Brad Delson

Bradford Phillip Delson, born on December 1, 1977, is an American musician, songwriter, and music producer. Delson is best known as the lead guitarist for American rock band Linkin Park, co-founding the band with Mike Shinoda and Mark Wakefield in 1996. Brad Delson helped shaped the band's sonic textures with his distinctive guitar playing, later serving as one of the band's chief creative forces. In 2024, Delson stepped away from live performances but remained as the band's in-studio guitarist.

While Linkin Park has been Delson's main endeavor, he has also helped write and produce a number of tracks by other artists.

Early Life

Brad Delson was born and raised in Agoura Hilla, California, attending Agoura Hills High School where he met Mike Shinoda. He has been interested in music as far back as he can remember. He played trumpet in his elementary school orchestra, and started learning to play guitar with his guitar teacher, Keith, when he was 12 or 13, taking lessons for about 5 years before he started teaching guitar and playing with friends in local bands. Mike Shinoda said, "When I was a kid one of my best friends lived right across from Brad, and all you could ever hear coming from his bedroom was Metallica, Metallica and more Metallica. If you were lucky you might hear some Exodus, or maybe some Sepultura, but that was it - the guy was an obsessive metalhead." In June 2020, Mike elaborated when asked about his first impression of Brad, "Brad lived next door to my friend Mark. And their bedroom windows were directly across from each other. And it was almost like a TV sitcom. He'd like play guitar in his room and you'd hear him shredding like Metallica. But it was always that really funny thing, you could out Mark's window and you could talk to Brad. I didn't know Brad at that point, he'd just like yell out the window and talk to Brad. Mark would. He seemed like a cool dude, though."

Brad attended the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), studying communications. Here, he met Dave Farrell, being roommates. The duo were playing small jazz events together.

Career

Linkin Park

Brad's first band was The Pricks. He was neighbors with Mark Wakefield in high school and the two of them were in the band together. Mike noted, "they were both in several bands before Xero. Mark and Brad were in one called The Pricks, they were this awesome rap-metal band. I loved their stuff." Their most famous show happened in June of 1995, during the summer, at Douglas Robb's parent's backyard. They played as an opening act for Hoobastank's very first show with around 150 people in attendance. Members of both bands had been friends since long before The Pricks was formed and to prepare for the show they stole stages from their local high school in the middle of the night, set them up in Doug's backyard and hired security, charging a dollar for admission.

Mike Giangreco, a local promoter, met Hoobastank through Incubus and booked shows for them. Hoobastank then introduced him to The Pricks. Besides giving Brad jobs as a bouncer at The Roxy and Whisky A Go Go and as a waiter in his restaurant, Giangreco heard The Pricks' cassette demo and, although it was pretty raw, decided to work with them in the hope they would develop their sound and get better. The band played at many frat parties and he would let them borrow sound systems to play shows with the condition that they would carry everything by themselves and bring it back to his garage afterwards. The band would also spend a lot of time in local record stores searching for new releases and "showcasing their musical talents".

Relative Degree played a show at The Roxy Theatre on May 17, 1996 before disbanding.

Brad met Rob Bourdon through the bass player of a local band called Karma, Dave Garrett. Brad and Rob, along with Dave Garrett, then started a band called Relative Degree. They had a dream of playing one show at The Roxy Theatre, so they set it as their big goal. The Roxy was a popular club for up and coming bands located on Sunset Blvd. in West Hollywood, California. The band wrote 12 songs and rehearsed for a year before playing the show at The Roxy which finally happened on May 17, 1996.

Brad said, "People laugh at me when I say this but my goal was - as a musician - to play a show at our local club, the Roxy, in L.A. in high school for my friends. I did it. Now I say this, and it may sound like bullshit, everything that's happened from that point on is all gravy. We're really proud of the music we've made, and for everyone that gets to hear it, that's more love for us. We're totally happy." After playing only one show, the members of Relative Degree started losing focus and the band eventually broke up.

