“In the End”—Linkin Park

Rob travels down memory lane and looks back at his not-so-kind review of Linkin Park’s diamond-selling debut album, 'Hybrid Theory,' before celebrating the band’s undeniable greatness. Along the way, he also pays respect to the late Chester Bennington. Later, Rob is joined by John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats to discuss Linkin Park’s ability to connect with the youth of the early 2000s, and much more. Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: John Darnielle Producers: Jonathan Kermah and Justin Sayles Additional Production Support: Olivia Crerie Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:01Speaker 00

  I'm Yasi Solak and I'm here to announce a brand new season of my Ringer original podcast, Bandsplain, the show where we explain cult bands and iconic artists to you and yours. This time, babe, we're going across the pond. That's right, I'm absolutely chuffed to be talking about the music scenes of 80s and 90s Britain. I'm talking Madchester, I'm talking baggy, I'm talking shoegaze, I'm talking Britpop, mate. So tune in every Thursday starting November 7th for a new episode of Bandsplain on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  So here is the deal we are making today, you and I. The deal is that I am about to read for you, in its entirety, my absolutely mortifying review of the first Linkin Park record. The first Linkin Park record is called Hybrid Theory. Hybrid Theory came out in the year 2000, in October 2000, when I was, and I cannot stress this enough, 22 years old. I was 22, I just want to stress that. 22. You know that Taylor Swift song, 22? I was that old. My absolutely mortifying review of the first Linkin Park record appeared

• 1:16Speaker 01

  in the January 2001 issue of Alternative Press Magazine, the great Cleveland-based, underground, punk metal industrial magazine, Alternative Press. I interned at AP in the late 90s and I don't think anybody liked me. And then I wrote mortifying freelance record reviews for a few years, and I'm starting to think that everyone liked me less. But see, print magazines have crazy long lead times, right? Months and perhaps years elapse between when you write your stupid review and when your stupid review gets published. So perhaps, perhaps, perhaps I wrote this stupid review of the first Linkin Park record

• 1:58Speaker 01

  months and months earlier, back when I was only 21. And I'd like to stress this point as well, maybe I'm only 21, maybe I'm 12. I'm gonna read this whole thing for you, word for word. It is mortifying. I am properly mortified. But the deal we are making here today is that before I read you this stupid thing I wrote, we're gonna talk about how sometimes, often, well-meaning rock critics get it wrong.

• 2:43Speaker 01

  Quote: "The whole album is a shuck. Despite the murky song titles and some inane lyrics that sound like vanilla fudge playing doggerel tribute to Aleister Crowley, the album has nothing to do with spiritualism, the occult, or anything much, except stiff recitations of cream cliches that sound like the musicians learned them out of a book, grinding on and on with dogged persistence. Vocals are sparse, most of the album being filled with plodding basslines over which the lead guitar dribbles wooden claptonisms from the masters' tiredest cream days." End quote. Rolling Stone trashed the first Black Sabbath album.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  The very famous and beloved self-titled Black Sabbath album, upon its release in 1970, famous rock critic Lester Bangs wrote that. I was hoping Lester Bangs would be a little quipier about it, in a shark sandwich, more like shit sandwich sort of way, but instead, Lester just brings up cream like 12 times in 200 words. Nonetheless, he was wrong. Quote: "Their music is as ephemeral as Marvel Comics," comics with an X, that's

• 4:12Speaker 01

  extra rude, "and as vivid as an old Technicolor cartoon. It doesn't challenge anybody's intelligence or sensibilities, relying instead on a pat visceral impact that will ensure absolute stardom for many moons to come. Their albums refine the crude public tools of all dull white blues bands into something awesome in its very insensitive grossness."

• 4:40Speaker 01

  Like a Cecil B. Demille epic, end quote. Rolling Stone trashed pretty much every Led Zeppelin album, including Led Zeppelin III, also from 1970, also trashed by Lester Bangs. Immigrant song has now come up twice in the past three episodes of this podcast about songs from the 2000s. Three is a trend. Anyway, he was wrong. And immediately here, I'm in a bizarre nostalgia loop. Right? Because why do I know that Rolling Stone initially ripped every album Led Zeppelin ever made? Do I know that because I personally read all those mean Led Zeppelin reviews in back issues of Rolling Stone? No, of course not.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  I know that Rolling Stone ripped every album Led Zeppelin ever made because Jason Lee's character says that verbatim in the movie Almost Famous, in the very famous and beloved 2000 Cameron Crowe film, Almost Famous.

• 5:41Speaker 02

  No, you can trust him. He's a fan. But it's Rolling Stone. He looks harmless, but he does represent the magazine that trashed Layla, broke up Cream, ripped every album Led Zeppelin ever made.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  Almost Famous, of course, is Cameron Crowe's fictionalized account of his time writing for Rolling Stone as a teenager in the early 70s. Jason Lee plays the lead singer of the fictional rock band Stillwater, a fake band that I love every bit as much as most IRL rock bands from the early 2000s. Stillwater's best song, as you might recall, is called Fever Dog.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  A cool thing that I used to do in the year 2000 as a 22-year-old is I'd be at work and I'd call up my friends while they were at work and they'd pick up the phone and go, hello? And I'd just go, Fever Dog! And then hang up. Just a little insight into my vibe at the time. Everyone loved me. The Real Life Rolling Stone did not really trash Layla. The magazine did not give the 1970 Derek and the Dominos album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs an especially bad review. Quote, "A double album means you can expect some filler." End quote. That's not mean.

• 7:13Speaker 01

  Every review of a double album in rock and roll history includes that sentence verbatim, including the reviews that I wrote. This Layla review is not especially quotable. I don't know what Jason Lee's almost famous character is on about there. The Real Rolling Stone did trash this, however.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  "We're just two lost souls swimming in a..." Quote, "By their own admission, Pink Floyd will never bring home any blue ribbons for their instrumental abilities. Their mastery of their tools peaks at competence. The illusion of complexity that caused their drooling legions to make wild claims of high art accomplishment was actually nothing more than the skillful manipulation of elements so simple, the basic three chords everyone else uses, that any collection of bar hacks could grind out a note-for-note reproduction without difficulty. Furthermore, with regard to all the other space rock bands copying Pink Floyd, quote,

• 8:28Speaker 01

  "The one thing those bands have going for them in their cacophonously inept way is a sincere passion for their..." scare quotes "art." And passion is everything of which Pink Floyd is devoid." End quote. Rolling Stone trashed Pink Floyd's 1975 album, Wish You Were Here. That's Ben Edmonds writing in Rolling Stone. I can assure you, Ben, speaking as a shoddy amateur guitar player, that grinding out a note-for-note reproduction of Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here resulted in a great deal of difficulty for myself and all my neighbors. Yes, I'm stalling. Of course, I'm stalling. Two more.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  Quote, "Those concerned with the future of hard rock may take solace in knowing that with the release of their first US album by these Australian grossed-out champions, the genre has unquestionably hit its all-time low. Things can only get better, parentheses, at least I hope so. Furthermore, ACDC has nothing to say musically, parentheses, two guitars, bass, and drums, all goose-stepping together into mindless three-chord formations. Furthermore, stupidity bothers me. Calculated stupidity offends me." End quote. Rolling

• 10:01Speaker 01

  Stone trashed ACDC's 1976 album, "High Voltage." That's Billy Altman writing in Rolling Stone. Just to keep the bizarre nostalgia loop going, perhaps you recognize that ACDC song, "It's a Long Way to the Top," parentheses, if you want to rock and roll, from that ACDC album, or perhaps you recognize it as the song Jack Black and all the kids play in the very famous and beloved 2003 Richard Linklater film, "School of Rock." If there is one thing the history of evolution has taught us, it's that classic rock will not be contained. Classic rock breaks free. It expands to new territories and crashes through

• 10:40Speaker 01

  barriers painfully, maybe even dangerously. But I'm simply saying that classic rock finds a way. Rock critics struggle in particular with hard rock, with metal, with heaviness. Rock critics often trash hard rock mercilessly and unfairly. Is that fair to say? Many well-meaning rock critics are put off by heaviness, pretentiousness, outsized ambition, or conversely, crudeness, grossness, loudishness, bro-ishness, in all its historical permutations. Not everyone

• 11:18Speaker 01

  digs loud men hooting at and/or complaining about chicks. Is that fair to say? You know what beloved rock and roll album Rolling Stone initially hated, and that genuinely bummed me out in real time? How can you not immediately love this, dude?

