And The Writer Is...with Ross Golan - Ep. 179: Mike Shinoda

Episode Date: September 11, 2023

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Welcome to And The Writer Is with Ross Golan. There are millions of singers, thousands of artists, and only 40 songs per genre at a time. These are the stories of the hottest creatives, the most venerable legends, artists, songwriters, executives, and more. Follow our socials and share your music with the and The Writer is community. See you all there and now. Here's this week's episode. Hey guys. I'm excited to say a few words about one of today's sponsors, Seeker Music.

Seeker was founded and is run by one of my very dear friends, and repeat guests on the writer, is Evan Bogart. Evan is an advocate for songwriters. He is in charge of the songwriter wing of the Grammys. He's a trustee for the Grammys. He's just a good person. And so that kind of community and culture is what Seeker is based on. They acquire only the best.

catalogs and sign only the best humans, including Christopher Cross, The Go-Gos, Run the Jules, John Belly, and John Ryan, Mozello, Julian Benetta's Family Affair, Carra DiGuardi, Zara House, Future Cuts, Sam Waters, Ruth Ann, Brian Morgan, and various other amazing songwriters. In fact, they have publishing deals with Kito, Robop, Sophia Valdez, Charlie Brand, Tilly, and more. So I recommend you go follow Seeker on all their social media sites, but go follow Evan to and let them know how much you appreciate Evans' work. Because of him, we have Songwriter of the Year.

Because of him, we have songwriter's added to the album of the year for the Grammys. And now he's got his publishing company that is a wonderful sponsor for our podcast. So thank you again, Seeker, and go check them out now. Hey, guys, there's a cool company called Sound Royalties that was founded about 10 years ago. They provide funding for music creatives without ever taking ownership of their copyrights. All they need to do is see that you have a royalty stream. They don't need personal guarantees, collateral, financial statements, or credit checks. They work alongside publishers and labels, distributors, and PROs.

They don't replace them. Again, all they need to know is that you have a royalty stream of at least $5,000 in a year, whether it's from mechanical performance, digital streaming sync, whatever it is. If you're interested in finding out more about sound royalties, check out their website or DM them on Instagram. or call 844 for all music. That's right. It's 844 for all music to get started with sound royalties.

Call them today. BMI is the champion of the creator. Supporting songwriters and making sure you get paid for your creative work. More than that, BMI has an incredible team that helps guide and develop songwriters, shows you how to navigate the internet, Plus provides invaluable opportunities on stages and at festivals.

Bottom line, they help you with your career at all levels from those just starting out to the biggest hitmakers, just like they helped me out when I was just starting out and how they still helped me out today. You can learn more at BMI.com. Welcome to And The Writer is. I am your host, Ross Golan. Today's multi-hyphenate legend. has written huge evergreens, produced monster jams,

and founded one of the greatest bands of the 21st century. His eponymous cadence influenced a generation of rock stars and rappers, selling tens of tens of tens of millions of albums. He has experimented musically as a true artiste does, probably because he actually went to art school. He's a leader in the Web 3, in the Web 3, He's a leader in Web 3, helping bridge the gap between tech and music. All the way from a one town over, this guy's most important accolade is that he's an incredible husband and father.

And the writer is, my dear friend, Mike Shinoda. What's up, Ross? Thank you for that incredible intro. It's weird. It's always fun to do when we're actual friends. And so then this is fun. You know, how often when you see a friend do you actually? say the things that you might

secretly really feel, you know? And also, it is fun to hear you use the podcast voice. Oh, yeah. You'd imagine in our session, I think we should move the pre-course over here. I'm thinking for my appetizer. I would like to order.

You want to know, this is a true, this is true, and I don't really talk about it, but I'm dyslexic. And the reason why I started reading intros slowly and more animated is because it allows me to actually read what's next and take the time it needs for me to read through an intro. If I read at the pace that people speak normally, granted that I speak slowly anyway,

but I would inevitably make more mistakes. I feel like there's so many, there's so many, I don't want to say that's a trick, but there's so many like tactics you can use in, like doing what I want to say we do, but like we all do different things, slightly different things. Like doing what I do,

I've had to learn a lot of little tricks to overcome the parts of it that are very unnatural. Like talking about yourself, the amount an artist has to talk about themselves is very unnatural. Standing on a stage, I mean, standing and getting pictures taken of you for an album or for whatever unnatural.

Like, first thing people think of is like, where do I put my hands? Why do my hands feel so awkward, right? And getting, our band started, Lincoln Park started like, like technically in like around 99 and I so that's a lot of time to learn like ways to cope with all the weird uncomfortable unnatural things yeah well I mean maybe it's a plus that you guys started so early because I imagine that gets harder and harder to I think learn that skill set later I think we adapt you get you like adapt to certain parts of it and then

And then the times change, and you've adapted in one direction, and then things have gone in the other direction. You're like, oh, okay, well, now I have to adapt to that too. Yeah. Yeah. I wish I could think of, like, I know it's a very abstract thing I'm saying. No, it makes sense. I was going to say, and this is an aside,

but the first time I heard Lincoln Park was I was an intern at V2 Records, which was like Moby and Black Crows for a second. And there was a compilation CD that had that K-Rock put out with the up-and-coming 20 bands. And I would imagine that they would do that every year and maybe one of them became something. But I was really in the study mode, so I wanted to know who everyone was. And this is before Myspace and stuff. this is like, you know, if you want to know them, you actually have to do some research.

But I remember listening to it and you guys were on this. It was you and Coldplay were like next to each other on this compilation. It's like that year, I think of 94 is the year where all the great bands started. But if I look at that era, there were a lot of bands that were, that were helping us move past 10 years of grunge to something different. and I think you guys and Coldplay were almost like these opposite cousins that come out the same time and we're like, oh, we're going to go in this direction, we're going to go in that direction. But all of this is, you know, we're going to move the needle on what rock and roll is.

Yeah, we, I think like our, I was just talking to somebody about that moment in time. I mean, because we're, this year we're celebrating the 20th. anniversary of our second album, Meteora. That moment in time before our first album, everything was very genre oriented. Like people were, you asked somebody, what do you listen to? And they'd say exactly what they listened to. There wasn't this like, oh, I listen to everything. Or I listen to these types of artists. It was like, I listen to this type of metal. I listen to this type of rap. That's it. And even sitting at a, I remember sitting in a, like you said, said I was I was an art student like I always thought I was going to be a like a painter

or an illustrator or something like that for for a living and music was just for fun and I remember sitting in art class in high school oh and actually junior high junior high like like six seventh grade um and we were practically enemies with the rock table like I just mostly listen to hip hop and if you listen to rock like you weren't my friend I have one friend who I who I who listened to rock music and eventually we started educating each other like that was um my friend mark uh wakefield and he would give me like rock CDs to borrow and I'd give him rap CDs so he was giving me like grunge stuff you were talking about and I was giving him rap stuff like like that like golden era hip hop stuff and eventually he's like yo you need to check out this check this out as this is called

rage against the machine check this out this is called red hat chili peppers and it was like oh things are things are mixing like we found the judgment night soundtrack together and then eventually mark and i started a band called zero and zero was the predecessor to lincoln park it's crazy you know because when you say enemies in junior high it's literally feels like they were you guys were probably enemies for a second it was that goon have you've ever seen like the goofy like i don't want to say karate kid in movies like that like there were more exaggerated versions of it, but if you look at movies from that era,

it's in the movies. Like they're, you know, the type of music you listened to was your like membership to that click. And then you were enemies with the other clicks. Or at least just didn't, you know, at the very least you thought their taste was shitty. That's funny. You know?

And so, yeah, when we came, when we were coming into our own as like, you know, creators in a sense, I don't know what else to call it, But like we started making our own. We went from listening to this stuff to making our own stuff. What introduced you to actually playing music? There's one thing to be a fan of music.

There's a difference to play music. Yeah, I grew up playing classical piano. I did that for like 11 years. Who made you do that? My mom. Why did your mom make you do that? She said it looked good on college resume. She was like, yeah, just, you know.

