Linkin Park was poised to explode onto the rock and metal scene in 2000 with the release of their debut record Hybrid Theory… and with that potential to be huge came some pretty dumb gimmick ideas from their Warner Bros.'s A&R guy. According to Mike Shinoda, the label felt that Linkin Park needed some kind of gimmick and choreography on stage to really engage fans. Obviously they needed it too, because who's heard of Linkin Park? Oh, everyone?
"On the funny side, there was the one time an A&R guy, because we were still getting comfortable onstage and working out that part of things, had us meet with this guy who choreographed and helped stage stuff on rap and R&B shows," said Shinoda.
"This dude comes in and he's basically like a choreographer and he literally suggested, 'You need to have a thing onstage, like a gimmick. For example you could come up to the microphone, step out to the side and step out of your shoes. Or kick a shoe off.'
"We were like, 'What the fuck?' That was a literal suggestion. I don't want to make it seem like he was a crazy person. He was shooting from the hip and it was something that just popped into his head."
Shinoda also revealed that there was a fight between the band and their label over who would mix Hybrid Theory, Linkin Park wanted Andy Wallace to mix it, though the same A&R guy went out and hired someone else to do a test mix due to internal label politics.
"A real thing that happened as we finished Hybrid Theory, we were like the only person who is going to mix it is Andy Wallace. Andy Wallace mixed these records that blend samples of rock music and industrial sounds in a way that feels very modern to us.
"It's full, it's expert level mixing. We love this. And he also, by the way, mixed Nirvana's Nevermind. He's an icon. He does huge records too. He's the only one who can mix Hybrid Theory. The next thing we knew, our A&R guy had done a test mix with somebody else. It was because of politics and stuff going on on his side. We were scared to death that this guy was just going to take our record and do his own thing with it and they were going to put it out that way."
