0:02

I Heart Radio Presents Inside

0:04

the Studio. I'm your host Joe

0:06

Leaving. My

0:09

guest today is Mike Shinoda, the rapper,

0:12

producer, songwriter of Lincoln Park. Although

0:14

he's here to talk about what's essentially

0:16

his first solo album, it's called

0:19

Post Traumatic, and although Mike has released

0:21

music under the name Fort Minor before, this

0:23

is the first album he's released under his own

0:25

name now.

0:32

Last year, on Lincoln

0:34

Park released their seventh studio album,

0:37

One More Light. It became their fifth

0:39

album to debut at number one on the Billboard Album

0:41

Chart, and in fact, all the two of their albums

0:43

have debuted at number one, which is a pretty remarkable

0:46

run over an eighteen year stretch. But

0:51

what should have been a moment of celebration was

0:54

marked by tragedy. On

0:57

May eighth, the day before the release

0:59

of One More Light It, Chris Cornell

1:01

of Sound Garden took his own life. Cornell

1:04

and Lincoln Park's Chester Bennington were close, and

1:07

at a memorial service in Los Angeles

1:09

ten days later, Bennington saying Hallelujah,

1:12

accompanied by bandmate Brad Delson

1:14

on guitar. Here's

1:16

how Bennington paid tribute to Cornell on Twitter.

1:20

Your voice was joy and pain, anger

1:23

and forgiveness, love and heartache all wrapped

1:25

up into one. I suppose that's

1:27

what we all are. You helped me understand

1:29

that thing

1:33

week. Indeed,

1:36

Bennington had a lot of pain and heartache of his own,

1:39

more than a share who

1:42

cares it for more like goes

1:44

out in the sky

1:47

of fa millions, and

1:49

two months later, on July, he

1:52

took his own life, as

1:54

some people immediately noted that day

1:56

was Chris Cornell's birthday. Kind

1:59

of thing that can make you think you understand an action that

2:01

at its core resists easy

2:03

explanations or understanding. As

2:06

Mike Shinoda explains, he himself

2:09

grew up a visual artist and a musician, and

2:11

he's always used his art as a way of

2:14

processing his experience of making sense

2:16

of things. But immediately after Chester's

2:18

death, he really wasn't sure what

2:20

to do. It

2:27

was weird because when

2:29

I look back at it, I don't think there's ever

2:31

been a time when I've not

2:33

been able to go write, Like when I felt

2:35

like weird about writing a song. It's always

2:37

like, if I have something going on, that's

2:40

like the best time to go write a song. You

2:42

know you're dealing with stuff. I use

2:44

my visual art and

2:46

my music as therapy, so it's

2:49

always like a thing. If I'm

2:51

going through something difficult, oftentimes

2:53

I'll go straight to the songwriting stuff. But with

2:55

this, there was

2:57

a time where I was really

3:00

like scared to be in the studio a little bit. Let'm

3:02

like scared, but just like anxious.

3:05

What was going on? Well, yeah, so after

3:07

Chester passed, it was

3:09

hard for me to go in the studio for

3:12

a while. And then at a certain point,

3:14

I remember speaking to Dave Phoenix

3:17

from the band and um, actually

3:19

all of us got together at Dave's house

3:22

and he had said, oh, have you guys listened to any of our

3:24

music yet? And everyone was like, no way, but

3:27

he had, and he

3:29

was like, you know, it was hard. It seemed

3:32

scarier than it was, you know, And now that I've

3:34

listened to it, I know I can listen to it. Well.

3:36

The same thing happened to me with getting in the studio.

3:38

It's like, at first it seemed like, oh man, it's gonna

3:40

feel really weird to go in and write about

3:43

anything. And I did

3:45

a few I just kind of, you

3:47

know, bit the bullet and went in and did some stuff

3:49

and some of it was really just screwing

3:51

around and just playing whatever, like play guitar

3:54

for a couple of hours, or just

3:56

doodle around on the piano, or make some sounds,

3:59

make a little like beat. Eventually

4:01

I was making songs every day.

4:03

It seemed like all the ones that

4:06

were about stuff

4:08

that was actually going on, songs

4:11

that were actually serious songs, most

4:14

of those just kind of turned in this record, I

4:22

Don't have a Leg to Stand, spinning

4:27

like a whirl and in the Land. The solo

4:29

music Shinoda began to release starting in January,

4:32

talked about loss in ways that we're both

4:34

deeply personal and universal.

4:37

In a song called Place to Start, he

4:39

sang about feeling like he was in a whirlwind,

4:42

sometimes scared that everything he'd built might

4:44

fall apart, sometimes feeling like he was so

4:46

focused on endings that he'd run out of

4:48

the will to find a beginning. But

4:51

it felt less like a song and

4:53

more like a page out of his journal. And

4:56

that feeling was reinforced by a video he

4:58

put out of him simply singing this ang into

5:00

his phone, which was more like a skype call than

5:02

a video from a musician who's been selling out

5:04

arenas for almost two decades, and

5:08

that immediacy was the whole point. Shonota

5:10

was figuring out things as he went and sharing

5:13

the process. And when I say figuring

5:15

out things as he went, I mean it very

5:17

literally. The first verse of over

5:19

Again was written and recorded on October,

5:23

the day Lincoln Park played a memorial

5:25

concert at the Hollywood Bowl, with friends from

5:27

Blink, No Doubt, Korn,

5:29

and many others stepping in to help

5:31

honor Chester Bennington. Shinodah

5:34

is describing the feelings he had beforehand,

5:37

right down to wanting to puke his guts out rather than

5:39

get on stage.

