'm talking about, It's a song that just starts out with a cello. There's literally a cello and a little sample beat. A piece of a beat. And Mike comes in and he sings the whole song.

He sings, he doesn't rap?
Right, he's singing the whole song, it's a very heartfelt, beautiful track,and its something no one would expect on a Linkin Park record.

What about "Hands Held High" and "Little Things You Give Away"?
Well "Hands Held High" [musically lends itself to singing]. And Rick was like, 'Forget that lets rap on that, Mike go ahead, do you thing.' It was an interesting piece of music to rap over but it works really well. "Little Things You Give Away" is this epic long, beautiful ride, and it's a little unconventional in the way its arranged too. So I think that's something that represents the diversity of the record.

Was it lyrically inspired by you know your Music for Relief charity for the tsunami?
The thing about this record we have made some observations on our perspective of things, we don't want to preach or get into politics or what ever, we are at an age where we're paying attention to that more in our lives.

So what kind of ideas did Ruben have that you guys really like and what ones did you try that he threw your way and you guys just really couldn't go for?
We took everything Rick said to heart. We have a lot of respect for him and he's got great taste in music and a really good ear so if he was like, 'Let's try this beat,' we really tried everything. We took every challenge and worked on it, that's the reason we wrote close to a hundred and fifty songs, and narrowed it down to 12 tracks on our record.

How did you whittle them down? Was there a grading system?
There's a grading system for everything and there's also a voting. We graded everything, voted, graded them again and voted again and that process just happened throughout. It was very tedious. Sometimes democracy felt like it wasn't a very good idea, but the end result was that we all walked away with a record that was lyrically stronger, very musical, really well written. think [we all looked at Rick] and thought we could live with this one. This one's good.

Does Mike do a lot of singing on the album? Because the songs I've heard are largely you singing.
Mikes was like, 'I wrote myself out of the record.' There's not a lot of Mike on this record -- there's a couple of songs he's rapping on, he has a couple of songs he's singing on, he's singing a lot of harmonies and playing a lot of guitar. And, you know he produced this record as well, so it was interesting. I questioned that early on, like, 'Hey there what are you doing? Maybe we should try some rapping or more of you.' And he was like 'No, no, no. This is all you dude.' It was almost like after awhile we just stopped paying attention to him. We were just writing songs.

Thanks to LPTimes.com for this.

Linkin Park update from Chester

2009-03-30T15:36:00.000-07:00

April 18, 2006

Linkin Park update from Chester
posted by Jas, 04/18/06
An update from Chester via the LP Newsletter

What is the writing process like?
It's fun. We all get a chance to release and contribute creatively. Rick Rubin, the producer on our new record, has us working in a style that we've never done before, so it's different for us. We'll come up with ideas individually then come together and work on it as a band. We decide together what direction the songs will go... but this album will be more vocally driven than any of our other ones. So usually, Mike and I write lyrics, and the rest of the guys write their parts to them. Brad is really great at structuring the songs. It's obviously a lot of work, but I love my job, so it makes working fun for us.

Do you and Mike write together?
We both write songs and melodies, and we both have our own personal things we write about, so some of the songs start out separately then we put them together and work on them together. But we both have songs that we've written on our own. Usually we tweak each other's stuff and go from there.

Is there one main person who determines the lyricism?
Nope, there are two. Me and Mike. But Mike is really good at making lyrics flow, so he perfects a lot of what we do together.

Does the whole band sit down together?
Every week. We're still in the early stages where we're working out our individual parts first. Each of the guys write their own part for their own instrument. But we have a band meeting every week, and we partner up on a lot of what we're doing. We get together at the studio every week and listen to each other's stuff. Then we all get to decide what to keep, what to change and help each other with what we've been working on.

And the rest work on the production?
Everyone does the production. But if you're asking me if everyone works on their own parts, yes they do. But we all help each other out when we need it. We're a band, so nothing is solo.

Is your writing a reflection of where you are in life?
A lot has changed for me since Meteora. I married Talinda, and have 3 sons, so I guess as I'm growing up and getting older, so is the music. You can't repeat the same things in life and not learn. The same goes for music with me.

Will the lyrical content be similar to any of your previous work or can we expect something TOTALLY new?
Both. We're still Linkin Park, and you'll hear that. But we have a lot of material that is totally new and nothing you've heard from us before. Rick Rubin is producing the record, and he's done so many different types of albums. We wanted something new but still with our vibe.

Are you also a writer in the traditional sense of the word i.e. short stories, fiction, etc.?
Yes. I love to write stories and poems. I did an interview for a book recently, and it ended up to be a story of my childhood and how I was influenced to play music. It ended up to be about 6 pages.

Do you find your writing as a form of release or pseudo-therapy?
Yeah. It gives me a chance to express myself creatively and to get my feelings out. Some people work out, some people paint, I write and sing. It lets me release my aggression and share my thoughts with fans and friends. We can't wait for you to hear the new music. Thanks for all your support, our fans mean the world to us and we're so excited to see you on tour later this year.

