Exclusive | Linkin Park on Their India Debut: 'We Have Been Wanting to Play in India For 20 Years!'

Fans of Linkin Park can rejoice because the iconic American rock band is set to debut in India and play two shows as part of their From Zero World Tour.

Vocalist/rhythm guitarist/keyboardist Mike Shinoda, lead guitarist Brad Delson, DJ/turntablist Joe Hahn, bassist Dave Farrell, vocalist Emily Armstrong, and drummer Colin Brittain's first stop will be in Bengaluru on January 23, after which they will make their way to Mumbai to headline Day 2 of this year's Lollapalooza India. 

Ahead of their India debut, the band's bassist, Dave Farrell a.k.a Phoenix spoke to The Hollywood Reporter India about the band's accolades, debuting in India, his love for Indian food, and a lot more.

Edited excerpts from a conversation:

The story starts in 1996 with Xero, which later becomes Hybrid Theory and eventually in the year 2000, the world gets Linkin Park. Two Grammy awards, five American Music awards, four MTV VMA awards, and multiple sold-out world tours later, the band has once again received two nominations for the 2026 Grammy awards. How does it feel?

Dave Farrell: It's always nice to hear things put together like that. Even 30 years on, we get to do a lot of exciting things, including playing in India, which has been on our radar for a while. We get to experience a lot of new things, so it feels great.

Rumours of Linkin Park coming to India started circulating early last year and it brought a certain part of Indian pop-culture to a standstill. How long has this been in the making?

Farrell: It's been on the table to play in India for 20 years. We're lucky enough to have a fanbase and meet a lot of the fans from India that travel to other shows or interact with us on message boards. So, we've been very aware that there's a community that we've wanted to play for and experience the place. This tour has been in the works for probably a year now. You always have the preliminary investigations to see whether it would work, not just for India, but for every place that we decide to tour. The agents start to look at the places, our schedule, routings, and all these different things to see if it's even possible to make it make sense and India was a part of that conversation. So, when it did end up working out for us, it was a pretty exciting moment.

Was there a specific moment where the band said, 'Okay, let's make this happen!'

Farrell: It was a series of a thousand small steps. We've been working with the same production manager for almost 20 years and he's a big part of making our shows and tours as successful as they are all across the world. At a certain point, he experienced and realised that India now has the infrastructure to do a great show that is safe for the fans. There have also been acts like Avenged Sevenfold that have come to India to perform and have said that the fans are incredible, which reconfirmed that if we get a chance to make it work, we got to do it.

After all these years, does the band still find it nerve-racking performing in front of a new crowd?

Farrell: One thing I still appreciate about playing music is that every night is going to feel different. Whether you're playing your second night in a row in your hometown, whether you're in India, or anywhere around the world, there will always be variables that will make each night its own unique animal. Having said that, the Indian audience's warmth and the passion they have for music is very well-known and I'm excited to experience that. The shared communal energy is special and that is what we are most excited to see going into these two shows in India.

Talk to us about your relationship with Indian culture and arts. Have you come across any films or songs that you enjoyed or which stayed with you?

Farrell: The first thing that comes to mind is Indian food. I hadn't travelled out of North America until I was 22 and in the process of touring and getting to see the world, I discovered that I loved London's version of Indian food. That was my very first step into Indian culture. Over the years, I was also exposed to Bollywood and the difference in the fun, colours, and music. India still has a really cool, exotically different feel to it and its arts that come across quite a bit when you grow up in southern California. I'm looking forward to our few days in India being a crash course in its culture, with the hope that we'll be back soon to experience it properly.

A lot of the band’s songs speak about themes of change inward and outward , finding oneself, resilience and more. Do you feel that they are just as important in today’s world as they were 20 years ago?

Farrell: Music can communicate with people on multiple levels. There are the sounds and music itself, and then there's the lyrics and what is literally being said. I've always gravitated towards music that comes from a personal place and shares the feeling and core emotion of the place or scenario that you are in when you're making the music.

Over the years we've found that a lot of those core emotions are universal. What I've really grown to love, along with our Linkin Park community, is that those universal emotions and the shared sense of community is always there. We're looking to put stuff out that connects people and lets them know that they are not alone in what they're feeling. We want to connect with you not only because you like the music, but also because that's what we like about the music too. At the end of it all there is a positivity in connecting together!