Although Mike never joined the band, he would occasionally put samples into their songs and watch them practice. He developed a strong friendship with Brad when they were both in 8th grade. "I loved the drums so much growing up, just listening to them. The reason that I got to know the Linkin Park guys because in high school I was really good friends... I started it with my friend Mark and we were both in art class together every day, we hung out outside of school all the time. I always gave him rap recommendations. He was in a band with these other guys from school (Relative Degree) that I didn't really know, and the drummer was from another school. And I would literally go watch them practice just to watch the drummer play. And then that ended up being Rob and our guitarist Brad. Eventually it was Mark on vocals but that didn't work out and we parted ways and found Chester. People always think "wouldn't suck to be the guy that didn't make it Linkin Park?" but he's a successful music manager and a good friend of mine."

Mike and Mark have been friends since they were 12 and they loved a lot of the same groups. After both graduated high school, they started a new band called "Xero" (pronounced "zero") in the winter of 1995/1996. "We named it Xero with an X because we thought it looked cool," explained Mike. At that point, Mike was mainly doing beats for various hip hop acts (and for himself as well), but decided he wanted to experiment with mixing different styles of music together. After one or two writing sessions, they enlisted the help of Brad and recorded a demo containing 4 songs with a few of them having guitars done by him. The artwork was a Xerox photo of what appeared to be a mountain and the inside featured a faded photo of four band members and a close-up photo of Mike Shinoda. The tracklist featured "Fuse", an untitled track, "Stick And Move" and "Reading My Eyes". They sent it to an A&R representative from an indie label/publishing company whose mailing address was included in one of the CDs they owned and got a phone call from Paul Pontius, the representative from Immortal Records, a day later asking them to come over. He was shocked to learn the duo recorded a professional sounding demo on a 4-track recorder in Mike's bedroom and encouraged them to put a band together and start playing shows. Rob said, "we haven't really figured out the exact date, but it was somewhere in ‘97 that we came together, most of us came together."

Brad was in his first year of college when he attended a class taught by Jeff Blue, who had just signed Korn and Limp Bizkit. Jeff was also developing a young woman named Macy Gray and told everybody in the class he was looking for an intern to help build her career and help him showcase artists, and Brad volunteered for the job. The next morning, Jeff walked in his office and his sister told him there was some kid waiting to speak to him (even though he had no appointments). He then saw Brad spinning on his seat, told Brad to don't ever sit on his seat again and asked him to talk about himself. He told Jeff about his dream of becoming a lawyer and about his band that he was developing. Brad then pointed to a big Limp Bizkit poster Jeff had in his office, which he was really proud of, and said "That band is not that great. I may have a band that's better than that." Jeff liked his confidence and hired Brad as his intern. Funny enough, Jeff had been playing the band's demos for DJ Lethal of Limp Bizkit from the very beginning. He met Joe Hahn at Jeff's birthday party on November 20, 1999 and gave Joe several tips. In addition, DJ Lethal said, "I helped linkin park when the were hybrid theory,mike shinoda came to my house and I gave him music plugins and adive and sounds."

Xero played their first shows as a band on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, with the first one taking place on November 14, 1997 at the Whisky A Go Go, playing before SX-10 and System Of A Down. Rob explained how they got in the bill, "Basically, with clubs of that magnitude, you pay to play. If you can sell enough tickets, you can play. But, actually, we made a little bit of money, because we could sell a lot of tickets. At that time, all of us were either in school, or just out of school. I was in between high school and college. So, we had a lot of friends at school, and all of us would each try to sell 50 to 75 tickets. We would just go crazy, and try to sell them to everyone; family members, it didn't matter. We had to sell them to everyone just to play there."

