The music industry in the early noughties was in a different place. The CD business fought for survival, vinyl was almost dead and Napster, Limewire and other file sharing sites were pointing to the future.
At the time I worked in the International Marketing team at Warner for a fearsome, brilliant and likeable guy called Jay Durgan who introduced me by the wrong name on my first day and who I was too terrified to correct. I think it may have been a test. Within a few months he was calling me Q anyway due to my ability to provide meaningful solutions and business analysis, he was buying me pints and without realising informing my future management approach. He was a very cool guy and I was fortunate to have the opportunity to work for him.
During this period, when album launch parties and gig tickets still flowed with excess I went to see a new US act called Linkin Park playing a very low key first UK performance at Kings College University Student Union attended by 200 competition winners from Kerrang magazine. In the weeks previously I been sat in marketing meetings where global and regional marketing leads nodded sagely along to their tracks introducing me to the group and whilst I didn’t normally find artists from the Kerrang demographic up my street, I found the hybrid hard rock/hip hop of their new ‘Nu-Metal’ genre appealing due to the accessible intensity, my love of Hip Hop that had started with Gangstarr, The Jungle Brothers, LL Cool J, KRS one, and the compelling angst of Chester Bennington whose raw vocal outpouring of pain and passion was as beautiful as it was unnerving.
I remember the night as dank and dark but exciting and one of a few at a certain time in my early career when I felt lucky to have landed doing something fucking cool that I really love.
At 27 million albums the album they were touring Hybrid Theory is the best selling debut record of the 21st century.
Tonight it’s twenty four and a half years later and so much has changed. I’m standing at Wembley Stadium with my 16 year old younger child, I’m still at Warner but having worked multiple different jobs in the interim, it’s 30 degrees at 8.30pm due to the planet’s environmental disinterest and Chester is not with us, tragically taking his own life in July 2017.
The fact that I’m here doesn’t imply a two and half decade overt devotion to the band. Since being deeply absorbed in Marketing the initial Hybrid Theory and Meteora releases, I moved into other roles at and watched progress from further afield with a simmering awareness due to tracks from their 2004 Jay-Z collaboration being amongst my perpetual favourites. To that extent neither myself (middle of the Dad-in-trainers core or Elodie 2024 Swifty world tour vibes) had received the wear black and tats memo. That’s not to say it was an unwelcoming vibe – we were just slightly off brand – and although there had been indications that some tickets may be left for this one time only Wembley date, seats and standing were occupied as far as the eye could see. People were genuinely, seriously excited.
Having mourned the loss of their lead singer, in September 2024 Linkin Park reintroduced themselves to the world with a new female lead Emily Armstrong, who since then has established herself as the coolest woman on the planet. Previously lead singer of Dead Sara, Emily has simultaneously respected and reinvented the role of Linkin Park lead vocalist, complimenting Mike Shinoda’s preppy nice guy flow with a wild eyed angst, energy and sinewy beauty that allows her to command the attention of every corner of an ninety thousand concert venue less than twelve months after being introduced as vocalist.
A 10 minute on screen countdown finished (I love it when bands do that) and they smashed into Somewhere I Belong. The crowd began to bounce and the as ever were tight (I recall this being a 2004 cliche reeled out in marketing meetings). A Greatest Hits set followed including Numb, One Step Closer, In the End and other classics that I didn’t think I knew but did. New tracks The Emptiness Machine and Two-Faced from the post Chester ‘From Zero’ album were celebrated as if 20 years old and demonstrated the sustained quality of their new material. Dressed in long trousers and sleeves on a stifling hot night, without an inch of flesh on show there wasn’t a person in Wembley from the tattooed middle aged hard rock fiend to the mum, to the 14 year old twin teenage Asian daughters standing in front of us, belting every single word, that didn’t find Emily entrancing.
As energetic, vibrant and joyful as each track was it was difficult not to dwell upon the lyrics that Chester would previously have written, albeit many years before he took his life – ‘Everything you say to me / Takes me one step closer to the edge / And I’m about to break’ , ‘The very worst part of you is me’ , ‘I wanna heal, I wanna feel / What I thought was never real / I wanna let go of the pain I’ve held so long‘…
In a stadium pushing ninety thousand people, buying overpriced drinks and merch, with the slick lights and machine of a global tour, I was still left emotional at the collective energy and the tragedy of a guy taking his own life so prematurely. Chester wasn’t mentioned but the night for those in London felt like a celebration of his talent, a transition to an new era and the privilege of being able to continue and add to his legacy in a way that didn’t feel like a tribute act. ‘Heavy is the Crown’ was a recognition of this as they hammered through a crowd pleasing encore. Whilst Elodie nurtured a growing love of the band (and Emily in particular) with each song, Dad bit down hard on his tongue and his breath shuddered as he held in waves of sentiment and melancholy. Based on the existence of this journaling I’m not sure why I was surprised.
I explained to Elodie who Chester was and what had happened as we left the stadium using the ‘Cockerell Exit’ protocol, a delicate balance of track list management, seat positioning and fast walking, branded and now adopted by my kids. One of the many things I love about them. She seemed to suddenly get it all a bit more.
For me also the evening was layered with meaning. A marker in my Warner triggering feelings about the work I’d been involved with over the years and which I have to remind myself means so much. We sat in a row of seats with my workmates, some with their own families, some who I had hired, others I was meeting for the first time but all of who were the type of people that made it easy to still be at Warner 24 years after Hybrid Theory. I watched Elodie enjoy the enrichment of discovering new music that she didn’t realise she was allowed to like and identify a female role model that she’s been telling her friends about since. I recognised that some acts resonate with me through osmosis and familiarity, not to mention pride and contribution to their cultural significance that doesn’t hit you in the face like a Chester Bennington chorus, but has built up through time, literally like layers of rock. Tonight this drove a level of investment in my enjoyment that I didn’t know was available as an option. The setlist has been on rotation on Spotify ever since.
Combined all of this with the underlying backstory, Linkin Park’s ability to re-emerge as a meaningful cultural force, in spite of tragedy and layering in something the same but different with Emily is so spot on that it’s difficult to think how it could have been improved.
29th June 2025 was a truly memorable night.
