Speaker 1: I Heart Radio Presents Inside the Studio. I'm your host
Speaker 1: Joe Leaving. My guest today is Mike Shinoda, the rapper, producer,
Speaker 1: songwriter of Lincoln Park. Although he's here to talk about
Speaker 1: what's essentially his first solo album, it's called Post Traumatic,
Speaker 1: and although Mike has released music under the name Fort
Speaker 1: Minor before, this is the first album he's released under
Speaker 1: his own name now. Last year, on Lincoln Park released
Speaker 1: their seventh studio album, One More Light. It became their
Speaker 1: fifth album to debut at number one on the Billboard
Speaker 1: Album Chart, and in fact, all the two of their
Speaker 1: albums have debuted at number one, which is a pretty
Speaker 1: remarkable run over an eighteen year stretch. But what should
Speaker 1: have been a moment of celebration was marked by tragedy.
Speaker 1: On May eighth, the day before the release of One
Speaker 1: More Light It, Chris Cornell of Sound Garden took his
Speaker 1: own life. Cornell and Lincoln Park's Chester Bennington were close,
Speaker 1: and at a memorial service in Los Angeles ten days later,
Speaker 1: Bennington saying Hallelujah, accompanied by bandmate Brad Delson on guitar.
Speaker 1: Here's how Bennington paid tribute to Cornell on Twitter. Your
Speaker 1: voice was joy and pain, anger and forgiveness, love and
Speaker 1: heartache all wrapped up into one. I suppose that's what
Speaker 1: we all are. You helped me understand that thing week. Indeed,
Speaker 1: Bennington had a lot of pain and heartache of his own,
Speaker 1: more than a share who cares it for more like
Speaker 1: goes out in the sky of fa millions, and two
Speaker 1: months later, on July, he took his own life, as
Speaker 1: some people immediately noted that day was Chris Cornell's birthday.
Speaker 1: Kind of thing that can make you think you understand
Speaker 1: an action that at its core resists easy explanations or understanding.
Speaker 1: As Mike Shinoda explains, he himself grew up a visual
Speaker 1: artist and a musician, and he's always used his art
Speaker 1: as a way of processing his experience of making sense
Speaker 1: of things. But immediately after Chester's death, he really wasn't
Speaker 1: sure what to do. It was weird because when I
Speaker 1: look back at it, I don't think there's ever been
Speaker 1: a time when I've not been able to go write,
Speaker 1: Like when I felt like weird about writing a song.
Speaker 1: It's always like, if I have something going on, that's
Speaker 1: like the best time to go write a song. You
Speaker 1: know you're dealing with stuff. I use my visual art
Speaker 1: and my music as therapy, so it's always like a thing.
Speaker 1: If I'm going through something difficult, oftentimes I'll go straight
Speaker 1: to the songwriting stuff. But with this, there was a
Speaker 1: time where I was really like scared to be in
Speaker 1: the studio a little bit. Let'm like scared, but just
Speaker 1: like anxious. What was going on? Well, yeah, so after
Speaker 1: Chester passed, it was hard for me to go in
Speaker 1: the studio for a while. And then at a certain point,
Speaker 1: I remember speaking to Dave Phoenix from the band and um,
Speaker 1: actually all of us got together at Dave's house and
Speaker 1: he had said, oh, have you guys listened to any
Speaker 1: of our music yet? And everyone was like, no way,
Speaker 1: but he had, and he was like, you know, it
Speaker 1: was hard. It seemed scarier than it was, you know,
Speaker 1: And now that I've listened to it, I know I
Speaker 1: can listen to it. Well. The same thing happened to
Speaker 1: me with getting in the studio. It's like, at first
Speaker 1: it seemed like, oh man, it's gonna feel really weird
Speaker 1: to go in and write about anything. And I did
Speaker 1: a few I just kind of, you know, bit the
Speaker 1: bullet and went in and did some stuff and some
Speaker 1: of it was really just screwing around and just playing whatever,
Speaker 1: like play guitar for a couple of hours, or just
Speaker 1: doodle around on the piano, or make some sounds, make
Speaker 1: a little like beat. Eventually I was making songs every day.
Speaker 1: It seemed like all the ones that were about stuff
Speaker 1: that was actually going on, songs that were actually serious songs,
Speaker 1: most of those just kind of turned in this record,
Speaker 1: I Don't have a Leg to Stand, spinning like a
Speaker 1: whirl and in the Land. The solo music Shinoda began
Speaker 1: to release starting in January, talked about loss in ways
Speaker 1: that we're both deeply personal and universal. In a song
Speaker 1: called Place to Start, he sang about feeling like he
Speaker 1: was in a whirlwind, sometimes scared that everything he'd built
Speaker 1: might fall apart, sometimes feeling like he was so focused
Speaker 1: on endings that he'd run out of the will to
Speaker 1: find a beginning. But it felt less like a song
Speaker 1: and more like a page out of his journal. And
Speaker 1: that feeling was reinforced by a video he put out
Speaker 1: of him simply singing this ang into his phone, which
Speaker 1: was more like a skype call than a video from
Speaker 1: a musician who's been selling out arenas for almost two decades,
Speaker 1: and that immediacy was the whole point. Shonota was figuring
Speaker 1: out things as he went and sharing the process. And
Speaker 1: when I say figuring out things as he went, I
Speaker 1: mean it very literally. The first verse of over Again
Speaker 1: was written and recorded on October, the day Lincoln Park
Speaker 1: played a memorial concert at the Hollywood Bowl, with friends
Speaker 1: from Blink, No Doubt, Korn, and many others stepping in
Speaker 1: to help honor Chester Bennington. Shinodah is describing the feelings
Speaker 1: he had beforehand, right down to wanting to puke his
Speaker 1: guts out rather than get on stage. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, anyone who's experienced the death of a friend
Speaker 1: or a loved one is wrestled with what's expressed in
Speaker 1: the chorus of this song. That's saying goodbye isn't confined
Speaker 1: to a single moment or even a series of moments.