Talking about the show, Mike said, "I remember that gig. I was wearing the most ridiculous thing ever. I had this white beanie hat on with blue goggles and white gloves, I think because it made me feel more like a performer and not the normal dude that I knew I was. So I had to get into costume in order to get psyched up and get into character. We were awful, just horrible but we survived." The club was packed with A&R scouts that had all fled by the third song. Jeff Blue added, "The place was empty. You could hear crickets." He saw that the group had potential but were pretty far from actually "making it", so he offered them a development deal with a little financial support from Zomba Music Group. Brad received the proposal on December 4th, but the band didn’t accept the deal right away. Mark and Brad were convinced Jeff Blue was the right person to help them, but Mike and the others disagreed. They shopped the deal to other managers for 9 months in hopes they would find something better. When the band decided to sign it, Jeff's surfing buddy Danny Hayes was hired to represent them. The deal was signed by every band member except for Phoenix at the law offices of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips in Los Angeles. The moment was registered with several group photos. This was followed by a Zomba Signing Party at Hollywood Athletic Club on October 10, 1998.

For three years, the band had been using their connections at Zomba to get the demos out to people who would listen to them and were rejected by every major label and by a lot of independents as well, including by Clive Davis. The rise of other rap/rock fusion groups like Limp Bizkit, Kid Rock and Korn only made things worse for them. "For the first few years, the first couple of years trying to get a record deal, people were telling us pretty much that we weren't great and that we should change our approach and be more like some of the groups that were already popular. That was exactly what we didn't want to do, and we stuck to our guns. We wrote the record we wanted to write," said Brad. After nine months playing forty two label showcases — including a showcase performance arranged by promoter and impresario Mike Galaxy at The Gig-Hollywood on Melrose Avenue — with no results, the band finally went to Warner Bros. Records as a developing artist in November 1999 after a buzz started building up in the label industry and Jeff Blue took a position as vice president of their A&R (Artist and Repertory) department. "Several labels pursued me to do A&R after I secured a deal for Macy Gray, whom I developed at Zomba. I insisted that I bring Hybrid Theory under my new contract as my first signing. The one label executive who was truly interested in Hybrid Theory was Warner Bros.' Joe McEwen. Despite being the smallest offer, I knew the label provided the perfect environment for the band to thrive. However, before we started the album, McEwen moved on from Warner Bros., ­leaving the fate of the band uncertain." Things almost fell apart in late February or early March 2000 when Warner CEO Russ Thyret (who liked the band) turned over many of his duties to Phil Quartararo starting February 28th, then Joe McEwen got demoted from A&R on March 8th and was replaced by David Kahne. The more songs they made and re-recorded, the more interested in signing the band the label got. Jeff made Hybrid Theory his first signing in April 2000. Warner Bros. had passed on the band three times before that.

Mike would first work with Brad on the music before he and Chester would write lyrics. "When we did Hybrid Theory and Meteora, Brad and I did the bulk of the writing. We would write the music and I would write the vocals and we'd give them to the rest of the band to make notes or change it, but essentially we were doing it like a hip-hop production team. This is the track, these are the vocals," said Shinoda.

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. Brad said, "If you like The Roots you'll like Linkin Park, if you like Slipknot you'll like Linkin Park, and if you like Depeche Mode you'll probably like Linkin Park. That's one of the reasons we called our album 'Hybrid Theory', and that was the original band name. Was because we really approached songwritting from day one, which was really about almost four years ago, as a way to bring together different styles of music and really create a music that would be almost a new sound, that would be unique indentifiable as ourselves."

The band went on to release multiple number one studio albums and go on world tours performing sold-out shows in dozens of countries. Brad's signature guitars, big headphones (worn not as an aesthetic but to protect his sensitive hearing in the loud concert environments), and periodically huge afro became a staple of Linkin Park's look, both live and to their core, fans affectionately referring to him as "Big Bad Brad.' During certain eras of the band, Brad stepped away from the guitar to focus on the production side of the band. While describing The Hunting Party (an album that sees Delson return to his metal guitar roots), Brad addressed how he normally feels about guitar solos: "There’s a lot of guitar solos on the album! And this is from someone who was quoted early on as saying I hated them. Not that I hated them as a listener; I just don’t want to play any; I shirked guitar solos. Early on, I felt as though the songs we were making aesthetically didn’t want them. This new batch of songs, to me, always want solos. I feel like every song has one." Delson's guitar playing has been described as relatively simplistic in technique, but an important anchor to creating the defining Linkin Park "sound."

