Hybrid Theory (Live At Download Festival 2014)

Announcement

On November 4th, 2013, Linkin Park and Download Festival announced, "Linkin Park will be headlining next year’s Download Festival on Saturday June 14th, 2014 and performing HYBRID THEORY in its entirety."

Chester: “We have been kicking around the idea of playing HYBRID THEORY for some time and the perfect opportunity is DOWNLOAD 2014. The legendary energy of the DOWNLOAD crowd is the apex of the rock experience and we are very excited to share this special night with them.”

Shortly after the announcement, #HybridTheory began to trend on social media worldwide.

The band later admitted that if they did not agree to play Hybrid Theory in full, Download was going to ask another band to headline.

Chester (Loudwire Interview): "That was an interesting situation that came up. We knew that this year marks the 15th anniversary of ‘Hybrid Theory’ [a demo version came out in 1999, while the album was properly released in 2000]. We wanted to do something special, so we were like, it’d be cool to do some small shows and just play ‘Hybrid Theory’ for some diehard fans. We were already starting to think about doing that.

Then when we got the call from the promoters of Download. We’ve headlined Download several times so they wanted to do something special. They felt like ‘Hybrid Theory’ was a real important record and they came to us to see if we wanted to headline Download, but they thought it would be really great if you guys did something different because you’ve been here so often, would you be interested in playing ‘Hybrid Theory’ from beginning to end to celebrate that record on its 15th anniversary.

And if you don’t, we’re probably going to ask someone else to headline because you guys were just here a few years ago. We were like, yeah — this is a great opportunity. Now we can do it in front of a huge audience, it’ll be real exciting. I can’t wait until we get to Download and we start ‘Papercut.’ Once that beat kicks in dude, I just have a feeling the crowd is going to fucking lose their mind. It’s funny, we play that song every night but I think in the context of people being able to hear it beginning to end, we’ve never done that before. A lot of these songs we haven’t played in 15 years. It’ll be a real fun night. Then to follow that up with some of the new stuff, it’ll be awesome."

Hybrid Theory in 2000-2001

Advertised as the first time that the album was being played in full, we ran across a show in which the album was performed in full previously in 2001. In June 2001 on the US-to-Europe Tour, Linkin Park closed the tour with five shows in Europe - Copenhagen, Rock im Park (two shows), Rock am Ring, and a sold out show at London's Brixton Academy on June 4, 2001.

The setlist for this show was added by an older LP fansite at the time, so we are not doubting it's authenticity. All of the Hybrid Theory songs were performed at this show, including a rare resurrection of Cure For The Itch (last performed in January 2001). Chester also performed Morning After at this show to start the encore. We are missing the Copenhagen setlist to start this tour, so it is possible that it was performed in full at that show as well. Copenhagen was the only other headlining show on that run in Europe, so it's quite possible that the songs were played there too, but not guaranteed. Unfortunately, there is no known recording of the sold out show in London.

2001.06.04 London, UK Setlist:
01. A Place For My Head (w/ Pre-Song Love Ridden Remix Intro)
02. Forgotten (Guitar + 2000 Beat Intro; Ext. Bridge)
03. Papercut (w/ Pre-Song LEE Interlude)
04. Points Of Authority
05. High Voltage (Mike Shinoda Remix)
06. And One (Short Live Version; Wind Intro)
07. In The End (Vocal Ending)
08. Pushing Me Away
09. Crawling
10. With You
11. Runaway
Encore:
12. Morning After (Acoustic)
13. Cure For The Itch
14. By Myself
15. One Step Closer (w/ Pre-Song FALLING DOWN Interlude)

Mike replied to our tweet saying, "But it was never performed front to back; we had 60 minute headline set times, and less than 40 minutes of album music, ha!"

Download Festival was at least the second known time in which all songs on the album were performed at a show, but no more than the third. It was the first time in the band's history in which the album was performed in order start-to-finish. Additionally, the version of Cure For The Itch performed in 2001 was not a full version of the song and was always played abbreviated.

Before the Show

Here is a brief rundown of the Hybrid Theory songs and how they were played BEFORE the show...