5:44

But at the same time, anyone who's

5:46

experienced the death of a friend or a loved one is

5:49

wrestled with what's expressed in the chorus of this

5:51

song. That's saying goodbye isn't

5:53

confined to a single moment or

5:55

even a series of moments. It happens

5:58

over and over and

6:00

over again. And

6:03

anyone who's experience loss also knows

6:05

the moment when someone comes up to you and

6:07

expresses his or her condolences, and

6:09

it is more to do with them than it does

6:12

with you. Shinodah talks

6:14

about this and hold it together, they

6:25

say that they sympathize. I'm

6:27

grateful they take the time for

6:30

bringing it up. But to six year old, what I

6:32

really wanted to do with a lot of those things, and

6:34

it happens in the show too, is

6:37

to take you and put you in

6:39

my shoes, you like, and make

6:41

sure that when you're hearing it, it's like, oh

6:43

shit, like I haven't thought

6:45

of what it

6:48

must be like, right. And

6:50

there were a few moments like like that on the

6:52

record where you know, somebody's asking

6:56

about you know, oh, it must be so hard,

6:58

are you okay? And whatever, and it's like, you know what,

7:00

motherfucker, I was doing really good

7:03

until you started bringing it up, Like I haven't

7:05

even thought about that all day. Now

7:07

I'm thinking about it and we're at a birthday

7:09

party. Maybe you could have stopped yourself

7:12

like thirty seconds ago and said,

7:14

wait, it's now

7:16

the appropriate time to ask this or to say this, like

7:18

maybe we wait till later to

7:25

understand the magnitude of the loss that charges

7:28

post traumatic and you have to understand

7:30

how Chester Bennington in My Shinoda each

7:32

served as the engine of one another's dreams.

7:35

When Lincoln Park first released their debut

7:38

album, hybrid theory. In two thousand, they

7:40

were lumped in with a lot of other bands that had grown

7:43

up on both heavy guitars and hip hop,

7:45

and some of them shared a pensiont for the gratuitous

7:48

use of the letter K when spelling their names. I'm

7:50

thinking here of Corn and Limp Biscuit. But

7:53

Lincoln Park were bigger and have lasted

7:55

longer in part because they

7:57

did more, not just made

7:59

me USI with a broader range, more open

8:01

to other sounds and feelings than pure rage.

8:04

It's also as they were

8:06

coming up, they

8:08

cared about nothing but playing shows and meeting

8:10

fans afterwards. We're

8:12

shooting for the title of hardest working

8:15

band in America. Bennington boasted

8:17

to Rolling Stone in two thousand and one, and that

8:19

is the year that they did three hundred and

8:21

twenty four live performances,

8:24

which is not exactly one a day

8:26

for a full year. It's one

8:28

every one point one seven days. I

8:31

did the math. They also had something that other bands

8:33

with the K didn't too, vocalists Mike

8:35

Shinodah and Chester Bennington. Shinodah was the

8:38

rapper, Bennington was the singer and

8:40

also the screamer and also everything

8:42

in between. On

8:44

breakthrough songs like In the End, Bennington

8:47

could sound delicate like the piano and

8:50

raw like the guitars. It

8:52

was like a whole band in one throat. It starts

8:55

with I don't

8:57

know why it doesn't need no matter how hard

9:00

to keep that in mind, I protect

9:02

to was playing to do one

9:23

thing. I don't know why it doesn't

9:25

need to. It took more than a year

9:28

for Hybrid Theory to climb to number two

9:30

on the album chart. Don't let

9:32

that number to fool you. It was a

9:34

dominator. Hybrid Theory

9:36

would become the best selling album of two

9:39

thousand and one, beating out

9:41

records from jay Z and Sinc. And

9:43

Britney Spears, and it stayed on the Billboard

9:45

chart for two hundred and nine weeks.

9:47

A little more than four years gets

9:50

sold better than ten million copies.

10:13

Lincoln Park went added hard when they were on stage

10:16

and hard when they weren't, but not the

10:18

way most bands did. We'd

10:20

rather go to somebody's house and write a

10:22

song than go to a party, Shinoda told

10:24

Rolling Stone in two thousand and three. At

10:26

parties, you knew what was going

10:29

to happen, you knew who was going to get drunk. But

10:31

when we got together to write songs, we

10:33

never knew what was going to happen. It

10:35

was much more exciting. Lincoln

10:38

Park became the biggest new rock band of the two

10:40

thousand's for years. They had

10:42

their own touring festival project Revolution

10:45

that in two thousand and four featured both

10:47

Corn and Snoop Dogg. Thank

10:50

You, Thank You, Thank you kind

10:53

And that's the same year they get a special friend,

10:55

TV jay Z that became the Collision

10:57

Core CP, the rare man

11:00

ship project that works for more than a few

11:02

minutes at the time. It's amazing

11:04

how well Numb and Encore go together and

11:06

how much each side gets from the other. Lincoln

11:09

Park is a whole new kind of swagger. Jay

11:11

Z has a new kind of thunder. It shouldn't

11:14

work, but it totally does, you

11:16

know. After

11:19

that, it was natural that Lincoln Park hook

11:21

up with producer Rick Rubin, who had masterminded

11:23

some of the first fusions of rock, guitar and hip

11:26

hop with Run DMC and The Beastie Boys. They

11:29

recorded three albums with Ruben, who

11:31

pushed them to write songs rather than make

11:33

tracks, and on songs like Shadow

11:35

of the Day from two thousand and sevens

11:37

Minutes to Midnight, they sounded

11:39

more like a band than ever. In

11:42

fact, they sounded like they were ready

11:44

to be the next you Tube. At

11:47

the beginning for Lincoln Park, everybody

11:49

played two roles, one in the band, one

11:51

behind the scenes. Shinoda and

11:53

keyboardist turntablist John handled

11:56

the visuals, with Han directing the videos.