• 11:52Speaker 01

  ¿Cómo no puedes amar inmediatamente a Weezer's frontman Rivers Cuomo sacando los nombres de las damas con las que se cansa de tener sexo en una canción llamada "Cansado de sexo", de la album problemáticamente genial y problemáticamente problemática del álbum 1996 de Pinkerton. "Como compositor de canciones, el cantante y guitarrista de la banda Rivers Cuomo toma un tacto juvenil en las relaciones personales. Además, Weezer depende excesivamente de canciones atractivas para sanar todos los heridas de Cuomo. En El Scorcho, la canción y el coro infeccioso se demuestra como una recompensa limitada. "Cansado de sexo", un mirada a la vida sexual vacía de los estudios de los estudios de los estudios de los estudios

• 12:36Speaker 01

  es tan inútil como la rutina nocturna del sujeto". La revisión de Rolling Stone de Pinkerton, escrita por Rob O'Connor, es escéptica pero razonable. Lo que realmente me asustó es que el pico de fin de año de 1996, los críticos de Rolling Stone llamaron Pinkerton uno de los álbumes más malos del año. Y fue el número tres en el pico de los lectores de Rolling Stone de los álbumes más malos del año. Y en general, la gente se odió tanto Pinkerton que Rivers Cuomo mismo comenzó a odiarlo. Y luego "Soy todavía estancado". Bueno, bueno.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  No estoy orgulloso de decir que como un hombre más joven y un crítico de rock menos adepto, añadí a este canonio de críticos rock de bienvenido la comprensión y la apreciación inferior de los álbumes de rock y de rock adjacente de la hard rock. Pero escribí una revisión estúpida y mi revisión estúpida es mucho más estúpida.

• 13:50Speaker 01

  I remember those drums. I remember hearing those drums through the ears of an empty-headed 22-year-old. I remember that little cymbal thing.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  I remember putting in this CD to listen to it yet again and rolling my eyes up into my empty head. That's the first song on Hybrid Theory, the first Linkin Park record. Song's called "Paper Cut," just setting the mood. And now, here is a dramatic reading of my review of Hybrid Theory, published in alternative press in January 2001, when, just to reiterate, I was 22-years-old, max. The little headline, the subhead of this review is "The Bastard Child of Fred Durst and Christina Aguilera." Yeah, this is gonna hurt me more than it hurts you.

• 14:46Speaker 01

  Kerm, can I have some soothing classical music, please, to play under this? Thank you. Quote, "Manlier than the Backstreet Boys, hotter than 98 degrees, sharper than Britney Spears, meet Linkin Park. Five aggro rap metal Southern California sweeties with hot pink teen pop polish painted on their nine-inch nails. They've got the angst-ridden moves to make all the little girls swoon on Hybrid Theory. Picture arenas packed to the rafters with lovestruck 15-year-olds clutching Linkin

• 15:29Speaker 01

  Park posters and screaming along to every heart-throbbing word. Who among us can resist shaking our hips to the weak electro beats, yawning guitar distortion, and screaming/rapping tag team that shake their collective bonbon on knockout tracks like "Paper Cut"? Certainly the angst-ridden "I Want It That Way" of our jaded generation."

• 15:57Speaker 01

  Every hard hitting track on Hybrid Theory leaves plenty of room for trade off vocals, dance breakdowns, product placement, and perhaps, in the future, a guest rap from Lisa Left Eye Lopez. "You thought the kids were done pissing all over Pretty Hate Machine, but oops, they did it again." End quote. Okay.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  Okay. Well. All right. A couple of initial thoughts. Just a few top line observations. Top line observation number one. What a bitch. Can I say that? I just said it. What a bitch. Wow. Wow. What a bitch I was at 22 or perhaps even 21. Get a load of this chump. How'd you like to party with that guy? Can you smell the me who wrote that? Can you smell the Pert Plus two in one shampoo and conditioner wafting off this person? Can you imagine

• 17:08Speaker 01

  all the time I saved combining shampoo and conditioner into one substance? Extra time I evidently used to write more dumbass album reviews? Can you feel all the corduroy I'm wearing? Can you hear the Built to Spill playing in the background as I typed that? "You Were Right" by Built to Spill. I should have mentioned that song in the rundown of Everything's Gonna Be Alright Songs from the Jimmy World episode. Somebody emailed me and suggested "You Were Right" as an interrogation of Everything's Gonna Be Alright Songs, and they were right. Can you hear the dead silence of my AOL Instant Messenger not going

• 17:50Speaker 01

  bleep with a new message because no one would talk to me? Fun fact about my journalism career in the year 2000. This is true. I would write in Microsoft Word, but I did not yet realize that you could A. copy and paste texts.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  Or B, attach a Microsoft Word file to an email. And so I want you to imagine me typing out all that bullshit Linkin Park action and then re-typing it into an email to file it. I did that for everything that I wrote for like a year. I typed and then re-typed many thousands of words in this fashion. There's me typing up my thousand-word phoner with Eve Six's bassist twice. You ever write something and you accidentally delete a whole bunch of text? And so you just go boop and the text reappears? I didn't know you could do that, so I just started over.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  Can you picture the look on my face when I discovered Ctrl X and Ctrl V? It's like I invented FIRE. Mr. Mensah over here making Backstreet Boys jokes. Does this sound like the angst-ridden "I want it that way" of our jaded generation to you? No, it does not.

• 19:30Speaker 01

  We got Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park rapping here. In a decidedly non-Nick or Brian or Kevin or Howie or AJ-like manner, a shrewder and more open-minded 22-year-old critic might have noticed just the subtle way Mike's rhythm switches up on the line or how the pressure was fed. And that shrewder critic might have then realized that the rapper in this particular rap-rock band was a much, much better rapper than most other rappers in other rap-rock bands. But no, no, I was too busy typing out the phrase "five aggro rap metal Southern California

• 20:11Speaker 01

  sweeties with hot pink teen pop polish painted on their nine-inch nails" and then accidentally deleting it and then re-typing it again. There are six people in Linkin Park, by the way.

• 20:40Speaker 01

  And see again, a truer and more open-minded 22-year-old critic might have heard Linkin Park singer Chester Bennington scream the words "beneath my skin", and that truer critic might have realized that the singer in this particular rap-rock band was a much, much, much better singer than most other singers in rap-rock bands. But no, no, "I was too busy making snooty, derisive references to the Backstreet Boys, 98 Degrees, Britney Spears, and Lisa Left Eye Lopez", and that's the truly mortifying part of this stupid review.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  Yes, my bitchy dismissal of pop music, my bitchy, non-aussingly problematic dismissal of pop music, hot pink teen pop polish painted on their Nine Inch Nails. This review sucks, man. I am aware of that. The attitude animating this stupid review sucks. This stupid retrograde notion that pretty hate machine by Nine Inch Nails is some hallowed fount of integrity that can be desecrated by the presence of pink nail polish, or rap music, or pop music, or teenage girls. Oof, this review really sucks, man. I sincerely do not remember thinking like this, and I wish I'd never thought like this.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  I vaguely remembered writing a pissy review of the first Linkin Park record, and I thought, "Oh, it'd be a hoot to read that again now", and so I emailed some very nice people currently working at Alternative Press, thank you to Neville and Rob from AP, and they sent me the PDF of this fucking Linkin Park review, and I read it, and it was not a hoot at all, and my soul left my body. My soul evacuated my body. My soul has not yet returned to my body. My soul was like... Did you not hear the bridge to the Linkin Park song "Paper Cut"? The muscular and propulsive and just slightly startling bridge? And did you not realize, Rob,

• 22:46Speaker 01

  that this rap-rock band was much, much better at song structure than other rap-rock bands? You dumbass. I can't believe you called them "sweeties."

• 23:17Speaker 01

  Really fantastic bridge, man. The drum pounding "bridge" within the bridge, especially. Yes, I must conclude reluctantly that as a younger, stupider man, 22, I did sometimes espouse the wayward notion that rock music, usually made by glowering men with guitars who were usually complaining about either having sex or not having sex. I thought that rock music was inherently better and more important and more real than the fake and plastic and dance-oriented pop music, often not made by glowering men. There is a word for this in the rock critic community,

• 24:00Speaker 01

  and conversely, there is a word for the notion that all types of music made by anybody can be great and important and real. And it's so fascinating, really, the rock versus pop dichotomy, the philosophical implications of who gets to make what kind of music and who should get to enjoy that music and how important that music is relative to other kinds. Critics love to talk about it, and I could talk about it all day, and maybe I will right now. That word is "p-" And if you had a couple hours, I'd really love to go deep on how I'm still bleeping that word out. It turns out I was one of the "rock is realer and more important" dumbasses who made the invention of that word necessary, and I'm still bleeping it out. Bleeping that word out is this show's most obscure and obnoxious running joke. Every time we do this, somebody emails me like,

• 24:46Speaker 01

  "What is that word you bleeped out?" And I just write back, "Stay out of it."

