Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Mike Shinoda on Beats, Rhymes and Linkin Park

Transcript

Mike Shinoda on Beats, Rhymes and Linkin Park · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. Since forming in nineteen ninety six, Lincoln Park has
0:25
Speaker 1: sold over one hundred million records worldwide. Their enormous success
0:31
Speaker 1: mixing genres like hip hop, metal, and anthemic pop, was
0:34
Speaker 1: spearheaded by the band's ultra talented founder, Mike Shinoda. Two
0:39
Speaker 1: months after Lincoln Park released their seventh album in twenty seventeen,
0:43
Speaker 1: their charismatic frontman Chester Bunnington, died by suicide, sending the
0:48
Speaker 1: band and millions of fans into a tales. Following year,
0:52
Speaker 1: Mike Shinoda detailed his grief on his solo release, Post Traumatic,
0:57
Speaker 1: and since that time, Mike has continued its relentless dedication
1:01
Speaker 1: to making music all through Quarantine. For instance, Mike has
1:04
Speaker 1: been creating tracks from scratch live on Twitch five days
1:08
Speaker 1: a week. He's a massive community of thousands of followers
1:12
Speaker 1: who scour the Internet for new artists from Mike to
1:14
Speaker 1: collaborate with, using the hashtag Shinoda produced me. In this episode,
1:20
Speaker 1: Rick Rubin talks to Mike about the albums he produced
1:22
Speaker 1: with Lincoln Park that helped we define the band's sound.
1:26
Speaker 1: Mike also reminisces about the band's early interpersonal dynamics and
1:30
Speaker 1: how the Beastie Boys License to Ill helped lay the
1:33
Speaker 1: foundation from Mike's life world. This is broken record liner
1:40
Speaker 1: notes for the digital age. I'm justin Richmond. Here's Rick
1:48
Speaker 1: Rubin and Mike Shinoda. Tell me about what you're doing
1:52
Speaker 1: on twitch. That's so weird, man, it's great. I love it.
1:56
Speaker 1: When Quarantine first started, every day was the same day.
2:00
Speaker 1: I was in pajamas half the time. I was just
2:01
Speaker 1: like walking around in sweats. Like it wasn't depressed, but
2:05
Speaker 1: it was just like everything is the same. So when
2:07
Speaker 1: I started streaming effectively, because it created like structure, so
2:12
Speaker 1: I stream. I started then and I still do stream
2:15
Speaker 1: five days a week. I stream weekdays ten to you know,
2:19
Speaker 1: noon or one ish. And that was a nice like
2:23
Speaker 1: it was a nice way to be like, oh, I've
2:25
Speaker 1: got like you know, I've got my weekdays now, and
2:27
Speaker 1: oh I'm not streaming today. I know it's Saturday. Like
2:29
Speaker 1: it's just a stupid thing. And I got to use
2:31
Speaker 1: really dig in with this space and get creative and
2:35
Speaker 1: get weird, which is part of the most fun part
2:38
Speaker 1: of it is doing stuff you go, oh, I didn't
2:39
Speaker 1: even know that was a weird idea. That was fun
2:42
Speaker 1: to do. And all last year I was getting I
2:44
Speaker 1: was getting faster and faster and faster in terms of
2:46
Speaker 1: like making a track, and then I realized at the
2:50
Speaker 1: end of last year, like, how do I do Now
2:52
Speaker 1: that I've done this for a while, I'm starting to
2:53
Speaker 1: get a little bit burnt on it, like I want
2:55
Speaker 1: to do something different with it. And I decided early
2:57
Speaker 1: on I wouldn't do vocals because I think that would
3:00
Speaker 1: burn me out. So I was just making instrumentals, and
3:02
Speaker 1: then I realized I could since I'm live on Twitch
3:05
Speaker 1: and there's anywhere between I don't know, like a thousand,
3:08
Speaker 1: and I think we peaked at like almost thirty thousand
3:11
Speaker 1: people watching at one time. I wanted to do something
3:14
Speaker 1: to like enhance the channel and give back to the
3:16
Speaker 1: people they've been watching. So I started taking like fans
3:20
Speaker 1: submissions of vocalists and songs because I just realized, like
3:24
Speaker 1: looking at Instagram and looking at TikTok, like there's so
3:26
Speaker 1: many good artists out there who have no following. They've
3:29
Speaker 1: got like, you know, six hundred people following them, and
3:32
Speaker 1: they're actually very good, and so I just started taking
3:36
Speaker 1: submissions from those people. Now I I called, you know,
3:38
Speaker 1: and I mean you'll get this joke right away. I
3:41
Speaker 1: started calling the chat the A and Army. So it's
3:45
Speaker 1: like it's like, you know, nine hundred people whose job
3:48
Speaker 1: it is to go find me the best stuff, and
3:50
Speaker 1: they do. They go, they go and find the good
3:52
Speaker 1: stuff and they bring it to me, and they're like,
3:53
Speaker 1: you know, the more they say, the more they shout,
3:56
Speaker 1: like look at this one, look at this one. I know,
3:58
Speaker 1: it's like pretty good. So cool. Yeah, And so I've
4:01
Speaker 1: been I do two to three, starting like a couple
4:04
Speaker 1: of weeks ago, I've been able to do two to
4:06
Speaker 1: three brand new songs all like I'm in a morning,
4:12
Speaker 1: I'm probably like a stream and a half. I'd get
4:15
Speaker 1: a song done from scratch to like finished, and I
4:18
Speaker 1: send them something that's effectively like mixed and mastered. It's
4:21
Speaker 1: incredible that they can release. It's so fun, man, it's
4:25
Speaker 1: really really fun. And the fans, I mean, you can
4:27
Speaker 1: imagine how excited they are, right and and some of
4:29
Speaker 1: the cases what I haven't like talked to the fans
4:32
Speaker 1: on the channel about actually I'm telling you about this
4:34
Speaker 1: is that I will reach out to somebody and say, hey,
4:37
Speaker 1: that thing you posted on TikTok or Instagram was really cool?