Thanks to LPTimes.com for this.

Why is Chester Bennington rocking a Home Depot parking lot? A cover band

2009-03-30T15:34:00.000-07:00

December 29, 2006
MTV

In the career path of a rock star, playing in a cover band typically comes near the beginning, somewhere between discovering your parents' vinyl and winning a battle of the bands at the county fair.

Lately, however, some rock stars have been forming ironically named cover bands after making it big. In fact, what used to be considered somewhat lame has suddenly become chic, with Dave Navarro's Camp Freddy leading the way. "Everyone's jumpin' that train, man," said Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins, whose cover band Chevy Metal has been playing around Los Angeles for five years.

So why the step back? "Because we have a really killer time doing it," Navarro answered. "It's kind of a celebration of that time where there's no publishing, there's no management, there's no label that's attached to it. It's really just a group of guys getting together and doing what they love doing, which is playing music." In many ways, playing in a cover band helps musicians balance the stresses that accompany playing in an original band. "Anything that's no pressure, musically, is a lot of fun," Hawkins explained. "There's a lot of pressure to get up and play drums in front of 30,000 people. So I like those low-pressure things and I think everybody who does what I do enjoys that too."

"None of us are out here trying to prove anything," added Linkin Park singer Chester Bennington, who also fronts the cover band Bucket of Weenies. "We're just out here having a good time and hopefully people show up and listen. And if they don't like it, then they can at least go buy a beer and it sounds like they're in any other bar."

For Bennington, doing a cover band was also a way to play music far different from his main gig, as well as to pay homage to his variety of influences, from the Cure to Oasis. "These are songs you play when you pick up your acoustic guitar and you're sitting there with your friends figuring it out and you're like, 'God, that is good,' " said Orgy's Ryan Shuck, who plays guitar in Bucket of Weenies. "Except all our friends happen to be really talented musicians."

"It's just stuff that we grew up loving and playing in garages with each other when we were kids," added Navarro, whose Camp Freddy focuses on classic-rock hits like Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love" and Sweet's "Ballroom Blitz."

Music journalist Lorraine Ali credits rock stars' early fandom as their main inspiration for forming cover bands later on. "Most musicians were influenced by someone, they want to be somebody else — or they did when they were kids," she said, citing John Lennon's love of Elvis Presley. "And doing a cover band is kinda the way to be like, 'I actually can slip into the shoes of, you know, Prince.' And there's something about it that's kind of tongue-in-cheek, so nobody can really ridicule you for doing a cover band after you get famous."

Since Camp Freddy formed in 2002, the band has become a major draw, mostly reserving their shows for special events and posh private parties. There's also been talk of a star-studded album in the works.

For Hawkins and Bennington, though, the occasional gig is enough. "We're the worst band in the world. I mean, it really is a joke," said Hawkins, whose Chevy Metal draw from the catalogs of Deep Purple, Queen and the James Gang. "It's not a joke, but it's not serious, it really isn't. I mean, we don't do corporate gigs or any of that kind of thing. Everybody makes 150 bucks here and there and we have fun."

"It's really something that wasn't planned," Bennington said of the Weenies. "It was really spontaneous and I think it will continue to be spontaneous as far as the songs we play and the venues we play. You know, we played the other day in a parking lot in front of Home Depot. And it was really a fantastic show."

Thanks to LPTimes.com for this.

Linkin Park singer gets stuff off his chest, and now he’s a big rap-metal star

2009-03-30T15:32:00.000-07:00

Carrie Schulman
The Morning Call
January 17, 2004

Over the last five years, Linkin Park has climbed to the top of the rap-metal heap by channelling anger and an uncompromisingly bleak world view into two studio discs, ''Hybrid Theory'' and ''Meteora,'' that have sold more than 10 million copies combined.

But the man who articulates those sentiments, lead singer Chester Bennington, (bottom front in photo) is neither surly nor sour. In fact, during a telephone conversation, he's just the opposite — a sweet-voiced, funny guy from Phoenix, Ariz., who answers every question put to him without hesitation or resorting to a rehearsed response.

Bennington joined Linkin Park in 1999 (previously he played in a band called Grey Daze, which recorded two albums before breaking-up), cementing the Los Angeles-based act's lineup. At the time, the group was still playing small L.A. clubs.

Those days are only a memory. Last year, Linkin Park was one of the big draws on Metallica's Summer Sanitarium Tour that made a stop at Philadelphia's Veterans Stadium in July.

On Tuesday, the sextet will return to Philadelphia for a date at one of the city's biggest indoor arenas, the Wachovia Spectrum, headlining a bill that includes P.O.D., Hoobastank and Story of the Year.

In an interview from a New York City hotel room, the 27-year-old Bennington reflected on a variety of topics, including how fame has affected his life and his band, the birth of his son in April 2002, the reason for releasing a live album, rap-metal's eclipse by emo and how Linkin Park might be remembered.

