LP updates, quotes, & more; Joe says he's "plotting" with Mike & Rob

[LPLStaff]

It has been a while since we've done a comprehensive update on what members of Linkin Park have said in regards to a possible future of the band, so we wanted to provide some information on what the band has been saying recently.

 

Yesterday, Mike, Joe, and Rob met up and Joe posted a photo to Instagram saying,  "#plotting with @m_shinoda and @robbourdon @linkinpark", but quickly removed the "#plotting" part of the message. However, that edit was only done on Instagram and the cross-post to his Facebook page remained with it intact.

 

Earlier this month, Phoenix talked about the band in a podcast with Riff Magazine. He said that his mindset is to respect the process they are going through right now and wants to ensure that what comes next is an organic choice. He added that he doesn't want to be retired from music at this point in his life, but he also doesn't want to rush to a decision when it comes to Linkin Park's future. He added,  “I don’t really know what we’re going to do, and how we’re going to do it. I know I still love music. I know I still love the five guys. The five of us still get together; we still hang out and we still love being around each other.”

Last month, Joe Hahn directly addressed Linkin Park in an interview with Yonhap News, saying, "Maybe in about 10 years? (Laughs) It might be sooner. I don't want to set a deadline. We just want to focus on the present and talk about music. We aren't discussing detailed plans. I just want to go back to those days when I made music in the garage."

 

In an interview with Sirius XM's "Volume West" in December, Phoenix elaborated on the current state of the band quite a bit, saying they all want to make music together again, and went on to thank the fanbase:
 

"The five of us, we still love getting a chance to hang out. We hang out quite a bit. I think we will do music again. We all want to. We all still enjoy being together and being around each other. But we have a huge process to figure out what we wanna do and what that's gonna look like. And I don't have a timetable for how long that'll take. I've never been down that road or gone through that process completely, so it's really hard to put a time or a day.

 

In fairness, one of the things that I think has been ridiculously cool about Linkin Park fans and our fanbase is how supportive they've been of us in that process. Social media, notoriously, can be a really negative place, and it is, like, 99.9 percent positive, what I see, from our fans just saying, 'We're here. We want to hear what you guys are doing. We want to be involved, but we get it. We want you guys also to be healthy and happy, and do what's right for you as well.' And we hear that message — we receive that, we get that from that community and from that fanbase — and it's really, really something that is special, and I can't say 'thank you' enough for that."

 

On the Post Traumatic World Tour in interviews, Mike reiterated the same message - they don't have answers for the future at this time, but they continue to see each other and hang out. Lastly, in January 2018, Mike mentioned the potential for a future of the band by responding to a fan on Twitter saying, "I have every intention on continuing with LP, and the guys feel the same. We have a lot of rebuilding to do, and questions to answer, so it’ll take time."

Only time will tell and we wish the band all the luck in the world in their journey to figure out their future. It's always a good sign when they post photos together, and with them already discussing publicly in 2019 that they'd like to continue making music together and talk about music, the future appears to be bright for them. While we'd all love to see Linkin Park return, we deeply respect this process and the amount of time it takes to collectively progress.

[PeppePark]

I love this thread.

Can't wait to have updates.

#plotting

[Scourge]

On 5/31/2019 at 2:20 PM, LPLStaff said:

I just want to go back to those days when I made music in the garage."

Oh man. I know this is a reach but the first thing that popped into my head was Xero. The community would go crazy if they did something like a small show under that name or re-recorded the four songs off the original demo. Probably won't happen but we can only dream!!! I'm so proud of these guys

[JZLP-Benningstrong]

So now it seems that Rob actually worked with Emily.

 

I would love to know more from this part of the story.

 

The Rob situation it's very odd.. no statement by him.. Mike didn't really address the situation he told it like it was no big deal.

 

LP met Emily in 2019 and this picture it's from that year hopefully someday they talk more about these dark days.

[Justin]

16 minutes ago, JZLP-RoadsUntraveled said:

So now it seems that Rob actually worked with Emily.