• 24:51Speaker 01

  As with global thermal nuclear war, when it comes to [bleep], the only winning move is not to play. But yeah, in conclusion, Ya'uzza, that review sucks. My 22-year-old attitude sucks. My 22-year-old conception of what counts as great music sucks. And I am sorry. And so here today, to use another super technical rock critic term, this is a do-over. I'm gonna do better this time. Or at the very least, I'm gonna try this time.

• 25:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, it matters to me. My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the ninth episode of 60 Songs That Explained the 90s: Cold and the 2000s. And this week, we are discussing "In the End" by Linkin Park, from their very famous and beloved 2000 debut album, Hybrid Theory. I stopped writing for Alternative Press Magazine eventually due to my terrible attitude. I was low on the totem pole of album reviewers, obviously. And I kept writing pissy reviews that were like, "This sounds like a third-tier band on Epitaph Records." And eventually, my very patient editor had to call me up and be like, "Rob, they literally are a third-tier band on Epitaph Records.

• 26:25Speaker 01

  Can you try to be a little more thoughtful?" And I was like, "I doubt it." And also, as punishment for writing such a bitchy review, I went on Goodreads.com and I plan to read you mean excerpts from one-star reviews of my book, my book called 60 Songs That Explained the 90s, now in paperback. But I will not be doing that. I will not be reading one-star reviews of my book because I did not enjoy that activity at all. It turns out I am not ego-less. Surprise. I took more offense to those one-star reviews than I anticipated. Those mean people have no idea what they're talking about. I do not ramble, sir.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  Or madam, I didn't finish that review, nor did I notice who wrote it. What a terrible idea I had to read mean reviews of myself. Basically, I was like, this will be hilarious. It was in fact, not hilarious. I feel weird, though. It feels incomplete and almost disrespectful to only play half the chorus to In the End. Hold on.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  Much better. Just the subtle inflection there. The way Chester Bennington sings the phrase to lose it all. The way he pulls back ever so slightly. The ocean of subtle melancholy implied there while he's still screaming the super famous screamy chorus. I might have noticed the greatness and importance of that also, even as a dumbass 22 year old. This is a truly great song by a truly important band. I know you know that. I just want you to know that I know that. Now, after the break, I'm going to tell you the single best thing about this song, and I will do that right away. Honest.

• 28:33Speaker 01

  All right, we're back. I am the best at ad breaks. I better win the Pulitzer Prize for ad breaks. You know what's genuinely awesome about this song and about this band? The whole ballgame here, the distilled essence of Linkin Park can be found on In the End. And it happens on the words, I tried so hard. It's the synergy, the profound spiritual connection, the intergalactic mind meld between Mike Shinoda, the rapper, and Chester Bennington, the screamer on these four words. The truly stupendous handoff here between the rapper and the screamer. I might have noticed it back then, but I'll have to settle for telling you right now

• 29:16Speaker 01

  that one of the most important rock bands of the 21st century is born right here on the words, I tried so hard.

• 29:42Speaker 01

  If you wanted to get super florid, excuse me, if I wanted to get super florid, I would say that the whole 21st century is born right there when Mike and Chester align on the words "I tried so hard." Or at least best-case scenario, 21st-century chart-topping rock and roll is born right there. And I do mean chart-topping. Even though Hybrid Theory, the first Linkin Park album from 2000, peaked at number two on the Billboard album chart, beaten only by Creed. Creed! The Creed album weathered. The one with the song "My Sacrifice" and the album cover where the dudes from Creed are like etched into a tree. If you don't know what I'm talking about, don't look it up. It's really disconcerting,

• 30:25Speaker 01

  album cover. Linkin Park's Hybrid Theory went diamond, my dude. It sold more than 10 million copies in America. You know another rock band this century that put out an album that sold 10 million copies? The Beatles. The Beatles won album, their greatest hits album with all their number-one songs on it, that also came out in 2000. That also sold 10 million copies. Linkin Park and the Beatles. And also Evanescence and Nickelback. But yeah, Linkin Park and the Beatles, two of the most commercially successful rock bands of the 21st century. And so, let's go back and meet the Lennon and McCartney of nu-metal.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  Woo-ha! Oh, I'm just kidding about this being the Lennon and McCartney of nu-metal. That's a little joke. Chester Bennington's not in this version of the band, and this band is not yet called Linkin Park. No, right now, this band is called Zero. Spelled X E R O. This song is currently called Rhinestone and it kicks off Zero's four-song 1997 demo tape. That is indeed Mike Shinoda, rapping and co-producing and more or less masterminding this project. But the other guy you're hearing right now, your singer, your screamer, your ostensible frontman, is a lovely gentleman named Mark Wakefield, who will not be long for this band. I am tempted to be extra obnoxious

• 32:04Speaker 01

  about the whole Beatles thing and call Mark Wakefield the Pete Best of Linkin Park, but even I have my limits. At least I thought I did. Mark is a huge fan of 90s grunge giants like Nirvana and Pearl Jam, and maybe especially Alice in Chains, but he cannot quite sing with the fearsome, soulful intensity of the dudes from Alice in Chains. But then again, who can?

• 32:40Speaker 01

  Is Chester Bennington the Lennon or the McCartney of Linkin Park? I can't decide. He's the screamy tough guy, but he's also the melody guy, you know? Much to consider. Let's start with Mike Shinoda. Mike Shinoda is born in 1977 in Agora Hills, California, a suburb of Los Angeles. Or at least you can drive to Los Angeles from there. Don't at me about Los Angeles geography. I don't care. When Mike is eight years old, he hears songs from Run DMC's second album, 1985's King of Rock. That's the album before the one where Run DMC and Aerosmith redo Walk This Way. That's on the Raising Hell album from 86. But King of Rock is a great album, too. When Mike is 14 years old, he attends

• 33:23Speaker 01

  his first concert, Public Enemy and Anthrax. The rap gods' Public Enemy and the metal gods' Anthrax, joining forces for a historic 1991 double bill inspired by their "Hey, you dipped your metal into my rap music" remix of Public Enemy's Bring the Noise.

• 34:00Speaker 01

  And right here is where the Mike Shinoda we know and love is born. There's a great new book, a biography of Linkin Park, written by Jason Lipschitz, an executive director at Billboard magazine. This book came out in October 2024 and it is called It Starts With One: The Legend and Legacy of Linkin Park. And Jason writes, quote, "By the time Mike went to that Public Enemy and Anthrax show in 1991, chaperoned by his friend's dad, bellowing, 'Turn it up, bring the noise,' watching Anthrax deconstruct a rap song into a rock song in the way that Mike wanted to deconstruct rock songs into rap songs, marveling at the mashed up tenacity and moshing

• 34:42Speaker 01

  bodies and velocity of the words being hurled from the groups onstage and back at them, Mike already knew he could make music. But that was the night he started thinking about becoming a musician." End quote. My personal favorite part of this Bring the Noise remix is when Chuck D from Public Enemy stops rapping and Scott Ian from Anthrax starts rapping. You learn a lot right here about the enthusiasm, the sincere mutual love driving this fairly new idea of rap metal. And as far as rapping goes, you perhaps learn a little bit about the learning curve also.

• 35:32Speaker 01

  Beat is for Yoko Ono. Scott's doing a great job there, really. Mike Shinoda wants to be a musician now. Can he learn to rap better than Chuck D? Of course not. Can he learn to rap better than Scott Ian? Perhaps. Mike is rapping, he's writing songs, he's making beats, he's forming bands with various classmates and cohorts in Agoura Hills, and he winds up with a six-man rap-rock crew called Xero. And with the exception of the ill-fated Mark Wakefield on vocals, everybody- Everybody here is gonna wind up in the classic Imperial lineup of Linkin Park. Mike is rapping, we got Brad Delson on guitars, Dave Farrell on bass, Joe Han handling turntables

• 36:15Speaker 01

  and also artwork, and Rob Borden on drums. Per the book, at 1.0 goes into a recording studio, right? And Mark Wakefield is struggling to lay down his vocals, and the producer eventually walks out of the booth and says, "It's been a couple hours and I'm afraid he's not getting any better." End quote. Then Zero does an industry showcase gig in December 1998 at the Whiskey A Go Go, the famed LA rock club. You can drive to the Whiskey A Go Go from various other cities in Southern California. Ooh, an industry showcase. We got multiple ultra-big-shot music business titans in the crowd tonight.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  Clive Davis, Tommy Matola, Polly Anthony, Guy O'Seary. Guy O'Seary knows Madonna. Anyway, according to this book, Zero bombs. Apparently, this show totally sucks, and the lead vocals especially kinda suck. And afterward, somebody goes up to Zero's two manager-type dudes and says, "You both have to go underground for six months after this show. Seriously, don't show your faces." Oh, wow. The vibes are bad. I'm sorry to tell you, but Zero needs a new lead singer. Specifically, Zero needs this guy.

