Linkin Park Get Booked
Linkin Park will chronicle their almost year-long Meteora World Tour in a coffee table book, available late this year in bookstores and through the band’s Web site. The band is also planning a series of in-store book singings. According to guitarist Brad Delson, the book will feature a close-up view of the band “on stage, messing around in the dressing room and on the [tour] bus.”
Photographer Greg Waterman, who joined the Grammy-winning sextet for last year’s free fan club tour as well as the subsequent Summer Sanitarium tour, shot the book. “He got some amazing photos,” says Delson, who estimates that Waterman once took over 5,000 photographs of the band in just a few days. “Greg is so good about being invisible. He was on stage taking shots and no one really realized he was there.” The book will also feature one-on-one interviews, quotes and anecdotes collected by Rolling Stone contributor Steve Baltin.
Linkin Park began thinking about producing an art/photo book to give fans an intimate look at their life and experiences on the road. “Each album has its own cycle,” says Delson. “We wanted to capture all those feelings and moments for this touring cycle.” The majority of the photographs were taken on the U.S. leg of the tour, though some shots will feature the band’s international tour stops in Europe, Australia, Japan, and Southeast Asia.
Delson is hoping one moment in particular will be included in the book: when, during a tour stop in San Diego, P.O.D. singer Sonny Sandoval held Linkin Park singer Chester Bennington over a two-story balcony. “It’s those weird moments that even I don’t get to see,” he says, “that will be cool for our fans to witness.”