Speaker 1: It happens over and over and over again. And anyone
Speaker 1: who's experience loss also knows the moment when someone comes
Speaker 1: up to you and expresses his or her condolences, and
Speaker 1: it is more to do with them than it does
Speaker 1: with you. Shinodah talks about this and hold it together,
Speaker 1: they say that they sympathize. I'm grateful they take the
Speaker 1: time for bringing it up. But to six year old,
Speaker 1: what I really wanted to do with a lot of
Speaker 1: those things, and it happens in the show too, is
Speaker 1: to take you and put you in my shoes, you like,
Speaker 1: and make sure that when you're hearing it, it's like,
Speaker 1: oh shit, like I haven't thought of what it must
Speaker 1: be like, right. And there were a few moments like
Speaker 1: like that on the record where you know, somebody's asking
Speaker 1: about you know, oh, it must be so hard, are
Speaker 1: you okay? And whatever, and it's like, you know what, motherfucker,
Speaker 1: I was doing really good until you started bringing it up,
Speaker 1: Like I haven't even thought about that all day. Now
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about it and we're at a birthday party.
Speaker 1: Maybe you could have stopped yourself like thirty seconds ago
Speaker 1: and said, wait, it's now the appropriate time to ask
Speaker 1: this or to say this, like maybe we wait till
Speaker 1: later to understand the magnitude of the loss that charges
Speaker 1: post traumatic and you have to understand how Chester Bennington
Speaker 1: in My Shinoda each served as the engine of one
Speaker 1: another's dreams. When Lincoln Park first released their debut album,
Speaker 1: hybrid theory. In two thousand, they were lumped in with
Speaker 1: a lot of other bands that had grown up on
Speaker 1: both heavy guitars and hip hop, and some of them
Speaker 1: shared a pensiont for the gratuitous use of the letter
Speaker 1: K when spelling their names. I'm thinking here of Corn
Speaker 1: and Limp Biscuit. But Lincoln Park were bigger and have
Speaker 1: lasted longer in part because they did more, not just
Speaker 1: made me USI with a broader range, more open to
Speaker 1: other sounds and feelings than pure rage. It's also as
Speaker 1: they were coming up, they cared about nothing but playing
Speaker 1: shows and meeting fans afterwards. We're shooting for the title
Speaker 1: of hardest working band in America. Bennington boasted to Rolling
Speaker 1: Stone in two thousand and one, and that is the
Speaker 1: year that they did three hundred and twenty four live performances,
Speaker 1: which is not exactly one a day for a full year.
Speaker 1: It's one every one point one seven days. I did
Speaker 1: the math. They also had something that other bands with
Speaker 1: the K didn't too, vocalists Mike Shinodah and Chester Bennington.
Speaker 1: Shinodah was the rapper, Bennington was the singer and also
Speaker 1: the screamer and also everything in between. On breakthrough songs
Speaker 1: like In the End, Bennington could sound delicate like the
Speaker 1: piano and raw like the guitars. It was like a
Speaker 1: whole band in one throat. It starts with I don't
Speaker 1: know why it doesn't need no matter how hard to
Speaker 1: keep that in mind, I protect to was playing to
Speaker 1: do one thing. I don't know why it doesn't need to.
Speaker 1: It took more than a year for Hybrid Theory to
Speaker 1: climb to number two on the album chart. Don't let
Speaker 1: that number to fool you. It was a dominator. Hybrid
Speaker 1: Theory would become the best selling album of two thousand
Speaker 1: and one, beating out records from jay Z and Sinc.
Speaker 1: And Britney Spears, and it stayed on the Billboard chart
Speaker 1: for two hundred and nine weeks. A little more than
Speaker 1: four years gets sold better than ten million copies. Lincoln
Speaker 1: Park went added hard when they were on stage and
Speaker 1: hard when they weren't, but not the way most bands did.
Speaker 1: We'd rather go to somebody's house and write a song
Speaker 1: than go to a party, Shinoda told Rolling Stone in
Speaker 1: two thousand and three. At parties, you knew what was
Speaker 1: going to happen, you knew who was going to get drunk.
Speaker 1: But when we got together to write songs, we never
Speaker 1: knew what was going to happen. It was much more exciting.
Speaker 1: Lincoln Park became the biggest new rock band of the
Speaker 1: two thousand's for years. They had their own touring festival
Speaker 1: project Revolution that in two thousand and four featured both
Speaker 1: Corn and Snoop Dogg. Thank You, Thank You, Thank you
Speaker 1: kind And that's the same year they get a special friend,
Speaker 1: TV jay Z that became the Collision Core CP, the
Speaker 1: rare man ship project that works for more than a
Speaker 1: few minutes at the time. It's amazing how well Numb
Speaker 1: and Encore go together and how much each side gets
Speaker 1: from the other. Lincoln Park is a whole new kind
Speaker 1: of swagger. Jay Z has a new kind of thunder.
Speaker 1: It shouldn't work, but it totally does, you know. After that,
Speaker 1: it was natural that Lincoln Park hook up with producer
Speaker 1: Rick Rubin, who had masterminded some of the first fusions
Speaker 1: of rock, guitar and hip hop with Run DMC and
Speaker 1: The Beastie Boys. They recorded three albums with Ruben, who
Speaker 1: pushed them to write songs rather than make tracks, and
Speaker 1: on songs like Shadow of the Day from two thousand
Speaker 1: and sevens Minutes to Midnight, they sounded more like a
Speaker 1: band than ever. In fact, they sounded like they were
Speaker 1: ready to be the next you Tube. At the beginning
Speaker 1: for Lincoln Park, everybody played two roles, one in the band,
Speaker 1: one behind the scenes. Shinoda and keyboardist turntablist John handled
Speaker 1: the visuals, with Han directing the videos. Guitarist Delson and
Speaker 1: drummer Rob Borden handled some marketing and finance duties. Bassist
Speaker 1: Dave Farrell was the tour correspondent, doing updates for their website,
Speaker 1: but Bennington's job was more like being the heart of
Speaker 1: the band. He and Shinoda wrote the lyrics, and in
Speaker 1: interviews he embodied the pain, the angst, and the positivity
Speaker 1: expressed in the songs. He talked about his past, his
Speaker 1: struggles with addiction and childhood abuse, and he talked about
Speaker 1: being a regular guy, about working hard, and about life
Speaker 1: being good. The band had existed before Chester Bennington joined.
