This is the interview with Lp from Blender Mag Feb/Mar 2002

The bigger the band, the bigger the security guy, so Linkin Park employ a cartoonishly immens handler named Jake. Built like an upended couch stuffed with sides of beef, Jake sports the classic cue-ball noggin and Harley Davidson-approved beard of minders the world over.

"You the guy writing the article?" he says ina Midwestern drawl that would make "Happy birthday Mom" sound like the prelude to a savage beating.

Er, yeah.

"Make sure you write how levelheaded these guys are," Jake says, pointing to the red suitcase he's wheeling from their dressing room. "They packed their own clothes. Bands never do that. They're the vest guys I've ever worked with."

Linkin Park are in Kansas City, Missouri, to play the Hale Arena, a 6,000-capacity barn normally used to meet the city's demand for rodeo. It's the third night of the band's Countdown to Revolution road trip, a percursor ro January's Projekt Revolution tour with bong lords Cypress Hill and nu-metal contenders Adema. Soft spolen Linkin drummer Rob Bourdon chats with the band's business manager over baked potatoes and fried chicken. "Nothing to worry about," he says of the meeting. "Everything looks good."

Indeed it does. In November 2000, shortly before the band's first tour, lead singer Chester Bennington bullishly decided to have blue and red flames tattooed from his wrists to his elbows-a strict no no in the fast food industry and other career avenues he'd grudgingly explored while playing with his first band, Grey Daze, in his hometown, Phoenix. Having heard a Linkin Park demo-the band was then known as Hybrid Theory-Bennington caught a flight to try out gor the Los Angeles five piece a few months earlier. Things worked out, and their debut album, an eclectic rap rock concotion christened Hybrid Theory, was cut in four weeks. Today, propelled by the well-manicured rage of singles, "Papercut," "OSC," "Crawling" and "In the End," and a rigorous 12-month tour that has included slots on Ozzfest and Family Values, Hybrid Theory has sold 5 million copies. It's been a year stupefying success from which the band si proud to have emerged, to use Bennington's word, as "ordinary dudes." No cause to regret that ink job, then?

"One tattoo leads to two, and two leads to 20," says the 25-year old Bennington, hitching up his jeans to reveal a green dragon above his right ankle. It's the latest addition to a collection now numbering 10, which includes a huge, gothic Linkin Park etched across his lower back and the cover of Hyvrid Theory-a flagbearing soldier with dragonfly wings that was designed by his cofrontman, 24-year old rhymebuster Mike Shinoda-on his left calf. "I still dont know what to think about that," muses Shinoda. Asked if he might regret wearing the bands colors so indebly, Bennington insists it's never crossed his mind.

In Bennington, Linkin Park have found a frontman to lift them high above the angst pack. Shinoda is an enthusiastic MC, and the band-guitarist Brad Delson, 25, bassist Dave "Phoenix" Farrell, 24, drummer Bourdon, 22, and Dj Joe Hahn, 24-is ferociously tight live, but Bennington's suprisingly versatile voice and anguished back story provide the star power. Like Korn's Jonathan Davis, Bennington was shattered by the divorce of his parents and abused as a boy. Unlike Davis, though, Bennington insists none of Linkin Park's material is autobiographical. "This songs can relate to anybody's situation," he says. "Like on 'One Step Closer': there's nothing in my life that drives me to 'the edge'...except trying to write the lyrics."

"Chester's the emotional leader-he brings a real life fire to everything that goes on," explains bassist Farrell, who once played with now defunct Christian-rock crew the Snax. "Mike and Joe are the creative forces in the band. Rob and Brad handle the business stuff. I'm the one who doesn't have a talent," he quips.

Were the Snax akin to white-bread Jesus-rockers Stryper?

"No, more like P.O.D., which is to say the focus was positive, and not about screwing chicks and pounding 40s."

Linkin Park, it turns out, share Farrell's former bands messageof uplift, minus the son-of God shout-outs. "We're not saying that everything has to be like The Partridge Family," Shinoda says, "but if things are going to shit you, you should want to stay optimistic. That doesn't mean you have to have a good time when things are going poorly; just look at the big picture."

"We're smart, we're serious, and we're not here to fuck around," adds Delson. "People think when you get a record deal all your problems will go away. We know that the bigger we get, the more problems we'll have. I guess Puff Daddy was somewhat-whats the word?-prophetic in that respect."


In the band's second dressing room, reserved for anyone who wants a discreet beer or a smoke, Bennington fiddles with a new purchase, a $25,000 Pro Tools recording rig, and gushes about his wife of six years, Samantha, a realtor he met when he was manning the grill at Burger King. Their first child, Draven Sebastian Bennington-named after Eric Draven, Brandon Lee's character in The Crow-is due out in April.

Does your wife worry that you might take liberties with female fans?

"I think that's natural for any woman with a husband who travels a lot, but we really dont have a problem with it. I'm a pain and she's perfect."

Bennington's attempts to set up his Pro Tools unit are hampered by the fact that he ignores the manual and had just sucked down a fat doobie. "If I dont have pot on the road, I will fucking kill somebody." he explains.

Linkin Park's only recreadtional drug user, Bennington's need for weed is mild compared to the narcotic meltdown of his youth. "I was on, like, 11 hits of acid a day. I dropped so much acid I'm surprised I can still speak! I'd smoke a bunch of crack, do a bit of meth and just sit there and freak out. Then I'd smoke opium to come down." His arrest for marijuana possesion when he was 18 wasnt the only sign that he needed to get a grip. "I weighed 110 pounds," he says, "My mom said I looked like I stepped out of Auschwitz. So I used pot to get off drugs. Every time I'd get a craving, I'd smoke my pot."

Bennington appeared to be a normal, happy kid. The son of a policeman and a nurse, he did well at school, enjoyed theater and thought The A-Team ruled. One day when he was 11, he came home from school, "and Mom wasnt there anymore-she left. I took the divorce pretty badly-started sleeping in class, getting high. I just wanted get away....I was going through the molesting part of my life then, too."

For someone who has made no secret of being abused as a child, seems unusual that Bennington sometimes wears a T-shirt bearing the logo of Hustler magazine's unsavory comic-strip deviant Chester the Molester.

"Thats just a name people have always called me," he says. "When somebody meets me and I go, 'Hi I'm Chester,' they go, 'Chester the Molester!'"

What exactly happened to you when you were young?

"I'm over it. I mean, what exactly happened is a lot...just...certain situations...."

Bennington stares at the floor. "I dont know...I dont really want to talk about it."

A few uncomfortable moments later, Bennington shake off the silence with a smile. "Its all good. I t sucks when those thinks happen, but going through them made me who I am today. And I'm a pretty decent person, I think."

Immediately after their encore-which climaxes with the "Shut up when I'm talkin to you!" refrain from "One Step Closer"-Linkin Park quickly towel off adn stand behind the security barrier at the front of the audience. For the next 30 minutes they sign autographs for any fan who wants them. It's just before midnight when they get back to their bus. Girlfriends are phoned, cookies eaten. Bennington walks in, mockpunches Blender in the stomach, fetches sodas fro both of us and slouched into a bench seat.

Whats the strangest request ever recieved from a fan?

"Someone once asked me for my pubic hair," he replies. "That was pretty sick."

Did you comply?

Bennington recoils in mock horror. "We're just dudes," he says with a shrug, then smiles. "For God's sake..."