| European Tour 2011 | |||||||
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| Tour by Linkin Park | |||||||
| Type: | Headline | ||||||
| Start: | June 11, 2011 | ||||||
| End: | July 4, 2011 | ||||||
| Number of shows: | 15 | ||||||
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Introduction
The European Tour in summer 2011 was the second visit to Europe by Linkin Park for A Thousand Suns and was a 15 show mixture of headlining shows and festivals. While the band played Europe in late July 2009, this was the first visit to the June and early July festivals in the region for LP since 2008.
Before the tour
Linkin Park played two radio show festivals in the United States before leaving - KROQ Weenie Roast on June 4th in Irvine, CA and Live 105's BFD on June 5th in Mountain View, CA. Both shows featured 22 song setlists, standard at the time for the band. The KROQ Weenie Roast show did not receive an encore.
Summary
The fifteen shows in Europe on this tour was the biggest mix of shows in one tour in the band's career.
Opening the tour were shows at NovaRock and Download. At NovaRock, Jornada Del Muerto was randomly dropped for the only time on the A Thousand Suns touring cycle. The show on June 14th was a headlining show in Stockholm, Sweden...last visited by Linkin Park in 2007. Unfortunately, their show at Hultsfred in Sweden was canceled in 2008 due to Brad having an ear infection.
On this tour, Linkin Park chose to bring back Projekt Revolution for the first time since 2008 and took it to Europe for the first time ever. The four shows on this tour that were Projekt Revolution shows were in Seinajoki, Finland and Leipzig, Oberursel, and München, Germany. All four were outdoor festival-type headlining shows.
The 4th LPU Summit was held in Hamburg, Germany on June 21st. Mike and Chester performed an acoustic cover of Adele's Rolling In The Deep, and Brad and Chester performed'The Messenger. According to an LPTV documenting the event, the band was originally planning to soundcheck QWERTY, but they opted to play something else out of the ordinary (Rolling In The Deep). Due to the performance making music news worldwide, iTunes asked the band to play it later in the tour (see below).
On June 23rd, Linkin Park played the Transformers 3 Premiere at Moscow's Red Square. The band worked with Michael Bay to design a Transformers-themed stage and this was the first time that Linkin Park used pyro since 2004. At the beginning of the show, fireworks went off before New Divide kicked in.
The band performed a new intro to New Divide'for the first time, which was an extended, sampled instrumental piece from the song entitled "Moscow Intro". This intro was later played once more, at the last show of the touring cycle in Singapore. This was just the third time New Divide ever opened a show - once before at the A Thousand Suns release show in New York City in 2010 and once in Detroit, MI in 2011.
Russian fans participated in a flash mob during the show. Fans made signs saying "Wisdom", "Justice", and "Love" and held them up first during The Radiance and then during Wisdom, Justice, And Love. Finally, for the first time, LP played the remix version of Iridescent (found on the Transformers 3 soundtrack) live and labeled it the "Energy Up Version" on their setlist.
Linkin Park played Sonisphere Italy in Imola, Italy on June 26th followed by a rare show in Norway, at Hove.
An appearance at Rock Werchter followed on June 30th, along with the Main Square Festival in Arras, France and OpenAir St. Gallen in St. Gallen, Switzerland. One Step Closer was surprisingly omitted from the setlist at the shows in France and Switzerland. Thiswas the first known time where the band had dropped the song from the setlist. At the time, LP was choosing at festivals to play setlists without encore breaks, something they started at BFD 2011 and continued doing throughout the Living Things World Tour.
The final show of the tour came at the iTunes Festival in London on July 4th. iTunes Festival asked the band if they would cover Rolling In The Deep at the show and the band obliged, dropping Blackout for it. This was a piano performance, different than the acoustic performance in Hamburg. Six songs from the show were were released on iTunes for a live EP along with the full show being webcasted live on iTunes.
Memorable Moments
At Hove in Norway, the band said in the years after this show that this was one of the wildest crowds they had ever played for. Chester in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 2012 remarked that Hove was the craziest crowd they've ever had, but Buenos Aires was "making them look like pussies".
Crew
| Name | Job |
|---|---|
| Jim Digby | Production Manager |
| Ken "Pooch" Van Druten | FOH Engineer |
| Kevin "Tater" McCarthy | Monitor Engineer |
| Sean Paden | Guitar Technician (Brad) |
| Mark Fiore | Videographer |