• 37:49Speaker 01

  Here we have Chester Bennington, frontman for a Phoenix, Arizona, alternative rock band called Gray Days. G-R-E-Y-D-A-Z-E. That song is called "Sickness." Chester Bennington is born in Phoenix in 1976. Chester grows up hard. Chester has spoken often of being a survivor of abuse, of struggling with Substances with drugs and alcohol, starting in his teenage years. Chester has a truly startling rock star voice. Yes. The screaming, the ferocity, the anger, the pain. And clearly, there is no shortage of real life pain and anger from which to draw.

• 38:31Speaker 01

  This band, Gray Days, is trying to catch the early 90s grunge wave. And they put out a couple albums and tour a little bit, but it ain't happening. Music business, big shot wise, no Whiskey a Go Go Industry Showcase is forthcoming. And so they fizzle out and break up. And Chester's back in Phoenix. He's married. He assumes he's out of the music biz for good. He's at his 23rd birthday party and the phone rings. And why don't we just say the rest is history?

• 39:15Speaker 01

  Woo-ha. Okay, so now that's Chester Bennington singing alongside Mike Shinoda. And now the Lennon and McCartney of new metal have aligned. And now this band is called Hybrid Theory. And they put out a little EP. But wait, now they've changed their name again and they're called Linkin Park now. And their full-length debut album is called Hybrid Theory. And now this song is called Forgotten. And the Hybrid Theory album is gonna sell 10 million copies. Answer your phone. That's the big takeaway here, I think. Okay, here is just one more important issue to address before we arrive at this diamond-selling album that was immediately loved and respected by everybody on earth except me. Don't you love it when you're reading a book and you ask a question out loud?

• 40:00Speaker 01

  Because you are socially inept and the book immediately answers the question you just asked? I love that. So I'm reading this Linkin Park book, right? And I blurt out, more or less, why are Clive Davis, Tommy Mottola, Polly Anthony, and a guy who knows Madonna all hanging around together at the Whiskey a Go Go in late 1998 to hear some random wayward rap-rock band called Zero with an X? And the answer, as it turns out, is that rap-rock is the next big thing.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  Rap rock is the next big thing. Thanks in part to our dear old terrifying friends in Korn. Korn with a K, who are from Bakersfield, California. You cannot drive to Los Angeles from Bakersfield. Korn have blown the fuck up with their third album, 1998's Follow the Leader. Specifically, this song, Got the Life, has blown the fuck up on TRL, on the fabled MTV afternoon call-in show Total Request Live. I am swearing all of a sudden because we're about to enter the brief but ultra sweary portion of this fucking conversation. Korn are suddenly famous pop stars in the vein of Eminem and Britney Spears and Christina

• 41:26Speaker 01

  Aguilera and the Backstreet Boys and all those other bold-faced names I did not yet fully appreciate as a 22-year-old. There is a rap-rock gold rush, a nu-metal gold rush. That's nu-metal and you with an umlaut hyphen metal. Hold down the Option key and hit U and the umlaut will appear and then you just hit U again and now the U's got an umlaut. Just a little keyboard shortcut for you. I've learned all kinds of keyboard tricks since I was 22. And the good news is that consequently, in late 1998, every big-shot record executive you've ever heard of will show up to hear your wayward, little,

• 42:04Speaker 01

  ill-fated nu-metal band suckin' stereo onstage. The bad news is that in summer 1999, Woodstock 99 will occur and ruin nu-metal's reputation for everybody.

• 42:30Speaker 01

  Here we have Korn doing Got the Life at Woodstock 99, aka Altamont's 99, a truly accursed music festival rife with sexual assault and arson and wanton property destruction and a suffocating aura of gross, hyper-masculine boorishness.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  All of which is dismayingly captured on camera, as you can see now in the Ringer documentary, Woodstock 99: Peace, Love and Rage, which in turn is based on our friend Steven Hyden's excellent but tremendously sobering podcast called Break Stuff. Historically, no band that is part of the next big thing wants to be identified explicitly as part of the next big thing, right? Nobody truly important at grunge wanted to be identified as grunge, for example. But the situation here, nu metal's reputation is now world historically awful. In the Linkin Park book, Mike Shinoda says, quote, "I never wanted to be part of nu metal." Though he also says, "There was a moment when that term and what it meant was actually

• 43:34Speaker 01

  pretty cool. It's almost impossible to imagine," end quote. And so, in October of 2000, we get two major nu metal albums. Hybrid Theory by Linkin Park is one of them. This is the other one.

• 44:05Speaker 01

  The other big nu metal album released in October 2000 is called Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water by our dear friends Limp Bizkit. I fucking told you it was about to get super sweary around here. This song is called Hot Dog. It appears that Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst has a few thoughts about the word fuck. So you found a boy who thinks really deep thoughts. What's so amazing about really deep thoughts? This is not my personal favorite era of Limp Bizkit. My personal favorite era of Limp Bizkit is when they perform onstage in front of a giant toilet. But Fred Durst emerges from Woodstock 99 as the poster boy for the scumbaggery and villainy and stupidity of nu metal.

• 44:49Speaker 01

  And that's not fucking fair, man. So we owe it to Fred now, I think, to listen to all his really deep thoughts about the word fuck. Remember that guy who thought AC/DC was a new low for hard rock?

• 45:17Speaker 01

  This song is fucking stupid. In context, that's not even an insult necessarily, but it is the truth. Stupidity bothers me. Calculated stupidity offends me. Wrapped calculated stupidity delights me, actually. It's the ad-libs here that really drive the point home, I think. Fred Durstall in the booth going, "Eight, six." I'm afraid he's not getting any better. Do you want to hear the chorus? I don't. I'm sorry. But see, this concludes the ultra-sweary portion of our conversation because an underrated but tremendously important element of the Linkin Park album Hybrid Theory is that it contains no swear words.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  Cool little drum fill at the end there. Rob Borden on drums, just reminding you, there are five people in this band. Six, sorry, I mean six. How do you convey maximum ferocity, maximum fury, maximum pain without swearing? You sing like Chester Bennington. That's how. The serrated edge to his voice. The paradoxical serrated vulnerability of his voice. Chester's voice is the first element of the song "One Step Closer" that makes you sit up a little straighter, ideally. In the Linkin Park book, Chester says, quote, "When Mike and I sat down and wrote the lyrics, we wanted to be as honest and as open as we could.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  We wanted something people could connect with, not just vulgarity and violence. We didn't want to make a big point of not cussing, but we don't have to hide behind anything to show how tough we can be." End quote. Cool little bassline coming in here. Linkin Park's bass player Dave Farrell does not actually play bass on this record because he's briefly left the band to tour with his high school pop punk band who were called Tasty Snacks. That's Snacks, S-N-A-X. What a knucklehead. That is such a bassist move. That is peak bassist. Bassists make everything more complicated. Dave comes to his senses and rejoins the band after Hybrid Theory, but shout out to whoever did this while he was gone.

• 48:02Speaker 01

  Try singing the words "you'll find that out anyway" like Chester Bennington sometime and you'll find out what happens. You will lose your voice for two weeks. That's what. The little pre-chorus right here, also, yes. The quick caught breath of "just like before", the immediate mastery of dynamics, and yes, song structure. When you're a rookie band and your first album sells 10 million copies, you deal with some snootiness. Yes, some skepticism, not just from me when I was 22, I mean other people. You might get to thinking Linkin Park are some sort of industry plant, whatever that possibly meaningless term means to

• 48:43Speaker 01

  you. You might think some faceless, soulless studio pros are calling the shots, perhaps including our old Swedish friend Max Martin. But no, it's just these six guys. Linkin Park are an overnight success despite the years of striving and failing that preceded that overnight success. And there is no mistaking the immaculate polish of Hybrid Theory, the pristine savagery. We are dealing with professionals here, and there is indeed a monumental air of professionalism, but they are professionals at kicking butt.

