Veterans Stadium 2003 is a live show release by Linkin Park on April 7, 2023, included in the Meteora (20th Anniversary Edition) Super Deluxe Box Set in the same DVD as Live In Seoul 2003. While the title of the release reads "Veterans Stadium 2003", the show was registered by Warner Records as "Live At Veterans Stadium 2003".
Background
After headlining a Linkin Park Underground Tour in clubs and their second arena tour ever, Projekt Revolution 2003, Linkin Park set off on their first and only stadium tour in North America - Summer Sanitarium 2003 opening for Metallica. Joining Metallica would be Limp Bizit, Linkin Park, Deftones, and Mudvayne. Summer Sanitarium took the band across the country in about five weeks, kicking off in Pontiac, Michigan on July 4th and wrapping up in Metallica's hometown of San Francisco, California on August 10th. The show in Philadelphia was the sixth show of the tour and took place three weeks before the band's filming of their famous Live In Texas DVD in Houston and Irving, Texas.
Along the way, Linkin Park took the opportunity to make up three of their canceled Projekt Revolution 2003 shows from April - Rochester, New York which was supposed to kick off the tour was canceled due to a snow storm, and both Council Bluffs, Iowa and Valley Center, Kansas were canceled due to the band needing to shoot their music video for "Faint" in Los Angeles that day.
Composition
Linkin Park debuted a brand new setlist for Summer Sanitarium 2003. To kick off the show, they mashed up "Dead Skin Mask" by Slayer and a speech from the 1970 film Cromwell, featuring Chester Bennington screaming in very high pitched vocals over it. This went into a shortened version of "Foreword" before the famous run of "Don't Stay", "Somewhere I Belong", and "Lying From You" kicked off the show just like the tracklisting on Meteora. Following "Papercut", "Points Of Authority", "Runaway", "Faint", and "From The Inside", Linkin Park made some changes to the set.
"Hit The Floor" was dropped and ended up never being played again despite being in the setlists for every show the first two tours. In its place, Linkin Park debuted "Figure.09" for the first time, which stuck around for most of the rest of 2003 - but not every show, it didn't make it into the fall and holiday 2003 setlists after Asia and it didn't get played at the first two tours of 2004 either. It made its final appearance in a setlist as a live song for Projekt Revolution 2004 the next summer. After the "Reanimated" "With You", LP added a new buildup intro to "By Myself" which featured Mike rapping the bridge lyrics slowly over the intro of the song. "P5hng Me A*wy" came next, which was a highlight in 2003 and 2004 as it only stayed in the show for less than one year total. And then instead of playing "Nobody's Listening", which was dropped until Tokyo in October, the band debuted "Numb" for the first time. Ironically, "Numb" didn't get much of a reaction on this tour from fans as it was one of the slower songs in the set for the time period and also had Mike on a keyboard on stage while the band was opening for Metallica.
"Crawling", "In The End", "A Place For My Head", and "One Step Closer" closed out the show, meaning "Easier To Run" which came after "In The End" was dropped from the show like "Hit The Floor" and was also never played live again. The band went on years later to say "Easier To Run" was collectively their least favorite song as a group.
As they did with the first two tours for Meteora, Linkin Park kept their nods to Reanimation in the setlist - "With You" featured the Reanimation-style instrumental in the verses and was commonly shouted out by the band before the song, "P5hng Me A*wy" was played in full which makes it the only song from the album played in full more than once ("Frgt/10" was played for just one show in 2005 with Chali 2na guesting), "Crawling" featured a short "Krwlng" intro, and "One Step Closer" had the fan-favorite bridge from "1stp Klosr" that Jonathan Davis originally sang.
This setlist was liked so much by Linkin Park that they kept it when they went to Europe, Australia and Asia after this tour as they headlined arenas, stadiums, and festivals across much of the rest of the world.
Release
The Meteora 20 release was announced on January 27, 2023 for a release date of March 24, 2003. Veterans Stadium 2003 was included on the second DVD alongside Live In Seoul 2003.
Veterans Stadium 2003 becomes the first live DVD by Linkin Park to be released as a second show from a tour they already released a live DVD from.
Track Listing
| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Intro | Hanneman Jeffrey John, Díaz Tomás Enrique Araya | 1:12 |
| 2 | Don't Stay | Linkin Park | 3:11 |
| 3 | Somewhere I Belong | Linkin Park | 3:34 |
| 4 | Lying From You | Linkin Park | 3:52 |
| 5 | Papercut | Bennington Chester Charles, Bourdon Robert G, Delson Brad, Hahn Joseph, Shinoda Mike | 3:07 |
| 6 | Points Of Authority | Bennington, Bourdon, Delson, Hahn, Shinoda | 3:24 |
| 7 | Runaway | Bennington, Bourdon, Delson, Hahn, Shinoda, Wakefield Mark | 4:21 |
| 8 | Faint | Linkin Park | 2:45 |
| 9 | From The Inside | Linkin Park | 3:01 |
| 10 | Figure.09 | Linkin Park | 5:32 |
| 11 | With You | Bennington, Bourdon, Delson, Hahn, King John Robert, Shinoda, Simpson Michae | 3:20 |
| 12 | By Myself | Bennington, Bourdon, Delson, Hahn, Shinoda | 5:28 |
| 13 | P5hng Me A*wy | Bennington, Bourdon, Delson, Hahn, Shinoda, Stephen Richards | 5:25 |
| 14 | Numb | Linkin Park | 3:25 |
| 15 | Crawling | Bennington, Bourdon, Delson, Hahn, Shinoda | 3:31 |
| 16 | In The End | Bennington, Bourdon, Delson, Hahn, Shinoda | 4:06 |
| 17 | A Place For My Head | Bennington, Bourdon, Delson, Hahn, Shinoda, Wakefield | 4:08 |
| 18 | One Step Closer | Bennington, Bourdon, Delson, Hahn, Shinoda | 4:27 |
Personnel
Linkin Park
- Chester Bennington: Vocals
- Rob Bourdon: Drums
- Brad Delson: Guitars
- Joseph Hahn: Records, Sampling
- "Phoenix: Bass
- Mike Shinoda: Emcee, Vocals, Sampling
Production
- Filmed at Veterans Stadium, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on July 12th 2003
- All Songs Written by Linkin Park | ©2002 Universal Music
- Except "Papercut," "Points Of Authority," "By Myself," P5hng Me A*wy," "Crawling," "In The End" and "One Step Closer" Written by Linkin Park ©2000
- "Runaway" Written by Linkin Park & Mark Wakefield ©2000
- "With You" Written by Linkin Park & The Dust Brothers (M. Simpson/J. King) ©2000
- "A Place For My Head" Written by Linkin Park, Mark Wakefield & Dave Farrell ©2000
- Sir Alec Guinness audio licensed courtesy of Matthew Guinness Obo The Sir Alec Guinness Estate
- Dialogue excerpt of "Cromwell" licensed courtesy of Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group
- Contains elements of "Dead Skin Mask" (Jeff Hanneman/Tom Araya) originally recorded by Slayer
- Licensed courtesy of Universal Music Group
- Published by Universal Music-MGB Songs/Death's Head Music/Kobalt Music/SS810 Music (ASCAP)