Q: You married your wife, Samantha, on Oct. 31, 1996, when you were 20. What has changed you more: the success of Linkin Park or the birth of your son, Draven Sebastian?
Bennington: My son is way more important. Music was a hobby. It was something I did for fun and because I loved it. I'm lucky. I got married, got successful and then had a child. We waited seven years and felt we were really ready for a baby.

Q: As a new father, do you find yourself trying to present a more well-rounded picture of the world? Has it changed your lyrics?
Bennington: No, being a father hasn't changed my lyrics. The world is still a scary place. I mean, we have been at war since I was born. … I write to get (stuff) off my chest. I'm not a role model, and I'm not out to save the world. There is no bright side. Success, to me, is a good marriage and kids. It's not what most people think. I think people perpetuate the wrong things for their kids. I just want Draven to grow up to be a tolerant person.

Q: You write all of Linkin Park's lyrics with MC Mike Shinoda. How do you negotiate content, and has there ever been anything you refused to sing?
Bennington: We are from two totally different places. Some stuff we have to come together on, but on an emotional level, we both can understand sadness, anger and loneliness. Being on the road is lonely. It's hard to go from being a punk-rock kid to running a company. People don't realize a band is a company and (stuff) never goes the way you want it too. I refuse to sing love songs. Al Green is the only person who does it right.

Q: In general, rap-metal appears to be on the wane, while emo is on the rise. What has kept Linkin Park on top?
Bennington: We blend pop in a not-so-cliche way. We don't sound like Crazytown, and not many bands sound like us. We also make our own samples. Mike and (turntablist) Joe (Hahn) are really good with beats. The problem with rap-rock is the people who play it either know one (style) or the other. They all sound the same. They're not doing anything new. As for emo, it will get old fast, too.

Q: Releasing, ''Live in Texas,'' a concert disc, after only two studio albums is unusual. How did that come about? And do you think it captures the energy of your live show?
Bennington: Live albums are weird; something is always missing. That's why we released a DVD. Actually, the DVD came first. We had cameras at 15 different angles and an ambient microphone to really get the crowd's reaction. A live album never gets the full energy of the show, but if you watch the DVD and then replay the CD, you'll visualize the concert in your mind. I think it's really exciting.

Q: So, what do you think about stadium and arena tours?
Bennington: It's exciting to play big stadiums. It creates a big wall of sound. But there isn't the connection with the fans. I guess it's a give and take. The perfect-size venue for me is Roseland (a New York City venue that can accommodate about 3,000 people).

Q: What bands have influenced you most?
Bennington: Stone Temple Pilots are my biggest influence. I have never devoted so much time and energy to a band. And to go from a major fan to friends is way cool. Then I guess Zeppelin, The Smiths, The Cure, Depeche Mode. I only saw Depeche Mode once, because I didn't have enough money to drive to L.A. to see them.

Q: What CDs have you bought recently?
Bennington: I bought Bunnybrains' ''Holiday Massacre '98.'' They are this independent punk band from New York. I also bought a reggae mix covering old R&B songs. I also bought the first Candlebox album because I only had it on tape.

Q: What was the first big-ticket item you bought when you got famous?
Bennington: I jumped from a Honda to a 2002 Sequoia. It was a big splurge. An SUV. I'm officially a member of the middle class.

Q: When all is said and done, what will Linkin Park's epitaph be?
Bennington: It's weird to say now. After our career is over, I don't think we will be remembered like The Beatles. I think we'll be remembered as a band that consistently made good records. Linkin Park will be remembered as a band that temporarily changed things and worked harder than anyone else.

Thanks to LPTimes.com for this.

One: Interview with Chester

2009-03-30T15:31:00.000-07:00

March 10, 2004
One (France)
March/April 2004

Translated by Sophie

With their new album « Live In Texas », Linkin Park is still topping the charts. Back after his medical problems, Chester Bennington agreed for a new interview, in which he reveals a few surprising aspects of his personnality.

You’re 28, married and father of a baby boy. Still when you’re singing, you express the pain of million of teenagers. How do you manage to talk about their problems now that they’re not yours anymore?
Simply because I’ve been through solitude, feeling of abandon, violence and drug. Before my parents divorced, I had a perfect childhood, I was a good pupil and I was feeling very good. But when my mum left , I suddenly lost it. I was 11 and I strated to take drugs. In class, I was sleeping and my health started to decline. I lost weight until looking like a starver. I remember very well this period of my life, even though I got out luckily of it. I’ve managed to overcome my problems and that’s why now I can talk about in our songs. I’ve made the worst mistakes and I’ve learned things that now, I hope, will help the kids who listen to our records. If it can help them to find their way and realise their dreams, that’s good.

What were you dreaming of when you were a teenager?
I loved Depeche Mode and I used to sing along their songs. I often dreamed that I was becoming the 5th memeber of the band. I imagined that their plane would land in my school and that they were taking me on tour with them. (laughs).