She never played an instrument. She always thought piano was interesting. And she loved. Once we started playing it in the house, she loved that. I think I've told this story a lot. I'll keep it short, but she basically, I studied classical and did theory and all that for since I was like really little. Like I did a Yamaha piano course when I was like somewhere around three or five years old,

somewhere in that range. And then eventually after I did get into so much hip hop and started learning what like rap producers did, at the time they didn't even call them producers they called them DJs strangely right so at the time it's DJs and emcees yeah really really weird

like there was this whole like people hadn't figured out the language yet um I didn't know the language either by the way we did our first two albums and I didn't know I was a producer like Rick Rubin was the one who said oh no you're the you're a producer like you're the producer in the band I was had no idea so you know

over 10 years before that maybe 15 or more. I went to my piano teacher as a little kid and I said, you know, I love this type of music and they're sampling jazz and blues and other things. I, you know, I don't want to play classical.

I want to play that. Can you teach me how to play that? And she basically said, no, she basically said it's not my forte. I don't know a lot about that. And also, it's not that you want to play that. doesn't sound like you want to play that. It sounds like you want to play rap music. And like maybe some of this like adjacent rock. And how old were you at that point? I might have been 13ish,

14. Do you have siblings? I have one younger brother, two years younger. Does he like music? He did. He was better than me on the piano. And yeah, he's more like he's a, he still plays really, he's got really good dexterity. He can, he can read music very well. well. But that was the moment where I went from trying to do all of that to basically she told me that she suggested that I buy production gear. She suggested I buy a sequencer and a sampler and a keyboard. She's a good. She was so good that she encouraged me to quit. She was literally giving up the income from my lessons telling me to not take lessons and go pursue experimenting with this you know with making beats because she knew that the only way

that you get good at that was by doing it and the there wasn't anybody to teach you there wasn't even a YouTube yet so like there only there was no way I could get like an education and how to make beats other than buying stuff yeah that task cam I bought I saw a taskam four track I had a at a a kai S 900 sampler with a floppy disk that's saved onto floppy disk. I have both of those here. And then for like sampling nerds, the S-900 and 950 predated what we know is like the MPC.

It was basically an MPC without pads. So the reason they did the pads is because prior to that, you had to have your own MIDI controller to trigger it and sequence everything. So you had to buy a separate drum machine and connect the two and have the drum machine be the brain and the sampler just be the sampler. And then Akai eventually said, why do we, like, why are we making a thing that has to be a slave to another person's piece of gear? Like, we should put it all in one unit and they made the MPC. Wow.

When, you know, you grew up, a lot of your story is known. You can look on Wikipedia. You've had a lot of interviews. So the brief synopsis being that, you know, you were raised in the valley, a real valley kid, you know, Panorama City, moved to Agora. You went to Agora High School, right? I did. I did. I was in shout out to Woodland Hills, too. I was in Woodland Hills until I was like 12 or so. Okay.

Agora High School, West Lake, Calabasas, whatever was, something was in the water when you were in high school. That where there are scenes and, you know, if the early 90s is famously Seattle, if, you know, you have these pockets where, you know, Chicago's had a moment and, you know, Miami's had a moment. I mean, Oklahoma City's had a moment. All these plays have had a moment. But something about the Valley and those three towns produce some huge bands. What was it that, you know, what was the sauce that made that happen? Why there then? Was it you guys leading the way?

Incubis was before us. So to be clear, like, I remembered what was cool. The reason I mentioned that is because. they went to school in the same like school system like i didn't they weren't at my school but i knew them i saw them live i saw i saw them around town and um and they got signed i think it was a like immortal records or something and um put out their their first album and it got on k rock it got on the radio and so to us to other people in town it's like oh you know this story it's like it always happens this way Like you see somebody you know do it and you go, oh, it can be done.

And so it empowers you. You just feel like emboldened to like get there, you know. attainability is a huge part of it. And by the way, like being in L.A., like especially back then, maybe less so now, but it's still true. If you had all the skill set and all the friendships and the skill set and the things that, you know, the friendships and the skill set and the things that. that we had, but we lived in Anchorage, Alaska, would not have happened. Being around in a place where you're going to make those connections and things are at your disposal and are like in your vicinity, you can't understate the value of that.

Because like, for example, you're not going to be able to just like go intern at a record label if you're out there. You're not going to be able to like just hop over to sunset and see a group play. And then in three months, like, oh, they're kind of blowing up. Like this, that whole thing is. Proximity matters. It matters so much. And we grew up in it.

We also, by the way, like, we grew up in it in a way where we weren't, there was no, there was no sense of like jaded. There was no sense of like when none of us had moved here to make it. right we saw people who did like they were waiting the tables and and doing all those jobs and we were just like kids who grew up in it and it's like oh that's cool like good luck to you like i don't know i mean it's it's 10 years earlier it's silver chair being kids who were in seattle and they could you know it was like they were there they were a good band but if that band was in Anchorage they probably they were in the moment at the place you know and they had the skill set Right. How much did, you know, you guys are a,

a racially diverse group that grew up in a area that I don't think of as particularly diverse. I think what was nice was that we were, it was like you were adjacent to a lot of diversity, though. Like we I when I grew up in up until like sixth grade, I was in Woodland Hills. And to be clear, you know the scene in, if you've seen straight out of Compton, the movie, it's fictionalized. It's exaggerated. And Ice Cube gets, you know, bust up to the valley to like this all white school and whatever. That area that he was bust up to was where I was in school. Everyone was like, oh, yeah, O'Shea Jackson, like, went to school here.

And it was not all white. It was the first, at least maybe, actually what may have changed between when he was, when that scene was written, I should say, the thing that that scene was written about was when busing started. When I went to school, their busing was the norm. So, so, like, 80% of the school was non-white. And I grew up in that school system where, It was really diverse.

I think of my group of friends, if there was 10 of us, I think there was like one white kid or two white kid, one mixed white kid. And that kid was Jewish. And the other kid was Christian. And then everybody else was some form of brown. And in case you don't know me, I'm half Japanese. I got mistaken for Latino my whole childhood. People would speak Spanish to me.

And I was like, I don't speak Spanish. I knew a little bit because so many of my friends. Did you grow up speaking Japanese? No. No. No. I spoke more Spanish than Japanese. Japanese. Right. To be fair.

Yeah, and they said that I would probably respond in Spanish. But moving up to Agora, one of my, the first criticism I had of it, my mom is like, how are things going at school? I was just like, it's just so white. Like, it's so monochromatic. I called it monochromatic as a kid. Yeah. And that was my problem with it. Again, I was listening to all rap music. like I was already immersed in a culture of like diversity and that's what we

that's what was what was comfortable to me so of course then when I was like making music I wasn't thinking about it didn't occur to me that like oh you know in this type of music a lot of people are white most people are white didn't were you in I always say like being being Jewish I'm a minority, but not necessarily, you know, an oppressed minority. People don't look at me necessarily.

Maybe you look at me and say he looks Jewish. Well, in L.A. In L.A. But in L.A. or in Chicago where I've lived, for the most part, I've avoided most things. Because I know it exists, but the anti-Semitism hasn't really hit me super often. You know, sometimes publicly people say some crazy shit. But for the most part, you know, I've, I've avoided it. Did you find that being,

growing up there, did you feel like you were out of place? Or because they were so monochromatic? Or was it like, oh, no, that's mine. I felt, it was funny because I had, like, it was rare that I'd have a story that impacted, like that was where the, the discrimination or the accidental, like, racism or whatever,

was pointed at me. It was rare that was pointed at me. Like one example where it was pointed right next to me was my friend who came over, he was black, and he said something, we were like doing playing in the front yard or something, he said something about my gardener, and I looked over, it was my dad.

And I was like, bro, like that's like, right? That's just like an accidental like, oh, he saw like, my dad, by the way, my dad is like a darker skin. Our family's from southern Japan, and they have very tan skin. He actually gets mistaken for like, be like Native American or or some kind of indigenous like he's got darker skin. He yeah.

So my friend like said that and I was like, it really struck me as like this is a, it was a funny accidental racism. Yeah. And even at the time you know that that's an accident. You know what it is. As we're trying to define that in this generation, it existed. We just didn't necessarily define it at the time. Yeah.

