Mike Q&A Summary 6/18/2020

[LPLStaff]

Getting caught back up with Q&A recaps, here's Mike from June 18th!

 

BIG answers to a few of these! And don't miss his piano tutorial for The Catalyst, Burn It Down, and What I've Done near the end.

 

- "Did anything ever happen with the track "Fuse" after the Xero days?" -> "Yes, I'll tell you what happened to it... it stayed in a hard drive. It leaked, I think it leaked, Fuse leaked right? You guys found Fuse, right? It was on like old demos and stuff. No, it didn't? Yes, it did? Ok it's a very unknown and unusual track. But yeah it was one of my favorites back in the day, a little rappy-style thing."

 

- "Hey Mike, you guys acted like little jerks in the 2000s, like throwing chicken at skylights, wet tissue at pedestrians, hiding broken glass tables. Do you guys regret recording these moments?" -> "Let me tell you something, it could have been a lot fucking worse. We could have been taking advantage of little girls - and we weren't. We could have been breaking all of our instruments - and we didn't. We could have been, I don't know, horrible racists - but we weren't. I don't know, pick your thing. Here's the thing, we were kids having insane experiences. Here's an idea of the sense of the transition of like coming from where we were to where we ended up being on Hybrid Theory. Before Hybrid Theory, when we even had the record deal and we were recording Hybrid Theory, I was living in apartment in Glendale. My rent was roughly $850 a month shared with two other people. That's what I could afford. If you know Glendale, CA in LA, my car that was I driving cost me $7,000ish, let's say between $7,000 and $10,000. Any of my extra money I would either spend on extra music gear or a movie. And I switched off between eating an actual meal of fish and rice, and the two meals after that would be fast food and ramen noodles. So I had a nice balanced diet of garbage and sustenance. When we mixed our album, we decided to mix it with Andy Wallace. Andy works in New York and the label flew us out to New York. I had never been to New York before. I was like, freaking out. Brad and I were freaking out - he had been to New York, but we flew to New York to go mix with Andy. When we got out off of the train and into Manhattan, he was like, "dude stop looking up at the buildings. You're obviously a tourist, you've never been here. I hear that people get mugged.. you're more likely to get mugged if you're in touristy spots and looking up at the buildings. Stop doing that, we're going to get fucking mugged." So I had never been to New York, but like all the music I liked was from New York. Well, more than half. Yeah and then all of a sudden we were getting flown around to do press and do shows. By the way, on our own budget at the end of the day. What happens is they will give you a budget to do press and whatever, and then they actually charge you back. Like, "Oh we're going to put a food budget in your studio budget", and we're like, "oh that's cool", but they take those receipts and when your album starts selling copies, they take the money from the food receipts and they take that out of the money out of your album sales. And they don't pay you until that is paid. Even if your A&R guy flies out to meet with you or you fly to do an interview because they want you to do an interview... all of that, you pay for. That is how it works. Because, by the way, if you decide to do that independently without a label, you're going to pay for it too. So either way you pay for it. It's not bullshit, it's bullshit in the sense that yeah it would be nice for them to pay for all of that, but also, I think most people don't realize when you're a musician, you're automatically a small business. Automatically that's what it is. You don't get it all for free. I'm not mad, actually, about any of that. There was a time when I thought that was very unfair, but, there are parts of it that are unfair, but we can talk about that another time."

 

- "Do you remember playing with Linkin Park in Portimao, south of Portugal, in August 2009? You made a lot of people happy." -> "Man, there's a reason Brazilians, a lot of people in South America have been really big fans of the band over the years and Portugal and Argentina, you guys are very... affectionate, just loud and affectionate. And I appreciate it. There's a reason why it has become a little bit of a meme in the Linkin Park community, because it's true, and you're cool, and that's good. I know Portugal is in Europe, I was grouping the Portuguese."

- "Can you show us how to play the bridge of The Catalyst, the organ during Joe's solo?" -> "Hmm, what is the best way to do this demo? How can I do this? Did you mean the "lift me up, let me go" part, is that what we are asking? Alright here's the thing, I'll do it quick here." And Mike did the demo. (2h38m in), "By the way, those shapes, those are the ones I use to write with" (he plays Burn It Down and What I've Done). This is a good insight into Mike playing piano, definitely check this moment out.

 

- "Mike, you said you guys did a lot of demos for Bleed It Out. Can you guess how many demos you did with all of the songs in total?" -> "Dude. I mean there are certain songs that are almost, like, notorious in our catalogue for having so many versions. Somewhere I Belong, Bleed It Out, actually Nobody Can Save Me was one. The song itself, like the words, melody, and chords came very easily. But the track, it took so much to get it right."

 

- "Because I have been doing the streams, I have been getting a couple of offers from some of the companies whose stuff I use to do some contests, so that's exciting... so free stuff for you guys, maybe? We'll see!"

