Linkin Park - Park Hayarkon - 15/11/10
Updated: 11 hours ago
On November 15, 2010, "Linkin Park" took the stage at Park Hayarkon in Tel Aviv for the first and only time in the band's history, giving some 15,000 fired-up fans a historic, polished, and unforgettable show.
Unlike plenty of rock legends who reach Israel long past their commercial and artistic peak, "Linkin Park" landed in Tel Aviv at the height of its powers as a global rock force. The Park Hayarkon show, produced by Shuki Weiss, closed the European and Middle Eastern leg of the "A Thousand Suns World Tour", supporting the band's bold fourth concept album, "A Thousand Suns", released just two months earlier and produced by Rick Rubin and Mike Shinoda. Only a week before taking the Tel Aviv stage, the band had picked up the Best Live Act award at MTV Europe's EMA ceremony in Madrid, and expectations on the ground were sky-high. For a whole generation of young Israelis, soldiers and rock fans raised on the masterpiece albums "Hybrid Theory" and "Meteora" as the soundtrack of their youth, the first face-to-face encounter with Chester Bennington and his bandmates was a dream come true, an experience that in retrospect became chilling and precious in light of Bennington's tragic death in July 2017.
The Israel visit was the final stop on the band's Middle Eastern mini-tour, right after a big show at the Formula 1 race in Abu Dhabi. Upon landing in the Holy Land, the six band members - charismatic frontman Chester Bennington, rapper, keyboardist and guitarist Mike Shinoda, lead guitarist Brad Delson, bassist Dave Farrell, aka Phoenix, drummer Rob Bourdon, and DJ and sampling wizard Joe Hahn - used their stay for a moving tour of Jerusalem's Old City and the Western Wall, and even met with Jerusalem's then-mayor Nir Barkat. The atmosphere on Park Hayarkon's show hill was warmed up by the band "Kwami & The Halvot", led by Eyal Friedman, joined on stage by Avital Tamir, singer of the metal band "Betzefer", for an energetic set that prepared the ground for the real thing. The crowd filling the lawn was remarkably diverse, from excited twelve-year-olds who came with their parents to veteran metalheads and twenty-somethings who had waited a full decade for this moment.
At exactly 8:45 PM, with exemplary American punctuality and none of the usual rock-star delays or mannerisms, the lights went out across the park. With an Israeli flag spread proudly at the front of the stage, the six members of "Linkin Park" came on through a shell of smoke and dramatic lighting to the apocalyptic opening strains of "The Requiem" and "The Radiance", accompanied by Mario Savio's famous speech, and exploded with tremendous force into the heavy industrial beat of "Wretches and Kings". From the very first seconds it was clear the band had not come to Tel Aviv for an evening of ingratiating chit-chat or cheap flattery of the crowd, but to deliver a stunning, tight, and astonishingly precise sonic show of force that ran an hour and a half of pure adrenaline without a single dull moment. Apart from justified complaints from fans at the back of the park about the local production's decision not to place additional video screens at the sides of the stage, the enormous video-art screen at the back of the stage, the mesmerizing lighting rig, and the polished, powerful sound made up for everything.
The sharp transition from the new album's dark electronics to the early classics ignited absolute madness in the park as early as the fourth song, "Papercut", where the perfect combination of Shinoda's crisp rapping and Bennington's explosive singing sent shockwaves across the lawn. Right after came "Given Up" from the album "Minutes to Midnight", in which Bennington proved why he is considered one of the rare vocalists of his generation, pulling off in the extended outro the unbelievable seventeen-second scream while leaning forward with one foot raised on the monitor at the front of the stage. The dizzying pace continued without pause with the cinematic anthem "New Divide", opening with hypnotic synthesizers, and immediately after it the sweeping "Faint", where Delson's rapid riff in the extended outro lifted 15,000 pairs of feet into the air, shaking the grounds of Ganei Yehoshua.
