Joe Hahn

Joseph Hahn, born on March 15, 1977, is an American musician, DJ, producer, director, and visual artist best known for his work in the band Linkin Park. Hahn, also widely known as Mr. Hahn or Chairman Hahn, joined the band during its Xero days and has served an evolving role within the band over the years, not only performing and recording with them but also directing and producing most of their music videos.

Outside of Linkin Park, Mr. Hahn has directed two films: the short-film The Seed (2006) and 2015's MALL, the latter of which he also contributed to the score of. Hahn has directed music videos for other bands, as well. He has also made a number of appearances at events around the world on his own, as a DJ for parties and similar gatherings.

Early Life

Joe Hahn was born in Dallas, Texas, but moved to Glendale when he was 8. Like Mike and Dave, Joe had been a classically trained musician and brought new capacities for sounds to the band. Joe played violin in school for a few years and then played guitar for a bit before he started getting serious about DJ-ing in high school. He says, "Around high school I loved music, hip-hop and all the stuff going on in KROQ back when people listened to the radio. I was DJing and I got into scratching and all that. The idea of a sound wave on a record and being able to manipulate it with speed and turning the volume up and down and having that turn into something totally different was really new and experimental at the time. I love the idea of just twisting sounds and manipulating beats; the idea of distortion and where that can go and how powerful sounds can be." He started off with drum machines and turntables, laying down demos on a four-track tape recorder, until it became obvious that he would have to turn to computers to fully develop sounds and create more atmospheric music.

Career

Linkin Park

Since their beginning, Xero knew they would need a DJ in order to perform their songs live, but the DJ would need to be someone who could handle more than just scratches. “I’ve always wanted our show to be energetic. We use drum pads, samplers and turntables with original vinyl to perform all the sample parts live on stage, which I think brings an exciting uniqueness to the songs,” Joe explained. Mike met Joe when both were studying illustration at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. They had similar interests and shared a love for music, especially hip hop. Because of how expensive the school was, Joe only went there for about a year before he started working as a Special Effects designer/illustrator, dealing primarily with character design and storyboarding for television and movies such as Phantoms, Virus, Sphere, X-Files, Dune, The Outer Limits, and Species. A couple years after their initial meeting, Mike approached Joe about a project named Xero. "Joe came in like right when we started rehearsing as a band," Rob explained. Joe Hahn met Brad Delson at Jeff's birthday party on November 20, 1999, where Delson gave Joe many tips.

In 1998, Joe worked at the Urban Network magazine where both him and Mike contributed with artwork and original Xero songs for Lee Cadena's Rapology compilation series which promoted new and upcoming hip-hop artists. Cadena founded LCM, his own artist management and development company, and worked with Xero introducing them to music venues such as Whisky A Go Go, The Troubadour and The Mint. He also helped Joe improving his skills by getting him with some of the Beat Junkies. That year Mike and Joe had a photoshoot with Howard Min, an LA-based commercial photographer and creative film-maker, at the Los Angeles River. He said, "i met mike shinonda a handful of times - he was a fun, chill guy. joe was a very good friend since the 7th grade".

After playing a wide number of showcases and going through a number of name changes over the course of three years, Xero became Linkin Park in 2000 after recruiting vocalist Chester Bennington in 1999. Linkin Park worked throughout 1999 and early 2000 to complete work on Hybrid Theory. The album name is derived from the previous alias the band had. The name still matched the concept of the sound of the album, so they went with it. Hybrid Theory went onto achieve incredible worldwide success, propelling Linkin Park into fame and taking its members along with it.

Mr. Hahn's role as DJ for the band was most prominent during their first two album cycles, where his scratching and samples on tracks like 'Don't Stay' and 'Numb' were pivotal to their performance. He took an executive role on their first remix album Reanimation, where he was credited as Chairman Hahn and produced remixed 'Wth>You' and 'Kyur4 Th Ich.' His scratching performances on records subsided over the years, Hahn opting to perform more background samples and key samples in favor of the music. Onstage, Hahn can often be seen with a camera or his phone taking pictures of the crowd or his fellow band members.

