| "So Far Away" | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Song by Linkin Park | |
| from the album LP Underground 12 | |
| Working title: | Hurry / Pointillism / Knight Rider |
| Recorded: | 1999 |
| Released: | November 16, 2012 |
| Format: | Digital, CD |
| Length: | 2:53 |
| Stems: | Akai MPC 1000 |
| Tempo: | 117 |
| Samples: | Björk - All Neon Like Lionel Richie - My Destiny Marilyn Manson - Little Horn Nine Inch Nails - The Perfect Drug (Nine Inch Nails Remix) The Smashing Pumpkins - 17 Tori Amos - China |
| Writer: | Linkin Park |
| Producer: | Mike Shinoda |
| Label: | Machine Shop Records |
| LP Underground 12 tracklist | |
"So Far Away" is the sixth track on LP Underground 12, a fan club exclusive compilation album by Linkin Park. The song is a demo recorded when Linkin Park was still called Hybrid Theory. It is notable for being the only known pre-Minutes To Midnight song where Mike Shinoda sings (instead of rapping) lead vocals for the entire song.
Background
In his One Step Closer: From Xero to #1: Becoming Linkin Park book, Jeff Blue describes a song called "Pointillism" dating from November 17, 1998, a period when the band was still called Xero and had Mark Wakefield as their lead singer: "Next was "p o i n t i l l i s m", which was something Mike was creating for a soundtrack. His description was that he felt very alone while writing the song during the transitional period when he started concentrating on music. He'd just gotten a new job and was spread so thin that he didn't have time to hang out with his friends. He wrote that he needed to work hard, or sacrifice, in order to succeed. He had crossed out that last sentence in his notes. I wanted to know what he was thinking. What I did know, was that Mike was intense, driven, and focused."[1][2] Mike's description read: "I felt very alone when I wrote this song; I believe it was during the transitional period where I stopped hanging around with friends as much and started concentrating on music more. I had just gotten my job, and was spread so thin between the two that I just didn't have time. I am generally a person who needs a LOT of interaction with people, so adjusting to the lifestyle I'm living has been really hard, and I'm still not completely used to it. But I need to work hard in order to succeed." Thanks to Jeff Blue showing the lyrics to the song to LPLive in 2024, it was discovered that "Pointillism" had the same lyrics as "So Far Away".[3] The song appeared on later demo CDs under the title "Knight Rider".
"So Far Away" was released in November 2012 on the LP Underground 12 CD. On the booklet, Brad Delson wrote: "This one has a special place in my heart. Part of the inspiration behind this song was an attempt to play with a particular back-and-forth song structure. Also, a foreshadowing of Shinoda's melodic facility."
In August 2020 when asked about the song on Twitch, Mike said, "You know, actually that song, I remember that was a time when we were seeing what we could experiment with, in the early days of Linkin Park. And try and figure out... "Can Chester rap? Can Mike sing? And you know, can we mix up ways we perform the vocals?" And so yeah, we had this demo called "So Far Away." It was ok, it didn't make Hybrid Theory, it was a cool experiment. I thought the song came out pretty good. I think at one point we tried to revisit it and see if it turned into a song, but it didn't make the cut."[4]
Although the track title says "1998", the song features Chester Bennington doing backing vocals, meaning it was recorded after 1998.
Some elements of the song were re-used in the creation of "Soundtrack".