Speaker 1: They'd written songs, they'd played together, they had recorded, but
Speaker 1: it only really came together once he was there to
Speaker 1: add a voice and a face and a heart to
Speaker 1: the music. It's no surprise that you notice says, now,
Speaker 1: the future of the band is an open question. It's
Speaker 1: tempting to hear all of post Traumatic as a reaction
Speaker 1: to Bennington's death. Some songs aren't so sometimes even those
Speaker 1: have a way of coming back to the subject. But
Speaker 1: there's a post in post Traumatic for a reason. Mike
Speaker 1: Shinoda is struggling to find the way to move forward,
Speaker 1: and in one of his first in depth sit downs
Speaker 1: since Chester Bennington's death, we talked about whether or not
Speaker 1: there's a future for Lincoln Park, what it's going to
Speaker 1: be like to go on tour playing his own music
Speaker 1: and some Lincoln Park songs by himself on stage in
Speaker 1: massive festivals, and how much Chester Bennington meant him. Let's
Speaker 1: hear what Mike Shinoda has to say. So, how are you.
Speaker 1: I'm good, Yeah, I'm good. Yeah. Tell me about putting
Speaker 1: this record together. First, Let's start at the beginning. Now,
Speaker 1: the songs that we heard on the post Traumatic EP
Speaker 1: seemed to very directly address Chester's death and your feelings afterwards.
Speaker 1: But are you saying that there were other songs you
Speaker 1: were making during that period that we're about something else
Speaker 1: or or didn't fit into this project but had a
Speaker 1: different direction. It was mostly that I was writing about
Speaker 1: whatever was on my mind, so usually that would fit
Speaker 1: under the umbrella of this album. I did a couple
Speaker 1: of things that were a little more like stylistically like
Speaker 1: way different, Like I've joked around. It was like the
Speaker 1: sounded like like a bad Smashing Pumpkin song or like
Speaker 1: a Nine Inch Nails song or something. Yeah, those just
Speaker 1: didn't pan out like I did them for fun, just
Speaker 1: to do it. But the vast majority of the stuff
Speaker 1: I made became post traumatic. And there's sixteen songs on
Speaker 1: the record, which is the longest album I've ever done
Speaker 1: or been involved with. I should say, you know, it's autobiographical.
Speaker 1: It had this live journal feel to it. I mean
Speaker 1: it's journalistic in some sense, particularly once those videos started
Speaker 1: coming out. Tell me about the process of putting together
Speaker 1: those videos. There's place to start over again. I had
Speaker 1: done the first few songs. I didn't know where it
Speaker 1: was going to go, but I knew I had some songs,
Speaker 1: and the first ones it seemed to me that it
Speaker 1: should be in some chronological order or something that resembled that.
Speaker 1: So the first few songs I had were the ones
Speaker 1: you just named, and I decided At one point I
Speaker 1: was listening back to them in my studio on the sofa,
Speaker 1: and I pulled out my phone and I I had
Speaker 1: this idea of what a video for that song could
Speaker 1: look like, and I just pulled out my phone and
Speaker 1: did a selfie video of it. I just saw the
Speaker 1: look of the thing, and I thought that would actually
Speaker 1: make a kind of cool video, so I just shot it,
Speaker 1: and then later, having done that, I did another one,
Speaker 1: and I did some more little shots and it became
Speaker 1: stylistically that again, like autobiographical kind of depiction of what
Speaker 1: I was doing felt like the right way to visually
Speaker 1: represent the songs. What it did is it removed any
Speaker 1: kind of like intermediary in the conversation. It was just
Speaker 1: me talking to you right as opposed to like it's
Speaker 1: being shot by a director. Here's Mike talking about this
Speaker 1: really personal stuff, and we storyboarded out this really cool narrative.
Speaker 1: All of that was removed, the feelings happening in time
Speaker 1: and the songs being documented that way. Yes, And once
Speaker 1: I did them, it became part of the visual aesthetic
Speaker 1: of the whole thing. Part of the idea was from
Speaker 1: the paintings that I was doing at the time, those
Speaker 1: became the packaging, they became the merchandise. The videos and
Speaker 1: the autobiographical nature. Just like the communication style is there
Speaker 1: on the record, it's there in the visuals. In one sense,
Speaker 1: it just blurs the line between real time social media
Speaker 1: and videos and things that you don't usually think of
Speaker 1: as a real time Like the most recent when I
Speaker 1: did was for a song about you, which we just
Speaker 1: put out a couple of weeks ago. Decided to put
Speaker 1: it out. The week that we were putting it out,
Speaker 1: I decided to shoot the video while I was out
Speaker 1: promoting the record, and I flew to China. I was
Speaker 1: already going to be out there to do some record
Speaker 1: promo and shoot some stuff for tour announcements in Asia,
Speaker 1: And while I was there, we shot the video and
Speaker 1: then a few days later it was on the internet.
Speaker 1: Like everything is in real time. And just to be
Speaker 1: clear for people who haven't heard it, about you, like
Speaker 1: a lot of songs on this record is addressing loss,
Speaker 1: so about you. The idea of the song is even
Speaker 1: when I don't think the song is about this, even
Speaker 1: when I don't think the moment is about this, it
Speaker 1: comes back to this, right or there's two versions of it.