Wow, that's really not right. Because also it was harmless. Like it was funny and he was super embarrassed, but then it was funny. Yeah. And I think, I mean, there was, you know, on the other side, there was one time, there was a couple times in, you've also have to imagine,

like so in high school, I dressed like the groups I was listening to. Okay, so I was, that's how I looked. Like it was always, my pants were hanging off my ass, like everything was triple extra large backwards hat and whatever um and so when i was out around town i get like i would get um categorized if there was a security guard if there's a police officer or whatever i got pulled over a number of times up there because like the nice sweet white kids who didn't dress that way weren't getting pulled over and i actually got like i remember

there's a time i could pull over this guy but this other the policeman who like patrolled near the school. I went off campus with friends and they all looked like me, they all dressed like me. We went off campus, ate some lunch, came back and he pulled me over. There was, for no reason other than he just didn't like how I looked. And he had me with my hands on the front of the hood and everything.

He was like making me like pull my shirt up to expose that I was sagging my pants. And cars are driving by going back to school, honking at me laughing. But he was embarrassing me because he just didn't like, he said something to the effect of like, you people make it difficult for the rest of the kids. And I was like, I don't know what that means.

But I was lucky that those experiences were few and far between, like so rare for me. But it gave me that tiny little taste of like, oh, this is what that feels like. It's fucking horrible. Yeah, that's definitely not accidental racism. It would be so bad. In that case, that was some real hardcore racism.

And he was, you know, I got the one or two experiences with it. A handful in my high school time I was in high school. And, you know, like my other friends had it all the time. You know, people who, like, with darker skin or whatever, that type of thing was constantly happening to them. So for me, going, once we got out into the real world of, started touring and going to other countries, where, you know, the race dynamics or the group dynamics

between different religious parties or whatever, it is political parties, like we started to see, my first impression I remember was just like, wow, the world is actually, it's like so, I felt like it was actually way smaller. I felt like, oh, these problems are all so similar. It's just that people back home think of it one way in this kind of small way, but,

the yeah I just felt like the world was more connected than I ever imagined once we started touring people were more similar Hey guys I'm excited to say a few words about one of today's sponsors Seeker Music Seeker was founded and is run by one of my very dear friends and repeat guests on the name of the writer is Evan Bogart

Evan is an advocate for songwriters He is in charge of The Songwriter Wing of the Grammys he's a trustee for the Grammys, he's just a good person. And so that kind of community and culture is what Seeker is based on. They acquire only the best catalogs

and sign only the best humans, including Christopher Cross, the go-goes, run the jewels, John Belly and John Ryan, Mozello, Julian Benetta's Family Affair, Carra DiGuardi's Our House, Future Cut, Sam Waters, Ruth Ann, Brian Morgan, and various other amazing songwriters.

In fact, they have publishing deals with Keto, Robopop, Sophia Valdez, Charlie Brand, Tilly, and more. So I recommend you go follow Seeker on all their social media sites, but go follow Evan to and let them know how much you appreciate Evan's work. Because of him, we have Songwriter of the year. Because of him, we have songwriter's added to the album of the year for the Grammys. And now he's got his publishing company that is a wonderful sponsor for our podcast. So thank you again, Seeker, and go check them out now.

Hey guys, there's a cool company called Sound Royalties that was founded about 10 years ago. They provide funding for music creatives without ever taking ownership of their copyrights. All they need to do is see that you have a royalty stream. They don't need personal guarantees, collateral, financial statements, or credit checks. They work alongside publishers and labels, distributors, and PROs. They don't replace them. Again, all they need to know is that you have a royalty stream of at least $5,000 in a year, whether it's from mechanical performance, digital, streaming, sync, whatever it is.

If you're interested in finding out more about sound royalties, check out their website or DM them on Instagram or call 844 for all music. That's right. It's 844 for all music to get started with sound royalties. Call them today. BMI is the champion of the creation. supporting songwriters and making sure you get paid for your creative work. More than that, BMI has an incredible team that helps guide and develop songwriters, shows you how to navigate the industry, plus provides invaluable opportunities on stages and at festivals. Bottom line, they help you with your career at all levels from those just starting out

to the biggest hitmakers. Just like they helped me out when I was just starting out. and how they still help me out today. You can learn more at BMI.com. I want to get into music, but one other questions, I've seen a lot of your artwork. You know, it's like one of the best parts of going to your studio. There's art that you enjoy that you patronize from other artists,

and then there's, you know, your art. And I think that there's all kinds of influence, and some of it has, you know, it comes from all over the place. Do you use the same influences in art that you do as a musician? How much of your art influences the music you make? Oh, that's a great question.

I'd say like in the literal sense, it's not so, there's not a lot of crossover, but in the in the practice of making it there's tons of crossover so in other in other words like in college once i left high school and went to college i went to school at a school called art center college of design it's here in pasadena and it's like it was described to me as like the harvard of art schools so it's really um reputable really difficult the workload is insane like the last like three weeks of school, people would be getting like two hours or three hours of sleep in night to finish all the work that they've got to get done. Very, very hard. And one of the things

that they teach, they teach technique, they teach aesthetic, they teach craftsmanship, they teach attention to detail and patience. And like for example, I was, I had a class on perspective. there's a um and we're talking about like drawing an image that's improper perspective right so there's um it's one of the more academic classes and there's there's definitely a right and wrong like if you're talking about like conceptual theories like is this a beautiful piece like it's a little you know subjective perspective is not subjective perspective is math and so and there were and there were two teachers that taught the class um one was a guy um named Gary Meyer who had done work on like Star Wars and the very first day of class,

he would draw like a full, as he's described as he's talking to the class and like giving the intro to the class, he would draw a full battle scene with the Death Star and X wings and all this. Like he just draw with chalk on a chalkboard in perfect perspective with a yardstick as he's telling you what to expect from the class. Everyone wanted that class. The other class was this guy named Westercamp who you had to do like an average project in Wester Camp's class was a two foot by three foot

vellum perspective analysis where the top half was all drawing and the bottom half was all text and you had to do all the text with a ruler and the entire thing with graphite if there was a smudge, if there was a wiggly line, if there was a line that was too light

or too dark for every single one of those you would lose 5% of your grade you had two of them you went to a 90% you had four of them you're at a B minus barely hanging on and people would come in the first they'd turn in a project and the very first review they'd be getting an F and I

the first week of that two weeks of that class I was like this is fucking this fucking sucks like I could have been in the other guy's class drawing like tie fighters and I'm instead I'm in this asshole's class like being forced to write the letter E with a ruler. By the end of it, I realized,

have you ever seen Jiro Dreams of Sushi? Okay. I realized that's what we were doing. We were doing, in Jiro Dreams of Sushi, this guy is like a master of every tiny little detail and the craft that goes into the rice, the craft that goes into the, to the, Nauri, the craft that goes into like the sauces.

Everything is perfect. It's precise, and he's worked on it for, decades. And if somebody comes to work for him and starts, and he starts mentoring them, they spend their first year working for Giro, they just make rice every day. That's all they do until they perfect rice. And then they can move on to egg. Like it's years before they touch a piece of fish. This is a long version. This is a long story. But to say that, like those types of things, learning them in art school, learning craftsmanship and attention to detail and patience.

Like if you're doing a big project and you fuck up this tiniest little thing, but it's irreparable, you start over. Just start over. And I'm not afraid to like look at something that I've been working on or made and say this is like this is going to take some something extraordinary to make it good. But if I do that, it'll be very good.

