Bassist Kyle Christner has filed a lawsuit against LINKIN PARK, claiming he didn’t receive credit or royalties from the 1999 “Hybrid Theory” EP that he appeared on.
In the lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District Of California on Wednesday (November 8), Christner calls himself “a former member of LINKIN PARK” who “collaborated on and recorded numerous songs with the band.” He says that the 20th-anniversary box set edition of LINKIN PARK’s landmark studio album “Hybrid Theory”, which was made available in 2020, contains “many tracks” of which he was “a joint creator of,” including “Could Have Been”, a” song that had never previously been released in any form and now has nearly a million views on YouTube alone.”
According to Christner, he “has never been paid a penny for his work with LINKIN PARK, nor has he been properly credited, even as [his former bandmates] have benefitted from his creative efforts.”
Kyle’s lawsuit, which was first reported by Bloomberg Law and Rolling Stone, alleges that his name was “removed” from the “Hybrid Theory” EP when it was reissued in 2001 as “a fan club edition.” He also claims that the aforementioned “Hybrid Theory” 20th-anniversary box set includes a reissue of the original EP.
“Though Christner was once under the misimpression that his bass parts were re-recorded on the EP after he left the band, he has, upon closer review, identified his bass playing on the edition of the EP included in the box set”, the lawsuit states.
The box set, which does not credit Christner for his work on the EP, includes, among other things, rare and previously unreleased tracks on three collections (presented as compact disks in the physical edition) respectively titled “Forgotten Demos”, “B-Side Rarities” and “LPU Rarities”. Christner says he performed on “many of these recordings”, such as a demo of “Could Have Been”, a song released for the very first time in connection with the box set.
In a Twitch stream, LINKIN PARK’s Mike Shinoda noted that Christner played on “Could Have Been” and described his bass solo on the track as “gnarly.”
As of the day the lawsuit was filed, the recording of “Could Have Been” featuring Christner had been streamed more than 948,000 times on YouTube alone.
Christner says he played on other tracks included in the CDs in the box set, such as “She Couldn’t”, “Chair” and “Step Up”. In fact, according to the lawsuit, Christner appears to have played on at least tracks 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12 of “Forgotten Demos”, tracks 1, 2, 7, 13, 14, 16, 17 of “LPU Rarities”, and track 7 of “B-Side Rarities”, as well as the “Hybrid Theory” EP.
Christner’s presence on various tracks is evidenced by, among other things, the fact that singer Chester Bennington, who joined the band after Christner, is on vocals.