Speaker 1: Sometimes when I'm writing about something, it does come back
Speaker 1: to the context of having lost Chester or the uncertainty
Speaker 1: of the band's current situation. The other thing is, though,
Speaker 1: that even when I actually don't write a song having
Speaker 1: anything to do with those things, people see it through
Speaker 1: that lens. So, in other words, just to put it
Speaker 1: into somebody else's context entirely, so that you can see
Speaker 1: where I'm coming from. Joe, if you have a public
Speaker 1: breakup with a woman, let's say you get both super
Speaker 1: celebrities and you're dating, this is going to be really imaginary.
Speaker 1: But okay, Scarlett Johansson, right, good for me. And then
Speaker 1: you broke up and everyone's like, oh man, they broke up.
Speaker 1: It's on the front page of all the things and
Speaker 1: all that, and people are talking about it. And then
Speaker 1: you go and you get coffee in your sweats and
Speaker 1: they take pictures of you and it's like, oh see,
Speaker 1: he's super depressed, Like didn't put on jeans in the
Speaker 1: shirt today today it was sweats, Like he must be
Speaker 1: super depressed. It's all about her. And then you get
Speaker 1: a slice of pizza. You see he got the like
Speaker 1: five different toppings could have been. Yeah, he's really hurting
Speaker 1: right now. They see everything through this lens of like
Speaker 1: what they think you're going through, and even if you're
Speaker 1: like no, I literally just felt comfortable in my pj's
Speaker 1: and I went and got a slice of pizza because
Speaker 1: I like pizza. Guys, Like, that's all there is to it.
Speaker 1: There's no reason to read further into it. But that's
Speaker 1: just how our world works. They're gonna start seeing things
Speaker 1: through that lens. In fact, just this weekend I had
Speaker 1: my first show. Two shows. Actually, I did a double
Speaker 1: header and did a radio show in the afternoon and
Speaker 1: did a longer headline set in the evening. It was
Speaker 1: in front of City Hall in l A. It was
Speaker 1: part of an Asian festival. Really special way to like
Speaker 1: kick things off. Perfect for me. I just loved it.
Speaker 1: A couple of the journalists who came and wrote about
Speaker 1: the events called it a tribute show. So I asked
Speaker 1: online just today, I tweeted, did you guys think that
Speaker 1: these were tribute shows? And if so, like, do you
Speaker 1: feel like that means it was sad? Did it feel
Speaker 1: like sad overall? Not that it didn't feel bitter sweet
Speaker 1: at certain moments. There was definitely a tribute moment I
Speaker 1: played in the end and we sang it together, just
Speaker 1: piano and me and the crowd. You mentioned that you
Speaker 1: were working these tracks chronologically, and I'm curious to know
Speaker 1: is the album sequenced that way. For the most part,
Speaker 1: it's not exact chronology. It doesn't follow exactly in the
Speaker 1: order in which they were written or have happened, because
Speaker 1: I did, as a listener have this sensation of getting
Speaker 1: too not exactly the more upbeat songs, but definitely the
Speaker 1: sense of as the tracks go on, I'm getting this
Speaker 1: feeling of you're going on, You're moving on right, And
Speaker 1: I think that one thing that's different about this album
Speaker 1: than most albums I've put out, from all the Lincoln
Speaker 1: Park albums to the fourth Minor album. Usually, when you
Speaker 1: put out an album, it's hey, I finished a thing,
Speaker 1: check out the thing I made. It's finished. And this
Speaker 1: is almost like I started a thing, like this is
Speaker 1: an album that captures a moment in time for the
Speaker 1: last six to nine months, and it is what it is,
Speaker 1: and now I'm going to continue to evolve and move
Speaker 1: on from here. Because we get deeper into the album,
Speaker 1: we come to these tracks like make it Up As
Speaker 1: I go World's on Fire. These are songs that seemed
Speaker 1: to me we're addressing the same sorts of problems or feelings.
Speaker 1: Make it up as I go? How do I go? On?
Speaker 1: Worlds on fire? This is a bad time. But they
Speaker 1: were also had another side to them. They had this
Speaker 1: side of like, here's how I get past this? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so like make it up as I go. Actually started
Speaker 1: the hook of that we wrote towards the end of
Speaker 1: One More Light. It was Brad and I and k Flay.
Speaker 1: That song is more about in its inception of having
Speaker 1: that feeling of like not knowing what the next steps are,
Speaker 1: but you just kind of power through it and figure
Speaker 1: it out as you go. And I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: I came back to that song because I just always
Speaker 1: loved it, And then I wrote the verses more recently.
Speaker 1: I think that one relates a little more closely this
Speaker 1: stuff of this last year. But the other one you
Speaker 1: mentioned the World's on fire. When I wrote that one,
Speaker 1: the course of that is basically the World's on fire,
Speaker 1: But all I need is you. It's the first time
Speaker 1: I've really written that kind of like it's like almost
Speaker 1: like just a love song. I was specifically thinking of
Speaker 1: my family It occurred to me because it was one
Speaker 1: of those days when I was like really like up
Speaker 1: to my eyeballs in my social media feed and it
Speaker 1: seems like everything was just a mess. You know, you're
Speaker 1: reading it's like the political tweets are firing and everybody's
Speaker 1: like freaked out about the state of the country, in
Speaker 1: the state of the world, and then environmental tweets and
Speaker 1: like net neutrality tweets, and then on top of it,
Speaker 1: like there's like five wildfires going on in Los Angeles
Speaker 1: at the same time, so all of this is happening
Speaker 1: at once, and all of that without the crap that
Speaker 1: I had been through in the six months proceeding, that
Speaker 1: would have been enough as it was, but all put
Speaker 1: together was just like everything is just falling apart of
Speaker 1: the seems what a mess. And then I can go
Speaker 1: like sit down and play with my kids, and it
Speaker 1: all kind of evaporates. And what's so interesting is receiving
Speaker 1: it now. I connected to some comments you've made about
Speaker 1: lost being like a wildfire. You know, things are destroyed
Speaker 1: in a clear space for something new. But also there's
Speaker 1: that image. The image of the wildfire is actually in
Speaker 1: the Nothing makes Sense video. Keep in mind. I grew
Speaker 1: up thinking I was going to be a painter. I
Speaker 1: grew up in art. I went to school for illustration.