I'm willing to do that work. So I feel like a lot of young artists don't have that in them yet. or maybe they never learn it where they're willing to put in the effort to make something that's exceptional. I talk a lot about aging gracefully in the music business and the common thing is to think that that means that the elders in the business are,

they have to act a certain way as they grow in mentorship or whatever they do. But I think that that is more important for the new writers and new artists to age gracefully when they're starting, to recognize that tuck your hubris and your ego away and listen, because that lesson that you just gave in going through all the snares,

finding that snare that's work, tweak it because that's not the right snare. That melody can be better. That melody can be better, and there's a reason why it's so disciplined when it's like, no, that word should not be that note. It should be the half step lower. That flat six is exciting here because it's a blues reference

and it works, but it only works if you salt it so much. The amount of like back and forth we'll do over one word midline. It's not even an important word to any listener, but to me and you, the six options all color the story. song a different way and that word matters. Yeah, I think that a lot of, the difference between people who aspire and people who do is sort of is the discipline in knowing that they have to erase and throw away and erase. Also to have the, like, related to that effort, I think of you sometimes, because we've had

the situation before. to be in a session and say like say you're writing with people and you've written so many songs right and you know at a certain point when a song has like a ceiling on it you just go yeah i know how this i've been to this place a lot of times and this song is going to be good but it'll never be great and it's got a fundamental flaw in its structure that it means we need to either completely start over or we need to change it fundamentally. If you're doing that with an artist in the room who's not you and you suggest that, there's also this diplomacy and like ability to give and take criticism.

I also learned that in school, by the way. You got to be really. you know loving about the way you handle that because you you know if the message is hey I know you walked in the room with this idea I know we worked on it for almost two hours now and we're still like you feel the momentum of it growing it's it's it's working it's happening um I don't like it's like I think it's going to be okay but I don't like it and I think we should start over. To be able to have that conversation with an artist is difficult and it could be a total

deal breaker. But if you can do it and you come out with something better at the end of that process, you're going to be so happy you did. Yeah. I mean, the only way you get perspective, not the way you were talking about drawing, but perspective is with time. And good collaborators and people you trust, the reason why you're put in that room is because they can expedite some of that perspective.

they can if you trust them someone in that room should be able to say and this is where the quality of collaborator makes a difference because some people may not have that ability but if you have somebody you can say let's save as we have this version let's you know what if we go here you know we have this idea we have a little bit of time if we walk away with just a good pre-course then that's worth a day if you know the value of a hit so let's just try another version let's try a new song you know like that keeping that session energy moving forward in a positive creative ways.

I like how you said that. Yeah, I like how you said that. Okay, so, you know, I said before we started this, I said these are the interviews that scare me because this is, a Mike Shinoda Ross interview should be about 10 episodes long. We'll just do a whole season.

So we're still like, we haven't even started with like Chester joining the band. So, you know, you guys have you know you guys are in zero incubus does their thing probably around that time you guys decide we want this kind of singer what's the choice in saying we're going to add somebody and you know the minute that you guys add you know chester are you starting you know what is that process and let's start with that yeah let's just start with that so we had so mark and I started the band.

We brought the other guys in that are, that's who you think of as Joe and Brad. Yeah, it was Joe Dave, Brad and Rob. Yeah. And then we did a lot of showcases. We showcased for every major label around town at the time. I think there were seven. And all the independent labels,

over a dozen of them, showcased for everybody. Like they came to our rehearsal space or they came to our concert at like a place like the Roxy or Whiskey. And they, we met, we had some meetings. nobody wanted to sign us. We parted ways with Mark. He and I are still good friends,

and Mark actually went into music management. He currently, in 2023, he manages bands like deaf tones and system of a down, and he does very well. That was his calling. He figured that out at that point. Chester, we found through, it was actually our attorney's friend.

So our attorney had a friend who was an attorney who represented, I think he represented Chester's old base. or some people in Arizona and he knew about Chester. He's like, yeah, this guy was in a band. He quit. He's like not doing music right now, but he should be. And like, here's his information.

And we loved him. Like we were very like slow to make a decision. So we did try out a bunch of people and it was obvious to us like he was the dude. And we didn't. And as we started to like make music together, the first thing that was notable I think interesting to people when I tell them about this is that he didn't have a singing identity yet every time he sang he sang like other people so it'd be like oh on this song he's singing like Dave gone from Depeche Mode on this song he sounds like Robert Plant on this song he sounds like Perry Farrell and so on like Scott Wyland those were the top ones like every time he'd bring in a like an idea or something it would be one of those or something close and it wasn't hard to tell like some of them he was singing in

a little bit of a British accent you're just like what are you affecting right now and my my I didn't know what I was doing I was just my intuition told me I don't love this I love what I love who the singer is that he is. I don't love when he sounds like these other people. He's just so talented he can do it. So the effort that we went, that we like started to make was to discover who he is. And I, by the way, we were, I was doing the same thing.

Like, who am I as a rapper, as a, at the time, like a producer, right, or like a music maker and so on. all the guys in the band, like doing that same thing, like, trying to discover your musical, like, identity. Who introduced... There's one thing where you're a band who's playing in, you know, we'll say garages, although it's not literal garages, but, like, you know, you're playing in high school. There's...

You even see, oh, wow, you can get to K-Rock, which was probably the most influential radio station in the world at that point. But somebody's got it, you got to go into a studio and record the songs. That's a huge jump from I'm in a band to we're going to scrounge up money to go into a studio. What's the leap from we're a band to we're a recording band? Since I came from hip hop, there's a punk rock DIY aesthetic to hip hop. Like you can do it yourself. And so it didn't, whereas if I, maybe if I came from like rock,

rock music it would have felt further away but to me it didn't feel far away like I had my task am four track I I worked that thing like I'd make you know it was four it was four tracks so I'd take three make stuff bounce those to the one so now it's mono make two more bounce those to the two and then we'd be putting stuff on three and four so it was a lot of tracks to like get the most out of this thing and you once you committed them you couldn't go back so our stuff sounded crazy but we took a meeting with, at one point we got a call back early, early on too. Like we'd only made a few demos.

Is it zero or is this? Zero with Mark, but there's a reason I mention it. So in the early, early part of this, I made some, Mark and I made some demos on cassette four track and we got a meeting with this guy named Paul Pontius at Immortal. And we were, oh, well, that's Incubis's label. Like, this is the path, right? And he met with us and he was basically like, you know, hey, what you're doing is interesting.

But in particular, one of the moments in the meeting was, what did you, where did you record this? And I explained it to him and he was like slack-jawed looking at me. And he's like, dude, I don't know what you were doing, but you, this does not sound like a cassette four-track recording. Like, I can't wait to hear what it'll sound like when you actually get the proper gear and you mic up some drum. or you, you know, multi-track these beats that you're making. So fast forward to later, we got Chester in the band. We were doing a lot of that, trying out demos in studios. And I learned we learned we learned a ton.

Like we got, it was like kid in a candy store. You know, you're just able to like play with all these things that you had always dreamed of playing with. So we were on fire, just like so happy, so creative. making all this great stuff, playing shows, and then we made the rounds again and met with all the labels again. Now we've got Chester.

I mean, I think we even played, like we played a place for my head from Hybrid Theory was on our set list, forgotten was on our set list, an early version of runaway was in our set list. We played for everybody and nobody called back. We were right back where we started. We just like, it didn't work.

And so we had this moment of like, well, they don't get it, they don't like it, but we feel like we've got to, all this momentum and we're learning a lot and we're getting better and our friends love the music like so kind of like well then fuck those guys like we're just going to keep being a band

and we'll somebody else somebody will figure it out at some point they're going to have to that's the decision that you know that's the sink or swim moment it was the first one yeah the first one where it's like you guys are a band you know the music's good but nobody's biting and there's a lot of like

there are a lot of famous bands who have played some hits for labels who didn't hear it. I remember we met with Clive Davis in that era, that moment, one of the last meetings we got, Clive came down to the studio and we were shook.

I mean, you know, we knew what a big deal that was. And he said to us, he was very honest, and he said, like, unfortunately, he's like, I like what you're doing, I think that it still needs a lot of development, but it's good. And he said, unfortunately, having heard you,

we have a ban that's in your lane. And he said, I make it a point to not sign multiple things that are too similar. And unfortunately, that's the case. So I can't sign you, but I think somebody will. And that was enough. That was really kind. And he's a really honest guy. Yeah.

Well, nobody else said that to him. us. Like nobody else was willing to be like... Do you know who that other band was? I don't. I don't. So curious. Yeah, me too. Who was on... I haven't in... Who was on... Who was on... Who was on... Or Erest or whatever. Would it have been? Like, the closest...