Papercut: Various members of Linkin Park have praised the song over the years, with Chester most recently saying that Papercut is his favorite Linkin Park song. Papercut has been performed live EVERY year of the band's existence except for 2009, when it took a short break from the short summer tour that promoted New Divide. Even then, Mike couldn't resist rapping a verse of it over Bleed It Out in Macau. We'll take it and that's enough to say that the song has been performed in SOME form every year that Linkin Park has been called Linkin Park. In 2014, the song was performed in a shortened version on the European Tour so Download was the only performance in full of Papercut in 2014.

One Step Closer: Fans were surprised to see the song mid-set at the Tucson show in May. Until Japan 2006, One Step Closer closed every show that the band has ever performed. Moving it to close the main set in 2006, Breaking The Habit took the honors of closing the show, and One Step Closer started moving around in 2007. It opened setlists, it closed the main set, it opened the encore break, it closed the show, etc. On the A Thousand Suns World Tour, Linkin Park dropped the song a few times and didn't play it at the MTV EMA show in Madrid, the Moscow Red Square show for Transformers 3, or at two festivals in the summer in France and Switzerland. To close the entire ATS World Tour, it was third in the setlist at the Formula 1 show in Singapore. This was the first time that it was consistently performed mid-set and that's appropriate for Download as well, since it will be second in the setlist there.

With You: A song performed at every headlining Linkin Park show from 2000 to 2006, With You took a break in 2007. It was missing from the 2008 and 2009 setlists as well, and Mike confirmed in 2010 with fans in Europe that he knew the hardcore fans wanted to see the song again and that he wanted to play it. The song finally made its resurrection two years later at the LPU House Of Blues show in Los Angeles (May 2012), where it returned with a bunch of other great Hybrid Theory songs. On the 2014 European Tour, With You, like Papercut, was performed in a shortened version in the setlist so Download was also only full performance of the song on the tour.

Points Of Authority: As we mentioned above, With You took a break for a few world tours and Points Of Authority followed suit a few years later when it was dropped from the sets in 2010 and 2011 for the A Thousand Suns World Tour. An interesting fact about the song is that it appeared on a leaked draft setlist from the London 2010 LPU Summit show (night two), but it ended up not being played. Mike said that the band on that tour saw requests from LPLive to change the setlist some, so they added in From The Inside and Somewhere I Belong, but left Points Of Authority out. The band was having a lot of fun with Points in 2008 and 2009, adding intros and outros to it and having Mike rap all sorts of great verses over the song from other Linkin Park and Fort Minor tracks. Anyway, Points returned in 2012 and has been a staple ever since, leading up to Download.

Crawling: Debuting in 2001 on the Street Soldiers' Tour, Crawling stayed around in the setlist for every show until 2012, when it was dropped on the Honda Civic Tour. It was in the setlist for Bristow and Uncasville to start the tour, and even showed up in a draft Camden setlist a few shows later, but the band ultimately didn’t play it at all at those shows (dropping it from all three) and decided to shelve the song for the rest of the Living Things World Tour in 2012 and 2013. We can't blame them, as Chester doesn't necessarily NAIL the song anymore, and it was good to see the song retired for a while. As of Download, just the intro and a chorus of the song was performed live in the encore medley. This will be the only performance of Crawling on the tour. This will definitely be a special performance of the song, which hasn't been performed in full since the intimate SiriusXM show at Third Encore in August 2012.

Runaway: The song that gets crowds bouncing in every city it is played in, Runaway is also a song that took the same break as its show partner With You (since they were performed back-to-back for many years) from 2007 until 2012. Runaway was performed for just a few shows in 2012, being dropped from the setlist for Honda Civic Tour in favor of VICTIMIZED (w/ QWERTY). Before Download, it had not been performed live since the X Games show in Los Angeles in June 2012. It's no secret that Chester has a strong dislike for the song (essentially demanding it to be dropped in 2012 after a few shows), so fans knew the song wouldn’t stick around after Download. Leading up to Download, it was performed as a short version, with the band finishing the first chorus before Mike went into Wastelands verse 1.

