Get Me Gone

Background

In late 2006, Clear Channel Music posted the entire The Rising Tied album complete with commentaries from Mike Shinoda before each song. On "Get Me Gone", he said, "‘Get Me Gone’ is a funny song, because a lot of Linkin Park fans can relate to the stories in it. I remember when we were first getting started there was a guy in our label, who, although he really wanted to understand the band, he just kinda… there were certain times that he just didn’t get it and he wanted us to have a gimmick, uhm, he wanted our DJ to wear a cowboy hat and a lab coat, for example, as a gimmick. He didn’t like my rapping, he wanted us to be more straight-ahead rock band, all stuff that you know, just didn’t make sense for us, it’s not who we are, so lucky for us, the things worked out as far as we put out a record after that and it did well, uh, that way now we get to do what we want to do on the record. Uhm, also there was a time, when people said, that the band was manufactured, and obviously that’s ridiculous, you know, we’ve know each other for years and years and we make all this music, you know, we write all this stuff ourselves, so, I just wanted to address those things in a song. "

In a Fort Minor Militia chat, Mike said, "get me gone is a little glimpse into what goes on behind the scenes. the other guys laughed out loud when i played that song" He added the reason that he wrote it was "to put the story out there. and to let journalists know that i'm tired of being misquoted. i do email interviews as much as possible now :0"

When the album was released, Mike said, "When a journalist minces my words and substitutes different things for word I chose, I don't like it. They wouldn't want me doing it to them, so I figure I ought to make everything easier on all of us and just write it down for them. We had a label guy who told me I should rap, that I should play keyboards because someone told him they didn't like my style. Then he lied to everyone and said he wrote part of our first album, when he never even wrote one note or word. It's not a commentary on the whole label at all. Don't get it confused, this was one guy. I think most people at the label have really good hearts and work very hard. The people who are really regretting things the fifty or so people from other labels who we tried to get meetings with, but they didn't want to sign us!"

The person in question appears to be David Kahne, who was Vice President of A&R at Warner Bros. Records when Hybrid Theory was being recorded. Mike Shinoda on his blog in 2008 (about the leak of "Plaster") said, "david was one of the people who wasn’t 100% impressed with our band and our sound..." David wanted Mike out of the band at the time and didn't like his rapping.

In a May 2020 stream, Mike was asked about the demo lyrics for "In The End" (at that time called "Untitled") and why they were changed. When Mike explained the reason why, he ended up revealing that the story told in "Get Me Gone" was specifically written about the sessions for "In The End." He said, "I don't remember who suggested we write new lyrics. At that point, we were operating on intuition. We didn't know what we were doing. We just had feelings about like what to try. I think it was probably like, "hey this is going to be an important song on the record. It's probably going to be a single, so we should probably try to beat the verses." And when I did the final version, I knew that like, I felt that they were better. And everybody kind of agreed. It was that interplay between me and Chester. It kind of the simplicity of it. The original version was a lot more abstract and a lot more rappy. It might be out there on the Internet somewhere I guess. I will say that I remember our A&R guy from the label coming in and trying to like, tell me what to do and produce it. And that was one of those moments when we knew the whole recording process might fall apart. And we were in full-on fight then with him and a couple people at the label for our souls, for our identity. Because that was THE song he kept coming in and saying he played it for like, whoever, that rapper, and he didn't like it, so we should change it. And I was like, we like it though and this is us. I respect that rapper but I don't care what he thinks of my stuff. He doesn't talk about the things we talk about. He raps about rappy things. I talk about real life and emotions, of course he doesn't like it. That couple of weeks was when he started going to Chester and was like "You could have the whole band to yourself, you could be the star, and you could ditch these guys." He went to me and told me I could play keyboard - that was that moment. We were getting verses to In the End right. Very tense time."

The person Mike is referring to with this quote appears to be Jeff Blue, who was the messenger between David Kahne at Warner Bros. Records and Linkin Park, telling him to change the rapping on the song and challenging him to do better.

Versions

Note: Only the date of the very first release of each version is listed.