One point I thought it was Kid Rock. And then I don't... I think I tried... Like, figured out where he was or whatever. And I don't... I don't think it was him. Um... Were you guys... By the time Warner Brothers hears you... what happened between that and Warner Brothers hearing you and famously they were I believe you guys were a hybrid theory right when we got Chester we changed the name to hybrid theory from zero to hybrid theory how many shows did you play out as hybrid theory like probably not that many because you were recorded most bands

the format like the thing most bands would do at the time was they would play shows constantly as many shows as many shows as they could to get good. We were more interested in writing and developing our sound. So we did one show every one to two months. The thing with that, that's also advice that, you know, this is an era where people actually practiced music together and wrote music together and lived with it and edited it versus now everyone writes and records the song often in the same day.

So they don't have the time to work out the kinks and, like, how the structure of songs go, how all that stuff. It seems like when you're focused on, well, we just need to develop our sound and our, you know, then you have the opportunity to actually grow as a musician versus as a performer. You know, it, like puts the songwriting first in a way that probably helped in the end versus the, you know, double entendre, I guess, kind of intended. It wasn't intended, but now they say, anyway. It did help that song. It did help that song. But it did.

Like, you had the ability to go through songs and you know, and probably make the songwriting better versus worrying about how many people can we get to this show this weekend. How many people can we get to this show this weekend? It kind of

like changes the focus to... I think artists today have the opposite problem. Actually, now that we talk about it in those terms, I think people today have that the norm is to sit and make it make, to develop your sound so much and focus so much on the curation of your identity, of your brand, on social media, on your songs, like what trends are happening and aesthetics and so on, that they don't actually get out in front of people and make a number one get the experience of trying those songs out in front of real human beings and number two get comfortable doing it so so the first one is when i play this song for people in a room

how do they react what parts of it are good what parts of it are not striking people and number two getting on a stage and doing it like remember I was talking about things being unnatural there's like so many unnatural things about performance and if you're going to if your music career is going to go anywhere as an artist if it's going to go anywhere you got to be good at that and getting good at that takes thousands of hours so what do you want to have happen like work your way up to having a song that goes viral and then they're like okay you got to play Jimmy Kimmel and you're like I've literally only played five shows like people are you know lucky if they get past that point yeah totally um so hybrid theory gets signed jumped a bunch of things

yeah you know yeah I love that you're trying really hard to go chronological and I'm resisting it and this is our entire I'm not doing that intentionally no I love I love this it's sort of like it's not going off the rails completely. It's like where they, it's like the train leans on one side, leans on one side, but we're still going down the track. If people aren't following this, they can do something else. But, okay, going back to

Warner Brothers finally hears something. Oh, I know what you kind of asked. They didn't know, we got let in the back door at Warner. We didn't get signed, signed. The guy that was representing us at Music Public. our Edzama music publishing got a job at Warner. He took us with him. He said, yeah, I'm representing this band.

Like, I'd love to do demos of them at Warner. And so we did a demo deal there. And the more demos we recorded, the more they saw what we were doing. And it went, oh, we get it. Yeah, we love this. So that was good. That's how we ended up at Warner. And I'd say our advocates at Warner were very few and far between.

even the guy that signed us eventually became very like difficult in our process so that was problematic he he I mean our whole first record was a nightmare because of him and because of that and then his boss so he got he's new at the company and he's got a new job he's got a new boss and he's trying to impress the new boss so everything's on the line he's the one to get fired and we're one of the of the focus is now. Like we've got some momentum. People are starting to like the music we're doing, but they're like basically like, don't fuck this up. And there was this really like, this crazy moment when

I remember we finished the song, we finished one step closer. And it was going to be our first single. And at that point, the relationship was really, there was a ton of turmoil. Like he had already tried to kick me out of the band. Chester stood up for me we knew that he was like

trying to like really muck up our thing and we Why would they kick you out of the band? He was convinced or and our guy was convinced that Chester was the only was the talent and that he went to him and he said

hey dude listen like you're the talent like if if we could build a whole band around you like I don't know you don't necessarily need the rest of these guys so he was trying to like pull this like power play thing and I think in his mind he had a vision for it that it wasn't our vision and I know that that's the case but he thought if he got chester on his side then they could make it together make his vision and chester basically he'd left that conversation

and then he came to us and he was like this is what just happened and we were like oh no that's fucking terrible what did we what did you say and he's to and chester goes I told him go fuck himself I was like amazing. Okay. And then we were just totally galvanized. And so at every turn, he knew he had shown his hand, right? The A&R guy.

And then we knew we had to stick to our guns. And so there was this like, that dynamic kept playing out over and over again. And at one point, we finished one step closer. They chose it as a single. They had to go get mixed. And whoever was going to mix one step closer was going to mix the whole album.

That was our like March. orders. That was what we were going to do. And we said it's going to be Andy Wallace because he mixed Nevermind and he mixed a couple of other more recent smaller records that we loved. But he gets whether he likes rap music or not, he gets the shape of rap songs. His songs knock. They've got like bass to them. They've got like that EQ shape. And all of these other mixers don't have that. We loved it. And we, we were. We were going to, we were like, it's going to be Andy Wallace mixing. It's going to be Brian Gardner mastering because Brian did the Dr. Dorey shit and Eminem,

who was about to come out, but at the time not. Anyway, the point is, big bass. Big bass. So that was our, that was what was happening, period. And the next thing we knew, we got a CD of our, of one step closer that had been mixed by somebody else. We're like, what is this? And it turns out it was our A&R guy's boss.

he had given our multi-tracks to his boss to mix our song without asking us and he gave us the CD and he had on the song one step closer if you don't know the song it's basically intro verse very short pre-chorus chorus chorus verse pre-chorus chorus and then a big surprising bridge that was inspired by groups like rage against machine the bridge is the shut up when i'm talking to you freak out screaming bridge. For us, this was the calling card of the band and the song. We wanted when the first time you heard Lincoln Park,

we wanted you to go, wow, this is a great song and then get to the bridge and be like, holy shit, this is like a religious moment. It's crazy. And you just wanted to go to the concert and scream it. The mixer took the bridge and copied and pasted it to the front of the song. thereby ruining the surprise of the structure.

He showed that he didn't understand us. He didn't understand the song. He didn't even understand how to properly tell a story. It'd be like, I hope this isn't too much of a spoiler for anybody, but it'd be like starting the movie Star Wars, the original Star Wars movie, four, and then alluding to the death of Obi-Wan Kenobi at the front of the movie. You'd be like, well, I'm not going to watch this movie now, right?

That's what happened. He put this thing together. And we were just like pulling our hair out going, oh my God, we're screwed. Because we can't, we can't convince our gatekeepers to let us be ourselves. And we had this like, it almost. What is Don Gilmore?

It almost fell apart. The producer of the album, was he on board with you guys? He was he. He was, he had his hands tied. He was so screwed. He was like, at the time we were livid. We were so mad at him,

had complete loss of faith. because he was supposed to be our like protector. He was supposed to protect the creative process and help us achieve the things that we wanted to achieve. And he wasn't doing that. He was letting those guys in the room all the time. And he let them have the multis, right? Like Don was the one who let them have it.

And we were so disappointed and so upset. And we just were barely able to hang on to the record that we were making and tell those guys no. And I think it was that point at which a guy who became our product manager at Warner Records, shout out to Peter Standish. Peter was brand new with us.

He had been there for years, but we didn't know him. And he reached out and he said, hey, guys, I know some of the things that are going on. There were a lot of other issues too, by the way, the other than the ones I just described, but Peter came to us and he said, I know you guys are having a lot of problems right now, and it's going to be okay.