11:59

Guitarist Delson and drummer Rob

12:01

Borden handled some marketing and finance

12:03

duties. Bassist Dave Farrell was the tour

12:05

correspondent, doing updates for their website,

12:09

but Bennington's job was more like being

12:11

the heart of the band. He

12:13

and Shinoda wrote the lyrics, and in interviews

12:16

he embodied the pain, the angst, and

12:18

the positivity expressed in the songs. He

12:20

talked about his past, his struggles

12:23

with addiction and childhood abuse, and

12:25

he talked about being a regular guy, about working

12:27

hard, and about life being good. The

12:31

band had existed before Chester Bennington

12:33

joined. They'd written songs, they'd played together,

12:35

they had recorded, but it only really

12:37

came together once he was there to add a voice

12:40

and a face and a heart to the music.

12:43

It's no surprise that you notice says, now, the future

12:45

of the band is an open question. It's

12:48

tempting to hear all of post Traumatic as

12:50

a reaction to Bennington's death. Some

12:53

songs aren't so sometimes even

12:56

those have a way of coming back to the subject.

12:59

But there's a post in post Traumatic for a

13:02

reason. Mike Shinoda

13:04

is struggling to find the way to move forward,

13:07

and in one of his first in depth

13:09

sit downs since Chester Bennington's death,

13:11

we talked about whether or not there's

13:14

a future for Lincoln Park, what it's

13:16

going to be like to go on tour playing his

13:18

own music and some Lincoln Park songs by

13:20

himself on stage in massive

13:23

festivals, and how much Chester

13:25

Bennington meant him. Let's

13:27

hear what Mike Shinoda has to say. So,

13:31

how are you. I'm good, Yeah, I'm

13:33

good. Yeah. Tell

13:36

me about putting

13:38

this record together. First, Let's start at

13:40

the beginning. Now, the songs

13:43

that we heard on the post Traumatic EP

13:45

seemed to very directly address Chester's

13:49

death and your feelings afterwards. But are

13:51

you saying that there were other songs you were making during that

13:53

period that we're about

13:56

something else or or didn't fit into this project

13:59

but had a different direction. It

14:01

was mostly that I was writing about

14:03

whatever was on my mind, so usually

14:06

that would fit under the umbrella of this

14:09

album. I did a couple of things that were

14:11

a little more like stylistically

14:13

like way different, Like I've joked around. It was like the

14:16

sounded like like a bad Smashing

14:18

Pumpkin song or like a Nine Inch

14:20

Nails song or something. Yeah, those just

14:22

didn't pan out like I did them for fun, just

14:25

to do it. But the vast

14:27

majority of the stuff I made became post

14:29

traumatic. And there's sixteen songs on the record, which

14:31

is the longest album I've ever done or

14:34

been involved with. I should say, you know, it's

14:36

autobiographical. It

14:38

had this live journal feel to it. I

14:41

mean it's journalistic in some sense, particularly

14:43

once those videos started coming out. Tell

14:45

me about the process of putting

14:47

together those videos. There's place

14:50

to start over again. I had done the first

14:52

few songs. I didn't know where it was going to

14:54

go, but I knew I had some songs, and

14:56

the first ones it seemed to me that it should

14:59

be in some chronological order

15:01

or something that resembled that. So the first

15:03

few songs I had were the ones you just named,

15:05

and I decided At one point I

15:07

was listening back to them in my studio on the

15:10

sofa, and I pulled out my phone and

15:12

I I had this idea of what a video for that

15:14

song could look like, and I just pulled out my phone and did

15:16

a selfie video of it. I

15:20

just saw the look of the thing, and I

15:22

thought that would actually make a kind of cool video, so I just

15:24

shot it, and then later, having

15:28

done that, I did another one, and I did some more

15:30

little shots and it became stylistically

15:32

that again, like autobiographical kind of

15:35

depiction of what I was doing felt

15:37

like the right way to visually

15:40

represent the songs. What it did is

15:42

it removed any kind of

15:44

like intermediary in the conversation.

15:47

It was just me talking to you right

15:49

as opposed to like it's being shot by a director.

15:52

Here's Mike talking about this really personal stuff, and

15:54

we storyboarded out this really cool narrative.

15:57

All of that was removed, the feelings

15:59

happening in time and the songs being documented

16:01

that way. Yes, And once I did them,

16:05

it became part of the visual aesthetic

16:07

of the whole thing. Part of the idea

16:10

was from the paintings that

16:13

I was doing at the time, those became the packaging,

16:15

they became the merchandise. The videos

16:18

and the autobiographical nature. Just

16:20

like the communication style is

16:23

there on the record, it's there in the visuals. In

16:25

one sense, it just blurs the line between real

16:28

time social media and videos

16:31

and things that you don't usually think of as a real

16:34

time Like the most recent when I did was for

16:36

a song about you, which we just put out

16:38

a couple of weeks ago. Decided

16:40

to put it out. The week that we

16:42

were putting it out, I decided to shoot the video

16:45

while I was out promoting

16:47

the record, and I flew to China. I was

16:49

already going to be out there to do some record promo

16:51

and shoot some stuff for tour announcements

16:53

in Asia, And while

16:57

I was there, we shot the video and then a few days

16:59

later it was on the internet. Like everything is

17:01

in real time. And just to be

17:03

clear for people who haven't heard it, about you, like

17:06

a lot of songs on this record is

17:09

addressing loss, so about you. The

17:11

idea of the song is even when I don't think

17:14

the song is about this, even when

17:16

I don't think the moment is about this, it comes back to

17:18

this, right or there's two versions

17:20

of it. Sometimes when I'm writing about

17:23

something, it does come back to

17:26

the context of having lost

17:28

Chester or the uncertainty

17:31

of the band's current situation. The

17:33

other thing is, though, that even when I actually

17:36

don't write a song having anything to do with

17:38

those things, people see

17:40

it through that lens. So, in other words, just

17:42

to put it into somebody else's context entirely,

17:45

so that you can see where I'm coming from. Joe,

17:47

if you have a public breakup with a woman, let's

17:50

say you get both super celebrities and

17:53

you're dating, this is going to be really imaginary.