By Myself: By Myself is a song that was performed at just about every show from fall 2000 to fall 2003. It was last played live on October 29, 2003 in Seoul, South Korea. It was never played again after this due to the band adding more songs from Meteora to the setlists. Linkin Park revisited the track for the first time almost eleven years when it resurrected it at Download. By Myself was performed as the studio version from 2000 to 2002, and then a live intro was added with Mike rapping the bridge over a building instrumental in 2003. We all are familiar with this version as it is on the Live In Texas DVD. An interesting note about the track is that it appeared in the encore of the Projekt Revolution 2002 setlist, so the band at that time at least thought that the track kicked some ass live. It was rehearsed in 2009 at least once but did it did not make it to the 2009 setlist.

In The End: Linkin Park has played In The End at every known, full show in the band's history except for one. On February 27, 2013 in Melbourne, the band decided to let fans vote in the encore for In The End or A Place For My Head. We are pretty sure that In The End had the loudest crowd reaction, but that didn't stop Chester from saying he wanted to play A Place For My Head and off they went with it! If you were around at that time, you'll remember a fan tweeting Chester that she was DEVASTATED that they didn't play the song at that show. We are hoping that the rest of the band didn't see that tweet, but maybe they did, as the song has still not been dropped from the setlists and likely never will be. Fans after the show collectively made a great decision - why not just play both songs?

A Place For My Head: Ah yes, the fan favorite for the hardcore fans for so long. A Place For My Head has been around forever, and it was played at every show until 2006, when it disappeared from the Japan setlist. If you've been a member of LPLive since the beginning, you might remember the EXTENSIVE campaigning fans went through to get the song back in 2007. After M&Gs, reports were common that fans had "asked them to play A Place For My Head", and in one occurrence, the Perth fans signed a huge petition for the song and presented it to the band at the M&G in 2007. Wow! All of this insanity in 2007 (literally all year long on every tour) came to a breaking point in January 2008, when it was resurrected in Hannover, Germany for the first show of the tour. Not only that, but it was the first time that Linkin Park had ever performed two encores at a show, and A Place For My Head -> One Step Closer was the second encore. The crowd reaction to when the intro kicks in is priceless in Hannover, and Linkin Park NAILED the song the rest of the year, before it was dropped again for Projekt Revolution 2008. Mike even appeared in the pit with silly string in Nashville in 2008 on the song. The band performed it ONCE on the A Thousand Suns World Tour in Paris, France for the Hybrid Theory 10th Anniversary. This pretty much started the whole process all over again since the Paris performance was nothing short of epic (it was even performed unrehearsed!) as the French lost their minds to it. Fans then asked the entire rest of the year for the song to return at the LPU M&Gs and the band indeed did give in by adding it to the bridge of Bleed It Out. At the very next show in Dortmund, Germany, Mike commented to the LPLive fans in the front (with their shirts on) that this was "just for you guys" before going into the first verse of the song. A Place For My Head returned in 2012 for the Living Things World Tour, kicking off first the European Festival Set and then Set B. It didn’t make the setlist for the tour in 2014, sending it back into being semi rare again.

Forgotten: Forgotten was last performed live on February 24, 2002 (Las Vegas, NV) (Possibly March 4, 2002 in LA). Forgotten has been performed with an extended beat intro (and then with guitar in 2002) at all of its live performances. It was an early staple in the setlist and was played very often from 2000 (before Linkin Park) until the end of 2002. However, it did not reappear in 2003 as it was dropped to make room for Meteora songs, and it has not been touched since. The band often extended the bridge of the song to get the crowd to yell "back" (as you might have seen on the Rock am Ring 2001 performance). Forgotten might have been THE most anticipated song of the setlist at Download since it was be the band's largest live liberation in its history.

Cure For The Itch: Joe and Mike's instrumental on Hybrid Theory is a track that has never been performed in FULL live. The 2000 and 2001 version of the song was shortened (almost always used to open a show, with a rare exception or two) quite a bit. In 2007, a remix of the track was added to the setlist to open the encore in Set B before QWERTY. This version stuck around until the end of 2008 and was used twice more in 2011 before the Asia Tour for the Las Vegas show and the LA Mayan show. However, the song has not been touched since. The last performance of the remix version was on August 31, 2011 and the last performance of the short studio version was June 4, 2000 in London.