• 49:34Speaker 01

  "One Step Closer" is Linkin Park's debut single. "One Step Closer" remains one of Linkin Park's biggest songs. "One Step Closer" is a song evidently about how annoyed Mike Shinoda and Chester Bennington are at their producer, at Hybrid Theory producer Don Gilmore. Don was experienced, he'd worked with Eve 6 and Lit, and he'd engineered Pearl Jam's debut album, 10, but Don, by his own admission, was not experienced when it came to rap music. And he didn't like any of Mike's or Chester's lyrics, and he kept making Mike and Chester rewrite their lyrics, over and over. And thus, Mike and Chester eventually wrote lyrics about how annoyed and close to the

• 50:15Speaker 01

  edge they were with their snooty perfectionist producer. "I cannot take this anymore. I'm saying everything I've said before," etc. Anybody got any ideas for the bridge to a song about how angry you are at the guy producing the song?

• 50:46Speaker 01

  Fantastic. Perfect. Thank you. Great idea. The one other moment on Hybrid Theory, when I flashback to my dipshit 22-year-old self when I hear this record now, as I heard it back then, I vaguely remember smirking like a dipshit, listening to Chester Bennington sing the word "heal."

• 51:19Speaker 01

  There's me at 22 or 21, driving home from Kroger after buying more Pert Plus 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner, and I'm like, "Heal doesn't have two syllables, dumbass." "But Heal has two syllables when Chester Bennington sings it."

• 51:36Speaker 01

  Heal has two syllables if you genuinely suspect that you will never heal. This also might have occurred to me at the time, or at least I should have had a little more respect for the way Chester Bennington sings the word insecure.

• 52:04Speaker 01

  Do not try to sing the word insecure like that. Honestly, I would try to avoid even thinking about how insecure you have to be to sing the word insecure like that. That song is called Crawling. Crawling, One Step Closer, and In the End are the three 10,000-pound gorilla monster singles on this record. But I'm here to tell you now that Hybrid Theory has no skips energy. It has greatest hits album energy. I'm having a real moment right now with a song called With You. You know who can sing with the fearsome, soulful intensity of the dudes from Alice in Chains? Yep, you guessed it.

• 52:57Speaker 01

  But it's also the camaraderie Chester develops here with these five other dudes. The skillful and thoughtful and revolutionary feeling combination of elements that Woodstock99 suggested we should stop trying to combine. We got a rapper rapping, we got Joe Han on turntables, turntabling, we got the best-case scenario version of what we'd already decided was the worst-case scenario future of hard rock.

• 53:38Speaker 01

  The piercing laser beam sample dude, uh, deep in the background there is really doing it for me. I'm gonna be lightly making fun of Joe, the Linkin Park DJ in a couple minutes, and so I just wanted to point that out. Have you noticed anything odd about Linkin Park's lyrics? The consistency, the severity, the austerity, the laser focus? Virtually every Linkin Park song here is the story of me and you. I, I, I, I, you, you, you, you. I'm with you. Shut up when I'm talking to you. The way I feel was promised by your face. Everything you say to me takes me one step closer to the edge and I'm about

• 54:19Speaker 01

  to break. Linkin Park are two people alone in a room screaming in each other's faces. Every Linkin Park song is two people alone in a room screaming in each other's faces. But somehow this does not feel repetitious. This does not get old or tiresome or predictable. There is a compounding, a multiplying, a tremendous fearsome gathering force. And sometimes there is only catharsis, only screaming, only breaking, only whatever comes after screaming, "Shut up when I'm talking to you," doesn't work.

• 55:18Speaker 01

  That song is called "A Place For My Head," and I wonder if that bridge also is directed at poor Don Gilmore, the producer. I wonder, in fact, if every bridge to every song on Hybrid Theory is addressed to Don, including this one.

• 55:46Speaker 01

  It does not surprise me that "In the End" has emerged, has endured across eight studio albums and lots of detours over the past 25 years as Linkin Park's biggest song, or at least the band's most streamed song. But can I say it kinda depresses me? No, it doesn't depress me, but it is awfully striking to me how hopeless, how bleak, how defeated "In the End" is lyrically. I'm so struck by the alchemy of a song that can drop the line "In the end, it doesn't even matter" in the chorus, but still endure as this triumphant, immortal, unbreakable anthem. And what makes "In the End" unbreakable has to be the camaraderie, right? The camaraderie within the band, the camaraderie between the

• 56:31Speaker 01

  band and the 10 million people who bought this record. Or even the camaraderie just between Chester, the singer, and Mike, the rapper, the truly stupendous handoff here, right off the rip on the word "one." Two people who align on the word "one" and never, ever, ever, ever break apart.

• 57:06Speaker 01

  You know what I bet annoyed me at the time as a 22-year-old, but now it's one of my favorite parts of this song? The little glitch here on the word "property." Maturity. One way to define maturity and sophistication is when you realize that this glitch on the word "property" is very cool and important.

• 57:35Speaker 01

  That's very important. The glitch on property is very important. I sound like I'm joking, but I'm serious. The battle between man and machine implied by the glitch on the word property is very important. A lot of other songs, though, right?

• 57:49Speaker 01

  Lot of other albums. I can't get to everything. I'm a little stressed about it. Are you gonna get mad at me if I don't mention Collision Course, the Jay-Z and Linkin Park EP from 2004? You're gonna be mad at me. I'd be mad at me. Okay, okay. This is so you don't get mad at me.

• 58:20Speaker 01

  This is not the famous song, the famous mashup from the 2004 Jay-Z and Linkin Park EP Collision Course. The famous track from Collision Course is Numb Encore. And I went to a work thing in Stockholm last summer and we all did karaoke. And two of my coworkers were gonna do Numb Encore together. And both of these coworkers are a solid 15 plus years younger than me. And I'm very curious about whether their Numb Encore karaoke version will be totally ironic, or absolutely sincere, or what. But the guy at the bar running karaoke took forever to call them up, and I left before they did it. And I can still hear it in my head. The Numb Encore that I

• 59:03Speaker 01

  personally never heard. The sad and profound absence of their karaoke rendition of Numb Encore. I'm still depressed about it. Which I guess is an appropriately Linkin Park sort of construction. But anyway, no, that's Izzo In The End, which is a way more discordant mashup on Collision Course. I think you'll agree. The jauntiness of Izzo by Jay-Z clashes tremendously with the bleakness of In The End by Linkin Park. But it somehow still works. Doesn't it? There is a lemons from lemonade phenomenon here. In addition to the cosine Jay-Z functionally provides here for Linkin Park. But man, numb. I can't believe we almost forgot numb.

• 59:47Speaker 01

  I almost did this whole episode about numb. The second Linkin Park album comes out in 2003, and it is called Meteora, and the biggest and best song is called numb. It's the drums that really do it for me on numb. The drums are simple, unobtrusive, not drawing a huge amount of attention to themselves, but the drums feel absolutely massive to me. I can't explain it, but maybe the lesson I should have learned from this band immediately was to not talk about this band at all.

• 1:00:30Speaker 01

  I love the drums on numb so much. The drums bolster the inherent archetypal me versus you of numb. I'm stalling again for a very different reason. Of course, I'm stalling. My realization that Linkin Park are a truly great and truly important band. My realization happened in two phases via two songs I heard nearly 20 years apart. The first phase, the first song, is very, very, very silly, but I'm driving at night, right? And a new Linkin Park song, the first single from their second album, 2003's Meteora, comes on the radio, and I am transfixed by the sound design here, genuinely.

• 1:01:25Speaker 01

  This is the first 10 seconds of the Linkin Park song, Somewhere I Belong. And I remember hearing this for the first time. I am driving somewhere alone at night in California, I think. It's pitch blackout, and this comes on the car radio, and I am immediately transfixed by this series of noises. And I remember thinking, oh, shit, I have massively underestimated this band, and I hope the stupid thing I wrote about them isn't too stupid. I love the beginning of Somewhere I Belong very much. I love it so much, in fact, that I am willing to overlook the presence.

• 1:02:02Speaker 01

  Of the chicken.

• 1:02:18Speaker 01

  Did you hear the chicken just now? Twice? Johann is your DJ. I apologize to Joe. Joe is an essential element of Linkin Park, and the chicken is an essential element of Somewhere I Belong. Stalling, stalling, stalling, stalling. "Meteor" the second Linkin Park album released in 2003 sells fewer copies than Hybrid Theory. "Meteor" sells a mere 8.5 million copies in America alone. That is still a bonkers number of copies to sell of an album in 2003. Sheesh. Linkin Park are now very arguably the single biggest rock band of the early 21st century, and they are certainly the biggest and best-case scenario new metal band. I can't stall

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  anymore. The third Linkin Park album is called Minutes to Midnight, comes out in 2007, and it includes my personal favorite Linkin Park song, but I do not realize that it is my favorite Linkin Park song until it is too late.