17:55

But okay, Scarlett

17:58

Johansson, right, good for me. And then

18:00

you broke up and everyone's like,

18:02

oh man, they broke up. It's

18:05

on the front page of all the things and all that, and people

18:07

are talking about it. And then you go and you get

18:10

coffee in your sweats and they

18:12

take pictures of you and it's like, oh see, he's

18:14

super depressed, Like didn't put on jeans

18:17

in the shirt today today it was sweats, Like he

18:19

must be super depressed. It's all about her. And

18:21

then you get a slice of pizza. You see he got the

18:24

like five different toppings could

18:26

have been. Yeah, he's really hurting right now. They

18:28

see everything through this lens of like

18:31

what they think you're going through, and

18:33

even if you're like no, I literally just felt

18:35

comfortable in my pj's and I went and got a slice

18:38

of pizza because I like pizza. Guys,

18:40

Like, that's all there is to it. There's no reason to

18:42

read further into it. But that's

18:44

just how our world works. They're

18:46

gonna start seeing things through that lens. In

18:49

fact, just this weekend I had my first show.

18:51

Two shows. Actually, I did a double header and did

18:54

a radio show in the afternoon and

18:56

did a longer headline set in the evening.

18:59

It was in front of City Hall in l A. It

19:01

was part of an Asian festival. Really

19:03

special way to like kick things off. Perfect

19:06

for me. I just loved it. A

19:09

couple of the journalists who came

19:11

and wrote about the events called it

19:13

a tribute show. So I asked

19:15

online just today, I tweeted, did

19:18

you guys think that these were tribute shows?

19:20

And if so, like, do you feel like that means it

19:23

was sad? Did it feel like sad

19:25

overall? Not that it didn't

19:27

feel bitter sweet at certain moments. There

19:29

was definitely a tribute moment I played in the end

19:31

and we sang it together, just piano

19:34

and me and the crowd. You mentioned

19:36

that you were working these tracks

19:38

chronologically, and I'm curious to know is

19:40

the album sequenced that way. For

19:43

the most part, it's not exact chronology.

19:45

It doesn't follow exactly in the order

19:47

in which they were written or have happened, because I

19:51

did, as a listener have this sensation

19:53

of getting too not

19:55

exactly the more upbeat songs, but definitely

19:58

the sense of as the tracks go on, I'm

20:01

getting this feeling of you're

20:05

going on, You're moving on right, And

20:07

I think that one thing that's different

20:09

about this album than most albums

20:12

I've put out, from all the

20:14

Lincoln Park albums to the fourth Minor album. Usually,

20:16

when you put out an album, it's hey, I

20:19

finished a thing, check out the thing I

20:21

made. It's finished. And this is almost

20:23

like I started a thing, like

20:26

this is an album that captures a

20:28

moment in time for the last six

20:30

to nine months, and it

20:32

is what it is, and

20:35

now I'm going to continue to evolve and move

20:37

on from here. Because

20:39

we get deeper into the album, we come to these tracks

20:42

like make it Up As I go World's

20:45

on Fire. These are songs

20:48

that seemed to me we're addressing

20:50

the same sorts of problems

20:53

or feelings. Make it up as I go? How do I go? On?

20:55

Worlds on fire? This is a bad time. But

20:57

they were also had another side to them. They had

20:59

this side of like, here's

21:01

how I get past this? Yeah, so like

21:04

make it up as I go. Actually started

21:07

the hook of that we wrote towards the end

21:09

of One More Light. It was Brad and I and k

21:11

Flay. That song

21:14

is more about in

21:16

its inception of having that

21:19

feeling of like not knowing what the next steps

21:21

are, but you just kind of power through it and

21:23

figure it out as you go. And

21:25

I thought, you know, I came back to that song because

21:28

I just always loved it, And then I wrote

21:31

the verses more recently. I

21:33

think that one relates a little more closely this stuff of

21:35

this last year. But the other one you mentioned

21:38

the World's on fire. When

21:40

I wrote that one, the course of

21:42

that is basically the

21:44

World's on fire, But all I need is you. It's

21:46

the first time I've really written that kind of like it's like almost

21:49

like just a love song. I was specifically

21:51

thinking of my family It

21:54

occurred to me because it

21:56

was one of those days when I was like really like up

21:59

to my eyeballs in my social media

22:01

feed and it seems like everything was just a mess.

22:04

You know, you're reading it's like the political tweets

22:06

are firing and everybody's like freaked

22:09

out about the state of the

22:11

country, in the state of the world, and then environmental

22:14

tweets and like net neutrality

22:16

tweets, and then on top of it, like there's

22:19

like five wildfires

22:21

going on in Los Angeles at the same time,

22:24

so all of this is happening at once, and

22:27

all of that without the crap that I had been

22:29

through in the six months proceeding,

22:32

that would have been enough as

22:34

it was, but all put together was just like everything

22:37

is just falling apart of the

22:39

seems what a mess. And

22:41

then I can go like sit down and play with my kids,

22:44

and it all kind of evaporates. And what's

22:46

so interesting is receiving it now.