To the opposite of many rock albums, “Hybrid Theory” doesn’t contain any cursing.
It’s true, we wanted to stand out. We were thinking that, to be honest, we shouldn’t try to hide our emotions behind cursing. We wanted to be sincere and not to shock. I suppose it surprises people who don’t know us. After a concert, the people that we meet are always astonished that we’re not agresive or frightening. But it’s not our style, we are normal guys doing music, that’s all. I think that it’s important to show the kids that you can express yourself without being agressive or violent.

You’ve got a lot of tattoes all over your body. Why?
To get tattoed is the most painful experience you could ever imagine and, at the same time, it’s beautiful and reveals a lot about your personnality. When people see my tattoes, I want them to help them to understand who I am. When I started, I didn’t plan to have as many tattoes, but I got them. There’s one I’m really proud of. When I got married in 1996, my fiancee Samantha and I didn’t have enough money to buy our rings, so we got them tattoed instead.

I’ve noticed that when you’re on tour you’ve got more luggage than the rest of the band....
(Chester looks in an other way, looking embarrassed) Yes, I admit it, I’m a fashion victim! (laughs). I own dozens of pair of shoes. One for each outfit! My underwears are generaly matching my clothes and my socks are matching my shoes. I suppose it says that I’m crazy, but it really matters to me.

Is your wife worried to see young and beautiful girls hitting on you after your concerts?
I suppose that she’s worried and, after all, it’s natural that a wife whose husband travels a lot questions herself. But we’ve been married for nearly 8 years and our realtion is important. Samantha is just perfect. I don’t deserve her.

What’s the strangest thing a fan has ever asked you?
A completely crazy fan asked to have my pubic hairs! I was disgusted....

What’s your favorite movie?
“Fight Club”, without hesitation. Brad Pitt is a real god in this movie, an incredible incarnation of the punk-rock spirit. This movie is awesome and sums up really well the Ameraican culture. I also like “The Crow” a lot, my son Draven has been named in tribute to the hero of the movie, Eric Draven.

Do you have any hidden gift which would surprise your fans?
I’m an excellent cook. My wife says that’s the reason why she stays with me! (laughs) I can cook a normal steak with just salt and pepper and it will be the best one you’ll ever taste. The secret is to cook with love.

What’s the record we’d be surprised to find in your collection?
I shouldn’t be saying it but I’ve got all Madonna’s albums. (laughs)

Thanks to LPTimes.com for this.

Kerrang Interview with Chester

2009-03-30T15:30:00.000-07:00

Kerrang!
June 2004
Typed up by Hiral

Linkin Park

Broken backs? Flying piss? Stage Fright? Bring it on – Chester Bennington and the Boys have faced far, far worse…

Did Donington mean anything to you as a kid?
“Well Arizona is a bit of a time warp for music – they’re still playing the same songs on the radio now as they were when I left – so growing up I didn’t hear much about Donington. Unfortunately, we’re a culture of people that don’t always get the opportunity to hear music from outside America and we don’t really have festivals, so it took a while for me to understand why Donington was special.”

Will you get a chance to check out the competition at Download?
“If we get there early enough in the day I'll check out other bands. Before we played Reading last year I had the privilege to see Placebo play, and also stuff like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Interpol. There's a lot of great bands out there, so I’m hoping to see someone. Sum 41 are a good band, and anyone in the music business who says that Iggy Pop hasn’t influenced them in some way is either lying or…”

... Or they shouldn't be in the music business
“Exactly! So I’m really excited about seeing him.”

There's a tradition at Donington for fans to throw bottles of piss at bands: does that prospect concern you?
“Is that a sign of honour?”

It's not a total sign of disrespect. Metallica had pigs's heads thrown at them once..
“I figure we can handle that pretty well. We did a show with Korn down in Mexico once, and before we went I was talking to Chino from the Deftones and he told us that down there kids spit on the bands. He said, ‘But don’t think that they don’t like you, they do it when they’re really excited’. Sure enough when we got there it was incredible. Have you ever seen ‘Braveheart’ or something when there’s just like 1,000 flaming arrows in the air at once? It was like that, but with 1,00 flaming loogies flying at us. They almost took my head from my body. That was pretty cool. I think we’ve had faeces thrown at us too. So if we just get beer at Donington, that’s pretty good.”

Do you feel more pressure on a festival bill than at a regular headlining show?
“Actually I feel more pressure at the smaller shows. It’s a weird psychological thing, like if you asked me to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ at a small kids’ birthday party I’d just clam up. I like having our peers watching us. I want groups that I love who might never think they could fit on a Linkin Park show to see that they could play with us. Having someone like Metallica say your band is good really means a lot.”

There's a skate event at Download too: were you a skater back in the day?
“I was, and I still have a go. Unfortunately, skating isn’t like riding a bicycle, its not like learn to ride and then you know how to do it for the rest of your life. And my body isn’t as rubber as it used to be…”

Would your insurance company cack it if they saw you heading for skate bowl?
“Probably. But I think they’d be more wary about me going to India than about me getting on a half pipe. I can still perform with a broken back, but I can’t perform very well sitting on the toilet.”