Speaker 1: I've had three gallery shows now. The only reason I
Speaker 1: haven't had more is because I'm busy with the playing music.
Speaker 1: You know, there's that minor distraction in the world. Doing that,
Speaker 1: I would do what I really want to do in
Speaker 1: all seriousness. I grew up painting, And one of the
Speaker 1: things I get out of doing an art show, creating
Speaker 1: a body of work that way is that when you
Speaker 1: walk in, if it's done right, like, you have a
Speaker 1: sense of this thread of intention that just weaves its
Speaker 1: way through everything that you're experiencing. Because some shows there's
Speaker 1: painting and installation and sound and all of these different
Speaker 1: ways that you can communicate the concept of the thing.
Speaker 1: And so this record, in a sense, I wanted to
Speaker 1: bring a little bit of that gallery experience, with that
Speaker 1: gallery intention to the thing. So something we mentioned, like
Speaker 1: the fires or or other symbolism on the record, it
Speaker 1: occurs in various media in the whole effort, And still
Speaker 1: I'm still weaving it in even as we're starting to
Speaker 1: do live shows and and look at the production to
Speaker 1: the show. But it's funny to me as a listener,
Speaker 1: how conflicting some of the emotions on this record are.
Speaker 1: There are moments of real rising above, like I think
Speaker 1: of can't hear You Now, which is almost like a
Speaker 1: battle rap if you're a hater, I can't hear you now.
Speaker 1: But because that's really one way of looking at that
Speaker 1: song and hearing that song, really, I think that was
Speaker 1: the intention of the song for sure, And yet I
Speaker 1: hear it now and I come to that line woke
Speaker 1: up knowing I don't have to be numb again, and
Speaker 1: I think, oh, yeah, maybe that's a reference back to
Speaker 1: this other thing I've been thinking about on this record. Well,
Speaker 1: that's the reality of the record and of going through
Speaker 1: something like this is you know, most of us know
Speaker 1: it's that it's messy and the references going to blend
Speaker 1: into one another. And even I listened to it and
Speaker 1: I go, oh, yeah, I was definitely thinking about a
Speaker 1: But subconsciously there's a little bit of be in there.
Speaker 1: You know. It's funny with a tragedy like this, Sometimes
Speaker 1: difficult days are the good days. Sometimes you have a
Speaker 1: good day. Everything's fine, you're with your kids, you're with
Speaker 1: your family, you don't think about the other thing, and
Speaker 1: you catch yourself feeling good and that feels strange. I
Speaker 1: thought that I would get taken off guard by that
Speaker 1: more than I did. A lot of people that I
Speaker 1: I've talked to had real difficult battles with feeling guilty
Speaker 1: for feeling good. One person described it as like I
Speaker 1: made it all the way to lunch without thinking of
Speaker 1: the horrible thing that had happened. In their case, it
Speaker 1: was it was similar with somebody passing away. Oh I
Speaker 1: made it all the way to lunch without thinking of them.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I'm so horrble that I didn't think
Speaker 1: about them until lunch, And it's like no, no, no
Speaker 1: for me, I'm like grateful on days when I can
Speaker 1: get back to more of a sense of normal, there's
Speaker 1: no disrespect or guilt that should come with that. Maybe
Speaker 1: I don't feel like elty because I did feel like
Speaker 1: when things kind of fell apart and the dust settled,
Speaker 1: that I was able to take a step back and
Speaker 1: look at my life and say, Okay, am I doing
Speaker 1: things that I'm proud of? Am I doing good things?
Speaker 1: Like what I do with the music and my professional life.
Speaker 1: Is that in a good balance with my family and like,
Speaker 1: am I taking care of my wife and my kids
Speaker 1: and that type of stuff. I do feel like I
Speaker 1: looked at that and said, yeah, I'm doing I'm doing
Speaker 1: good fine, And this isn't just about like sell records
Speaker 1: and make money. This is about getting out with the
Speaker 1: people that have been hard. My Lincoln Park and individual
Speaker 1: musical community we have like a family. There are people
Speaker 1: with my drawings and signatures and banned artwork tattooed on
Speaker 1: their bodies. This is a a moment in time when
Speaker 1: they have been there for me when I'm feeling like
Speaker 1: I don't know what the hell is going on, and
Speaker 1: when I have been there for them to reassure them
Speaker 1: that things are going to be okay. I'm not responsible
Speaker 1: for them, they're not responsible for me. But we can
Speaker 1: be support for one another, and they can be support
Speaker 1: for one another without me even being in the picture.
Speaker 1: It's really reassuring to see that. I wish there was
Speaker 1: a way for me to like share that with more people,
Speaker 1: because when I look in my mentions and I see
Speaker 1: them talking to one another and saying such wonderful things,
Speaker 1: like I mean, the end of the thought was just
Speaker 1: that that's really reassuring the other day, when I did
Speaker 1: that show at l A City Hall, some of the
Speaker 1: fans had gotten there super early in the morning, six
Speaker 1: in the morning or something, and it was an unusually
Speaker 1: cold day and l a kind of rainy. I saw
Speaker 1: them tweeting like san tacos and pickets, send blankets and tacos, right,
Speaker 1: believe it or not. One of the folks on our side,
Speaker 1: like who works at Warner Brothers. His name's Adam and
Speaker 1: he ran our Lincoln Park fan club first before he
Speaker 1: moved over. He got poached by the label. But he's
Speaker 1: a friend of the community of Lincoln Park and of
Speaker 1: my music. He went and need to made sure they
Speaker 1: were okay, Like are you warmed? You guys need some
Speaker 1: merchandise in a sweatshirt? Can I get you some water?