22:50

I connected to some comments you've

22:52

made about lost being like a

22:54

wildfire. You know, things are destroyed in

22:56

a clear space for something new. But also

22:58

there's that image. The image of the wildfire

23:01

is actually in the Nothing makes Sense

23:03

video. Keep in mind. I grew up thinking I was going

23:05

to be a painter. I grew up in art. I

23:08

went to school for illustration. I've

23:10

had three gallery shows now.

23:13

The only reason I haven't had more is because I'm busy

23:15

with the playing music. You know, there's

23:18

that minor distraction in

23:20

the world. Doing that,

23:23

I would do what I really want to do in

23:25

all seriousness. I grew up painting, And one

23:28

of the things I get out of doing an art show, creating

23:31

a body of work that way is that when

23:33

you walk in, if it's done right, like,

23:35

you have a sense of this thread of

23:37

intention that just weaves

23:40

its way through everything that you're experiencing.

23:42

Because some shows there's painting

23:44

and installation and sound and all

23:47

of these different ways that you can communicate

23:49

the concept of the thing. And so this record,

23:51

in a sense, I wanted to bring a little bit of that

23:54

gallery experience, with that gallery intention

23:56

to the thing. So something we mentioned,

23:58

like the fires or or other symbolism

24:01

on the record, it occurs

24:04

in various media in

24:06

the whole effort, And

24:09

still I'm still weaving it in even as

24:11

we're starting to do live shows and

24:14

and look at the production to the show. But

24:16

it's funny to me as a listener,

24:19

how conflicting

24:22

some of the emotions on this record are. There are

24:24

moments of real rising

24:27

above, like I think of can't

24:29

hear You Now, which is almost like a battle rap

24:32

if you're a hater, I can't hear you now. But because

24:34

that's really one way of looking at that song and hearing

24:36

that song, really, I think that was the intention

24:38

of the song for sure, And yet I hear it now

24:41

and I come to that line woke

24:43

up knowing I don't have to be numb again, and I think,

24:45

oh, yeah, maybe that's a reference back to this other

24:47

thing I've been thinking about on this record.

24:50

Well, that's the reality of the

24:53

record and of going through something like this is

24:55

you know, most of us know it's

24:57

that it's messy and the references

25:00

going to blend into one another. And even

25:02

I listened to it and I go, oh, yeah, I was definitely

25:04

thinking about a But

25:06

subconsciously there's a little bit of be in there.

25:09

You know. It's funny with a tragedy like

25:11

this, Sometimes difficult

25:13

days are the good days. Sometimes

25:17

you have a good day. Everything's fine, you're

25:19

with your kids, you're with your family, you don't think about the other

25:21

thing, and you catch yourself feeling good and

25:24

that feels strange. I

25:27

thought that I would

25:29

get taken off guard by that more

25:32

than I did. A lot of people

25:34

that I I've talked to had

25:37

real difficult

25:40

battles with feeling guilty for

25:42

feeling good. One person described

25:44

it as like I

25:46

made it all the way to lunch without

25:48

thinking of the horrible thing that had

25:50

happened. In their

25:53

case, it was it was similar with somebody passing away.

25:55

Oh I made it all the way to lunch without thinking of

25:57

them. Oh my god, I'm so horrble

26:00

that I didn't think about them until lunch, And

26:02

it's like no, no, no for me, I'm like

26:04

grateful on days when I can get back to more of

26:07

a sense of normal, there's no disrespect

26:10

or guilt that should come with that.

26:13

Maybe I don't feel like elty because I

26:16

did feel like when

26:19

things kind of fell apart

26:22

and the dust settled, that I was

26:24

able to take a step back and look at

26:26

my life and say, Okay, am I doing

26:29

things that I'm proud of? Am I doing good

26:31

things? Like what I do with the music

26:34

and my professional life. Is that in a good

26:36

balance with my family and like, am I taking care

26:38

of my wife and my kids and that

26:41

type of stuff. I do feel like I looked

26:43

at that and said, yeah, I'm doing I'm doing good fine,

26:46

And this isn't just about like sell

26:49

records and make money. This is about getting

26:52

out with the people that have been hard.

26:55

My Lincoln Park

26:57

and individual musical

27:00

community we have like a family. There

27:02

are people with my drawings and signatures

27:05

and banned artwork tattooed on their bodies.

27:09

This is a a moment

27:11

in time when they have

27:13

been there for me when I'm feeling

27:16

like I don't know what the hell is going on, and

27:18

when I have been there for them to reassure

27:20

them that things are going to be okay. I'm

27:23

not responsible for them, they're not responsible for me. But

27:26

we can be support

27:28

for one another, and they can be support

27:31

for one another without me even being in the picture. It's

27:34

really reassuring to see that. I

27:37

wish there was a way for me to like share that

27:40

with more people, because when I look

27:42

in my mentions and I see them talking to

27:44

one another and saying such wonderful things,

27:47

like I mean, the end of the thought

27:49

was just that that's really reassuring the other day,

27:51

when I did that show at l A City

27:53

Hall, some of the fans had gotten there

27:55

super early in the morning, six in the morning or something, and

27:58

it was an unusually cold day and l

28:00

a kind of rainy. I saw them tweeting

28:02

like san tacos and pickets, send blankets

28:04

and tacos, right, believe it or not.

28:07

One of the folks on our

28:09

side, like who works at Warner Brothers. His

28:11

name's Adam and he ran our Lincoln Park

28:13

fan club first before he moved over. He

28:15

got poached by the label. But he's

28:18

a friend of the community of Lincoln

28:21

Park and of my music. He went

28:23

and need to made sure they were okay, Like are you warmed?