 

I would love to know more from this part of the story.

 

The Rob situation it's very odd.. no statement by him.. Mike didn't really address the situation he told it like it was no big deal.

 

LP met Emily in 2019 and this picture it's from that year hopefully someday they talk more about these dark days.

I feel like Mike didn't want to speak for Rob and say anything concrete about why he did or didn't choose to leave since it's not his place.

 

Rob can speak for himself if and when he chooses to elaborate on why he chose to not return. Occam's razor says it's that he didn't want to continue on in a version of LP without Chester. It can't just be that he doesn't want to tour anymore considering that is Brad's issue and they've worked around that for him.

 

With that said, I don't want to assume his reasons either. I just don't think it's incredibly likely that we'll get anything from Rob if we haven't already.

[Trumtram]

Yeah, it's super strange that Rob didn't say goodbye to us fans. A small written statement would have been enough and the decent thing to do. That leads me to believe that things got messy somewhere down the road.

But that's obviously as speculative as the overall narrative that gets thrown around of him not continuing because of Chester being gone.

[JZLP-Benningstrong]

3 hours ago, Trumtram said:

Yeah, it's super strange that Rob didn't say goodbye to us fans. A small written statement would have been enough and the decent thing to do. That leads me to believe that things got messy somewhere down the road.

But that's obviously as speculative as the overall narrative that gets thrown around of him not continuing because of Chester being gone.

 

If he stayed for so long (until 2022?) he probably didn't like Emily or the new direction.

 

It's very weird that he left when the recording session started or were really close to start.

 

Something weird happened.

[bloodbath]

When I see some of you speaking about the Rob situation, I see a lot of naivety. Bands changes a lot of members for various reasons, some of them logic, some of them absurd. Bands are enterprises, rarely a bunch of friends, like LP.

 

If Mike says that he simply lost interest, then it probably be it, you're trying to see a big drama where there's nothing, just a guy who doesn't feel comfortable anymore in the band. And no, he doesn't own you a statement.

[leftshoe18]

I also hate this insistence that Rob owes us some kind of statement. Saying stuff like it's the "decent" thing for him to do reeks of entitlement. If Rob ever wants to clarify things, cool. If not, he's not failing to meet some obligation he has to the fans.

[LPLStaff]

Not one clue what happened with Rob, but the timeline that he had met Emily or worked with her seems pretty likely. He was around for years after they first started working with her. But Colin was around too, but he's also a multi-instrumentalist and producer which is not strange to have sessions with.

[Hybrid1988]

Mike is also notoriously bad at remembering exact dates. All we have to go on is his word and it’s possible that in reality, the timelines are off. 

[Trumtram]

4 hours ago, leftshoe18 said:

I also hate this insistence that Rob owes us some kind of statement. Saying stuff like it's the "decent" thing for him to do reeks of entitlement. If Rob ever wants to clarify things, cool. If not, he's not failing to meet some obligation he has to the fans.

He was part of this band since forever. Yes, he never was the most social guy in the band, but my god, you act like just saying thank you to the fans for all these years is an outlandish thing to ask for. To me, it's a decent thing to do for not only the fans of the band, but also for his fans. Providing closure, not raising a dozen question marks. He doesn't have to justify his decision, obviously. But it's by large standard procedure to put a statement out when someone leaves. Either by the band and/or the parting member. I mean, it has been almost 20 years for them together. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

 

It's totally fine if you (or anyone else) is cool with him just noping out. But I agree to disagree on that one.

[LPLStaff]

Rob has known Mike since like 1995. This is literally almost 30 years of life - he's been in/around LP longer than he's not been, if that makes sense. So, it is odd to not hear from him on this in one sense, but Rob also is a super private person. I hope the band opens up about him in more interviews.