We're going to sort through them, and you're going to make a great, finish a great record, and we're going to put this thing out and put everything behind it, but I need you to get a manager. We can no longer be, we didn't have a manager, and he sees like, we can no longer be doing this, I think one of your problems is that you've got this direct line of communication and nobody there to protect.

you who has any gravitas with the label get a manager we did and that's how we i think that's how we were able to stick to our guns at the end of the day we hired and it was rob mcdermott at andy gould and those guys were able to go to the label and say stop it's like you sign this band you when you were letting them do their thing look how good it was going they've got a great music, we know it's going to be, we know it's going to have a shot. So if you keep doing what you're doing, you're going to mess it up. Well, shout out to Rob, who is also my manager for a very short amount of time. So I like Rob, though. When, how soon after the success of one step closer, did those same A&R guys take credit? Immediately. I mean, they were like, I mean, I think

that some of those folks were even saying that they had written things on the record. They wrote nothing on the record. You know, you guys end up obviously, you know, crawling in the end, there's so many big songs on that. And there are so many questions to ask about the personal, how you reacted personally. But while we're talking about the label, did that, did the success of those songs

tie you to those A&R people for the rest of... No, I mean, it was the opposite. It was as soon as we had success... Then you could say... Actually, it's a good... If you don't mind me fast-forwarding us. Please. Can I do that?

I'm keeping track. By the time we finished the hybrid theory cycle, so that's how it started. By the time we finished it, hybrid theory was the best-selling album on the planet Earth. It felt like everything we did, everything we touched turned to gold, everything we did worked.

And it was like it almost felt too easy at a certain point that I shouldn't say easy. It just felt like here's our effort. Let's check that box. And then we'd check the box and we'd move to the next thing. Checking the box was things like, okay, I want to be headlining. We're opening this festival this year. I want to be headlining this festival next year. And we do it.

It's like that's a stupid, that's a crazy thing to say. But those things were happening for the band. we got to the end of the record and we didn't even because we were so young and naive and things came so quickly we didn't really like like we didn't know how hard it could have been and we were at that we were at a point with the label where yeah they were just they were like they trusted us they were like wow like you guys really just every your intuition is so good you're very strategic, you're very creative. You make, you know, not only do they like the music,

but we were helping write all the marketing plans and promotion and stuff. We'd have like these like long meetings over and over again with each of those departments and tell them how we thought the fans would best experience the thing we were doing. So for example, a thing called street teams were a thing back then.

we were when we started out we were looking at other people's street teams and seeing where we can improve by the time we finished the first album everybody was just looking at us and just whatever we did they copied and so we were writing the playbook on how to put out a record how put out a single how to put out a tour what to do on tour we were doing meet and greets after every single show we did a meet and greet every my goal at that point and i said this like very publicly i want my autograph to meet to be worth zero dollars i want to sign so many autographs that you couldn't sell one because everybody's got one and we we signed so much stuff we saw so many fans and that work was fun work and it paid off it's funny because i i naturally go to the poor chester whose voice had to sing over you guys

night after night and then you're saying like oh we're going to sign all these autographs that guy is probably panicking being like it's so loud here I got to save my voice maybe it wasn't him it wasn't there we had those guys that sentiment was in the band but surprisingly it wasn't he grew up in like punk rock

punk rock and hard rock shows so like and the other thing is that like screaming vocals were like not the hardest thing for him like the high pitch singing vocals were harder crawling was harder to sing than one step closer for him So, yeah, he wasn't, his voice wasn't worn out because we were doing a lot of screaming and he's like, yeah, that's easy for me to do. You know, when you talk about, well, you know, these kids now, they might have a hit, then they have to play Kimmel. Still, if you go play Kimmel, there's TVs and that can be really, or cameras, and that can be intimidating.

But there's 250 people there may be at a taping of a Jimmy Kimmel, give or take. You were playing in front of, I don't know, 80,000 some nights? It went from, I don't think we got there at that point. Okay. We weren't there yet. All right, 20,000? Very, very big. We went from 150 people and then two years later, probably on the high end, 30 to 40K.

Yeah, okay. It's still not, not, not as half as many people. But at a certain point, it's huge. You can't comprehend the difference. You are one human who's gone from like Agora High School, Agora Hills. No, we hadn't finished that thing that you're describing. I didn't have a house at this point. I didn't even have an apartment.

I let my apartment go because we were on the road so much that I didn't need a home base in L.A. So I just, when I came home, I lived with my then-girlfriend now wife, Anna. I'd like go to her place. My stuff was in a storage unit. I didn't have a house. Like, it didn't matter. And the other guys were pretty much the same way.

Like, we were completely in transition in terms of our lives. It wasn't until the end, probably the end of the second album, three, four years later, that we wrapped our heads around the... What had just happened. Yeah, the change in our lives and what that meant. And actually, at that point, you know, we had a chance. We had met so many of our goals. We achieved so many of our goals that we realized,

okay, the goals after our second record can no longer be number goals and achievement goals in that sense because we'll set ourselves up for disaster, both in terms of our mental health and in terms of our like, like the health of our band as an enterprise in the world it can't just be about more more and more all the time because we've already you can't probably

there was a perfect storm like we're not going to do another hybrid theory so we need to set the goals at things that are more attainable or more healthy or artistic or it's like what you can control goals came became like I need be we need be 100% happy with every single song we put on a record or put out we want to strive for this level of artistry or achievement

in these like in the engineering of it in the songwriting of it um we'd love this type of aesthetic that kind of you know redefines like after our second record we wanted to redefine the DNA of the band we wanted to flatten it and go to like to the foundation and rebuild a new thing um you know there one of the one of the things i want to to talk about that. It's not really discussing the other stuff that I've in the other Mike Shinoda interviews in the way that I think that's interesting in the conversations we've had.

If you look at the evolution of who the producer is on Lincoln Park albums and also if you start adding in Fort Minor, if you start adding in, you know, the JZ records, the, like you said, it took Rick Rubin to be you're actually the producer you know it goes don Gilmer is the producer but I know how you work and there's no way it was really just

Don Gilmore although legend in what he's done it was definitely you know you were there the whole time the sound of Lincoln Park and you know shout out to Brad shout out to you know

his guitar playing Chester's voices Chester's voice but the author of the track, often the author of the song as well, is a lot of Mike Shinoda. When did you start gaining the confidence to say,

I would like to be credited as the producer. Did it take Rick on the third album to say, you're this? Was it the success of Fort Minor that gave you the confidence? of I can be, I am myself within this structure. When did your independence, when was the moment we were like, I'm in Lincoln Park, but I am Mike Shinoda? I think the Rick conversation was pivotal.

Where were you in that? We were at. We were at, so on Minutes to Midnight, our third album, we worked with Rick. And he, when we were, we did our first meeting with him. We were with him for like an hour, hour and a half, I think. And one of the most important moments there was that, you know, he asked what kind of record do you want to make. And everybody in the band to the man described a version of reinvention

and that we didn't want to do the things that we were known for. And we know that's scary. And we knew that it's risky. And that wasn't a problem for us. And he basically said, I love that. that's the answer that I was really hoping I would hear from you. So we got into it with him. We recorded at what they called the Houdini Mansion. It's his studio that he used to have on Laurel Canyon. And it's a couple, like I think it's like three story. I think it's three stories.

It's kind of two stories plus home where the electricity is like going out half the time. Like it's kind of, it was kind of a nightmare. But it was a good nightmare. and there was a moment when we were sitting there and he said you know he was like oh well you know you're the you're the common threads through the first two records and now is you like you're the you've been the band's producer in band producer

nobody else it was the context of the conversation was he was saying no no other bands that I've worked with work like you you guys are very unique and I think that adds to the that's probably pivotal to your sound is the way you construct the songs you use me meaning me you use uh the daw the recording software as an instrument and you play the song you write the song with the da you you construct it like digitally and cut things up and chop things and formulate ideas um the way a guitar player would use their guitar and i thought that was like i wouldn't have known he worked with so many artists i've not worked

with so many any other artists or any other producers other than don and so to hear that perspective on it i thought i went wow that's i didn't know that and and so towards the end of that i asked for the production credit co-production credit on the record because of what he had said and he there was no argument there was no conversation or anything the band didn't say every no everybody just said Okay. Did you get, you don't have to answer this, but did you get compensated differently? We had,

I can't answer that like, like in detail. Not that I can't, but I think it's unfair to the guys. What I would say is in the, like as a general idea, in the history of the band, we did things,

whether it's the end of the, like, what are you talking about? Like publishing and stuff like that? I don't know. I mean, you know, the person who's the producer gets different point structures.