28:25

You guys need some merchandise in a sweatshirt?

28:27

Can I get you some water? That's what I'm

28:29

talking about. Like you'll even see it in in Chester's

28:31

wife Tlenda's feet. She'll retweet

28:34

people who are just being kind to one another.

28:36

Let me ask you about Chester, those of us that

28:39

knew him through the songs. Yeah, and

28:41

in the songs, there's a lot of pain, there's a lot of struggle,

28:43

there's a lot of moving beyond that. But

28:46

tell me a little bit about the

28:48

Chester we didn't know well.

28:50

The one thing that I like to remind people is

28:52

that he was naturally gifted with

28:55

the way he performed in his voice, in particular,

28:57

like he had a world class, one of a kind

28:59

voice. Obviously if you didn't

29:01

know, he could sing basically any

29:04

genre, any type of song that

29:06

you threw at him, barring hip

29:08

hop, maybe a little bit like it wasn't the best rapper.

29:11

You give him a singing part, and the dude

29:13

could do anything. It didn't matter if it was

29:15

like quiet female singer songwriter.

29:18

In fact, he'd be singing something like one of

29:20

our songs, like tracking it in the studio, and

29:22

I'd say, do it with five more,

29:25

Dave, gone, do it with twenty

29:28

five more, Adele. I'd

29:30

throw out these references of

29:33

other singers that I wanted him to imitate

29:36

or at a flavor of, and

29:38

he knew we had a vocabulary

29:41

of that type of stuff that I could say to him,

29:43

and he knew what I meant. Nobody

29:47

else had that with him, So that

29:50

was a thing personally, you

29:52

know, studio and all that stuff aside. I

29:55

think when we wrote, we wrote

29:57

about these difficult topics,

29:59

but in general, especially in the past

30:01

few years. He was so much more together then

30:04

he had been in years prior. Like he joked

30:07

that the band was his most stable

30:09

and together relationship. I

30:12

think he was saying that in a joking way, because I think

30:14

with his wife and his kids, I think that was probably

30:16

number one and we were probably number two. But

30:18

but just to be clear, there aren't a

30:20

lot of bands that have a run this

30:23

long. Just last year, you have a

30:25

number one album, right,

30:28

Usually when you have that situation, you have your

30:31

couple of classic albums and

30:33

then it's just you play the old stuff. We were

30:35

fortunate enough to for most

30:38

of the records that we put out, we got a

30:40

number one or two on the rock charts

30:43

and alternative charts, and a number one

30:45

release and in many countries. So

30:47

still very relevant, is the point. I guess.

30:50

I think with each album I've ever

30:52

been involved with, each step of the way, I'm

30:55

trying to see what have I not done that

30:57

seems exciting and fun, that will keep it fresh

31:00

and like in the in a sense of like they to go back

31:02

to, like that body of work, like this is

31:05

the art show, like curate your experience,

31:07

what is the experience you're curating for the

31:09

fans this time, and how is that different

31:11

than the other things that you've done. You've

31:14

worked with a remarkable range of rappers

31:17

across the career of Lincoln Park

31:19

common of course jay Z. Have

31:23

you given thought to Lincoln

31:25

Park's impact on hip hop? Oh?

31:28

Sure, absolutely that I

31:30

grew up a hip hop kid first and foremost, Like, that's

31:32

the first type of music I ever got into and

31:34

fell in love with it and most of what I listened

31:36

to it. It's the legend that your first show ever was

31:39

a Public Enemy Anthrax show. Is that truth?

31:41

That is my first The first concept I ever went to it

31:43

was you went in the black young black

31:45

teenagers primus Public Enemy Anthrax.

31:48

So you go to that and you're like, we get some depeche Mode

31:50

keyboards in here, we might have something. It's like, it's

31:52

almost comedic. How like

31:55

it sounds like I would just be I'd be making that up

31:57

right, that that would be the first show. But if you

31:59

think about it, at that time, those types

32:01

of music were being put together for the first time, and

32:04

it was clumsy, like in a way, there

32:07

was a simplicity in the way they would just

32:09

like mash the stuff up together. There

32:11

were moments when it was really seamless,

32:14

like walk this way absolutely,

32:17

like that is

32:19

an album, Whereas when I listened to it, I

32:21

go, Okay, that's that's like a very seamless

32:24

blend. There's a lot of food analogies

32:26

in our band, so that would be like a

32:29

soup where you take the ingredients and

32:31

you blend them together and you can't tell one ingredient

32:33

from the other. The Anthrax Public

32:35

Enemy thing is like a salad. You've got all the ingredients,

32:37

but you can see them all. They're all separate ingredients,

32:40

right. So sometimes we take one approach,

32:42

sometimes we take another, and it's the gray

32:44

area in the middle when

32:46

it becomes really interesting. Whenever

32:48

I've approached the stuff, just the awareness

32:51

of how blended do you want this thing to be?

32:54

The hybrid theory brand of it was like kind

32:57

of blended, but like you can kind of still see

32:59

the arts from one another. But if you fast forward

33:01

a few albums in you start

33:04

getting songs like on Um. For

33:06

example, our fourth

33:08

record was called A Thousand Sons. There's

33:10

a song on there called when They Come for Me.

33:13

When They Come for Me is just this like I

33:15

don't know what genre that song is. There isn't

33:17

a name for that thing. This is a long way

33:19

of saying we were

33:22

growing up in a time where music was very separate,

33:25

and I know that we played a role in making it less

33:28

separate. When I grew up, kids

33:30

were metal kids, rock kids, rap

33:32

kids, pop kids. You weren't like just

33:35

fans of music. People didn't really do that.