Speaking of which, you're sharing a stage with Dillinger Escape Plan who famously took a shit onstage the last time they played a UK festival. Think you can top that?
“Wow. Short of masturbating and ejaculating fire, I don’t know if you could compete. The shitting onstage thing has been done so often that if I was to do it Iggy would just look at me and think, ‘Poseur!’. Between Bowie and GG Allin and Iggy and Marilyn Manson and Alice Cooper just about every outrageous thing you can do has been done. The only thing we have left is to make sure we kick ass. We’ll do our best to do that, but I don’t think you’ll be seeing any shit.”

Thanks to LPTimes.com for this

“I’m Always High”

2009-03-30T15:27:00.000-07:00

Blender
Typed up by lpcyn02

Herbally infused Linkin Park CHester Bennington on Snoop Dogg and Shrinkage

B: Where are you and what can you see out the window?
CB: I'm sitting in my office in my house, staring at my security- camera monitor

B: How many monitors so you have?
CB: I can't disclose that

B: You're going on tour with Snoop Dogg this summer. Will you be drinking from his bejeweled pimp cup?
CB: I don't know if I qualify

B: Have you ever suffered from male shrinkage when getting out of a pool?
CB: Yes- everyone should understand how the penis works. When it gets cold, the testicles need to be warmer in order to produce healthy semen. Thats why the area constricts and forces the testicles into the pelvic cavity. And if your girlfriend is like, "oh how sill you look!", just say, "well come touch it and see how silly it looks".

B: How many events are in the Olympic Decathlon?
CB: Ten. Think about it: Deca is a latin root meaning 10. I was a junior Olympic swimmer.

B: Is it true that Olympic swimmers tend to be big pot smokers?
CB: It's true, but you know what i found out? Everyone smokes weed.

B: Are you high right now?
CB: I'm always high.

Thanks to LPTimes.com for this

Rapping with Chester

2009-03-30T15:26:00.000-07:00

Manond Apanich
The Nation
June 18, 2004

While the people at BEC-Tero and the opening bands were preparing for the show late last week, Linkin Park’s lead singer, Chester Bennington, chatted with Weekend from his Los Angeles publicist’s office, his Yorkshire terrier puppy by his side:

What are you planning to do while you’re in Bangkok?
I’ve never been there but all I know is that it’s a big city and that it’s supposed to be beautiful. I love food, so I can’t wait to try the food there.

Do you guys have a say in choosing opening local acts?
Well, we definitely don’t want the Britney Spears of Bangkok to open up. It kinda sucks to live in America because we close ourselves off to everything outside and miss out on lots of good bands. Unfortunately, I don’t know who’s opening up for us in Bangkok yet, but we’re excited about meeting them.

What were some of the more memorable opening bands on your previous Asian tour?
We’ve seen some great opening acts like Uza Monkey in Japan. Pie from Seoul is another band we really like; we’re looking into having them come on tour with us in the States.

What can people expect from your show? Anything special planned for your Asia tour?
Well, if you’ve seen “Live in Texas”, its a good indication of what our live shows are like. We try to be high energy – lots of new lights and video screens – and we’ll be playing for about 90 minutes.

What does nu-metal mean to you?
I have no idea what nu-metal is. I don’t even know what it means. I mean, before I thought Metallica was a nu-metal band, but what do I know? It seems like the word just appeared one day.

What’s the most inspiring live performance that you’ve ever seen?
We played with Korn in Mexico City a few years ago. That was pretty intense. I also saw Front 242 once which was also pretty amazing. But one of the greatest was when I saw Nirvana, Pearl Jam and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers on tour together.

If you were stuck on an island and only allowed to have three CDs with you, what would they be?
“Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and umm . . . Man, can’t I just bring my iPod? Well, something that can put you in a good mood . . . maybe an Al Green greatest hits album . . . and the soundtrack to “Fight Club”, so you can run around the island and pretend you’re in the movie.

What’s in your CD player now?
Well, I have a hard drive full of mp3s in my new car. I’ve got Metallica’s whole catalogue, everything by Zeppelin, Nirvana, Public Enemy, Pixies, just random stuff.

Any words to your Thai fans?
When we were in KL, we kept hearing from tons of fans in Thailand to come over. Thanks all for that. We’re really excited to be playing.

Thanks to LPTimes for this.

Interview with Linkin Park on the Twilight Show

2009-03-30T15:25:00.001-07:00

Twilight Show
June 20, 2004

Translated by Puean

It's a pleasure to have you guys here on our show and first of all, Welcome to Thailand
Chester: Thank you very much. It's really exciting for us to be here also, thank you.

Is this your first time in Thailand?
Brad: Krub (Thai word that means yes in English and everybody's laughing....)

Have you had any Thai food since you've been here?
Chester: Yeah, actually the first night we came in, our record label took us out to a very nice Thai dinner and the food was exceptional as we expected 'cause we really enjoy Thai food back home so to come here and have real Thai food was a pleasure.

How about you Brad, Thai food?
Brad: I've just had Pad-Se-Ew. That was really good.

And Rob, how about you?
Rob: I had my favorite, Pad-Thai.