Demos
"Hurry" was released on April 15, 2016 as a downloadable bonus track of the LP Underground 15 CD. An LPU exclusive video about the song was released on the same day. In the video, Mike said: "This release is a song from around 1999. The demo is called "Hurry", because the song never got words or lyrics or anything. What's interesting, I think, about this track is that it was basically completely made on an MPC. At that time, the idea of really blending hip hop and rock was still very new and the technology then wasn't what it was today, so I was trying to figure out ways to add this hip hop flavor to the music creation process, so rather than recording the drums and the guitars the way you would normally record them, I was recording them straight into the MPC, and then I was programming them out inside the box. In this song, all the drum sounds you hear, all guitar sounds you hear are actually basically being played off of pads. Brad's playing "Duh duh duh, dun duh duh duh, duh duh", and then that would be one button. All the drum parts are actually sampled from individual hits by Rob on drums mic'd up in our practice studio. I think it was after "A Place For My Head" and probably before "With You" and "Runaway", so definitely the rawness of this track and also the evolution hasn't really happened yet. But for those of you that have heard earlier Xero demos, Linkin Park's original name, there [are] demos called "Carousel" and "Part Of Me", and if you play this song next to those then I think that you can really hear that's the era of the band that this came from."
An alternative version of the demo was featured in the 2003 LPTV episode "Rock The Mullet". The released version was featured in the "Making Of In the End Video" on Frat Party At The Pankake Festival and in the LPU exclusive video "Drumstick Secret With Rob", released on April 1, 2016.
The piano in "Hurry" was sampled from "17" by The Smashing Pumpkins. The demo also includes samples of "Little Horn" by Marilyn Manson, "The Perfect Drug (Nine Inch Nails Remix)" by Nine Inch Nails, "China" by Tori Amos, "My Destiny" by Lionel Richie, "All Neon Like" by Björk, "Somewhere Else To Be" by Vast and "Appels + Oranjes" by The Smashing Pumpkins. The latter two are only present in "Hurry2".[5] Although not present in the LPU version of "Hurry", later versions of the demo use some samples and riffs from "So Far Away".
Versions
Note: Only the date of the very first release of each version is listed.
| Title | Album | Length | Recorded | Released | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| So Far Away (Unreleased 1998) | LP Underground 12 | 2:53 | 1999 | November 16, 2012 | |
| Hurry (1999 Demo) | LP Underground 15 | 2:34 | 1999 | April 15, 2016 |
|
| Hurry | Hybrid Party Of A Thousand Things | 4:15 | 1999 |
| |
| Hurry2 | Hybrid Party Of A Thousand Things | 3:05 | 1999 |
|
Personnel
Linkin Park
- Chester Bennington
- Rob Bourdon
- Brad Delson
- Joseph Hahn
- Phoenix
- Mike Shinoda
Production
LPU 12
- All songs written by Linkin Park
- Mastered by: Mike Bozzi at Bernie Grundman Mastering
LPU 15
- Mike Shinoda: mixing
- Mike Bozzi: mastering
Lyrics
Save me now
From this mess that I've created
All the souls have gone
And I'm stranded here with doubt and fear alone
Tell me how
I'm in fault for all this madness
I don't know what's wrong
But I cannot help but try to push it
So far away
(And so near to the inside of me)
So hard to say
(I don't want to say it anyway)
Save me now
I'm the mess I have created
And my soul has gone
For some reason all I do is push it
So far away
(And so near to the inside of me)
So hard to say
(I don't want to say it anyway)
So far away
It's so far away
(And so near to the inside of me)
So hard to say
(I don't want to say it anyway)
So far away
(And so near to the inside of me)
So hard to say
(I don't want to say it anyway)
Gallery
-
LPU 12 -
LPU 15 -
Hurry
External Links
References
- ↑ "pointillism" (Xero/Mike Shinoda Demo) - Everything Linkin Park - Linkin Park Live, May 03, 2021
- ↑ Blue, Jeff (2020). One Step Closer: From Xero to #1: Becoming Linkin Park. Permuted Press. ASIN: B08LMZLXTJ
- ↑ Jeff Blue | #linkinpark #explore part2 of when @lplive visited me & I share some of the #original #lyrics & the band’s #inspiration behind the #songs... | Instagram, December 26, 2024
- ↑ Twitch: Mike Shinoda - 8.24 / I'm back!, August 24, 2020
- ↑ Technique Samples - Everything Linkin Park - Linkin Park Live, April 21, 2021