Right, right. The person who's the main songwriter, you know, sometimes gets different compensation, especially if they're writing to tracks. If there's like, you know, I just didn't know how the dynamic within the band evolves with the credit. Evolves, yeah.

So it evolved. It changed from period to period. and usually in our band it changed in the direction of like democracy or or kind of evening and leveling the playing field for everybody. Well, I think one thing that that, you know, other writers and producers that I talk to, if they've got a group dynamic going on, One thing that I tell them about it is that there was a moment in the beginning of the band, earliest stage, I wrote a track, right?

And Brad would help with that track. And some of the other guys, you know, peripherally would help as well. Like I think my main collaborator was Brad and then my second tier was the other guys. Everybody participated. Everybody helped. I was the one steering the ship. I was the one who they would leave and I'd sit with the computer

and edit and edit and change and put more ideas and so on. And then we'd take in the studio and work with Don and so on. But we'd put the vocals at the end. We'd do the track and then we'd put the vocals on and if the vocals weren't working the track didn't change

like we just threw the song out. That was stage one. Stage two, the other guy said, hey, we've had a lot of success. and I, person in the band, have never been really like a lead writer on anything. I want to write. I want to like submit songs. I think I can do it too.

And we all said, I said, great, I would love the help because I feel like there's a lot of pressure on me and we're throwing away a lot of songs. We started generating tons and demos. And by the end of that process of the 12 songs, 11 of them were mine. So at the end of that, that was the second stage where we said, okay, let's democratize it and let everybody participate. And then at the end of the day, they were picking my songs over their own. So that was a kind of a game changer too.

It was enlightening and also very, very reassuring to have the other guys say, you know what, I gave it a try. I prefer your songs to my songs. Like you're a better writer. You're a better producer. And so then from that, then from that, then went into the third stage, which is the bulk of our career after album three was I was actively steering the ship

and taking on that responsibility in a more like assertive way and really pulling the guys in as it was my job to pull them in as often as I could and make sure they were as happy as they could be and that they really were heard on everything whether that was them saying I want you know I don't like this lyric I don't like this guitar part I don't like you know the shape of these things. I do love these things. Let's not change them. Please don't get rid of them. They would fight with each other over things. They'd not fight, but they would say like one person would say it must be black and the other person would say it must be white and I had to be the one in between going, okay, like here's here's some solutions. Let me try and help this. It was design

challenges basically. I mean that makes that's something. I mean, really that's just that's you by fricating your role, there's a time when you're the producer, like by pulling in the bandmates and giving them an opportunity to be heard, that's a good producer of a band, you know. There are times when you were Mike Shinoda, the guy in the band who needed to be heard as a musician, there's the, you know, I think that's hard for a lot of musicians where, you know, sometimes you're the engineer, you know? Sometimes in a room, I can play all the instruments. I'm not great at all the instruments, but I can play all the instruments. I can write, lyrics and melodies, I can produce. But sometimes I'm in a room, and my job is to make

sure the song just gets done. Sometimes my job, you know, and you can be a musician and not be so defined. It's sort of your skill set in that band is that you could be all of the things. If you needed to be the singer, you could be that. If you needed to be the beat maker, you'd with that you know the way i mean and and the way i would write a song back then from from that second stage on i also was like stretching myself and learning how to write differently and in the process with rick one thing that changed a lot was i stopped doing the it took a long time for me to stop doing this because i was so comfortable with it but doing the track and the vocals uh the top line separately and not changing the track um rick had we had a conversation with

Rick one time where he was like, hey, well, you know, have you ever written a song where it's just the instrument and the vocal start and starting with just an instrument and the vocal and no track and then built the track around that? And I was basically like, well, rarely like a couple of occasions where it kind of went that way. And he's like, what songs? And I was like in the end and breaking the habit. And he's like, that seems like it worked pretty good. Yeah. I was like, yeah, I know. But I, but I, it wasn't, it took me many years to get comfortable doing that. as a primary option. And once I got there, I'm still getting better at it, actually.

But once I got there, it fundamentally changed the quality. I think the quality of the work got so much better. Because on our fourth album, A Thousand Sons, it was really starting to happen. And I can tell where we were changing tempos and transposing the song. and removing and adding parts to work better with the vocal, to work better with the concept. It was the first time that we were like addressing like, I know this is a little like nerdy,

but if we had a concept going on in the lyrics, we could make the melody work with the concept and make the sounds of the song compliment or, yeah, compliment or rub against it. the actual like meaning of the song is very it's a much more dynamic and difficult way to write but when it strikes you as like oh this we can do this like that's it's like feels like magic i got to write with you guys on one more light which uh was the first time that we met you which you guys were bringing in some outside writers and uh i got to work with chester and

It's really interesting that the song we did halfway right, you and I think we wrote two or three songs, and one of them you release afterwards. You know, the song that we wrote, Chester sent me some lyrics. He would text me lyrics. And I said, man, these are really, these are really heavy. And he talked about, he said to me once,

in the songwriting side, he said, Man, if I walked in with the song yesterday, all of you guys would have notes for me. Yeah, that's true. I've said that about... I think that's true with a lot of writers anyway, but he said that. No, but our band,

one of the toughest things in our band is that everybody... Everybody always had notes. Like, you... They got in a... You know the horror stories about Chinese democracy, the Guns-Rows' album,

where it's almost like the album that would never see the light of day. just went around and around around on it. We were always teetering on the brink of having that problem because the notes, because everybody's very creative. And so they'd always have ideas. And they'd always want to try everything.

And this culture of like leaving no stone unturned, developed. And I think there was a, it's a double-edged sword. Like, well, the beauty of that approach is that, you know, you get to take your time. and really find the weird creative solutions that you wouldn't have found any other way.

But the tough part is that it's a grind. It really is hard. It's a lot of, like our third album was where we kind of started that process. And it took 18 months to make that record. It was impossible. I was the one. I was the one at the, around month like 15,

where I was like, I took Rick aside and I was like, I can't do this anymore. It's a very, it's too hard to be juggling 50 songs at that point. We had 150 demos and we had managed to whittle it down to 50 or 40. And I said, I can't, they're expecting me to, to, you know, address their notes on 40 songs or 45 songs and I don't have, that I can't do it. It's too much work, right?

So his point is, if you know the story about yesterday, Chester's point was that the original version of yesterday was called scrambled eggs. Those were the original. That was instead of yesterday, it was scrambled eggs. And in our band, everybody assumed that every song was scrambled. Everybody assumed that every song was that, that, oh, it's going to take a long time for it to get to the beautiful end product.

Chester's point was, we were so used to doing this. that they couldn't recognize when a song came in that was good because they just want to change stuff. And then we do all that changing and we'd end up basically running in a big huge circle and coming back to the original idea. I know we don't have like a ton of time and there's so many questions regarding where the band is now and who everyone is when they're not the Lincoln Park from 2000. to 2017. Obviously, Chester's passing is devastating and enlightening in all of the ways.

And I know you've had to answer a lot about Chester. So in the current state of Lincoln Park and knowing how you've been, you know, the things we work on, it's not all Mike Chinota music, although we have had, you know, one song with that but you're writing for a lot of other people I have been but you I know you guys also are releasing some yeah the Meteora yeah yeah yeah so with the Meteor 20 we released like a handful it's a huge box set five vinyl records four CDs three DVDs book art so on and so forth the the kind of like keystone of the whole thing the main I think the most interesting thing in there is there's an album of lost demos.