- "Hi Mike, when LP would get a record mixed, would there be a lot of opinions in the band - any stories?" -> "I haven't really shown you guys, mixing can be a little tedious. I do it as I go, obviously. I did a demo of a song, it's right here, this is what we made. From here, I might work on it and tighten it up and fix some things in order to present it to the band. So I'd present it to the band and say, "here's the track", maybe I present it with no vocals, chances are I probably would present it with some vocals. There have been many different phases in the band for presentation of songs. Phase one was - "here's a demo with no words on it, what do you think?" Phase two was, "I'm going to put vocals on it, what do you think?" and then I realized the guys in the band, my band in particular, would get... if you put vocals on a song, those vocals were married to the song. So if I sang ANYTHING that they didn't like, they would think of the song as... if I sang "stinky teapot" in this song, in their minds, this would be the stinky teapot song forever. Forever. And even when I change those lyrics to something good, they would be like, "oh I don't like stinky teapot." So I stopped singing those things on it because psychologically they got married to the bad things and had trouble... I literally with Joe in particular, I had to remind him so many times. He's like, "oh I don't like that song, blah blah blah" and I had to keep reminding him... like I'd play it for him and he'd listen to the new version, and he'd like, "oh that's right, I forgot you rewrote the lyrics" or "you changed the thing, I do like this better" and the next time we talked, he'd be back to stinky teapot. *slams desk* So I started singing "la la la" or "da na na" with no words because people got married these old things. And then eventually I just stopped doing that altogether. This is where I'm at now, I would present either instrumental or I would present almost finished. Nothing in between because just in between, it was too problematic in our band. So mixing, it was always me and Brad with any mixer, we were always hands on, we were almost always in the room unless it was just physically impossible. And yeah, the reason we were in the room is because we had the most knowledge about it and sense about it. And that can be a subjective statement, sure, but there are some things that indicate whether that's a subjective statement. So for example, if I play a ten year old... if I take a track with three different types of EQ on it and I play it for a ten year old and say "are these different?", that child is probably going to say no. They're probably going to listen to it and say "no, what is different? they are all the same." Somebody more in tune with those things will say, "yeah I can tell they are different" and if I say "here's 1, 2, and 3, and play them" and I play them in a different order, and say "now tell me what order they are in", if you can't pick it up and tell me which, then your ear is not attuned to it yet. Make sense? So it's not totally subjective. My ear, I can probably pick out what order, like which one is which and what you've done, and you develop that over time."

 

Mike is working out the subscriber feature with Twitch and says that it is coming soon.

 

Mike would like to meet Dave Greco from Twitch in person one day but wants to do an art collaboration with him soon.

 

- "LPLive says, do you remember how or when your remix of Butterfly Caught by Massive Attack came about? Why did you pick that song?" -> "I don't know how that came about. I was so thrilled to do a remix for Massive Attack, I love their music. And I definitely chose that song, I may not have chosen it from the album, but they definitely gave me some options and I chose that one because I really liked it."

 

 

[sordomuda]

I Think he has said the story about

mixing and singing and how the words would stay forever with the song somewhere before. 
 

when he started talking about Brazilians and South America i was like Dude but you know Portugal is in Europe right and then he said he knows haha. 
 

i would like to hear nobody can save me now demo 

 

i wonder what kind of the „unfair part” he would like to talk later on 

 

 

[Justin]

1 hour ago, sordomuda said:

I Think he has said the story about

mixing and singing and how the words would stay forever with the song somewhere before. 
 

when he started talking about Brazilians and South America i was like Dude but you know Portugal is in Europe right and then he said he knows haha. 
 

i would like to hear nobody can save me now demo 

 

i wonder what kind of the „unfair part” he would like to talk later on 

 

I mean, we know in 2005 the band stood up to the label, very publicly, for what they perceived to be unfair treatment and shady business practices. They thought the label wouldn't back them appropriately with marketing/promotion, etc., and they wound up renegotiating their entire deal.

 

It would be interesting to hear Mike talk about that, and what the thought process was by essentially calling WBR's bluff by going public with their grievances, but I doubt he would go into detail on it now. The label and band's relationship has done a complete 180 from that low point. It was much more bitter than I remembered when I went back and read about it. Brad's remarks about it were surprisingly blunt.

Edited June 21, 2020 by Justin

[sordomuda]

Just now, Justin said:

 

I mean, we know in 2005 the band stood up to the label, very publicly, for what they perceived to be unfair treatment and shady business practices. They thought the label would back them appropriately with marketing/promotion, etc. and they wound up renegotiating their entire deal.

 

It would be interesting to hear Mike talk about that, and what the thought process was by essentially calling WBR's bluff by going public with their grievances, but I doubt he would go into detail on it now. The label and band's relationship has done a complete 180 from that low point. It was much more bitter than I remembered when I went back and read about it. Brad's remarks about it were surprisingly blunt.

 

thanks for the link, i will read it

[ThePretender]

I WANT ALL THOSE NOBODY CAN SAVE ME DEMOS!