Mike Shinoda has opened up about Chester Bennington putting his job on the line for Linkin Park. The band arose in the early 2000s as a nu-metal outfit with their album Hybrid Theory, which became one of the few metal albums to achieve diamond certification.
Shinoda had recently mentioned their label’s intentions to have Bennington be the leader of the band, telling Rolling Stone, “At a certain point, they kept trying to meddle in our creative process and change the DNA of the band. There was a suggestion, ‘Well, maybe you just have the singer sing and you don’t do any rapping,’ which to all of us was an offensive suggestion”. Bennington was even asked to build another project with his voice, but Shinoda remembers him turning them down.
Further in the interview, Shinoda would go on to say that Bennington recounted the conversation to the whole band and told them that they could “go fuck themselves”. Looking back on it, Shinoda talked about admiring Bennington’s loyalty to the group dynamic, remarking, “That was the start… To me, that was a real galvanizing moment. That was the start of all for one and one for all”.
Though Linkin Park have not made any new music since Bennington’s death in 2017, they have just released a 20th-anniversary edition of their sophomore album Meteora, including never before heard tracks.
