Mike Q&A Summary 6/23/2020

[LPLStaff]

Still no news from Mike on the "Open Door" or CoronaJams release, but here's his Q&A summary from today.

 

- Someone sent Mike a clip of him on Frat Party in 2001 and he said they were having fun, but were also losing their minds on tour. "The travel was so aggressive. You know what our manager used to do back then that we caught on to very quickly? Well, not quickly enough. They did this thing they'd send you out to a country, and say, "oh we'll route them this way because while you're in the area, you should go to this country or you should go do this TV show." "While you're in the area" happened when we were in Australia and they sent us to southeast Asia to play a show, while we were "in the area." We didn't know the distance between New Zealand and Malaysia because we hadn't been to either place before, so we were like, exhausted. We were like, "oh we need to go promote the album, we haven't been there, we'd love to go." And it's like a six hour flight or eight hour flight or whatever... it's not "while you're in the area."

 

- "On the Hybrid Theory cover, there are four symbols. I wonder who designed it." -> "That was Frank Maddocks who designed those. I don't think Joe and I did anything with them or gave any input, I don't think we did. Iconic symbol combination."

- "Hi Mike you recently talked about Friendly Fire. What about other unreleased songs from One More Light?" -> "Every album we've got so many songs that we make and you know, they're not... some of them are just in really like, half cooked, half baked conditions. So I mean, I think fans tend to be very overly optimistic about those types of things. In their imagination, there's some gem that's the best Linkin Park song that's sitting on a hard drive somewhere. I promise you that's not the case. The best stuff is always the stuff we put on the record. There are some songs where we were like, "oh this is really good", but it's not better than the record. Some of it is like, a verse and chorus copied twice and that's the second verse as well... it's like half done, it's not done."

 

- "Have you ever considered doing orchestral versions of the songs?" -> "No, not really. I think other people and other musicians have done stuff like that and it's all good."

 

- "LP's past with the record label wasn't always roses. What are some things you would change about the way labels treat artists and/or the music industry in general?" -> "You know, we had a fight with the label a long time ago because it was like, they wanted to go public and make all this money and they weren't going to cut the artists in on it. And at the same time, they were spending all of their time and energy doing that and we weren't convinced they were adapting to the changing musical landscape very well. We were already concerned that they weren't prepared to like, keep up with what was going on in technology, like music technology. And then they were doing this IPO. And you notice, we're not complaining about Warner Bros IPO now, because it's an entirely different time and it's an entirely different cast of characters. I'm not super deep in it, I feel like the labels do what they need to do to be good partners and to make money. Some artists do really well in that equation and other artists don't get attention in that equation. It's always the artists who don't do well that complain. That's just life."

 

- "What inspired the lyrics of "Open Door", especially the first verse?" -> "Open Door was really like, I was already writing it before quarantine and all of that. It was like looking for opportunity, and for me, looking for things that really grab my interest and keep me excited and feel like the place to spend energy. It could be a lot of things to different people. I was writing from the perspective of wanting something that was worth investing myself in, in terms of energy and time and passion and all of that. But still with some attitude in the verse, but with an encouraging kind of verse. "

 

- "Are the lyrics of "Prove You Wrong" about a specific person or group of people? The lyrics in the second verse seem so specific." -> "I feel like this song was really a lot about feeling like somebody didn't have your back, somebody didn't have my back, or betrayed trust, you know. So, it's really about wanting somebody to support you. I feel like sometimes what's worse than somebody not supporting you is somebody lying about it. Or that you expect them to and then they don't. I think this song wasn't my parents or anything, but I feel like that's one thing that's so tough a lot of people when they talk about their deep issues, their real stuff that they deal with. It's like your parents or certain people in your life you expect more of them, or you expect them to have your back on certain things. And when it's somebody of importance, it's more hurtful or shocking when they don't. So parents are like that, that just sucks."

- "What was your first impression of Brad?" -> "Brad lived next door to my friend Mark. And their bedroom windows were directly across from each other. And it was almost like a TV sitcom. He'd like play guitar in his room and you'd hear him shredding like Metallica. But it was always that really funny thing, you could out Mark's window and you could talk to Brad. I didn't know Brad at that point, he'd just like yell out the window and talk to Brad. Mark would. He seemed like a cool dude, though."

- "How was your experience making the sounds and score for The Raid film?" -> "That was cool. Basically The Raid was a movie that was already almost basically done. They had put it out, it was a lower budget, Indonesian, action, martial arts film. They reached out because they were going to release it in the U.S. and they wanted something to kind of spice it up and the director and Sony who had put it out had thought of me. And I had fun. Basically I got to score a film, like learn on the job of scoring a film. The director was very open to my ideas and he didn't manhandle the score very much which from my understanding, sometimes that happens where people on either the production company or director, they will get really picky about the score and it can be contentious. So this was not contentious, it was very easy and a lot of fun. And I learned a lot on the job. I met Joe Trapanese and became friends with Joe. I love that guy, he's crazy talented. Super nice guy as well. So overall it was an awesome experience."

