I was in school when I first heard Linkin Park songs. My brother first introduced them to me, although introduced would be a wrong word here. I remember I was in fifth/sixth grade when my brother had this one folder in his phone as well as on our personal computer back then, it had some five or six songs of LP and they didn’t even have proper names on them. And since he is nine years older than I am, back then, even though we connected a lot, I assumed our tastes would not match. I use the word “assume” here because I was proved wrong. But anyway, back in those days, not every member of the family had a cell phone of their own. And my brother and I, we were both still in school, with him being a high-schooler, none of us had a cell phone of our own. So the five or six songs that he had got from somewhere were stored in our Mom’s phone. One that we all could use.

Perhaps my brother once or twice urged me to listen to the songs but I didn’t, thinking they wouldn’t be something I’d really like. But I remember, playing around with my Mom’s cell phone and there was this song called “Numb” that I listened to a couple of times. And I kinda memorized it as well but I was ten or eleven years old and I was too young for that song to resonate with me at a time like that. 

The shit that has gotten real nowadays, with kids being depressed and being in love and having relationships and keeping records in the social media, well, it wasn’t like that back then. And I guess, we’d been the last of the people who didn’t grow up in such circumstances. Not that I blame the current developments and changes but, well, now that I look back, I can’t possibly deny that times were simpler back then. We lived each day as it came. 

So my brother eventually found me listening to “Numb” one day and I told him, “Yeah, I’ve heard this one, it’s good.” I don’t quite remember the conversation but I do have a feeling that he took pride in that. He felt proud of being a brother who could finally introduce something like that to his tiny little sister.

And so from there it started, my brother was in high school, about to go to college, and their songs resonated with him deeply. They would resonate with anyone around that age, you know? The songs are just like that. I grew up into my teens and by that time, our computer had folders of Linkin Park songs. I ended up being the only one in my class listening to Linkin Park and not Bollywood songs. And you know? I heard the songs. I memorized the lyrics. I was thirteen around this time. And we still hadn’t entered the smartphone era. A couple of years passed, my brother and I kept up to date with LP and their new releases.

Around this time, is when I began ‘feeling’ the lyrics. Back then, I wouldn’t have been able to understand something like “Crawling in my skin, these wounds they will not heal…”. I would have thought the guy just might have seriously hurt his skin pretty badly. Or the depth in something like, “But what it meant to me, will eventually be a memory of a time when I tried so hard…”. I began understanding the raw pain, the hatred that the lyrics spoke of. And it became so special to me because I had been literally listening to this band before I developed a taste for music. 

Linkin Park was a constant companion of me growing up, and I mean that, in every possible way. The thing that both my bro and I liked about the songs was that they didn’t cry about just relationships, like most of the songs back then. Songs back then, and even now, would speak of heartbreak, usually coming from a broken relationship. But Linkin Park? Sure they had songs like “With You” that would make you feel like it was written for a special someone, but even if they spoke of heartbreak emerging out of a broken relationship they never addressed it directly. And I feel like, this is why the songs were loved by a specific group of people at a specific time. Teenagers, college students, in their twenties. 

We went through shit and we had something to connect to. Those guys were writing stories from our own lives. Feelings that we felt, of losing it and regretting having to face ourselves at the end of the day.“Against my will, I stand beside my own reflection…”. 

I mean, “In The End” connects to people in so many different levels I can’t begin to explain it to you. Songs like “Hands Held High”, spoke of political issues and we were in that age where we were driven by hatred, anger, blood and tears you know. We were the people listening to them and feeling it. The songs addressed what we sometimes didn’t want to address ourselves. They spoke of guilt, “If I could change I would, take back the pain I would, retrace every wrong move that I made I would…”. They sang of the will to try, “Clutching my cure, I tightly lock the door, I try to catch my breath again…”. Trust issues, “I don’t know whom to trust, no surprise… I’m trying not to break but I’m so tired of this deceit…”.

Mike Shinoda was phenomenal for me. Chester Bennington seemed like a guy who knew me better than most. I had a crush on Rob Bourdon, not to mention that he completely rocked it every time on stage with the drums. Phoenix was a cool guy, doing his thing, and singing along sometimes and I would wait for Brad Delson to nail the solo of “Little things give you away” or “Shadow of the day”. Joe kept shit alive with his thing up there on the left corner of the stage. These guys had something else you know? They spoke about shit happening, so fearlessly, developing music so raw and so powerful. We guys had some of the best days of our lives with them.

My brother shared this article with me a couple of weeks ago, and I would paste this one paragraph out here…

“To be blunt, nu-metal is dead. No musical young man or woman nowadays aspires to combine mumbling and un-technical, oftentimes bland, rap with chugging power chords and electronic synths strewn about. It was a mess of a genre. I mean, if you were old enough to be coherent and cognizant of the fact you were listening to Linkin Park, if you weren’t completely obsessed with pop, you HAD to like Linkin Park. I was in kindergarten and distinctly remember my older brother (12 at the time) blaring “Crawling” and “In the End” in our house and me just absorbing it, like sucking venom from a wound. It was nasty, for lack of a better term. What kind of young man didn’t like Linkin Park at some point? Nu-metal sucks, and sucked back then, but Linkin Park was fantastic in doing what it set out to do: make music different from the norm, and become popular and successful by making music that was not… popular. Interesting, but it worked.”

And I feel this guy. I feel this guy because I was much in his place when I was young. And to be honest with you peeps, I’m an 18-year-old teenager listening to pop like any other out there. My brother listens to older songs btw. He dived deeper into stuff like Pink Floyd, Breaking Benjamin, AC/DC, Guns n Roses, Anathema…which I like now like because of him only. Honestly, I owe my brother so much. But just saying, what this guy wrote here is right, when I listen to pop music nowadays, there are times when I feel like yeah man, there’s no artist out there who’d come up with that genre and develop anything close to what LP left behind. It’s nostalgic for me.

Years passed and I started listening to other stuff as well but Linkin Park always held a special corner. I was seventeen, the first year of college and I had just woke up for the day. Feeling sleepy, groggily, I took up my phone and I went through the usual social media and that was it. That was it. I couldn't believe what I was reading. I called back home but I dialled my brother. And his first words were... "There's something I need to tell you, something happened..." And I said, "I know, I saw..."
...

Since then, for both me and my brother, it was like we had pulled up the memories and put them inside a locker and hid the key somewhere. I didn't keep up to any related news or what happened afterwards. I didn't admit it, but it hurt me.

I came back home for the winter break in December last year and I was just messing around in YouTube when I saw that...there had been a Hollywood bowl celebration in memory of Chester and that was the first time I guess, the first time after July I went back to LP... And then they played "Numb" with a lonely mic up on the stage and the fans singing the lyrics...I remember thinking... "Gosh, I can't cry, I can't cry, what if mom walks in right now...."

And I sort of needed to watch that. I wasn't healed. I had pretty much turned my back to something I couldn't believe and I didn't face it.

I did keep up with Chester’s life a little when I was young. I knew he had had a troubled past and most of his works are reflections of his own life. But even though, I wish he wasn't gone. I wish he was here. 

But the band added to my definitions and they still do. And I will forever be grateful for that.