Pushing Me Away: The last performance of the studio version of Pushing Me Away was on August 21, 2008 in Maryland Heights, MO on Projekt Revolution 2008. The studio version was played in 2001 and 2002, but was dropped from the setlists until the summer tour in Europe in 2008, when it was resurrected. One of the encores on that tour featured Pushing Me Away, Breaking The Habit, A Place For My Head, and One Step Closer. Pretty solid, eh? The remix, P5hng Me A*wy, was added in 2003 and stuck around for a full year (March 2004), and it remains a fan favorite to this day. Mike and Chester started performing a piano version of the song in 2006 (the LPU 6.0 CD has that version) in Japan and that version stuck around until the end of Projekt Revolution 2008. No version of the song has been played since.

Show

Rehearsals for Download began months before the show took place. Due to Linkin Park replacing their entire backline and an incredible amount of gear, they needed quite a while to rehearse and to get everything set for the tour. The gear replacement plus the Download rehearsals were the reason the band didn't work out more than three new songs (Guilty All The Same, Wastelands, and Until It's Gone) from The Hunting Party for the live shows to start the touring cycle. While none of the songs were extremely hard to "relearn", it did take LP a while to nail the set down in rehearsals.

Interestingly and to the surprise of many fans, the band did not "road test" any of the rarer songs beforehand to warm them up for Download, like By Myself, Forgotten, or Pushing Me Away.

To start the show, Mike walked out on Papercut with a red wig on, which was given to him by LPU member Graham Hatton at the LPU Meet & Greet and can be seen in the LPTV episode for the tour. There was no actual intro to the show, just a video played over the screen of the recent "Road To Download" episode of LPTV.

Before Crawling, Mike remarked "This is a special night for us, we've never done this before." He also mentioned on the intro of A Place For My Head that the song was used to open the setlists up for the band back in the day (2000-2001 era).

Shinoda paused before the second set to joke with the crowd, saying "If this was 2001 we'd be done now!" He then showed the large crowd a finished copy of their new album and proceeded to throw it into the crowd.

2014.06.14 Download Festival Setlist:
01. Papercut
02. One Step Closer (Ext. Outro)
03. With You
04. Points Of Authority
05. Crawling
06. Runaway
07. By Myself
08. In The End
09. A Place For My Head
10. Forgotten
11. Cure For The Itch (Full Song Live Debut; 2014 Version)
12. Pushing Me Away
13. Mashup Intro #1 (w/ The Catalyst, The Requiem, 1stp Klosr)
14. Guilty All The Same
15. Given Up (Ext. Outro w/ Extra Note)
16. Wastelands (Hard Start (No Album Version Intro))
17. Burn It Down
18. Waiting For The End (Apaches Intro w/ Until It Breaks Verse 2; Wall Of Noise Outro)
19. Numb (Numb/Encore Intro/Outro + Verse 1 Guitar)
20. Until It's Gone (Ext. The Catalyst + No More Sorrow Mashup Intro)
21. Lost In The Echo (Shortened (No First Chorus or Second Verse); Drum Transition Outro)
22. New Divide (Shortened (No First Chorus or Second Verse))
23. What I've Done (Ext. Guitar Solo Bridge; Ext. Sing-a-long Outro)
24. Bleed It Out (Ext. Intro; Ext. Bridge w/ Drum Solo + The Catalyst Sing-a-long; Ext. Ending)

By Myself was last performed live on October 29, 2003 in Seoul, South Korea. Mike read lyrics from the stage for both By Myself and Forgotten. Forgotten was last confirmed to have been performed on February 24, 2002 in Las Vegas, but the band performed a show at the House Of Blues in Los Angeles on March 4, 2002 for a benefit concert. The setlist for that show is unknown, but it was likely that the Projekt Revolution 2002 headlining setlist (which included Forgotten) was performed at that show. The band messed up the beginning of the song, with Chester and Mike both skipping the first line. Mike messed up part of the second verse.

Cure For The Itch was last performed on August 31, 2011 in Los Angeles. That version of the song (performed throughout Europe and North America in summer 2008 as well as for two shows in August 2011) was a remix. The studio version was last performed on June 4, 2001 in London, but all performances in 2000 and 2001 were shortened. This was the first time that the FULL studio version of Cure For The Itch was performed live. Mike rerecorded the vocal samples in the song for this performance and Joe added a few more improv beats over the song. The ending fade-out was lot longer than the studio version and past performances.