 

 

[lpplus]

45 minutes ago, LPLStaff said:

The best stuff is always the stuff we put on the record

Blackbird, Across The Line, Primo

Someone give me more examples please😅

just look at 'In Between" and you know what I mean

[Justin]

27 minutes ago, lpplus said:

Blackbird, Across The Line, Primo

Someone give me more examples please😅

just look at 'In Between" and you know what I mean

 

Somebody should ask Mike to look us in the eyes (the camera) and say, with a straight face, that In Between is a better song than No Roads Left. Lol

Edited June 23, 2020 by Justin

[hahninator]

I think it came down to the band's vote of In Between vs NRL for some reason. Rick and Chester were the only ones who voted YES to every song on MTM.

 

It still just doesn't make sense to me, but somehow along the way, the band voted NRL out.

[Justin]

1 hour ago, hahninator said:

I think it came down to the band's vote of In Between vs NRL for some reason. Rick and Chester were the only ones who voted YES to every song on MTM.

 

It still just doesn't make sense to me, but somehow along the way, the band voted NRL out.

 

I just mentioned In Between because, to me, that's the weakest song on that record. I actually like it, but in comparison to the rest and NRL I would have voted it out.

 

Also, In Between and NRL are the only two songs with Mike on lead singing vocals, so it makes sense to compare them for that reason as well.

Edited June 24, 2020 by Justin

[Soeffingnaive92]

“What are you worth”, Primo, Across the Line, NRL, Figure 09 demo, Untitled ITE demo... I don’t believe you Mike 😂😂

[sordomuda]

In between is a bland filler meanwhile NRL is amazing. 
 

also let me not start at Across the line which was a hidden gem indeed, glad they released it after all

[blackout]

The question about the unreleased songs from OML was mine. The question as Mike read it seems very general. Actually, I added specific demo names from One More Light to my question (Out of Reach and My Horizon) but unforunately, Mike read only the first part of my submission.

 

I must admit that I don't believe what he's saying is true. Obviously, fans have too high expectations when it comes to demos like Pictureboard or Thoughts That Take Away My Pride. They are treated like holy grails but may truly be not as good as fans think. However, I'm sure that they must have around 16-17 almost-finished songs for each album before they choose the final tracklist. It's just how things work. We know songs like Across the Line and No Roads Left which could go straight to Minutes To Midnight and replace one of the songs with no problem. I believe that besides Friendly Fire, they had Out of Reach and one or two songs that were considered to be put on One More Light. Same with Living Things or A Thousand Suns (maybe one or two albums had fewer b-sides than Minutes To Midnight but they had to have one or two at least). Therefore, it is possible that these songs may be better than the ones put on the final tracklist because music is always subjective. Then, I can't believe Mike when he's saying that they always release the best songs on the album because his view is definitely not fully objective. It is impossible that the only fully finished songs are the ones released. 

[SFNL14]

Maybe I'm wrong, but didn't they have to finish Across the Line first, before releasing it though? That means that it wasn't actually finished in MTM sessions.

[hahninator]

Mike just cut the intro off of it, the song was done.

 

Songs finished near their release would be like Pretend To Be and Not Alone.

[blackout]

7 minutes ago, SFNL14 said:

Maybe I'm wrong, but didn't they have to finish Across the Line first, before releasing it though? That means that it wasn't actually finished in MTM sessions.

 

I doubt that they'd finish any song before releasing it in LPU. If they had done this, then the demo was fake, which is not true obviously.

[Justin]

6 hours ago, blackout said:

The question about the unreleased songs from OML was mine. The question as Mike read it seems very general. Actually, I added specific demo names from One More Light to my question (Out of Reach and My Horizon) but unforunately, Mike read only the first part of my submission.

 

I must admit that I don't believe what he's saying is true. Obviously, fans have too high expectations when it comes to demos like Pictureboard or Thoughts That Take Away My Pride. They are treated like holy grails but may truly be not as good as fans think. However, I'm sure that they must have around 16-17 almost-finished songs for each album before they choose the final tracklist. It's just how things work. We know songs like Across the Line and No Roads Left which could go straight to Minutes To Midnight and replace one of the songs with no problem. I believe that besides Friendly Fire, they had Out of Reach and one or two songs that were considered to be put on One More Light. Same with Living Things or A Thousand Suns (maybe one or two albums had fewer b-sides than Minutes To Midnight but they had to have one or two at least). Therefore, it is possible that these songs may be better than the ones put on the final tracklist because music is always subjective. Then, I can't believe Mike when he's saying that they always release the best songs on the album because his view is definitely not fully objective. It is impossible that the only fully finished songs are the ones released. 

 

He meant that they put what they decide, as a collective, are the best songs to put on the record. It's definitely subjective. Music always is. They made the decision to not include NRL on Minutes to Midnight, when most of us all love that song and think it should have been included.

 

So, in his opinion, the best LP songs are the ones that have been released on their albums.