First of all, let me tell you since you have never been to Thailand before. It’s a very rare occasion indeed for this sort of concert to be organized and arranged, this is incredibly unprecedented, this is the first time that the tickets were sold out like in days, it’s never happened before even if Michael Jackson sort of mention his name. You are probably the biggest act in the past 10 years. How do you guys feel?
Chester: I guess we really quite expected that, it’s really quite an honor for an event like this to be put on just for us. I actually heard that this is the first time that this venue is used in Thailand and everything you see around us used to be a huge car park and they just basically laid the concrete last week just for the show. It’s really overwhelming and quite surprising to us but it’s really an honor for us too.

How about you Brad? It seems like you have a welcoming smile, I mean how do you like Thailand so far since you’ve been here?
Brad: Well, this is our first time as I said earlier in Thailand. We’re just really pleased to be here. We’ve heard a lot about Thailand but it’s nice actually to experience it for ourselves. One thing I’ve noticed in particular from the moment we got off the plane is that the Thai people are very hospitable and very friendly, everyone really made us feel like home here so I think this is definitely a place that we wanna come back too.

Excellent & nice to hear that. How about you Rob? How do you like Thailand so far?
Rob: I love it. Actually I remember doing a report on Thailand when I was about in the fifth grade so I learnt a little bit about Thailand here. I hoped I’d be able to come here one day and be able to do the show in front of so many great fans that we have here.

We were impressed in the fact that you guys at such a young age, you have basically conquered the world. Have you ever dreamt that this success would come so fast so early in your lives
Chester: We never…..I think any of us have never expected to play in other places other than in Southern California and some small clubs and some barbeque with friends in the backyard. We love music with great passion and to be able to do this for a living and actually be able to travel all over the world and have thousands of fan here. It is something that we’ve never expected to happen to us so we feel really blessed that we have the opportunity.
Brad: I think that we were really fortunate to have some of the best fans particularly in Asia & Southeast Asia. The experiences we had in this part of the world, I really won’t forget. The hospitality of the people especially here in Thailand as I said earlier really goes along well and making want to come back. We just wanna thank all of the amazing dedicated fans for making this event possible and also thank our record label and the promoter BEC Tero for doing an amazing job.

Now can you guys walk in your neighborhood, walk in the street back home in the US? Can you guys still do that?
Rob: Well I think actually at home we can walk around and no one really cares that we walk around but when we go to other places and leave our country, we’ll get recognized by people who are happy to see us.

Is it the pinnacle of your happiness? You come to your peak. What do you think? Is it what made you happy the most?
Brad: This interview is actually the happiest I’ve ever been in my entire life, being with you two. (Everyone’s laughing)

For you Rob, is there anything left undone in your career in your life?
Rob: That’s a good question. I mean we’ve done a lot and we’ve gone further than we expected and we were really excited about the show tonight and we’re gonna get a chance to play in front of more than 30,000 of our fans in Thailand and we just wanna continue making music and keep doing this because we love doing it, we just wanna do it for as long as possible.

Thank you so much you guys for being here and good luck, the best of luck with the Thai tour.
Chester: Thank you.
Brad: Kob Khun Krub (Thank you) Sa-Was-Dee-Krub (Hello)
Rob: Thank you.

Thanks to LPTimes.com for this.

Spin Magazine Interview

2009-03-30T15:22:00.000-07:00

July 2, 2004

Spin Magazine
July 2004

Typed up by meteorarocker411

Projekt Revolution Starring: Linkin Park, Korn, The Used, Less Than Jake.
When: July 23rd-September 5.
Where: Amphitheaters whose parking lots are loaded with scores of extremely bored parents.
Watch out for: That pool of vomit in front of The Used's Bert McCracken.
Don't miss: Linkin Park's genre-defining Depeche Mode metal.
Don't bother: Wondering what pimp Archbishop Don Magic Juan is still doing onstage with Snoop.

Linkin Park's Chester Bennington, he nu-metallers get one step closer to the edge with Projekt Revolution.

Any good tour horror stories?
At Jones Beach on Long Island. Total equipment failure. All of our DJ stuff was completely gone--there was no power in any of it. All of our drum samples went dead. It's Linkin Park with nothing but raw instruments. You listen to "One Step Closer" and there's nothing but guitar and bass. Then I physically transformed by body into a visualization of what was happening onstage, and by the end of the show, I was running around in nothing but my shorts. I had no shoes on, no shirt, no jewelry. I was basically singing a cappella. Kids were like, "What song is this?" Hopefully, it'll be just this good when we come back to Jones Beach.

What's your favorite summer song?
I like "Summertime Rolls" by Jane's Addiction. In the summer, I also listen to a lot of the Beatles and the Smiths, although the Smiths aren't that upbeat and summery.

What's backstage going to be like?
I definitely think there's going to be a lot of partying on this tour. Definitely more than we're used to.

You may have to become Bert McCracken's big brother, and Snoop will be the uncle.
Well, Snoop did call me nephew! I think he calls a lot of white people "nephew" 'cause it's better than "cracker" or "honky." Who knows what goes on in Snoop's mind besides pure genius?