• 1:03:21Speaker 01

  I close both locks below the window.

• 1:03:29Speaker 01

  I close both blinds and turn away.

• 1:03:37Speaker 01

  My favorite Linkin Park song is called Shadow of the Day. This is the one. This is the song. The song is anomalous, as Linkin Park songs go, perhaps, in the sense that this song features neither rap nor metal, but the surprise, and maybe even the shock, is essential to its greatness. The shock that Linkin Park are capable of a song like this. The shock that Chester Bennington is capable of delivering, of selling a song like this. But so I realized that Shadow of the Day is the one on July 20th, 2017, when I hear the news that Chester Bennington has taken his own life. He was 41. I hear this and Shadow of the Day pops immediately into my head.

• 1:04:21Speaker 01

  And I know it's the one and it's too late.

• 1:04:42Speaker 01

  And it's obviously convenient in a morbid and melodramatic sort of way that this song solidifies in my head right in this moment of collective shock and grief and mourning. Sometimes goodbye is the only way. What fascinates me about this band eternally is that they can write such desolate, defeated, nothing even matters type anthems that provide so much solace to so many people. And there's a lot that goes into that, but I don't think any one element is more important than Chester Bennington's voice, the defiance and also the comfort in his voice, the solace he provides even at his angriest and most hopeless, the defiance he provides even at his softest and prettiest.

• 1:05:48Speaker 01

  It's With or Without You. This is Linkin Park's answer to U2's With or Without You. This is the power ballad. This is the cigarette lighters in the air moment for a generation that no longer brings cigarette lighters to rock concerts. After Hybrid Theory and Meteora, Linkin Park make five more albums with Chester Bennington, and some are much harder than expected and some are much poppier than expected, but none of them are expected. This is a band that expands, that evolves, that surprises, that defies expectations, that silences haters, that tries shit. And so here with Shadow of the Day, they tried to write their own Stairway to Heaven,

• 1:06:33Speaker 01

  and they did it. Of course, they did it.

• 1:06:57Speaker 01

  And now Linkin Park is trying to move on without this person. And my overwhelming impulse is to shut up now. What Linkin Park did, what Linkin Park does is find new and spectacular ways to bridge the divide between rap and metal, between the 20th and the 21st century, between stadium-filling rage and headphone-filling serenity, and between I and you. "Shadow of the Day" is my favorite Linkin Park song. It is indeed Linkin Park's "With or Without You." It is heartbreaking, truly, to live with the loss of Chester Bennington. But we will never live without his voice.

• 1:07:41Speaker 01

  We are so honored to be joined today by John Darniel, frontman for The Mountain Goats, whose latest album is called Jenny from Thebes. He's also the author of four fantastic books, the latest of which is called Devil House. John, I'm so grateful for your time. Thank you so much.

• 1:07:57Speaker 03

  Oh, it's entirely mine. Thanks for, thanks for hauling out me.

• 1:08:00Speaker 01

  Of course. When Chester Bennington died in 2017, you tweeted something that really stuck with me, and real quick, I'll just read it. You said, "Linkin Park meant a lot to a lot of kids I used to take care of in treatments and placements, and therefore to me too. Very sad today." Why was Linkin Park so important to those kids?

• 1:08:25Speaker 03

  During that moment of time in popular music, right, there was a sort of post-Nirvana signing frenzy of rock bands, right? And rock had grown in this time to incorporate a lot of hip-hop, which was really a more popular music form, but popular radio was struggling to, you know, was failing to meet the moment and stuff. And in this interesting moment, there were all these rock bands whose vibe was... About people who were a little frustrated with life, not because of their material conditions or anything, but sort of, sort of your standard, you know, alienated feelings, right, that you often satisfy in literature or wherever else. But doing so at a very, um, sort of conversational level, right? This wasn't, wasn't novelistic stuff, right?

• 1:09:09Speaker 03

  And, uh, and this was the movement that we now call new metal, right? Um, nobody likes the term new metal. I don't think any bands call themselves new metal bands, right? But it was actually a super interesting moment that was very severely hated on by grownups at the time, right? And, uh, well, there's nothing to more completely cement a musical style to young people than a bunch of grownups saying that it sucks, right? And, uh, and that moment was full of these bands that were, I think, the way I think of them now is just as bands that were, you know, trying to make good music. But at the time, I was a pretty big hater. So, and I worked with a lot of teenagers and they would try to explain to me, like, no, Linkin Park is about this, you know, or, or, I mean Creed, a lot of them liked Creed.

• 1:09:53Speaker 03

  I'm not a big Creed defender, but I came to understand them better on their own terms, uh, when I was taking care of people to whom those records spoke, right? Linkin Park, I think, was sort of the most interesting of them, precisely because they were the most earnest, the most seeking and the most relatable of those bands.

• 1:10:11Speaker 01

  And so on their terms, like when they try to explain to you why Linkin Park are great and why Linkin Park are important to them, how do they describe this band? What are they getting from this band?

• 1:10:25Speaker 03

  Well, we're talking about young teenagers, so we didn't sit down and really do it, do it kind of, kind of break it down for me. They'd say, but, but they, they would say, you know, I mean, they'd say things like, no, they're good. That's what a 13-year-old says and trying to explain it to you. Say, no, they're good though, right? You know, that's really, they're good. They're not like that at all. If you were saying, oh, they're kind of, you know. Pretenders or whatever. So no, no, they're doing their own thing, you know, uh, so we didn't have any big intellectual breakdowns about it, but, uh, but they would, they would often, and the thing is like, a, a child in treatment, uh, when upset, you know, when, when, when, you know, sent off to reflect on something will often scream or sing lyrics really loudly. Like the big one from back then was Last Resort by Papa Roach, right?

• 1:11:09Speaker 03

  Every, every adolescent I took care of in the 2000s adored that song, right? Um, cause it spoke to their frustration, but I think Linkin Park spoke more to yearning. You know what I mean? It's like, like, like Last Resort, a big song from that moment, you know, is, is a, is a song of anger and frustration and desperation, right? But I think Linkin Park is sort of, they're almost, you know, there's this horrible term old soul that I don't really like, but, but, uh, but you know, they're mature beyond their years in what they're thinking about, right? They're, they're, they're sort of, there's a wistful quality to what they do. And I think kids who've been through a lot, related to that, related to sort of looking at your life that hasn't even gone that far yet and feels like it's already been a lot, you know?

• 1:11:54Speaker 01

  You say Lot Last Resort, and it makes me think about the Linkin Park song, In The End, you know, which I think has emerged as probably the biggest song. And lyrically, it is tremendously bleak. The chorus of this song is, I got so far and tried so hard, but in the end it doesn't even matter. Like, how does a song like that, or like Last Resort, you know, that sounds so defeated, how does that become an anthem, you know, a balm, a comfort to so many people?

• 1:12:20Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, it's a big question because like, again, at the time I was, you know, I was not into this music. I, I became interested in it because my kids were interested in it, you know? Uh, but my first reaction as a grown up would be, you know, what do you mean you came so far? You're, you're a child. You're 20. So, so, and the older you get, the more, the more that you struggle to not become the sort of jaded adult who, who forgets that at 20, you do feel like you've been around for a long time, right? Well, actually you've only been a grown up for a year or so at that point, you know, two, and it's like, uh, But it feels that way, like the weight as you be, as you potentiate, as you become an adult, right?

• 1:13:01Speaker 03

  You, you sort of feel the pressure of life, right? And there's, there's no, you know, the word life is so general and large that it's hard to dwell on, but I think that's what a lot of these bands, especially Linkin Park, are thinking about is how do we do, there's a term in recovery, this thing called life, right? And how do we do this? What does this look like? Is it worth the effort? You know? And, and that's a big question when you're a young person, I'll say a young man, especially young men, who feel that they're gonna have to be taking on responsibilities that they maybe didn't bargain for, you know, inheriting a world that, that, that kind of, you know, has been set up for them in a way that now doesn't benefit them, that benefited the generations before them, right?