Throughout the show, all six band members roamed nonstop across the length and width of the enormous stage, switching positions and instruments in perfect dynamics. The material from the album "A Thousand Suns", which felt experimental and challenging in the studio, took on an especially animalistic and forceful volume on the Tel Aviv stage. On "When They Come for Me" Shinoda moved over to pound floor toms alongside Bourdon and Bennington in a sweeping tribal rhythm display, and from there the band shifted into the heavy, sawing metal of "No More Sorrow" with a long, dramatic intro that gave a crushing answer to anyone who had doubted the power of the band's distortion. Immediately after the interlude "Jornada del Muerto" came one of the evening's most melodic and moving peaks with the performance of the hit "Waiting for the End", where the harmony between Shinoda's warm voice and Bennington's melodic cry moved the entire park, and led through Martin Luther King's speech in the passage "Wisdom, Justice, and Love" into a massive singalong by thousands of fans on the anthemic ballad "Iridescent".
The heart of the show arrived with a sequence of immortal classics that turned Park Hayarkon into one enormous choir. With the familiar opening notes of the keyboards on "Numb", the whole park roared every word at a volume that nearly drowned out the PA, as Bennington extended the microphone toward the thrilled masses before Shinoda closed the song with a special electronic outro weaving in lines from "The Catalyst". The chills continued with "Breaking the Habit", which Bennington finished with exposed, moving a cappella singing facing thousands of lighters and lit-up cell phones, and with the sweeping ballad "Shadow of the Day", in which Bennington held a rhythm guitar. Immediately afterward the band returned to pounding at full force with the pair of defining nu-metal anthems from the debut album "Hybrid Theory", the songs "Crawling" and "One Step Closer", in which the "Shut up when I'm talking to you" scream by Bennington and the Israeli crowd was heard loud and clear across north Tel Aviv.
In one of the evening's most refreshing and appreciated moves, the band gave up the artificial ego games of a staged exit to the dressing rooms ahead of the encore, choosing instead to play all six encore songs in one continuous run on stage so as not to break the electric momentum that had built up in the park. After the interlude "Fallout" and the energetic, sweeping performance of the lead single "The Catalyst" came the most intimate and unique moment of the Israel show. Bennington remained at the front of the stage with an acoustic guitar, and in a spontaneous, moving gesture marking their visit to the country, launched into more than a minute of the classic "No Woman, No Cry" by "Bob Marley & The Wailers" together with thousands of thrilled fans, before sliding straight into the bare acoustic ballad "The Messenger", in which he showed off his full heart-wrenching vocal range.
The evening's finale was nothing less than an atomic blast of three huge classics that closed the show at peak energy. The mythological piano notes of "In the End" launched all of Park Hayarkon into the air, as Shinoda stepped forward to conduct 15,000 fans reciting every syllable of the rap verse and the immortal chorus. Right after came the sweeping "What I've Done", and the show closed with "Bleed It Out" in an especially extended and wild version, during whose central bridge Shinoda and Bennington surprised longtime fans by weaving in the first verse and powerful bridge of the beloved song "A Place for My Head" from the debut album. At 10:15 PM, after about an hour and a half of total sensory intoxication, the band members said goodbye to the Israeli crowd. The quality of the Tel Aviv show was so high that the band not only released the show's full soundboard recording in its official bootleg series, but also chose three tracks recorded that night in Park Hayarkon, "Empty Spaces", "When They Come for Me" and the chilling performance of "Numb", for inclusion on its official live EP, "2011 North American Tour EP".
The setlist played at the show:
1. The Requiem
2. The Radiance
3. Wretches and Kings
4. Papercut
5. Given Up
6. New Divide
7. Faint
8. Empty Spaces
9. When They Come for Me
10. No More Sorrow
11. Jornada del Muerto
12. Waiting for the End
13. Wisdom, Justice, and Love
14. Iridescent
15. Numb
16. Breaking the Habit
17. Shadow of the Day
18. Crawling
19. One Step Closer
20. Fallout
21. The Catalyst
22. The Messenger
23. In the End
24. What I've Done
25. Bleed It Out
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