Careful, he's probably got strong pot.
I was hanging put with Snoop Dogg for a day, but I had to do an interview and set [a joint] down on the table, and all of a sudden--I'm in the middle of an interview--I hear "Damn nephew! That shit smells better than uncle Snoop Dogg's!"

Thanks to LPTimes.com for this.

Mo’ money, mo’ problems

2009-03-30T15:20:00.002-07:00

Wade Tatangelo
Bradenton Herald
August 13, 2004

Linkin Park's Chester Bennington says fame stinks and money is a pain

eavy-metal and hip-hop have been the rebellion music of choice for the past two decades. Linkin Park's spruced-up crossbreed of the two styles has made them one of the most successful bands of the new millennium.

The group was living in poverty when they wrote the darkly themed material for their debut "Hybrid Theory," the biggest selling rock album of 2001. After watching a remix version of "Hybrid" also go platinum they sounded no less miserable on "Meteora," which has been on the pop charts for 70 weeks and is on pace to match its precursor's global sales of 12 million.

From a stop in Cleveland, lead singer Chester Bennington says the fame and money haven't made life any easier. He also talks about rewriting a song 150 times, pimping-out a PT Cruiser and his band's inability to attract groupies.

What's the big news so far on this summer's Projekt Revolution tour?

The shows have all been kick (expletive). Promoters say they could squeeze a couple extra in, but I couldn't tell - every show has looked packed. It's been awesome for all the bands. I couldn't imagine it going any better.

How was hooking up with Jay-Z at L.A.'s Roxy for the pilot of MTV's "Mashup" series that's scheduled for the fall?

Killer. I don't even know how to put it into words . . . It was a magical meeting of two artists who really take pride in what they do, and have a great work ethic. Jay-Z had such a good time, he came out and joined us at our show in New Jersey.

Any chance of a Snoop Dogg/Linkin Park mashup when Projekt Revolution comes to Tampa?

We might be able to work something out. We brought him out for the first time the other night. Jonathan Davis (of Korn) came on with us the other night, too.

What song did Snoop join you on?

We'll keep that a surprise . . . It doesn't happen every night, so we'll just let people come and find out.

Rumor has it you and Mike Shinoda wrote 40 different choruses for "Meteora's" first single, "Somewhere I Belong." Is the songwriting process always this tough?

Yeah, ya know, we're not ones to settle for just good - it's gotta be great. We take everything that serious. I rewrote "Runaway" (from "Hybrid Theory") about 150 times. The frustration of writing that song sprouted "One Step Closer."

Was there fear of the sophomore jinx when you entered the studio to record "Meteora?"

Nah, even though we were new at the game, we understood that each time you make a record it is like the first time. You restart your career and take all the risks each time you put out a release. We put the pressure to the back of our minds and just concentrated on making good music.

We will not release anything unless it's awesome. If you don't hear from us for a few years, it's not because we're on break, it's because we're working on making our next record worthy of release. We're not going to put something out that will disappoint

our fans or disappoint our label. We won't make music we're not proud of.

What's the most expensive item you have purchased for yourself since the fat royalty checks started pouring in?

That I didn't really need? (Pause.) It was customizing my PT Cruiser.

What did you fit it with?

I can't even get into it. Put it this way, when I get it back you're gonna need shades to look at it - it's that bright.

Has wealth and fame made it more difficult for you to write about the inner pain your fans have come to expect from your lyrics?

Fame is fleeting and money is a pain in the (expletive).

It's just one of those things, you know, life doesn't change just because certain people think you have it made.

Yeah, I live in a different world now than I did at 19 or 20. I'm 28, I'm a father, a husband and I'm in a successful band. I get to see and experience a lot more . . . But (chuckling) there's still plenty of (expletive) to come out of my disgusting mind.

Growing up in Phoenix, were you more into rock or rap?

Hip-hop was my first passion. I loved it, still do. But I'm probably more the rocker.

What do you listen to at the end of a miserable day?

I listen to The Beatles these days more than anything.

What are some of your hobbies outside of music?

Nothing really cool. Music is my life. I like to paint and that kind of stuff . . . talk to friends, throw barbecues - how stupid, that's not even a hobby.

How about passing time on your tour bus/mobile recording studio?

All we do is play (the video game) "Halo" and write music.

Your lyrics paint a dark picture of your childhood. How emotionally taxing is it to revisit these unpleasant memories each night in concert?

When I write about that stuff, it's taxing, but when I perform the song it's different. It doesn't attach itself to the memories anymore. When you perform it becomes more of a release and something for the fans.

On "Breaking The Habit," you sing, "I know it's not alright. So I'm breaking the habit tonight." Do we sense a trace of optimism there?

It's about taking control rather than being a victim. So, yeah, it's very optimistic.

What's the backstage scene been like this summer?

You don't have to have too good of an imagination to figure out what's going on back there with me and Snoop and Korn.

What's the biggest difference between Chester Bennington the lead singer of Linkin Park and Chester Bennington the guy lounging around the house on an off day?