Speaker 1: That's what I'm talking about. Like you'll even see it
Speaker 1: in in Chester's wife Tlenda's feet. She'll retweet people who
Speaker 1: are just being kind to one another. Let me ask
Speaker 1: you about Chester, those of us that knew him through
Speaker 1: the songs. Yeah, and in the songs, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of pain, there's a lot of struggle, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of moving beyond that. But tell me a little bit
Speaker 1: about the Chester we didn't know well. The one thing
Speaker 1: that I like to remind people is that he was
Speaker 1: naturally gifted with the way he performed in his voice,
Speaker 1: in particular, like he had a world class, one of
Speaker 1: a kind voice. Obviously if you didn't know, he could
Speaker 1: sing basically any genre, any type of song that you
Speaker 1: threw at him, barring hip hop, maybe a little bit
Speaker 1: like it wasn't the best rapper. You give him a
Speaker 1: singing part, and the dude could do anything. It didn't
Speaker 1: matter if it was like quiet female singer songwriter. In fact,
Speaker 1: he'd be singing something like one of our songs, like
Speaker 1: tracking it in the studio, and I'd say, do it
Speaker 1: with five more, Dave, gone, do it with twenty five more, Adele.
Speaker 1: I'd throw out these references of other singers that I
Speaker 1: wanted him to imitate or at a flavor of, and
Speaker 1: he knew we had a vocabulary of that type of
Speaker 1: stuff that I could say to him, and he knew
Speaker 1: what I meant. Nobody else had that with him, So
Speaker 1: that was a thing personally, you know, studio and all
Speaker 1: that stuff aside. I think when we wrote, we wrote
Speaker 1: about these difficult topics, but in general, especially in the
Speaker 1: past few years. He was so much more together then
Speaker 1: he had been in years prior. Like he joked that
Speaker 1: the band was his most stable and together relationship. I
Speaker 1: think he was saying that in a joking way, because
Speaker 1: I think with his wife and his kids, I think
Speaker 1: that was probably number one and we were probably number two.
Speaker 1: But but just to be clear, there aren't a lot
Speaker 1: of bands that have a run this long. Just last year,
Speaker 1: you have a number one album, right, Usually when you
Speaker 1: have that situation, you have your couple of classic albums
Speaker 1: and then it's just you play the old stuff. We
Speaker 1: were fortunate enough to for most of the records that
Speaker 1: we put out, we got a number one or two
Speaker 1: on the rock charts and alternative charts, and a number
Speaker 1: one release and in many countries. So still very relevant,
Speaker 1: is the point. I guess. I think with each album
Speaker 1: I've ever been involved with, each step of the way,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to see what have I not done that
Speaker 1: seems exciting and fun, that will keep it fresh and
Speaker 1: like in the in a sense of like they to
Speaker 1: go back to, like that body of work, like this
Speaker 1: is the art show, like curate your experience, what is
Speaker 1: the experience you're curating for the fans this time, and
Speaker 1: how is that different than the other things that you've done.
Speaker 1: You've worked with a remarkable range of rappers across the
Speaker 1: career of Lincoln Park common of course jay Z. Have
Speaker 1: you given thought to Lincoln Park's impact on hip hop? Oh? Sure,
Speaker 1: absolutely that I grew up a hip hop kid first
Speaker 1: and foremost, Like, that's the first type of music I
Speaker 1: ever got into and fell in love with it and
Speaker 1: most of what I listened to it. It's the legend
Speaker 1: that your first show ever was a Public Enemy Anthrax show.
Speaker 1: Is that truth? That is my first The first concept
Speaker 1: I ever went to it was you went in the
Speaker 1: black young black teenagers primus Public Enemy Anthrax. So you
Speaker 1: go to that and you're like, we get some depeche
Speaker 1: Mode keyboards in here, we might have something. It's like,
Speaker 1: it's almost comedic. How like it sounds like I would
Speaker 1: just be I'd be making that up right, that that
Speaker 1: would be the first show. But if you think about it,
Speaker 1: at that time, those types of music were being put
Speaker 1: together for the first time, and it was clumsy, like
Speaker 1: in a way, there was a simplicity in the way
Speaker 1: they would just like mash the stuff up together. There
Speaker 1: were moments when it was really seamless, like walk this
Speaker 1: way absolutely, like that is an album, Whereas when I
Speaker 1: listened to it, I go, Okay, that's that's like a
Speaker 1: very seamless blend. There's a lot of food analogies in
Speaker 1: our band, so that would be like a soup where
Speaker 1: you take the ingredients and you blend them together and
Speaker 1: you can't tell one ingredient from the other. The Anthrax
Speaker 1: Public Enemy thing is like a salad. You've got all
Speaker 1: the ingredients, but you can see them all. They're all
Speaker 1: separate ingredients, right. So sometimes we take one approach, sometimes
Speaker 1: we take another, and it's the gray area in the
Speaker 1: middle when it becomes really interesting. Whenever I've approached the stuff,
Speaker 1: just the awareness of how blended do you want this
Speaker 1: thing to be? The hybrid theory brand of it was
Speaker 1: like kind of blended, but like you can kind of
Speaker 1: still see the arts from one another. But if you
Speaker 1: fast forward a few albums in you start getting songs
Speaker 1: like on Um. For example, our fourth record was called
Speaker 1: A Thousand Sons. There's a song on there called when
Speaker 1: They Come for Me. When They Come for Me is
Speaker 1: just this like I don't know what genre that song is.
Speaker 1: There isn't a name for that thing. This is a
Speaker 1: long way of saying we were growing up in a
Speaker 1: time where music was very separate, and I know that
Speaker 1: we played a role in making it less separate. When
Speaker 1: I grew up, kids were metal kids, rock kids, rap kids,
Speaker 1: pop kids. You weren't like just fans of music. People
Speaker 1: didn't really do that. I mean, I think early late nineties,
Speaker 1: early two thousands, you ask somebody what do you listen
Speaker 1: to and they go, oh, everything, And that was the
Speaker 1: beginning of oh everything. When I first heard Little Loozy
Speaker 1: for Exo Tour Life, I was like, you know, this
Speaker 1: is a rap song that would not exist without you guys.