33:37

I mean, I think early late nineties,

33:40

early two thousands, you ask somebody what do you listen to

33:42

and they go, oh, everything, And that

33:44

was the beginning of oh everything. When

33:46

I first heard Little

33:48

Loozy for Exo Tour Life, I was

33:50

like, you know, this is a rap song

33:53

that would not exist without

33:55

you guys. You

33:58

know I mean that that sense of like those big keyboards,

34:00

that keyboard drama, being

34:03

open to that that was a turning

34:05

point. I think it's it's something different. Uh

34:08

Well, also lyrically, if you think about that song, like

34:10

there's a darkness and and an openness

34:13

to just saying like, well, this is how I feel I'm going to write

34:15

about in a depression and whatever.

34:18

Right, that emo side of current rap, some

34:21

of those rappers are kind of running from that a little bit

34:23

and playing that down and saying no, it's not emo

34:25

or whatever. I get why they're

34:27

doing that. I would probably feel the same way. You

34:30

didn't want to be called a rap rock band in

34:32

the year two thousand and one only because

34:34

of the associations. We just wanted

34:37

it to be clear that they were such a big difference

34:40

between what a lot of those bands

34:42

were doing. One of your songs

34:45

from the fort minor Days deal specifically

34:48

with identity, and I'm talking about Kenji.

34:50

Yeah. Yeah. For those who don't know, it's

34:52

the story of Japanese immigrants

34:55

held in internment camps during World War Two,

34:57

it's a personal story for you. Well, they weren't

34:59

just immigrants, they were American citizens

35:01

of Japanese descent. Basically, what happened is

35:04

when Pearl Harbor was bombed, there

35:06

was a high that, you know, the highest level

35:09

of wartime paranoia going on. The

35:12

American government decided, oh

35:14

no, like, we don't know who could be

35:16

a spy, We don't know, you know, what bad

35:18

things can be happening. I mean, this sounds like it could happen

35:20

today. Let's just make clear

35:22

that that there is a personal dimension here. Yeah. Yeah,

35:25

my dad's Japanese. My dad's side of the family

35:27

is all Japanese. I'm half. I

35:29

grew up understanding that my

35:32

family had unjustly been put

35:34

in these camps. Basically, what happened is short

35:36

version of the story Pearl Harbor happens. The

35:38

government says, we're putting all the Japanese on the West

35:41

coast in prison camps. They

35:43

tell everybody to get out of their homes. They let them pack

35:45

two bags of stuff, and you have to leave the rest of your earthly

35:47

belongings in your house alone. And

35:50

you say, oh, well, when are we coming back, And there's like, whenever

35:52

we tell you you can, you get thrown

35:55

in horse stalls to sleep,

35:57

sometimes just tents, sometimes busses

36:00

whatever. Once the camps are built, they are

36:02

built in the desert. You get shipped off to the desert

36:04

and you stay there for years until

36:06

the end of the war. And then when you go home, your

36:08

home has been vandalized and some

36:11

cases burned. Some cases

36:13

people's stuff was okay, my family's

36:15

was not. The place was vandalized and everything was stolen

36:18

um and they had to start their lives over. When

36:20

I was listening back to the Fort Minor record,

36:23

I was really struck by the

36:26

creeping sense of this

36:28

feels like it should have been impossible, and

36:31

there are things happening now that feel like they

36:33

should be in part. Oh. Yeah, the Japanese American

36:35

community has been one of the most vocal communities

36:38

in the past couple of years, especially

36:41

as it relates to Muslim

36:43

and immigrants. For example, um, when the

36:45

whole thing was going on about shutting the borders to

36:47

to folks who are coming in living in l

36:50

A, the Japanese American community in in

36:52

l A was really vocal about

36:55

that subject. All of a sudden, they want to start rounding people

36:57

up again. So of course the Japanese Americans

36:59

like my family are saying, no, guys, we already made

37:01

this mistake, and the US government said we

37:04

can't make it again. You know, you mentioned that that

37:06

you recently played your first solo

37:09

shows, and just to be clear, these were

37:11

really solo shows that we you

37:14

on stage, nobody else. You've

37:16

got some dates coming up, I

37:18

do. I'm headed to Asia and Europe.

37:21

You're going to play the Reading Festival. Yes,

37:24

is it just going to be you? I thinks

37:26

so I want to try that first

37:29

and uh see how

37:31

that feels, and after

37:34

that we'll see what happens. I mean, I'm curious

37:36

about what the show would look like if I start

37:38

adding a couple of people, but I don't also don't

37:40

want it to be confusing in terms of, like, you

37:43

know, the fans wondering if

37:45

it is or is not Lincoln Park, or you know,

37:47

anything like that. What was the

37:50

feeling going into these two shows?

37:52

Were you nervous? Did you know how it would

37:54

feel to do those Lincoln Park songs by yourself?

37:58

I felt ready to do of them.

38:00

I did feel anxious, quite

38:02

a bit more anxious before the first

38:05

show, and I was glad that I did

38:07

the two on the same day because the first show was almost

38:09

like a nice warm up, and I then

38:12

I felt really relaxed going to the second one.

38:14

To your point, like, I

38:16

don't know, maybe I'm just really good at compartmentalizing.

38:21

I felt, Okay. It's impossible to get

38:23

through, for example, like Lincoln Park songs

38:25

without thinking about Chester, you

38:28

know. You I look out and I see one person

38:30

like just raging, like

38:32

screaming and having the best time,

38:35

and then like I look over the other

38:38

side and like somebody crying. Right, that's

38:40

a little tricky, Like that's new that's

38:42

not something I normally would see. How

38:44

did it compare to last October

38:46

when you were at the Hollywood Bowl you

38:49

did this what was a memorial car?