Pushing Me Away' was last performed on August 21, 2008 in Maryland Heights, MO. The piano version of the song was last performed two shows later on August 24, 2008 in Woodlands, TX.

After Hybrid Theory, eleven more songs were performed to close out the show. Wastelands was performed with a hard start to the song due to it being the first performance without it coming out of the end of Runaway like all of the prior shows in 2014. This is the first full show that Faint has not been played at since the beginning of the LP Underground Tour in 2003 when it was debuted live for the first time. It is also the first time that just one song from Meteora (Numb) was on the setlist for a show since the touring cycle began for that album in February 2003.

While he has since praised the crowd on Twitter, a month after the show, Chester told NME in his first interview since Download that "outdoor festivals killed the live experience." Many took this as a direct comment about Download Festival. He added, "Rock'n'roll is not meant to be played with the sun shining on your face. It can be done, but it's done begrudgingly. Inside. Dark, lights, controlled environment. Always better." These correlate with his comments about Projekt Revolution not returning partially because he isn't a fan of the opening bands performing outside in the daylight.

Release

Two days before the show, Linkin Park updated the preorders for The Hunting Party by adding a digital download of the Download Festival show.

FOR A LIMITED TIME ALSO GET HYBRID THEORY - LIVE AT DOWNLOAD FESTIVAL 2014

LINKIN PARK is playing their seminal first album, Hybrid Theory, front to back LIVE for the first time ever at Download Festival 2014 in the UK. As a thank you to loyal fans, the audio from this special performance is being made available for those fans who can't be there.

ALL OFFERS BELOW WILL COME WITH THIS SPECIAL CONCERT EVENT if you order by 6/22

The download arrived on August 11th, 2014, just before Carnivores Tour began. The audio was mixed by Ethan Mates and went through significant editing beforehand, more so than previous DSP (Digital Souvenir Package) releases by LP. For example, Rob's cymbal taps before Pushing Me Away were removed, the steel sample on Points Of Authority from the studio version was added to the first part of the song, etc. However, Mike's lyric blunder on the intro of By Myself was untouched.

This is the first official live recording release of Forgotten by Linkin Park. Fans who received the email for downloading the show were able to choose between FLAC and MP3, and as a bonus received a download link for the official FLAC version of The Hunting Party.

Track Listing

1. Papercut
2. One Step Closer
3. With You
4. Points Of Authority
5. Crawling
6. Runaway
7. By Myself
8. In The End
9. A Place For My Head
10. Forgotten
11. Cure For The Itch
12. Pushing Me Away

Songs After the Show

In an interview just before the show, Mike said that "Crawling will be the first song to go to make room for new songs this summer." A few weeks later, Chester said that it was possible that the rarer songs from Download "could stick around" in the setlists for Carnivores Tour. However, just as Carnivores was kicking off, Mike said that there were only "minor changes" to the setlist. Instead of opting to include By Myself, Forgotten, or Pushing Me Away into a setlist, Linkin Park decided to debut Rebellion and Final Masquerade, and keep the setlists mostly unchanged.

However, With You was an exception. While it was shortened for the European Tour in 2014, it was it was played in full in Set B on Carnivores Tour starting in August.

In May 2015, the full version of Papercut was played for the first time since Download Festival. In June 2015, Crawling was performed in full for the first time since Download Festival, over one year prior. It was previously shortened and sped up in an abbreviated version for the remainder of 2014 and some of 2015. A Place For My Head made two more appearances in 2014 - once at the surprise Vans Warped Tour show about a week after Download and once for the LPU at the LPU Summit in Amsterdam in November. While LP added it to Set A and Set B in January 2015 for their North American Tour, the tour ended up being canceled after three shows. A Place For My Head was later performed again on September 6, 2015, in Rome, as a crowd request. The song since Download has been played a total of six times (two in 2014, four in 2015).

To this day, By Myself, Forgotten, Cure For The Itch, and Pushing Me Away have not been performed live since Download.