We kind of skimmed over this when it first happened because we didn't want it to get lost in the flood of From Zero-related news, but back in September, while in town for the first show of the From Zero World Tour in Los Angeles, LPLive staff members Mark (Hahninator), Dylan (RogueSoul), and Anthony (Astat) had the chance to spend an afternoon hanging out and filming some content with Jeff Blue! There's more of this stuff in the works, so be sure to follow Jeff on his socials so you don't miss out on anything! You can find him at JeffBlueMusic on Instagram, X/Twitter, and YouTube, as well as at jeffbluemedia.com.
You're probably already aware of who Jeff is if you're part of the LPLive community, but here's a short summary: In 1997, while working at Zomba Music Publishing, Jeff was also giving lectures on the music business at UCLA. In attendance at one of these lectures was a young Brad Delson, who met with Jeff a short time later and convinced him to hire him as an intern. Jeff subsequently attended the very first Xero show at the Whisky a Go-Go in Hollywood, and signed them to a publishing deal. Over the next three years, the band played showcases for every record label imaginable (many of them on multiple occasions), nearly split up following a particularly disasterous performance in December of 1998, saw Dave Farrell leave the band in early 1999 and spend the next year and a half recording and performing with numerous bassists (Kyle Christner, Ian Hornbeck, and Scott Koziol most notably), replaced vocalist Mark Wakefield with Chester Bennington, changed their name to Hybrid Theory, finally got signed to Warner Brothers after Jeff was hired to their A&R department, changed their name AGAIN to Plear...for about a week, before deciding Linkin Park was a better option, and finally, in October of 2000, released the album that would change all of their lives: Hybrid Theory. Jeff served as an executive producer on Hybrid Theory, and continued his A&R role with the band through the end of the Hybrid Theory touring cycle in 2002.
Given that Jeff was basically the only person other than the band themselves who was involved with their entire pre-Hybrid Theory journey, he amassed a huge collection of material from the band during his time working with them, and having visited with him, we can tell you that the guy has held on to ALL of it, both for archival purposes and out of a genuine love for what the band was doing. Every demo tape or CD, set of lyrics, photo shoot, contract, piece of artwork, etc. that the band produced between 1997 and early 2002 is still in his possession, and a lot of it is stuff that the fans have never seen. In fact, Jeff may be the ONLY person who still has a copy of some of this stuff! Jeff utilized this archival material to write his book, One Step Closer - From Xero to #1: Becoming Linkin Park, which was published in 2020 and documents his time working with the band.
It goes without saying that as archivists ourselves, we share a massive mutual interest with Jeff when it comes to this stuff, and it was an amazing experience to go through a bunch of it with him. After the 20th anniversary edition of Hybrid Theory was released in 2020 with previously-unheard tracks like "Dialate," "Could Have Been," "Pictureboard," the Xero version of "Esaul," and the Chester version of "Stick N Move," some of us thought that we may be getting pretty close to having all of the band's pre-Hybrid Theory material, but the information in Jeff's book and our visit with him confirmed that there's still a LOT of stuff in the vaults. Obviously, we can't release any music without the band's permission, and neither can Jeff for that matter, but here's hoping that the rest of the world will get to hear songs like "Ashes," "Deftest," "Turn to Grey," and the various unreleased demo versions of other songs someday!
As far as the content we made together, Jeff has been uploading bits of it on social media recently. His first video features him meeting us for the first time, a brief summary of all the stuff he has, the story of how he met Brad and decided to sign the band, and some cool tidbits such as an early copy of the Xero demo tape (with "Dialate" as the second track instead of "Rhinestone," as well as artwork that differs from either the "baby" version we all know and love, or the more rare "shopping cart" version), Jeff's letters to Danny Hayes (the band's lawyer for many years) and Richard Blackstone (Jeff's boss at Zomba) regarding signing the band, and some details on other artists Jeff worked with during the same time period (check out that copy of Korn's "Neidermayer's Mind" demo tape!).
Jeff's second video focuses on his massive binders full of lyrics and song notes. In addition to having copies of the lyrics themselves, Jeff would often have Mike write summaries of what his mindset was when he was writing them. Jeff wanted to be able to explain what kind of place the band's writing was coming from when pitching them to record labels. You can see some glimpses of demo lyrics (both typed and handwritten) in here, and just from the size of the binder and the equally-large one under it, it's clear that even in their primitive state, these were songs that had a lot to say to the world.
Video #3 touches on the differences between his roles as a music publisher with Zomba, and an A&R executive with Warner. These typically aren't roles that are occupied by the same person, Jeff just happened to make signing the band part of his employment contract when he was hired by Warner (since the band kept getting rejected by record labels otherwise), so he naturally became their A&R guy as well.
Again, we have more content planned from our visit with Jeff, so keep checking back! A HUGE thank you to Jeff for inviting us into his home to check this stuff out, we're hoping we get to visit with him again in the future!