Hmm. I don't think much, but people do say we're two different people. On stage they say I'm this raging ball of energy and negativity and offstage it's this nice, laid-back, kickback guy - but I don't know if we're that different.

More musicians than perhaps ever before are taking a stand on the upcoming presidential election. How do you feel about this?

Speak your mind in the (expletive) voting booth! Music and politics don't mix, dude. Haven't we learned that from the '60s?

What kind of groupies does Linkin Park attract?

We don't have groupies. People think of us and they don't think sex, they think Linkin Park saved my life or helped my relationship or kept me from running away from home or got me off drugs . . . The groupie thing just doesn't work for us.

Does it ever get overwhelmed having so many troubled fans seeking your guidance?

No, I love helping people. That's what the music is for. It would bother me more if people assumed I liked hookers and (cocaine) and wanted to talk about that, rather than talk about something that could be positive.

What advice would you give to someone struggling with the same type of drug abuse problems you have dealt with?

Stay strong, willpower is the key to everything. If you can't fight and stand up to yourself you can't fight and defeat anybody.

What makes you laugh on TV?

Oh, geez. "Chappelle's Show" is the funniest show on TV. That guy has got some (expletive) going on. I thought I was the only person who thought like that. I'm so glad to see a guy in his position do what he's doing so honestly.

Do you have a favorite reality series?

(Sheepishly) Yeah, "The Newlyweds."

Have you met Nick or Jessica?

(Laugh) No. No I haven't.

Thanks to LPTimes.com for this.

ONE Interview with Chester

2009-03-30T15:20:00.001-07:00

One (France)
December/January 2005

Translated by Sophie

As their new album could be long to be made, to help their fans waiting, Linkin Park have just released mini-album of remixes made with Jay-Z. Chester comes back on this unusuall collaboration and also talks about his sentimental life...

Linkin Park have just released an album with Jay-Z. Is it a way for you to break your image?
No, not really. It's just a simply exercise of style, a bracket before starting on the new album. But recording Collision Course has sometimes been a real challenge. It hasn't been easy to re-sing our dark lyrics on Jay's music. Indeed, the atmosphere of Jay's songs is a bit more happy than ours. So there was a little difference between our lyrics and his music. That's what made the project interesting.

Are you interested a lot in hip-hop?
Not as much as I used to. When I was younger, hip-hop was my favourite musical style. Listening to rap made me really fall in love with music. Today, even though I still like it, I'm much more into rock.

What are your passions, apart from music?
I love art in general. When I have time, I go visit a museum or an art gallery. In a less intellectual register, I love playing video games, as well as the other members of the band. After a concert, we always play a bit. It helps us to relax...

A lot of bands have tried to copy Linkin Park lately. Do you find it flattering?
At the beginning, I must admit that I found it flattering. It's normal to be inspired by other bands, we've been through that too. But I think that we've at last found our own style and that everyone can say it's us when they hear our music. But to come back to your question, lately I get more and more angry when I hear bands that are trying to copy our music.

In your opinion, Linkin Park is a band that's made to last for a long time or do you know that you'll soonly start something else?
As long as we have pleasure to play together, we'll keep on. Even though it's hard to say today that we'll still be here in 10 years, what's sure it's that we're not planning to do something else for the moment. We are perfectly aware that we're incredibly lucky. A few years ago, we wouldn't have imagined to be where we are now. Thanks to Linkin Park, we've achieved things that we couldn't have otherwise.

You don't seem to care about your voice when you're on stage. How do you do to keep it intact concert after concert?
I must have pretty solid vocal chords... (laughs) Non, in fact, it's not that simple. When I'm touring, to keep a clear voice, I drink between 6 and 8 liters of water per day, and also several bottles of Gatorade. If my voice is a little bit broken, then I heal it by drinking herbal tea.

With all the money that you've earn those last few years, have you bought meaningless or crazy things?
No, not really. I bought a new house, even though I haven't had the time to live in it because of the touring. One day, somebody asked me what my address is and I was obliged to ask my wife because I didn't know it. Otherwise, I just customised my car over. Today, it's so beautiful that you have to wear sunglasses to admire it. If not, you'll be blinded by its beauty. (laughs)

Is it hard to be away from your wife when you're on tour?
Are you kidding me? It's hyper fustrating! Not making love for several weeks, it's not funny! Luckily there are other ways to satisfy yourself solitary otherwise, I wouldn't make it through. (laughs)

What are the craziest things that have happened to you when you're onstage?
There are plenty of it! When we were playing in Long Island, our computers, our platines and our samplers were out of order. So we had to play with just a guitar and a bass for all the concert! (laughs) To be one with this light musical atmosphear, I got undressed leaving just my underwears. It was a unique moment in Linkin Park 's story! Another time, in Mexico, the audience just kept on spitting on us all the concert long. We thought it was because they hated us... But a member of the Deftones, who had also played there, told us that it was their way of saying that they were happy! (laughs)

Thanks to LPTimes.com for this.