38:51

That was yeah, completely different. In October

38:53

we had done that show because we

38:56

realized that we had a private

38:59

memorial and that the fans

39:01

didn't have a public one. They didn't have one

39:03

that they could go to. They didn't get to say goodbye,

39:05

they didn't get to experience that closure

39:08

that comes with it. We set that show up, we scheduled

39:11

it to play that

39:13

role for the fans. Really don't

39:16

get it twisted. It was like very hard for

39:18

us to do. You know. Sometimes we'd

39:20

be rehearsing stuff and the guys are just like, can

39:22

we like, let's take a break. It's like too much. There

39:25

are a few like realizations that

39:27

were really necessary about

39:30

doing it. Number One, the warmth

39:33

and the connected energy

39:36

of the whole Lincoln Park fan community of

39:38

all of the world like really came together

39:40

around that show and around the band during

39:43

that time, and I'm super grateful for that. I mean, everybody

39:45

was so supportive.

39:47

It was incredible, and they've continued to

39:49

be artist community, people

39:52

jumping in, sending in videos like I

39:54

wish we could be there coming on stage

39:56

and singing with us and doing all that really

39:59

really special we had. I don't know how the artist

40:01

twenty something artists, I think. And then

40:03

in in retrospect, after having done

40:05

those rehearsals and played the show, you

40:08

know, even watching it back and stuff, I was like, these

40:11

people who came on stage with us all have awesome,

40:14

awesome voices, and they're really really wonderful

40:16

and talented people, and not a single one

40:18

of them is chest her like that. There's no one's

40:20

who even if I'm imagining, like who could

40:23

we sing these songs with in the future.

40:26

Is listening back to those It's like those

40:28

are all great moments, but that's

40:30

none of them are sustainable things. There

40:33

isn't a version of the band that exists

40:36

with any of those types of people, as

40:38

wonderful as they are, right, So

40:40

that just puts more of a I

40:43

doesn't doesn't add more of a question mark,

40:45

maybe, but it just checks things off the list that are

40:47

not. Really we just know what things

40:50

are not the option, Well, then what

40:52

are the options? I don't know. That's

40:54

the million dollar question, right, And unfortunately,

40:57

you know I've said it before, but unfortunately there aren't

40:59

any answers to that at this point. It

41:01

would be awesome if there were. That would be really easy.

41:03

Um, I wish we were in in a Brian Johnson

41:05

Bond Scott situation where it's like, no,

41:08

the guy, like our best friend who sang

41:10

for the band who passed away. He literally

41:12

said, this is the guy, and we listen

41:15

to the guy, and the guy is definitely the guy, and we all love

41:17

hanging out with him and we want to play with him. That's

41:19

not a normal that that didn't happen

41:21

to anybody else. Really, that hasn't happened to us.

41:24

Somebody comes and says, Hay Lincoln Park, do you want to play a

41:26

show in Germany? Then

41:29

you have to have a discussion with all the guys, and you have one

41:31

guy who's like, I definitely don't want to do any one

41:33

guy who says, I don't know, maybe I agree, maybe

41:35

we shouldn't do it, and two guys to say we definitely

41:38

need to do it. And then there's concerns and all

41:41

that noise, like that

41:44

is not something I can deal with right now, and

41:47

it's not a knock on anybody else, any one

41:49

of us could be the outlier

41:52

opinion though, like minority voice on

41:54

something. But I definitely

41:57

need some more simplicity in terms of

42:00

like decision making, Like oh my gut says

42:02

that the right thing to do is to shoot a video on the

42:04

crappy camera on my phone. I

42:07

chewed it, I look at it, I go I like that, and

42:09

I can put it on the internet and it's done. I

42:11

don't need to call anybody else. And

42:14

that for me, that power and that and that

42:16

control has been part of my like

42:18

recovery process. When

42:22

you miss Chester, what do you miss most about him? In

42:24

the beginning, I'll tell you the thing that whenever

42:26

I saw it, it just made me like so it just

42:28

like oh' just so painful. Is

42:31

at the end of every show we put our arm around

42:33

each other and always say a good

42:35

show. And that was always such a special moment.

42:38

It was always that like really satisfying,

42:40

like hey, good job, we did

42:42

it. If the show is really good,

42:44

then it's like, hey man, that was a good show. It

42:47

was bad. I was like we made it through that show. Good

42:49

job. Also, like we always

42:52

traveled together, we'd have

42:54

a lot of the same conversations and

42:56

a lot of inside jokes, and we played

42:59

a lot of poker. Those are things,

43:01

especially on the road, that like other people

43:03

around us would have mentioned

43:05

a lot of times, like, man, it's always so

43:07

funny hearing you guys like post show in the

43:10

van, like just rambling

43:13

on about nonsense the way

43:15

we do. We do that goofy voices.

43:17

And they had like these characters and he he had

43:19

like a Russian character that always showed up

43:21

like in this weird Russian accent. Yeah,

43:24

that was all really great stuff. I'm

43:27

shout to thank you for being here. Good show. Join

43:35

Inside the Studio for more in depth

43:37

conversations with the biggest names

43:39

in music. Search and follow Inside

43:41

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43:44

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43:46

so that you never missed an episode.

43:49

Inside the Studio

43:52

is an I Heart Radio original podcast

43:54

created by Chris Peterson. This

43:57

episode was written and hosted by me Joe

43:59

Levy, our executive producer Sandy

44:01

Smallens for audiation and

44:04

of course special thanks to Mike Shinodah

44:07

and Warner Brothers Records.