In 2024, once the band reunited with new official members Emily Armstrong and Colin Brittain, Brad announced he would no longer be performing with the band in a live setting, but remain as the band's guitarist in the studio. Mike said, "touring is actually not a good fit for Brad’s personality. It used to be, but as he’s gotten older, the noise, the chaos, the moving around from city to city - it’s not a thing [he enjoys].” Beginning with the From Zero World Tour, touring guitarist Alex Feder filled in for him in his absence.

Music Production

Beginning in 2017, Brad Delson began collaborating with a number of other artists for their own projects, wracking up a number of writing and production credits. Multiple of these collaborations were with bandmate Mike Shinoda, Delson even being credited on some tracks from Shinoda's solo Post Traumatic from 2018, the songs 'Make It Up As I Go' and 'Running From My Shadow' sprouting from previous Linkin Park album sessions. Brad also remixed Fort Minor's 'Where'd You Go' in 2005 for the CD single, dubbing his remix the "Big Bad" remix. He is also credited on the Martin Garrix and Mike Shinoda collaboration 'Waiting For Tomorrow,' which began as a Linkin Park collaboration.

Brad's first production credit outside of the Linkin Park sphere was with singer-songwriter Lauren Dair, for her song 'Every Little Light' in 2017. Delson and Shinoda met Dair at Red Bull Studios in Los Angeles on February 20, 2018 to work on another original song of hers. She said, "Working with Mike Shinoda and Brad Delson of Linkin Park yesterday was such an unforgettable experience! I learned so much from our session and they helped take my song to a whole other level. Thank you guys so much!" Brad also worked with Canadian singer-songwriter Allan Rayman around this period, co-writing the song 'Crush' off of his third studio album, Harry Hard-On.'

Over the next few years of Linkin Park's hiatus, Delson continued to work with other artists on various singles. Brad co-wrote a song with his brother Greg Delson called 'Go To Waste,' released in 2022. The duo have another song called 'Willing To Try' that remains unreleased. In December, Brad wrote a song called 'My Eight Favorite Nights,' a Hanukkah song recorded and released by indie-folk band Distant Cousins, while working with Landon Pigg on other tracks. The band's singer, Dov Rosenblatt, said of the song, "This song is its own little Hanukkah miracle for us. We were thrilled when Brad, who we’ve been fans of for years, approached us about this collaboration for us to record his beautiful Hanukkah song he co-wrote with Landon." the song was featured in a Hallmark Channel film about Hanukkah called “Hanukkah on Rye” that premiered on, December 18. Brad also worked with the band Foreign Air on their unreleased album Second Chances.

Discography

Linkin Park

Full article: Linkin Park Discography

• Hybrid Theory (2000)
• Meteora (2003)
• Minutes To Midnight (2007)
• A Thousand Suns (2010)
• Living Things (2012)
• The Hunting Party (2014)
• One More Light (2017)
• From Zero (2024)

Production Credits

• Fort Minor - 'Where'd You Go' (Big Bad Remix) (2005)
• Allan Rayman - 'Crush' (2017)
• Lauren Dair - 'Every Little Light' (2018)
• Mike Shinoda - 'Make It Up As I Go' (2018)
• Mike Shinoda - 'Running From My Shadow' (2018)
• Martin Garrix - 'Waiting For Tomorrow' (feat. Mike Shinoda & Pierce Fulton) (2018)
• Beoga - 'Let You Go' (2019)
• Bryce Xavier - 'Already Looking At Me' (2020)
• Landon Pigg - 'When The Seasons Call' (2021)
• Greg Delson - 'Go To Waste' (2022)
• Distant Cousins - 'My Eight Favorite Nights' (2022)
• Foreign Air - Second Chances (unreleased)