Speaker 1: You know I mean that that sense of like those
Speaker 1: big keyboards, that keyboard drama, being open to that that
Speaker 1: was a turning point. I think it's it's something different.
Speaker 1: Uh Well, also lyrically, if you think about that song,
Speaker 1: like there's a darkness and and an openness to just
Speaker 1: saying like, well, this is how I feel I'm going
Speaker 1: to write about in a depression and whatever. Right, that
Speaker 1: emo side of current rap, some of those rappers are
Speaker 1: kind of running from that a little bit and playing
Speaker 1: that down and saying no, it's not emo or whatever.
Speaker 1: I get why they're doing that. I would probably feel
Speaker 1: the same way. You didn't want to be called a
Speaker 1: rap rock band in the year two thousand and one
Speaker 1: only because of the associations. We just wanted it to
Speaker 1: be clear that they were such a big difference between
Speaker 1: what a lot of those bands were doing. One of
Speaker 1: your songs from the fort minor Days deal specifically with identity,
Speaker 1: and I'm talking about Kenji. Yeah. Yeah. For those who
Speaker 1: don't know, it's the story of Japanese immigrants held in
Speaker 1: internment camps during World War Two, it's a personal story
Speaker 1: for you. Well, they weren't just immigrants, they were American
Speaker 1: citizens of Japanese descent. Basically, what happened is when Pearl
Speaker 1: Harbor was bombed, there was a high that, you know,
Speaker 1: the highest level of wartime paranoia going on. The American
Speaker 1: government decided, oh no, like, we don't know who could
Speaker 1: be a spy, We don't know, you know, what bad
Speaker 1: things can be happening. I mean, this sounds like it
Speaker 1: could happen today. Let's just make clear that that there
Speaker 1: is a personal dimension here. Yeah. Yeah, my dad's Japanese.
Speaker 1: My dad's side of the family is all Japanese. I'm half.
Speaker 1: I grew up understanding that my family had unjustly been
Speaker 1: put in these camps. Basically, what happened is short version
Speaker 1: of the story Pearl Harbor happens. The government says, we're
Speaker 1: putting all the Japanese on the West coast in prison camps.
Speaker 1: They tell everybody to get out of their homes. They
Speaker 1: let them pack two bags of stuff, and you have
Speaker 1: to leave the rest of your earthly belongings in your
Speaker 1: house alone. And you say, oh, well, when are we
Speaker 1: coming back, And there's like, whenever we tell you you can,
Speaker 1: you get thrown in horse stalls to sleep, sometimes just tents,
Speaker 1: sometimes busses whatever. Once the camps are built, they are
Speaker 1: built in the desert. You get shipped off to the
Speaker 1: desert and you stay there for years until the end
Speaker 1: of the war. And then when you go home, your
Speaker 1: home has been vandalized and some cases burned. Some cases
Speaker 1: people's stuff was okay, my family's was not. The place
Speaker 1: was vandalized and everything was stolen um and they had
Speaker 1: to start their lives over. When I was listening back
Speaker 1: to the Fort Minor record, I was really struck by
Speaker 1: the creeping sense of this feels like it should have
Speaker 1: been impossible, and there are things happening now that feel
Speaker 1: like they should be in part. Oh. Yeah, the Japanese
Speaker 1: American community has been one of the most vocal communities
Speaker 1: in the past couple of years, especially as it relates
Speaker 1: to Muslim and immigrants. For example, um, when the whole
Speaker 1: thing was going on about shutting the borders to to
Speaker 1: folks who are coming in living in l A, the
Speaker 1: Japanese American community in in l A was really vocal
Speaker 1: about that subject. All of a sudden, they want to
Speaker 1: start rounding people up again. So of course the Japanese
Speaker 1: Americans like my family are saying, no, guys, we already
Speaker 1: made this mistake, and the US government said we can't
Speaker 1: make it again. You know, you mentioned that that you
Speaker 1: recently played your first solo shows, and just to be clear,
Speaker 1: these were really solo shows that we you on stage,
Speaker 1: nobody else. You've got some dates coming up, I do.
Speaker 1: I'm headed to Asia and Europe. You're going to play
Speaker 1: the Reading Festival. Yes, is it just going to be you?
Speaker 1: I thinks so I want to try that first and
Speaker 1: uh see how that feels, and after that we'll see
Speaker 1: what happens. I mean, I'm curious about what the show
Speaker 1: would look like if I start adding a couple of people,
Speaker 1: but I don't also don't want it to be confusing
Speaker 1: in terms of, like, you know, the fans wondering if
Speaker 1: it is or is not Lincoln Park, or you know,
Speaker 1: anything like that. What was the feeling going into these
Speaker 1: two shows? Were you nervous? Did you know how it
Speaker 1: would feel to do those Lincoln Park songs by yourself?
Speaker 1: I felt ready to do of them. I did feel anxious,
Speaker 1: quite a bit more anxious before the first show, and
Speaker 1: I was glad that I did the two on the
Speaker 1: same day because the first show was almost like a
Speaker 1: nice warm up, and I then I felt really relaxed
Speaker 1: going to the second one. To your point, like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe I'm just really good at compartmentalizing. I felt, Okay.
Speaker 1: It's impossible to get through, for example, like Lincoln Park
Speaker 1: songs without thinking about Chester, you know. You I look
Speaker 1: out and I see one person like just raging, like
Speaker 1: screaming and having the best time, and then like I
Speaker 1: look over the other side and like somebody crying. Right,
Speaker 1: that's a little tricky, Like that's new that's not something
Speaker 1: I normally would see. How did it compare to last
Speaker 1: October when you were at the Hollywood Bowl you did
Speaker 1: this what was a memorial car? That was yeah, completely different.