4:41
Speaker 1: Would you want me to produce it? And I say
4:43
Speaker 1: that because they've used the hashtag. They've used shinoda produce
4:46
Speaker 1: me as the hashtag would do. So they've they've raised
4:49
Speaker 1: their hand and said I want Mike to produce me.
4:51
Speaker 1: So I hit them on the DMS and I say,
4:53
Speaker 1: you want me to produce and they always say yes,
4:56
Speaker 1: and then half the time they say I haven't finished
4:58
Speaker 1: the song though, Like the thing I posted is it's
5:01
Speaker 1: a verse and a chorus, and I don't have a
5:03
Speaker 1: second verse. I don't have a bridge or any you know,
5:05
Speaker 1: middle aid or whatever. I don't have anything else. And
5:08
Speaker 1: so it's like, okay, like take your time, don't rush it,
5:11
Speaker 1: because I want you to be I want you to
5:13
Speaker 1: submit something you love, because like the whole idea is
5:17
Speaker 1: for you to get to more people than you've already
5:18
Speaker 1: got to. So give me something great and when it's ready,
5:22
Speaker 1: then send it to me and I and that's generally
5:24
Speaker 1: it's if it's if it's somebody in that scenario I
5:27
Speaker 1: find that they're getting they get back to me within
5:29
Speaker 1: like three or four days, And what do they usually
5:31
Speaker 1: get back to you with like a more expanded same demo,
5:35
Speaker 1: but with all the parts. Yeah, it's usually like we
5:39
Speaker 1: we transfer link or something like that with multi tracked vocals,
5:42
Speaker 1: and I always tell them like I'll tell them like
5:45
Speaker 1: speed it up like to this bpm or whatever, or
5:48
Speaker 1: I'll tell them make sure it's in your like very
5:51
Speaker 1: best range. It sounded low to me, but up to you.
5:54
Speaker 1: And then I can and they can go crazy on
5:56
Speaker 1: the on the over dubs and harmonies and background vocal
6:00
Speaker 1: whatever else they want to do, they do, but they
6:04
Speaker 1: do that before the track is before there's a track.
6:07
Speaker 1: Is that correct, Yeah, before there's a before there's a track.
6:09
Speaker 1: So what you get is basically finished vocal stems for
6:15
Speaker 1: a song. Yeah, and then you start from scrat you
6:18
Speaker 1: take it as an a cappella yeah, and you build
6:22
Speaker 1: music to support whatever that is. Yeah. Do you remember
6:26
Speaker 1: when we were doing the Thousand Sons Together that at
6:30
Speaker 1: the end of that record, before the first single, The
6:33
Speaker 1: Catalyst was the single on that record, before the single
6:37
Speaker 1: came out, so no fan had heard the song. We
6:40
Speaker 1: released pieces of stems to that song and we told
6:45
Speaker 1: them take these pieces, make a song out of them.
6:49
Speaker 1: We didn't give them enough to know what the song
6:51
Speaker 1: even was. We just said, take pieces and make a
6:54
Speaker 1: song out of it, and whoever's thing is the coolest
6:58
Speaker 1: to us, we're going to put you on our record,
7:00
Speaker 1: on the album itself, and we ended up putting them on.
