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Shinoda, a classmate of Delson's and Bourdon's, crashed a few Relative Degree practices and fostered a strong friendship with Delson. He created a few samples for them but was more interested in making beats for local MCs. "We always just figured we were in two different worlds," said Delson, whose head looks naked when not wrapped in his signature headphones.
The duo eventually decided to write some songs together.
"One of the first songs we wrote, we were like, 'Let's try to collide these
different styles of music,' " Delson recalled. "It really was somewhat crude
at that point, because you could hear, 'OK, here's the hip-hop verse and
here's the rock chorus.' "
After several months of songwriting sessions together, Shinoda and Delson
decided to recruit a band to test their creations. They snagged Bourdon and
later Phoenix and Hahn, college classmates of Delson's and Shinoda's,
respectively, and adopted the name Xero.
They practiced daily for months. Xero were coming together but they needed a
singer. Delson was interning at Zomba Music Publishing at the time, and a
friend there suggested Chester Bennington, whose previous band had crossed
paths with the company.
"He called me up at work on a Friday, and I got the demo on Saturday
morning, went in Saturday night, cut the vocals and called him on the phone
Sunday," said Bennington, who was living in Arizona at the time. "I said,
you know, I could mail this to you or I could be in L.A. before the mail
would get there. And he goes, 'We gotta hear it first.' So I went, 'OK,
hear.' And I pushed 'play' over the phone. And he was like, 'When can you be
here?' "
Bennington impressed his future bandmates, but they wanted to spend some
time rehearsing together to test the chemistry. They decided to be fair to
other potential singers and didn't cancel already-scheduled auditions.
"One guy came in a couple of songs before our practice was over," Bennington
recalled. "He was sitting there and they were like, 'OK, you ready?' He
stood up and said, 'You know what, I'm going to leave.' And they were like,
'Why? What's going on?' He's like, 'If you're not gonna take this guy,
you're stupid.' And he just left. That was kind of the last audition."
Bennington had sealed the deal, but even then the band was "in a state of
flux," according to Phoenix, who left Xero to tour with another band but
returned a few years later. "We were auditioning some bass players, and
everybody was getting ready to graduate from college," he said. "Nobody
knows how dedicated anybody else is. It was like, anything could happen."
The band's new vocalist had already made his decision about the future.
Bennington left behind his newlywed wife and newly built house and moved to
Los Angeles. "I had to say, 'Honey, you stay here. Pay all the bills with
half the income that we had before and wait for me to tell you when it's
cool.' That was really hard, but I knew deep down inside that if we put in
the right amount of work and we focused on the music that it was going to
work."
His actions motivated the rest of the band to take the music more seriously.
Bennington even suggested a new name, Hybrid Theory, after the mix of styles
they brought to their music.
There was something special in their musical hybrid, but it needed work.
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Photo: Clay McBride
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