• 1:13:45Speaker 03

  And these are, I think, in that moment, a lot of young men are, are saying to themselves, wow, you know, I'm being handed a plate full of stuff that I didn't pick, that now, that I now have to eat, you know? And, and I think that's, that's where, and Linkin Park addresses this not, I think, so much with rage, there's anger in their music, right? But, but I think in, in all their stuff, in Somewhere I Belong, in, in, in this one, you know, there's, there's this, there's this feeling of sadness that's sort of woven into both anger, but also hope, they're a really hopeful band. I think that's probably why, one reason why they're more successful than a lot of their peers, is that when you, when you give the reader or the listener, you know, a sort of

• 1:14:30Speaker 03

  a, a, a life preserver to, to climb up on, even while you're dwelling on the hard parts, that's a thing that is appreciated, you know? Because we all have, we like to, to get down with the hard parts sometimes, but we also, you need to be able to, to find some light in the corner somewhere.

• 1:14:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was gonna ask you as a songwriter, when you became interested in this band, what you made of it, because the songwriting in Linkin Park is so fascinating to me because there's such a rigor and consistency to it. It's all me addressing you. You know, it's I, I, I, you, you, you. You know, you did this to me and here's how I feel. I put my trust in you. Shut up when I'm talking to you. I'm tired of being who you want me to be. Like, there's, there's almost no other characters, no settings. You know, it's not flowery. There's just, over the course of now, eight albums, you know, decades, there's just such a consistency and a focus to this battle between me and you. I just, I wondered what you made of that as a songwriter.

• 1:15:29Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, as a songwriter, that's not something I relate to at all. I'm a storyteller, right? I, I, I tell stories. I'm almost never the guy talking to you, right? And even when I am, you know, I'm a college guy. I think, you know, I have thoughts that will not be interesting to your listeners about how, no matter how hard you try to say, this is me and I'm speaking to you, you can't do that. That's not possible, right? It's mediated. The actual I that's trying to speak isn't actually coherent enough to, to come through. I mean, that's how I think of it, right? Other people don't think of it that way. I think clearly, you know, in, in Linkin Park, there's an attempt to sort of actually make a direct communication. I think it's the desire to make that communication that electrifies

• 1:16:14Speaker 03

  and potentiates it, right? But as a songwriter, I mean, part of what I like about it, and this is true with a lot of music I listen to, is that it's not what I do at all, right? I don't, I listen to way less singer-songwriter stuff than most people assume. Most people think because I play an acoustic guitar, that I want to listen to guys with acoustic guitars, but I actually mainly listen to heavy metal and ambient and jazz, right? And, and I prefer to listen to, to stuff that is not what I do, right? Because that's what, because that's what thrills me. You know, it's like, if I, if I could do what Linkin Park does, I would do Linkin Park, you know? So in my zone, what I'm doing is essentially literary enterprise, right? No matter how raw it gets, I'm bookish, right?

• 1:16:56Speaker 03

  Linkin Park, I don't think they're unintelligent, but I don't think of them as bookish. I think of them as trying to do something that's visceral, that's trying to forge a connection. There's a real nobility to what they do. I don't think of what I do as noble. What I'm doing is curious, right? And there's a difference there.

• 1:17:12Speaker 01

  I agree with you that they're noble, but I disagree with you that you're not noble. Like, I thought about this year. I thought about...

• 1:17:19Speaker 03

  I appreciate you, but I'm just some guy telling stories. That's all I am.

• 1:17:23Speaker 01

  But that's absolutely not true to a lot of people. I was thinking about the burden that must have been placed on Chester Bennington. The idea that he's written these songs that have saved people, that have helped people. And I know that's absolutely true of thousands of Mountain Goats songs. I thought of this year immediately as just this anthem that I'm sure has just helped so many people through so many things. And I've wondered about the burden that that puts on you and might have put on Chester Bennington, right? That you're so important, the songs you're writing are so important, and that connection that you've made weighs on you to a degree, I have to imagine.

• 1:18:01Speaker 03

  So, I apologize in advance if I get... It's hard for me to think about Chester Bennington because his work was so useful to so many people, and he took his own life, right? But I also, I don't know what was going on with him. I don't know what all that is about. But I do know that there's a thing I'm always wanting to impress on, one, to people who say that I saved their lives, but also, I don't know a lot of other songwriters and stuff. I'm kind of a hermit. But the thing I always say to people, and that I would hope every performer also has internalized this, and I think most of them have, right? Is like, when somebody says, "Oh, you saved my life." I say, "No, I did not do that, right?

• 1:18:43Speaker 03

  What I did was I made a thing that I wasn't thinking of any..." I mean, if you sit down to write a song going, "Yeah, I'm gonna save this guy's life," then there's something very wrong with you, right? It's like, that's not what you're doing when you're writing songs. You're just writing songs. You're just trying to make the song something. Good, that's all, right? It's not, you don't sit down and say, "Now, today I will inspire people," or anything like that. You do that work before you write the song. You think, "Why am I writing? Why do I do this? Well, you know, I hope music does for me what it, or does for other people what music has done for me," right? But, but the thing that I say to people is, "No, I did not save your life. No, I didn't," right? Under any circumstances. I made a thing that you, as a listener, chose, actively chose, to use as a tool in your

• 1:19:28Speaker 03

  own healing. I'm immensely grateful for my role in that process, right? That's a beautiful blessing in my life. But I don't, I don't carry any weight about it because I didn't do anything. All I did was write a song, right? And, and the thing that I did, that it's valuable, makes me feel the sort of pride that I imagine I would feel if I built houses for a living, right? And if I build a house and someone lives in it, I saved that person's life 100 days out of the year when it was freezing, right? But that person's never gonna see me and say, "You saved my life. I have a house to live in," right? Well, no, I didn't. I just built a place that is warm, right? And writing songs is building places that are warm, right?

• 1:20:10Speaker 03

  But it's the people who choose to take up residence in them that actually did the work of scouting out the address, you know, to bear the metaphor out, of scouting out the address and seeing if it looked like a place where they could stay, right? But I think on a lot of songwriters, especially young ones, that weight of, of feeling that, you know, that you, that you live inside people's heads like that, that you, conflating yourself with your work, it's hard because your work does come out of you, but it's not you. It's something you do. For me, that's a very useful way of thinking about it. But again, I don't know what, uh, I don't know the rest of what was going on with Chester Bennington. I have to assume that if, you know, if you could hear this conversation, you'd say, "Look, it had nothing to do with Linkin Park, or with my songs, or anything.

• 1:20:55Speaker 03

  I had other stuff going on."

• 1:20:58Speaker 01

  It does make me think though of your first book, The Black Sabbath book, you know, as part of the thirty-three and a third series, it was about Master of Reality and most of those books are just, you know, the stories of how their records were made, but you, you did a fictionalized account of like a kid in treatment, you know, and all he wants is his tapes, all he wants is to listen to Black Sabbath, like that's the only thing that's going to help him. And I wondered, when you talk to these kids and they're telling you what Linkin Park means to them, do you flashback, you know, to the music that you loved as a teenager that maybe helped you as much as, you know, Linkin Park is now helping these kids?

• 1:21:35Speaker 03

  A funny thing about that is that, like, a lot of people read that book, you know, they come out of it very angry at Gary, the therapist, right? And, and they're relating strongly to Roger, the, the patient. But in my work, I was the Gary, right? Gary's actually named after an old coworker of mine. I'm the guy whose job it is in these hospitals to put you in a robe when you get admitted and to put your tapes in the, in the office. Like, that was my gig, right? I think that, I mean, I was not the head nurse or anything. I was just, you know, it was a new, new job to me. And as I grew in the business, I learned ways of, of welcoming people into the facilities where I worked at that, that were better.

• 1:22:16Speaker 03

  But, but these eighties facilities I was working in during the Satanic Panic, they had a regimented very, and I only worked at the, I guess it was only six months at this one place, but, but, but they had a very regimented system of, of taking these kids' stuff away, which I thought was messed up. And, and I would try and talk to these guys when they would, not all guys, but, but when they would come in. But, but in the book, I'm trying both to, both to, you know, to show the, the helplessness that a sixteen, seventeen-year-old feels having been stripped of his stuff, even his clothes, you know, admitted. But also, in

• 1:22:56Speaker 03

  the answer part, you know, the grown-up understands that, that, you know, that he was a kid then. He just thinks the system was messed up and that the people working within the system need to take some responsibility for their roles in it, right? But, but yeah, like my, I think Gary is sort of the, the invisible character in there that like... You know, there's, we're very inside of Roger's head for the entire thing. But there's a world outside of his head also that's supposed to be implied by the book.

• 1:23:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, you mentioned it earlier, but Linkin Park gets a lot of credit for talking, for singing about mental health, you know, long before that was common in pop music, you know, Chester was so painfully honest about his struggles, his setbacks, you know, his feelings of hopelessness sometimes. I mean, you've been in a band now for 30 plus years. Is it any easier now to be vulnerable in that way in a song? And like, how hard must it have been for Chester, you know, now 25 years ago to be doing this?