7:03
Speaker 1: I think it was When They Come for Me was
7:05
Speaker 1: the song we put them on. But we chose it
7:08
Speaker 1: based on who is like, as I recall, like I
7:12
Speaker 1: could be getting some of this wrong, but as I recall,
7:13
Speaker 1: it was like we gave them pieces to remix, but
7:17
Speaker 1: they'd never heard the song they were remixing, so I
7:20
Speaker 1: called it like the premix, like they just they had
7:23
Speaker 1: to just assume the song. And that's why I feel
7:26
Speaker 1: I feel like there's something to that, something about that
7:28
Speaker 1: that relates to this where it's like, I don't know
7:30
Speaker 1: what you were thinking your song is, but here's what
7:32
Speaker 1: I hear, just based on that vocal on a grid
7:36
Speaker 1: so cool. It's fun, man, super fun. That Thousand Sons
7:40
Speaker 1: is my favorite of the things we worked on together.
7:44
Speaker 1: That's my favorite, just because I feel like it really is.
7:48
Speaker 1: It felt like the beginning of something new and something
7:52
Speaker 1: new and really good. We didn't like the record before
7:56
Speaker 1: it Minutes to Midnight was that the whole effort the whole.
7:59
Speaker 1: When we first met, you asked the band, what do
8:03
Speaker 1: you guys envision doing with this album? Like why why
8:07
Speaker 1: are we talking like what you want to do? And
8:10
Speaker 1: we all said, like we want to we want to
8:12
Speaker 1: redefine the identity the band, Like the whole point was
8:15
Speaker 1: to make something that didn't sound like the stuff the
8:17
Speaker 1: people that already heard, because albums one and two were
8:19
Speaker 1: so similar. And You're like, great, that's exactly how I feel,
8:22
Speaker 1: and He's you said, I don't know if I would
8:25
Speaker 1: want to work with the band if you didn't feel
8:27
Speaker 1: that way. So it's great. We're all on the same
8:29
Speaker 1: page and we just kind of hit it off from there,
8:31
Speaker 1: and that first record we did together, it was a
8:33
Speaker 1: very long, hard process, was very difficult. We were like
8:37
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty demos eighteen months or something, and
8:41
Speaker 1: you and I had a couple conversations towards the end
8:43
Speaker 1: of it where I was like, Rick, I can't do
8:44
Speaker 1: this anymore. It's like we're turning it into guns n'
8:47
Speaker 1: roses Chinese democracy. We're just gonna be in the studio
8:49
Speaker 1: for years on this thing, so we need to put
8:51
Speaker 1: a stop to it. And I think that's because we
8:54
Speaker 1: hadn't gotten to the place place yet where we're gonna
8:57
Speaker 1: get on the next record, and I didn't want to
8:59
Speaker 1: like just have our heads down underground until we thought
9:03
Speaker 1: we were there. I don't think we could have gotten
9:05
Speaker 1: there on one try. It was a two record evolution, yeah,
9:08
Speaker 1: and I think it worked fine, and it ended up
9:10
Speaker 1: being more of a somewhat more smoother transition for the
9:16
Speaker 1: audience as well, because yeah, oh god, it would you
9:19
Speaker 1: imagine if they had been if if Thousand Sons came
9:21
Speaker 1: out first, it would have just been, like I mean,
9:25
Speaker 1: there would have been a lot of people who just said,
9:27
Speaker 1: fuck these guys. Yeah, yeah, that even as it was
9:30
Speaker 1: that album, like a Thousand Sons was one or five stars,
9:34
Speaker 1: like it was a solid two and a half star record,
9:36
Speaker 1: because nobody was in the middle. Everybody was on what
9:40
Speaker 1: we love it or we hate it every day, which
9:42
Speaker 1: is which is there is no better way to know
9:46
Speaker 1: you took it as far as it needs to go.
9:49
Speaker 1: When people love it or hate it and no one's
9:51
Speaker 1: in the middle, that it tells you everything. That's the
9:54
Speaker 1: dream is to have people love it or really hate it.
10:00
Speaker 1: Totally totally agreed. I remember us having a lot of
10:03
Speaker 1: conversations about like music technology stuff around the time of
10:08
Speaker 1: soos and do you know what I'm saying, Like you've
10:12
Speaker 1: always been interested in well, I mean you've always been
10:15
Speaker 1: interested in cutting edge technology. Let me ask you this,
10:19
Speaker 1: is there stuff in music technology that you're interested in
10:22
Speaker 1: right now? And then beyond that, is there stuff in
10:23
Speaker 1: technology at large that you're really interested in? These days?
10:27
Speaker 1: I'm interested in how blockchain is going to affect music distribution.