Joe Hahn has directed a large majority of the band's music videos, from their very first video for 'One Step Closer' to his most recent, 2024's 'Friendly Fire.' Hahn had always been interested in the art of storytelling through his love of comicbooks, ultimately first manifesting itself through the band's videos. Speaking on how he began working on the videos for the band, Mr. Hahn explained, "I just asserted myself into the process because I found it very interesting. We did a couple of videos with a couple of directors but I realized, in order to have our voice come across, I would have to direct it myself. That is when I started directing the music videos."

Directing

After learning to direct music videos for Linkin Park, Mr. Hahn began to develop his directing career in further directions. Joe went on to direct a number of music videos for bands and artists outside of Linkin Park, including Story Of The Year's 'Anthem Of Our Dying Day' in 2004, Alkaline Trio's 'Time To Waste' in 2005, and Steve Aoki featuring BTS' 'Waste It On Me' in 2018. He was also responsible for the video for The X-Ecutioner's 'It's Goin' Down,' on which both he and Mike Shinoda are featured artists on.

In 2006, Mr. Hahn began diving into filmmaking with his first short-film, The Seed. The film follows the story of a homeless veteran living along the banks of the Los Angeles River. It debuted at the Busan International Film Festival in South Korea in 2006. Hahn won a number of awards at film festivals for the film, namely "Outstanding Cinematography Award" at the Veneration Film Festival in Newport Beach, Florida in 2007 and "Best Short Short" at the Festival Film Festival in Denver, Colorado in 2008. Hahn said of the film, "The SEED is a 12 minute short film that I made in between records. It deals with deception of the mind." Around this time, Mr. Hahn obtained the rights to make a film adaptation of China Miéville's novel Rat King, but in 2007 he claimed that project had become inactive.

Hahn returned to film directing in 2014 with his feature-length debut, MALL. Adapted from the Eric Bogosian novel of the same name, the film depicts the unusual events at a mall following a shooting. Describing his vision of the "mall," Hahn explained, "Well, for the story, the mall represents – almost like the town hall of a city, in the traditional sense. That’s where people just congregate. And I think the reasons why people come – in different ways, [it’s because] it makes them feel good, whether it’s shopping, it makes them look pretty, or they want sugar, or a way to escape in some kind of way. But this shows the people that go to the mall to do whatever they’re doing, but it shows the emptiness of their souls. It’s an analogy of them trying to fill their emptiness with even more emptiness. So that’s what the mall really represents." The music for the film was created by the majority of the members of Linkin Park (Chester Bennington, Mike Shinoda, Dave Farrell, and Hahn himself) and collaborator Alec Puro. Some of the songs from this soundtrack were taken from previous Linkin Park album sessions.

DJ Appearances

For more information, see Year:OtherMembers#JoeHahn

Starting in 2011, Joe Hahn started making solo appearances as a DJ at certain nightclubs and events. His very first known DJ, however, set goes back all the way to November 2002, where he and Mos Def joined Pharaohe Monch for a DJ set on the SmokeOut Festival MainStage before the Circle Jerks took the stage. Joe's first official solo appearance was at the HAZE Nightclub in Las Vegas, Nevada in February 2011, as an official after-party for the Linkin Park show there earlier in the night. He performed another set at the same venue the following March. Hahn would play similar Linkin Park after-party events in 2015 on the band's The Hunting Party Chinese Tour.

Mr. Hahn made multiple more appearances between 2013 and 2019, largely at corporate events. Some of these include the Sebago x Linkin Park boot collaboration launch event in New York City in 2013, the Toon Workshop Tokyo Launch Event in 2015, and two sets for the Singapore F1 Grand Prix in 2018. During his sets, Mr. Hahn would play a mixture of hip-hop, rock, pop, and electronic music, including some Linkin Park tracks and remixes.