Speaker 1: In October we had done that show because we realized
Speaker 1: that we had a private memorial and that the fans
Speaker 1: didn't have a public one. They didn't have one that
Speaker 1: they could go to. They didn't get to say goodbye,
Speaker 1: they didn't get to experience that closure that comes with it.
Speaker 1: We set that show up, we scheduled it to play
Speaker 1: that role for the fans. Really don't get it twisted.
Speaker 1: It was like very hard for us to do. You know.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we'd be rehearsing stuff and the guys are just like,
Speaker 1: can we like, let's take a break. It's like too much.
Speaker 1: There are a few like realizations that were really necessary
Speaker 1: about doing it. Number One, the warmth and the connected
Speaker 1: energy of the whole Lincoln Park fan community of all
Speaker 1: of the world like really came together around that show
Speaker 1: and around the band during that time, and I'm super
Speaker 1: grateful for that. I mean, everybody was so supportive. It
Speaker 1: was incredible, and they've continued to be artist community, people
Speaker 1: jumping in, sending in videos like I wish we could
Speaker 1: be there coming on stage and singing with us and
Speaker 1: doing all that really really special we had. I don't
Speaker 1: know how the artist twenty something artists, I think. And
Speaker 1: then in in retrospect, after having done those rehearsals and
Speaker 1: played the show, you know, even watching it back and stuff,
Speaker 1: I was like, these people who came on stage with
Speaker 1: us all have awesome, awesome voices, and they're really really
Speaker 1: wonderful and talented people, and not a single one of
Speaker 1: them is chest her like that. There's no one's who
Speaker 1: even if I'm imagining, like who could we sing these
Speaker 1: songs with in the future. Is listening back to those
Speaker 1: It's like those are all great moments, but that's none
Speaker 1: of them are sustainable things. There isn't a version of
Speaker 1: the band that exists with any of those types of people,
Speaker 1: as wonderful as they are, right, So that just puts
Speaker 1: more of a I doesn't doesn't add more of a
Speaker 1: question mark, maybe, but it just checks things off the
Speaker 1: list that are not. Really we just know what things
Speaker 1: are not the option, Well, then what are the options?
Speaker 1: I don't know. That's the million dollar question, right, And unfortunately,
Speaker 1: you know I've said it before, but unfortunately there aren't
Speaker 1: any answers to that at this point. It would be
Speaker 1: awesome if there were. That would be really easy. Um,
Speaker 1: I wish we were in in a Brian Johnson Bond
Speaker 1: Scott situation where it's like, no, the guy, like our
Speaker 1: best friend who sang for the band who passed away.
Speaker 1: He literally said, this is the guy, and we listen
Speaker 1: to the guy, and the guy is definitely the guy,
Speaker 1: and we all love hanging out with him and we
Speaker 1: want to play with him. That's not a normal that
Speaker 1: that didn't happen to anybody else. Really, that hasn't happened
Speaker 1: to us. Somebody comes and says, Hay Lincoln Park, do
Speaker 1: you want to play a show in Germany? Then you
Speaker 1: have to have a discussion with all the guys, and
Speaker 1: you have one guy who's like, I definitely don't want
Speaker 1: to do any one guy who says, I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe I agree, maybe we shouldn't do it, and two
Speaker 1: guys to say we definitely need to do it. And
Speaker 1: then there's concerns and all that noise, like that is
Speaker 1: not something I can deal with right now, and it's
Speaker 1: not a knock on anybody else, any one of us
Speaker 1: could be the outlier opinion though, like minority voice on something.
Speaker 1: But I definitely need some more simplicity in terms of
Speaker 1: like decision making, Like oh my gut says that the
Speaker 1: right thing to do is to shoot a video on
Speaker 1: the crappy camera on my phone. I chewed it, I
Speaker 1: look at it, I go I like that, and I
Speaker 1: can put it on the internet and it's done. I
Speaker 1: don't need to call anybody else. And that for me,
Speaker 1: that power and that and that control has been part
Speaker 1: of my like recovery process. When you miss Chester, what
Speaker 1: do you miss most about him? In the beginning, I'll
Speaker 1: tell you the thing that whenever I saw it, it
Speaker 1: just made me like so it just like oh' just
Speaker 1: so painful. Is at the end of every show we
Speaker 1: put our arm around each other and always say a
Speaker 1: good show. And that was always such a special moment.
Speaker 1: It was always that like really satisfying, like hey, good job,
Speaker 1: we did it. If the show is really good, then
Speaker 1: it's like, hey man, that was a good show. It
Speaker 1: was bad. I was like we made it through that show.
Speaker 1: Good job. Also, like we always traveled together, we'd have
Speaker 1: a lot of the same conversations and a lot of
Speaker 1: inside jokes, and we played a lot of poker. Those
Speaker 1: are things, especially on the road, that like other people
Speaker 1: around us would have mentioned a lot of times, like, man,
Speaker 1: it's always so funny hearing you guys like post show
Speaker 1: in the van, like just rambling on about nonsense the
Speaker 1: way we do. We do that goofy voices. And they
Speaker 1: had like these characters and he he had like a
Speaker 1: Russian character that always showed up like in this weird
Speaker 1: Russian accent. Yeah, that was all really great stuff. I'm
Speaker 1: shout to thank you for being here. Good show. Join
Speaker 1: Inside the Studio for more in depth conversations with the
Speaker 1: biggest names in music. Search and follow Inside the Studio
Speaker 1: on I Heart Radio or subscribe wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: podcasts so that you never missed an episode. Inside the
Speaker 1: Studio is an I Heart Radio original podcast created by
Speaker 1: Chris Peterson. This episode was written and hosted by me
Speaker 1: Joe Levy, our executive producer Sandy Smallens for audiation and
Speaker 1: of course special thanks to Mike Shinodah and Warner Brothers Records.