Title	Album	Length	Recorded	Released	Notes
Get Me Gone	The Rising Tied	1:56	2005	November 22, 2005	Features vocals by John Legend. Contains a reference to Handsome Boy Modeling School's "Holy Calamity (Bear Witness II) (feat. DJ Quest & DJ Shadow)".
Get Me Gone	The Rising Tied (Non-PA Version)	1:56	2005	November 22, 2005	Different vocal take. Different lyrics.
Get Me Gone	Instrumental Album: The Rising Tied	1:38	2005		Official instrumental version.

Lyrics

Album Version

"The dude, he said that, like, when we were making the first Linkin Park record
He was like,
'Yeah you know, I don't know about the rapping like, I don't know if it's... maybe you should just be a rock band.'
You know what I mean, like, trying to change us,
Like they signed us as an act, like what we sound like, and then he's like (Yeah)
'Oh I don't know maybe you should just play keyboard'."

Before the first song that you heard me on,
There were people already tryin' to get me gone,
Tellin' me to quit rapping, just play the keys, that
"My band had a singer", "They didn't need me",
But my band had my back,
So we did the tracks, put out the album,
And the talk went flat,
It was funny at first, but then the humour faded,
When some magazines printed that our label made us,
We were too be good to be true,
Some were saying ghost writers were writin' all that we do,
So we had to disprove it, we spelled it out,
To the detail, how we do it, when we're making this music,
After that I made it a rule:
I only do e-mail responses to print interviews,
Because these people love to put a twist to your words,
To infer that you said something fucking absurd.
Oh, did I lose you at 'infer'?
Not used to hearing a verse that uses over first grade vocabulary words?
People used to 'infer' that we were manufactured,
Now I've got the interviews on file,
Which people said what, which number to dial,
So now every enemy screaming insanity,
All they're ever gonna be's another big fan of me, (Bitch!)

(*Laughter*)
"Can you believe that? Like that's crazy,
It sounds crazy right, like this point,
At this point you're thinking...you hear that you're like,
'That guy..is out of his mind!', But honestly at that point...
Like besides the fact he wanted me to just play keyboards or whatever,
Didn't want me to rap..he was like 'Maybe Joe Hahn..should, um...wear a lab coat, and a cowboy hat on stage',
Like when we play? ('yo?!')
I swear to god he was crazy!
('So Joe..in a cowboy hat?!')
Yeah, and later on he claimed he wrote all our songs,
So yeah..that was..that was really nice."

Non-PA Version

"The dude, he said that, like, when we were making the first Linkin Park record
He was like,
'Yeah you know, I don't know about the rapping like, I don't know if it's... maybe you should just be a rock band.'
You know what I mean, like, trying to change us,
Like they signed us as an act, like what we sound like, and then he's like (Yeah)
'Oh I don't know maybe you should just play keyboard'."

Before the first song that you heard me on,
There were people already tryin' to get me gone,
Tellin' me to quit rapping, just play the keys, that
"My band had a singer", "They didn't need me",
But my band had my back,
So we did the tracks, put out the album,
And the talk went flat,
It was funny at first, but then the humour faded,
When some magazines printed that our label made us,
We were too be good to be true,
Some were saying ghost writers were writin' all that we do,
So we had to disprove it, we spelled it out,
To the detail, how we do it, when we're making this music,
After that I made it a rule:
I only do e-mail responses to print interviews,
Because these people love to put a twist to your words,
To infer that you said something that was absurd.
Oh, did I lose you at 'infer'?
Not used to hearing a verse that uses over first grade vocabulary words?
People used to 'infer' that we were manufactured,
Now I've got the interviews on file,
Which people said what, which number to dial,
So now every enemy screaming insanity,
All they're ever gonna be's another big fan of me, (Yeah!)

(*Laughter*)
"Can you believe that? Like that's crazy,
It sounds crazy right, like this point,
At this point you're thinking...you hear that you're like,
'That guy..is out of his mind!', But honestly at that point...
Like besides the fact he wanted me to just play keyboards or whatever,
Didn't want me to rap..he was like 'Maybe Joe Hahn..should, um...wear a lab coat, and a cowboy hat on stage',
Like when we play? ('yo?!')
I swear to god he was crazy!
('So Joe..in a cowboy hat?!')
Yeah, and later on he claimed he wrote all our songs,
So yeah..that was..that was really nice."