[bloodbath]

2 hours ago, Trumtram said:

He was part of this band since forever. Yes, he never was the most social guy in the band, but my god, you act like just saying thank you to the fans for all these years is an outlandish thing to ask for. To me, it's a decent thing to do for not only the fans of the band, but also for his fans. Providing closure, not raising a dozen question marks. He doesn't have to justify his decision, obviously. But it's by large standard procedure to put a statement out when someone leaves. Either by the band and/or the parting member. I mean, it has been almost 20 years for them together. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

 

It's totally fine if you (or anyone else) is cool with him just noping out. But I agree to disagree on that one.

Make no mistake, we all like to know what happened and have some words from him, but some people take it as Rob own them something, like they're entitled to something. It would be a good gesture from him, but again, we have no place here.

[JZLP-Benningstrong]

16 minutes ago, bloodbath said:

Make no mistake, we all like to know what happened and have some words from him, but some people take it as Rob own them something, like they're entitled to something. It would be a good gesture from him, but again, we have no place here.

 

He really owes us an explanation, too many years.. he wasn't an assistant or a tech he was the drummer of the band that i love.

[bloodbath]

6 minutes ago, JZLP-RoadsUntraveled said:

 

He really owes us an explanation, too many years.. he wasn't an assistant or a tech he was the drummer of the band that i love.

No, we're just fans. There's limits to our relationship with the band. And personal stuff is one of them.

[Trumtram]

1 hour ago, bloodbath said:

but some people take it as Rob own them something

This gets thrown around a lot and I have to preface that I don't think the following personally, but the argument can be made that Rob doesn't "owe" "us" anything, he "owes" "us" everything.

Throughout their whole career, the band always stated how grateful they were for their fans and how without us there wouldn't be a band. That sentiment got repeated again and again through stuff like LPU letters (if I recall correctly, there is even one written by Rob, where he states exactly that). I think it is not far off to expect SOME form of gratitude for the ride towards the fans after everything.
Again, he has his reasons and doesn't have to communicate them to the fans, but SOMETHING after 20+ years of being in this band and getting loved by millions would just... be a decent thing to do.

 

So, yeah, there might be reasons for why it is like it is, there might be none: everything about Rob and his departure is largely speculative. But I wouldn't have imagined that a parting member of Linkin Park would just vanish without a goodbye at the very least.

Edited September 30 by Trumtram

[Justin]

It could be that Rob personally felt like LP without Chester isn't LP and he didn't want to do it, and the rest of the band were like "Ok cool... but maybe don't say that publicly? At least not right now as we're going to already be facing a bunch of criticism from a portion of the fanbase/media who will be feeling the same way? Maybe don't throw gasoline on that particular fire just as we're reestablishing ourselves?"

 

That was basically John Deacon's position on Queen after Freddie Mercury died.

 

Mike did say the band was jamming, but not like "We're returning as LP!" He said they were just hanging out and making music and seeing what would happen, and that the shift towards "This feels like Linkin Park" was a gradual one. Rob may not have shared that feeling, and may no longer have been cool with it after things started moving in that direction.

 

I mean since we're all speculating at this point, I figured I'd throw my own speculation in lol

Edited September 30 by Justin

[JZLP-Benningstrong]

1 hour ago, Justin said:

It could be that Rob personally felt like LP without Chester isn't LP and he didn't want to do it, and the rest of the band were like "Ok cool... but maybe don't say that publicly? At least not right now as we're going to already be facing a bunch of criticism from a portion of the fanbase/media who will be feeling the same way? Maybe don't throw gasoline on that particular fire just as we're reestablishing ourselves?"

 

That was basically John Deacon's position on Queen after Freddie Mercury died.

 

Mike did say the band was jamming, but not like "We're returning as LP!" He said they were just hanging out and making music and seeing what would happen, and that the shift towards "This feels like Linkin Park" was a gradual one. Rob may not have shared that feeling, and may no longer have been cool with it after things started moving in that direction.

 

I mean since we're all speculating at this point, I figured I'd throw my own speculation in lol

The thing is that he stayed as a member for more than 4 years after C passed away.

 

While Rob was still a band member  they did sessions (*auditions) with other unknown vocalists.

 

Rob always knew that someone was going to join in Chester's role.

 

So your Deacon theory it's out.