• 1:23:56Speaker 03

  So, I mean, again, that's not, I, I don't, I don't really do the expressing my feelings in song thing that much, right? That's not my, that's not my neighborhood. I, my songs are very emotional, but they're usually not about a present situation, right? Usually the speaker is somebody else. I experience a cathartic sort of release of emotion through storytelling, right? That's how it works for me. Um, for him, though, I think it is very natural for, for young men, especially after punk rock, to, uh, you know, to, to sit down and write a song and, and write something like, you know, you take Black Flag, like, we are tired of your abuse. Try to stop us. It's no use, right? Like, I think that stuff actually is, is, is the first thing you think of to write when you, when you get in a rock band, right?

• 1:24:41Speaker 03

  I mean, I think what's interesting about, about Chester Bennington is that he is introducing this element of vulnerability, you know, it's, it's interesting because that whole nu metal moment is full of testosterone, right? It's, it's very, you know, if you look at, what was the band Mudvayne? If you look at the band, uh, I mean, is that the one I'm thinking of? The wall, the makeup in their, in, on their bodies in the video and their thrashing?

• 1:25:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:25:04Speaker 03

  They're really being very intense physically. It's very deeply testosterone-y stuff, right? And Linkin Park is bringing, for lack of a better word, a sort of a feminine element to the presentation. There's a looseness, there's a liquid quality to it, you know, that's inviting, and a sadness. And that's the thing is like, lots of music is sad, right? But in that moment, sad was sort of off to the side, and rage and frustration were more in the front. And you get into fine divisions of expression. But there's a real sorrow in Linkin Park's music that, you know, that I think most adults over 21

• 1:25:44Speaker 03

  missed entirely at the time. And, but I think spoke very deeply to people who are just, were at the time, just getting in touch with these deeper currents of emotion that grow, you know, these sort of reservoirs of feeling that grow in size as you age, right?

• 1:26:06Speaker 01

  It's such a hard thing to talk about, but I do wonder, you know, a teenager who looks up to Chester to this degree, how you feel when you lose him? You know, I just, I cannot imagine how devastating that would be to a young person especially.

• 1:26:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, well, it's a, there aren't good ways of talking about suicide, especially the, you know, the suicide of other people, you know, it's, because you don't know, you don't know what was going on with the person. You can't, even if they leave a note right before they go, you don't know what was going on in their skull. And they sort of, suicide demonstrates the gulf between us and others, right? That's what makes it so painful, right? That it, it sort of is almost an accusation that, that we can't reach across the gulf between self and other, right? So, I mean, yeah, I mean, the thing is like,

• 1:27:04Speaker 03

  The other side of what you're saying is, as an artist, you do sort of have a responsibility to take care of yourself, right? Because people are going to be looking to you for examples, even though, as I say, I don't think, you know, when I write a song, I'm not saying, here's me, relate to me, right? I'm trying to make a thing that is useful, right? But that's just a thing I made. It's not, you know, it's only self-expression to a certain extent. But yeah, I mean, I don't think publicly we're really encouraged to feel anger when an artist does something like this, but I do, you know? I, it's one of the feelings I have, besides the sadness and the grief, you know? I feel anger because, because I do think if you're in the public eye and people are looking to you for comfort, you have a responsibility to take care of yourself.

• 1:27:49Speaker 03

  But that's overtaken for me generally by the sadness that I'm certain that he tried the best he could. I'm certain that he did all he could to, you know, to beat his demons and couldn't in the end.

• 1:28:00Speaker 01

  Of course. Do you think there is a way that fundamentally changes the relationship a young person has with the songs, you know, when they go back and listen to "In the End"? You know, or even the songs, as you say, that are more hopeful, you know, "Somewhere I Belong", you know? Does it screw up the way that they hear this music now?

• 1:28:19Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, the thing is, you and I are going granular on something, and our relationship to it is that we have thought a lot about it and about the people who make it. But, and this is a thing most entertainers never get their heads around, the vast majority of people who hear a song neither know nor care about the people who made it, and I think that's fine, right? There's nothing wrong with that at all. I mean, to me, that's an ideal situation. I hope the people enjoying my music don't care who I am or what I'm all about. I mean, obviously, you know, they might do a little check, make sure I'm not a monster or whatever, but, but, but, but that's the thing, is like, the song, the song is self-contained. The song, the song is much bigger than the people who make it, you know?

• 1:29:00Speaker 03

  So I think most of the people who hear it in the future, and I think it will be a song that people return to, both of these songs, that work in doers, you know, and, but I think it will only be the occasional listener who really... Goes to find out more. And then I do think that complicates or maybe enriches your relationship to the music. This is an old question, like with Sylvia Plath, right? You know Sylvia Plath killed herself. And all of her poetry reads like a sort of prediction that this is going to happen. And in fact, she has these poems are explicitly about suicide and so forth. And but I do think it's important to not, you know, to not be doing, that's a very 19th century way of reading stuff, to say that the biography

• 1:29:42Speaker 03

  and the work are inextricably intertwined. They can be free of each other. You can, and you have the freedom as a reader to to include or exclude as much of that as you need to. And, and so I think, you know, I think, you know, in a sense, an artist who takes their own life, and has written songs that offer a branch of hope, sort of is on the other side of the song at this point. You know, the song sort of stands as an accusation at that point, or as a, you know, as a counterpoint, at the very least.

• 1:30:17Speaker 01

  Just to wrap up, I was so struck rereading your Black Sabbath book, just by your dedication. You know, it just blew me away for some reason. It just says, "To all the children to whom I ever provided care, in the earnest hope that your later lives have brought you the joy and the love and freedom that was always yours by right." I, it was just so beautiful to me. And I was just wondering, with kids you've kept in touch with, in the years since, you know, have they found that? And has Linkin Park, or really any music, helped them find that?

• 1:30:52Speaker 03

  Well, so the thing is, you don't, patient confidentiality, which is gospel for me as a nurse, means that you don't reach out to people after they leave your, your, your facility. You don't, you don't reach out, right? It's against the rules. And rightly so, for a lot of reasons, if you think about it, it's like, you know, if I took care of you, right? And, and then I see you out in the community, three years later, you were 17 then, you're 20 now, right? And, and you've gotten your act together, right? You were a mess when you were 17, say, right? But now, you're doing your best. You've actually, you're on the other side, you got a gig, I show up at, I don't know, car dealership, where you're selling cars, right? I want to buy a car. If I say to you in front of

• 1:31:36Speaker 03

  your coworkers, "Oh, hey." Don't I, don't I know you from Charter Oak? Right? Then you'd be like, no, I don't talk about that. That's not, that's not part of my story for me. Right? I don't have the right to, to make that your story. And if I reach out to you, you know, by contacting you, uh, then I'm forcing you to sort of own a story about you. That's not mine to force. So I haven't kept in touch. I have had once or twice a child reach out as a grown up, uh, to say hello. And this, it's very emotional for me if, if they say that, you know, that they took something good from my care. Uh, but, uh, but, but that's something I think, because we talked in the field about it.

• 1:32:21Speaker 03

  You know, you're just planting seeds. You're not trying to fix anybody. You're not trying to solve anybody's problems. You're trying to do what any parent would do. Give them a couple of skills that you hope they're able to use out there in the world. Right? Um, and in the limited instances where I have any information about that, I mean, you know, I don't take any credit for it. All the credit that kids I used to work with get for what they made their lives goes to them. They took some stuff they learned in our care and used it. So, but it's a blessing to me to know that if I was instrumental in any way there.

• 1:32:55Speaker 01

  John, this has been really wonderful. I'm so grateful for your time. Thank you so much.

• 1:32:59Speaker 03

  Oh, the pleasure is entirely mine. It's, it's hard to talk about, you know, I, Chester Bennington's death was a, was a sad, a sad moment. I mean, sad when anybody doesn't, you know, doesn't manage to make it through a, a difficult moment like that. But it's especially sad when, when it's somebody whose work meant so much to so many. Um, but, uh, but yeah, it's, it's good to work some of this through sometimes.

• 1:33:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. Thanks so much, John.

• 1:33:30Speaker 01

  Thanks very much to our guest this week, John Darniel. We were thrilled to have him. Thanks to our producers, Justin Sayles and Jonathan Kerma. Thanks to Olivia Creary for additional production help. Thanks to Juliana Ress for fact checking. And thanks very much to you for listening. And now why don't you go listen to In The End by Lykan Park? We'll see you next week.