And all of those are like basically half of it is brand new songs that are old songs from the era. And we didn't really, we basically just presented them. We polished them up and presented them and didn't like write anything new on them or touch them or whatever. They're stuck in a time capsule and just brought them out and polished it. And the song lost, there's a song called Fighting Myself. There's a song called More the Victim, a song called Massive. a song called Massive. These are all like demos from the time that in, you know, 20 years ago,

like all of the ones I just named, like they could have been on the record. In the spirit of talking about songs outside of the Mike Chinota, Lincoln Park umbrella, you and I have a song coming out soon with the grandson. Oh yeah, yeah. And in this segment of what would Grandson? son asked Mike Shinoda and the writer is, he asks he said,

ask something about the existential nature of some of the bigger songs like in the end and numb. Oh, I thought this was going to be a joke. No. I thought he went serious. Jordan goes serious. These massive anthems that speak to generational angst,

how do you compartmentalize and handle those feelings whether they're your own or whether it's the ones that fans express to you. Like the way people interpret your songs like NUM, songs like in the end, how do you interpret the emotion? I've had such a weird relationship with that subject. So for context, you know, on one hand you've got what Jordan is referring to, which is like a lyric that's so much about like such deep emotions

or like questions about mortality or questions about like why am I here or like fundamental feeling like the song is about like as a listener you hear a song you go oh man the fundamental human flaw that they are talking about is my fundamental human flaw that I deal with every day it's so me this song is me and I'm going to tattoo it on my back 18 inches big, right? And they do it. When I hear that, I go, oh my God, that's like so intense.

Like I'm uncomfortable that how intense that is. I also rewind, in my head, I jump back to the year 2000 when we wrote a song like crawling, which was about those things. It's such in, like, in terms of like the potency of what we were writing about,

we were very serious about it. It was very emotional. It was very like, yeah, it was intense. And then I remembered seeing a video of a cheerleading squad doing a dance to it, to crawling. And I'm like uncomfortable in the complete opposite way where I'm like, you aren't listening to the lyrics that I poured my heart and soul into Chester wrote.

Actually, that one, I should say Chester, because Chester wrote a lot of those words. Like, this is not a joke, right? Like in my head, I was mad for the opposite reason. You have to, like, as you do this for a while, like, you've got to grow up and realize, like, you're going to fly in one direction of the...

Once the song comes out, it's theirs. Yes. You know, it's like, that's the hard thing. Exactly right. That's exactly right. All right. I know that we will end up doing 10 of these interviews. I can tell that.

But in the spirit of ending this one, we are going to do first our last segment which is a five for five. I'm going to list five things to just tell me what comes off the top of your head. Oh, I forgot we were going to do this.

I'm so unprepared for this. The first one is Web 3. Okay. First thing comes to my head. How, you'll get like a sentence, a couple sentences? There are no rules, man. Yeah. I'm not going to kick you out.

Yeah, I just, I think my reaction is it's it's i feel a lot of promises there and i feel like uh the path has been obscured by a lot of garbage so the promise of web three whoever's in it um they will have to deal with and you know communicate to the rest of the world like what's the real benefit and how that's separate from the scamminess and the, you know, shilling that goes on. Yeah. That's probably, that's the best answer you could give for that. All right, let's, Twitch.

Twitch was a necessary connection for me for a period of time. 2020, I went on Twitch and it was a perfect fit for being, for communing with, like, minded people. Chester. I mean, I can't. There's two. Somebody asked me the other day, like, in an interview, like, what's your purpose in life? To you?

To me, they said that. What was your answer? It's a really big question. Well, but the point, I mean, my point is that that's, like, it's such a big. There's so much there. Similarly, like, there's so, with, you ask about Chester. Like, it's just so much there that, I'm. that I would be doing him a disservice.

I'd be doing myself a disservice to like try and explain it or simplify it. I think that's one of the, you know, we are also used to those kinds of like sound bites and stuff that it's hard to not try and do that to everything. But some things are too complicated to do that too. Well, then this one won't be any better, but Anna. Yeah, same. Yeah. I'd say right now, one thing that is like so great about my wife Anna is that she,

the, we have such like a complimentary, um, like growth path. Like we're, we're not, we're very different people. Um, and like as we've matured and gotten older, I think we constantly grow. I like get challenged by her in ways that, I don't even realize it's something I need to learn

and just then vice versa. Actually, it's usually, when that happens to me, it's usually like I don't realize it's, I'm being challenged and that I need to figure something out. And the other, and on her side, it's probably me like literally saying, like, this is an issue we need to, like, address. This is not me saying, hey, you need to change.

This is me saying, like, have you noticed that, like, in our family, like, this keeps happening or whatever? like, what can we do to make this, like, weird thing not happen anymore? And it's her having patience to listen to me do that dumb thing over and over. It could be something as stupid as like, God, we're so messy. Okay, so that's an, that's, oh, I'm a super, I'm like a, I like to have things a little more, like, organized and in place and clean. And she cares less about that.

And we have kids, and they care not at all about that. And so the lesson for me is chill the fuck out And be cool with other people Living the way they want to live And her She has to have patience with me And she also is like Okay like I can try and

Tidy this Our little universe up a little But it's that's what I feel like that's what a family is right Totally It's like this like push and pull of like oh it's just like I don't know it's you adapt out of love. Yeah.

Like you adapt, because you love the family, you adapt certain things and it always takes a little bit of effort and the effort's good effort. And this random one, but I just think it's kind of interesting. K-Rock.

Oh my God, K-rock. That's a good one, because we were talking about that earlier. K-rock was like, it was such a special, it's almost like, I never put this together but you know how some people talk about like

CBGBs or like the way people talk about I hear some people talk about punk rock and they don't mean like the style of music they mean the moment in time like there's a thing that happened some kids that with email

I feel like K rock for those of us that grew up when it was doing what it was doing it was by the way it was Power 106 and it was K rock and I loved both passionately. I was obsessed.

Because it was a moment in time. It was like a culture. Yeah. Well, thank you for doing this. I know we've talked about doing it for a long time. You know, one of my favorite anecdotes about about how, you know, everyone talks about how grounded you are. And these are examples of that.

The idea that when you guys would fly private, you'd land and you and Chester would go in a van while the other guys and Dave would go in a van while the rest of the guys are getting into like nicer cars

you know it's like you guys had the opportunity to land somewhere you would fly private for efficiency but you'd land and you would you could have been picked up in an escalade but you chose to get picked up in a van like there's some of those things like

I remember asking you that you were flying out of Burbank and not to blow up your spot but and you were like talking about flying an airline that I know doesn't have a first class and I was like well why are you guys

why are you doing that? And you're like I don't want my kids growing up like that. Oh yeah. And I think what that says is it says more than you know even in a session with you

no artist, no writer feels like oh I'm with this guy who belongs in the Hall of Fame I'm with a guy who wants to make a cool record

with his friends and you keep it because that's just who you are you were that at the peak of Lincoln Park when you could have been picked up in a limo

you were picked up in a van that's the person I want to write with I don't need to write like the other guy that I write with, I go in, I do that one session, and I don't need to hang out that guy.

I don't call that guy to talk to. I don't, you know, we're not hanging out if you're the guy who, because that guy's living a life that I don't lead, you know. But you're living the life of something that's like about keeping the connection authentic. And that's why, you know, my wife and I talk about that. You want to have friends where you can go deep right away, you know, where it's not just about, hey, what do you want?

working on. I mean, maybe we talk about that, but it's not just that. And you live in, you live five levels deeper and more authentic and more, you're not just a grounded person. You're like, you're part of the thing. I think a lot of, I think a lot of us look

for that, that, you know, when you, you know it, like the songwriter version of kind of what you're talking about is when you go into a session with one person and they go like, they're immediately focused on the hit. Yeah. Like, this is a hit, this is not a hit.

It's like in my experience, this is not my opinion. This is my, like, what I've seen happen for as long as I've been doing it is like, how the fuck do you know? You don't know. Like there have been, for every time people are convinced

that it's gonna work. Like there are a lot of people who are convinced something else was going to work that did not work. Yeah. And when for me, setting that as a goal is a very flimsy goal.

That's a very flimsy platform to stand on. Yeah. The other stuff about, you know, quality and community and having fun and doing good work and loving what you're doing, that is so much more important. You're going to be, but partially because you're going to be able to, like, hang your hat on that. Well, thank you. Thank you. This episode is produced by Joe London, Hypnosis, mega house management and myself.

See you all next week. I'm Ross Golan, signing off.