Rock Am Ring 2001

Rock am Ring 2001 is a live DVD release by Linkin Park in October 2020, included in the Hybrid Theory (20th Anniversary Edition).

Background

Linkin Park's performance at Rock am Ring 2001 came right in the middle of the band's hectic touring year for Hybrid Theory, where they performed 165 shows for the album throughout the year - by far the largest amount of any year for the band. LP's book "From the Inside" erroneously reports the band performing over 320 shows in 2001, but the reference is to the band likely being on the road for around 300 days that year, not performing 320 actual concerts.

After starting out promoting the album with their very first headlining overseas shows in January in tiny clubs in Paris, Hamburg, and London, Linkin Park headlined the Street Soldiers Tour in the United States for their first headlining tour ever. Following that, they opened for the Deftones in Europe for about a month before a six week period on what they called the "U.S. to Europe Tour" that saw Linkin Park transverse the world for festivals, headline shows, and radio event appearances. It was at the end of this run in the first week of June when Linkin Park performed at Rock am Ring and Rock im Park for the first time on consecutive days.

Rock am Ring has gone on to become one of the most famous venues for a Linkin Park show, despite the band only performing there five times. It almost certainly has to do with the availability of their shows there to the global fanbase, as the 2001, 2004, and 2014 shows were webcasted and/or shown on TV. At the 2014 show, Mike Shinoda mentions that Linkin Park watched footage earlier that day of their 2001 set at the festival.

The 2001 and 2004 Rock am Ring shows by Linkin Park are two of the most famous shows the band has played, along with the band's 2003 CD/DVD release Live In Texas. Videos for these shows were widely shared for years on applications like mIRC, Kazaa, Limewire, Napster, and more. Moving into more modern years, the videos for these two Rock am Ring shows have racked up millions of views on YouTube, cementing themselves in Linkin Park's live legacy.

Composition

Starting with the band's Street Soldiers Tour in February 2001, Linkin Park stuck with the same general setlist for the first half of the year until they began playing with it just before and around the start of Ozzfest.

The Rock am Ring 2001 setlist is the same as the headline tour, featuring eleven of the songs from Hybrid Theory, only missing "Cure For The Itch." Comments from the band members over time about the 2001 touring year reflect the fact that the album was less than 38 minutes long, but they had to fill around an hour of set time at a lot of places.

To do this, they had to dig in to their catalogue and find a few other tracks they could perform. "And One" was an early song that they had been performing since at least 2000 (and likely earlier) and "High Voltage" was convenient to learn as Mike Shinoda had just remixed it for the b-side of the "One Step Closer" single. Both of these songs went on to become fan favorites in the live setting, although only sticking around for the Hybrid Theory era. This is the most famous performance of "And One" in the Linkin Park community. Mike introduced it as saying, "We're going to play another song that's not on the album. It's real old. It's the first song we wrote when Chester came in the band, it's called "And One.""

The Rock am Ring show also has a particularly interesting thing in it - the short jam of the infamous "Pictureboard" song. The band performed it several times in May and June 2001 with no real vocals, just a short instrumental jam. Over time, fans assumed that it was actually part of an older song because it seemed just a little too rehearsed. The connection between the jam during the show and the song actually being "Pictureboard" was not made until the August 2020 promotion of Hybrid Theory 20, when the band's throwback website campaign listed a folder on the desktop called "In Yourself Jam" with a file inside called "Demo_Pic_Board.mp3." Fans had called the jam "Be Yourself" (sometimes incorrectly "In Yourself") due to what Chester sang over it... which ended up actually being lyrics in the song! The discovery of the connection lit the Linkin Park community social media on fire and lead to an over nine page thread on LPLive immediately thereafter.

Release

The Hybrid Theory 20 release was announced on August 13, 2020 for a release date of October 9, 2020.

The release of Hybrid Theory (20th Anniversary Edition) is composed of the original Hybrid Theory studio album, the Reanimation remix album, the Hybrid Theory EP, a compilation of b-sides from singles released in 2000-2002 titled B-Side Rarities, a compilation of LPU tracks dating from 1997-2002 titled LPU Rarities, a demo CD featuring previously unreleased demos, a replica of the Linkin Park Sampler Street Team cassette tape, a replica of the Frat Party At The Pankake Festival DVD, a second DVD with Linkin Park's full performances at The Fillmore and Rock Am Ring from 2001 and a third DVD featuring live and behind the scenes footage from the Projekt Revolution Tour 2002. The collection sums up to a total of 80 tracks.

The DVD with Rock am Ring 2001 also features The Fillmore 2001 as well.

Track Listing

No.	Title	Writer(s)	Length
1	With You	Bennington Chester Charles, Bourdon Robert G, Delson Brad, Hahn Joseph, King John Robert, Shinoda Mike, Simpson Michael
2	Runaway	Bennington, Bourdon, Delson, Hahn, Shinoda, Wakefield Mark
3	Papercut	Bennington, Bourdon, Delson, Hahn, Shinoda
4	By Myself	Bennington, Bourdon, Delson, Hahn, Shinoda
5	Points Of Authority	Delson, Hahn, Shinoda
6	High Voltage	Delson, Hahn, Shinoda
7	Crawling	Bennington, Bourdon, Delson, Hahn, Shinoda
8	Pushing Me Away	Bennington, Bourdon, Delson, Farrell David Michael, Hahn, Shinoda, Wakefield
9	Pictureboard	Bennington, Bourdon, Delson, Hahn, Shinoda, Wakefield
10	And One	Bennington, Bourdon, Delson, Hahn, Shinoda
11	In The End	Bennington, Bourdon, Delson, Hahn, Shinoda
12	A Place For My Head	Bennington, Bourdon, Delson, Farrell David Michael, Hahn, Shinoda, Wakefield
13	Forgotten	Bennington, Bourdon, Delson, Farrell, Hahn, Shinoda, Wakefield
14	Sweet Child O' Mine	Guns N' Roses
15	One Step Closer	Bennington, Bourdon, Delson, Hahn, Shinoda

Personnel

Linkin Park

• Chester Bennington: Vocals, Rhythm Guitar
• Mike Shinoda: Vocals, Rhythm Guitar
• Brad Delson: Lead Guitar, Backing Vocals
• Dave "Phoenix" Farrell: Bass Guitar
• Joseph Hahn: Turntables, Sampling, Programming
• Rob Bourdon: Drums

Gallery

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  Front cover

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  Back cover