Mike, Brad, and Dave Interview with BBC Radio 1

[LPLStaff]

Mike Shinoda, Brad Delson, and Phoenix catch up with Daniel Carter from BBC Radio 1 with the Meteora|20 release quickly approaching.

 

Brad: "Lost is actually resonating right now and was made 20 years ago, that really is shocking to me and I am super proud of the album, super proud of the song... changing the name of the song to "Found", ha. And I am just really stoked to talk about the album and this moment we are having. I don't take it for granted, let me just say that."

 

"I think a lot of the songs are a natural evolution of Hybrid Theory and when I look at the tracklist, I think there is a pivotal song on Meteora where I am like, "Woah, what's that? Where did that come from?" And I think it harkens, it foreshadows what's to come. And that song is Breaking the Habit. That song could not have been on Hybrid Theory. It's in a whole other lane that kind of opened up for us creatively and the other thing that stands out to me dramatically is the visual landscape because the visuals, first and foremost with the music the visuals have never been a secondary part of making music."

 

Phoenix: "There is always a pressure in any sense on any record. We were just young enough and naïve enough to not even have grasped, in real time, be grasping how big or special or unique what Hybrid Theory was doing... was. We were still, in a way, just doing the same stuff we were doing when it was written, recorded and released. We were just doing it on larger stages. We were still getting on each others' nerves and eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and grinding it and that kind of stuff. Even though Hybrid Theory had done great, the short amount of time we'd have at home, we'd get home and we'd still be doing the same silly stuff. In a good way, it just put us in the mindset of, "You know, with Hybrid Theory, we wrote the kind of music we wanted to hear, our bar was that we wanted to love it, and we had that kind of hubris. So that obviously worked, and why wouldn't we do that again?" And it just turned into that thing of, "Well, apparently we know everything, so let's keep doing what worked." Not just copy, but "it worked", so let's do that. It wasn't until the album was just about to come out when we were doing the press about it, just hearing the "pressure" stuff... then my brain went "I've not really dealt with that at all, or come to grips with that at all. Hopefully this does well or this might be our last record." It wasn't until all of you started asking questions that the pressure started to mount."

"In the footage of the live shows, you can see the progression of the band going through the year and a half of playing shows. There is a smaller show, then there is a mid sized show, then there is a stadium sized show. Hopefully you can see the evolution of the setlist and playing it better and gaining our footing on how to grow in that sense of being a live band."

 

"We didn't start investing in how to do those larger shows until we were in the Meteora era. How do we present the band visually, how does it look/feel, etc. I think there is a big growth in that sense with Meteora. That was when our touring was a huge grind and to be able to do it was a huge blessing. When I look at the schedules of what that looks like on paper, I say "Thank god we did that then, because we would not be able to do it now." It was insane schedule. But hopefully in the process of that, for anybody who is interested, you can see the progression of that through that process."

 

Mike: "On Meteora we had 20 something songs. I was writing the first demos in the bus on domestic tours for Hybrid Theory that summer in the US. The guys would come in, usually like one at a time, and see what is going on, or "I have an idea", or "Check this thing out" or just listening to things and giving feedback. I'd change things to their request. And then once we got home, we had a really good sense, a handful of things we were building on, these ideas. Specifically, one thing that has come up these days is that Hybrid Theory was intended on being a pretty direct and compact pallet of information. We wanted it to be clear, we wanted to define to people "This is Linkin Park." We were being asked to play headline shows like, "How long can you play? 60 minutes? 90 minutes?" Our record was was like 30 something minutes long. So we could literally play it and that would almost be a headline set. So we were so excited about the idea of doubling the amount of songs we had out there. But in particular, doubling the amount of touchpoints and genre information and things that we can do. So you could take that too far and the second record could be just all new information. Like, it would be "Oh well where did the old sound go at all?" Instead we said, here are the things we can keep and build on. And here and are the things that if we change... let's experiment with making our own loops - we love sampled hip hop, we love the things people are doing in electronic music doing looping and programming. That's how the sound of the intro of "Somewhere I Belong" with Chester playing an acoustic guitar... it was reversed, and I think there is a bit crusher and compressor on there. The main sound was reversed guitar with bit reducer on it. And then "Faint" for example, it was written as a string melody. Then we hired a string group to come play it, then we sampled that. "Nobody's Listening" was a Japanese flute sample we had a guy come play. That's one example of, "We have a new color to put in the palette. And it'll make the record be more interesting. And we identified those things, Meteora began to have its own identity."

 

Standout moments for you: "I guess the things I think about are how it was a very compressed timeline - writing, recording, mixing and mastering. The writing stage is at the beginning. Our process was much more like a rap group where we were making tracks then putting vocals on the tracks, we were still writing and changing stuff all the way into the mastering stage. The record needed to be delivered by Friday, and we were changing the vocals on "Somewhere I Belong" while it was being mastered to see if we could make it better. We knew the bar was so high and it was a good energy. It was a fun record to make, it was not negative, it was not stressful. I remember asking guys to "stretch", Joe asked me, I had this demo that was intended to be an electronic instrumental track. Like the Meteora version of "Cure for the Itch." And a few guys said but Joe in particular said, "I think this song needs vocals, it's going to be a good song - it could be a good song." I took it home, I had this idea for a song that I had tried a few times and it didn't work out. It popped into my head and I tried it over the top of this thing and it became "Breaking the Habit." A lot of my stuff that I'd write, it would take many many weeks to get to a place where it sounded like the song. This one immediately sounded like the song. This one, I was playing piano and singing. I turned off the track. I started playing the song and I did it - within a few hours it was done. Sometime you tap into something and it's the song. I feel like "In the End" was that way. To some degree "One More Light" was like that. And other songs, like, "Somewhere I Belong" it was a grind to get them where they needed to be. Sometimes I hear the song and that's apparent, I can hear that in "Somewhere I Belong." "Faint" off of Meteora was a bit of a grind to get where it was. "Faint" was not a two steps forward/one step back kind of process, but "Somewhere I Belong" was that process. "Faint" was big step forward, and another big step forward, but it happened over three months. I'd come in with the song and it's like "Oh, what about this, what about this?" And Rob's like, figuring out how the drums should go. And the second he arrived at the thing we were like, "Oh my god the song is so much better now that you added the flavor on the song."

 

Listen in full here which starts at 41 minutes.

[Trumtram]

Having the instrumental loops playing in the background is really annoying.

 

Edit: Haha, the Thrice loop came unexpected

Edited April 4, 2023 by Trumtram

[LPLStaff]

The story about BTH and OML is cool. First time Mike has talked in a very long time about Drawing becoming BTH.

 

For some of it it was almost like he had read the wiki pages about the songs before talking about them lol

[Elaine]

Listening to this and the little loops of the instrumentals in the background, just looping the same part of the track over and over, are driving me absolutely insane.

[Awalkinthelinkinpark]

5 hours ago, Elaine said:

Listening to this and the little loops of the instrumentals in the background, just looping the same part of the track over and over, are driving me absolutely insane.

LoL

[JZLP-Benningstrong]

Who mixed Nottingham ?

 

It's one of the best mixed LP shows EVER