10:33
Speaker 1: I'm looking forward to a place where if an artist
10:37
Speaker 1: makes something that can put it out and people who
10:40
Speaker 1: want it can get to it. Even from the early
10:42
Speaker 1: days of hip hop, it's always been a struggle of
10:46
Speaker 1: people wanting to silence hip hop. I mean the right
10:49
Speaker 1: to express your feelings. You're not saying what's No one
10:53
Speaker 1: knows what is or isn't. All you have is All
10:57
Speaker 1: we have is our experience of the world and we
11:00
Speaker 1: share it. And as artists, that's what the game is.
11:03
Speaker 1: It's just sharing what you notice that no one else notices,
11:07
Speaker 1: or that what you notice that other people notice and
11:10
Speaker 1: like oh yeah that or not or something to react to.
11:15
Speaker 1: You know, Like as we talked about, I like the
11:19
Speaker 1: fact that the people who vote one star for a
11:21
Speaker 1: thousand sons get to say that. It's like, that's right,
11:24
Speaker 1: that's what that's their opinion. They don't have to like it.
11:28
Speaker 1: That's fine, Yeah right, No, I love I mean you
11:32
Speaker 1: know this, I love polarizing music. I love stuff that, like,
11:36
Speaker 1: I mean, one of my favorite groups ever is something
11:39
Speaker 1: like I had said this the other day. We did
11:41
Speaker 1: a remix. We gave you know, one hundred guess yeah,
11:45
Speaker 1: I gave we did we let one hundred gecks remix
11:48
Speaker 1: one step closer, And so obviously the fans were like, wait,
11:53
Speaker 1: that's what they look like. Wait, that's what it sounds like,
11:55
Speaker 1: like like they could they hate, like so many people
11:58
Speaker 1: were hated it so much, and then other people were like,
12:01
Speaker 1: this is their favorite thing. I posted about it because
12:04
Speaker 1: I was seeing all that. I was like, you guys know,
12:06
Speaker 1: like ever since from from Public Enemy to Death Grips, like,
12:11
Speaker 1: I love stuff that. I love that dissonance. I love that,
12:17
Speaker 1: like Visceral. It takes it's hard to like get that
12:23
Speaker 1: like in tune with almost like your intuition to like
12:27
Speaker 1: make those weird sonic experiments to make something sound that way,
12:30
Speaker 1: like you don't get you don't arrive at m one
12:34
Speaker 1: hundred guess or like by the Way, or like Umru,
12:37
Speaker 1: or like Sophie, you don't arrive at that just in
12:41
Speaker 1: a day, like screwing around and mistakenly like making it.
12:45
Speaker 1: Like there's so much work and experimentation and like self
12:49
Speaker 1: reflection in a sense that that is required to find
12:54
Speaker 1: that that sonic like identity. I love that work absolutely
13:00
Speaker 1: me too. I can remember the first time I heard
13:02
Speaker 1: Sophie and how my mind was blown, just like you know,
13:05
Speaker 1: like Lemonade song destroyed Me. Destroy was so cool, it
13:11
Speaker 1: was so original and so cool. I can't believe Sophie
13:15
Speaker 1: passed away, kind of believe it. Yeah, it's crazy. We'll
13:19
Speaker 1: be back with Mike Shinoda and Rick Rubin after a
13:22
Speaker 1: quick break. We're back with more from Mike Shinoda and
13:28
Speaker 1: Rick Rubin. What's your first memory of music in your life.
13:33
Speaker 1: I remembered listening to my parents' records. They had like
13:37
Speaker 1: a what my dad would call a high five system.
13:41
Speaker 1: Any we play vinyl, and I remember their music like
13:45
Speaker 1: they didn't listen to stuff that was very exciting to me.
13:48
Speaker 1: They listened to a lot of like slower seventies, like
13:53
Speaker 1: almost sounded like ballads and love songs. It was like
13:55
Speaker 1: this whole soft rock period. And then honestly, like the
14:00
Speaker 1: first record that I was like, what is that was
14:02
Speaker 1: Beastie Boys License Ill. Wow. That was the first time. Yeah,
14:05
Speaker 1: I mean music was happening, was happening all over the place.
14:08
Speaker 1: But the first record that I was obsessed with was
14:13
Speaker 1: was Licensed Ill. And that opened the door for because
14:17
Speaker 1: it's funny, it's weird to think that, like at the time,
14:20
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have known that that hip hop was, that
14:24
Speaker 1: these guys were underdogs, that the style of music was
14:26
Speaker 1: being what you'd call it today, you'd call it a meme,
14:29
Speaker 1: like they was being it was being minimized as like
14:33
Speaker 1: not real music, it's just a bunch of and part
14:36
Speaker 1: of that there was a racism involved with that too.
14:38
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, it's just these black guys talking over
14:40
Speaker 1: other people's beats, other people's songs, so like it's not
14:45
Speaker 1: music right. But to me, I was like, these are
14:48
Speaker 1: the first songs that I've ever felt like, that's that's
14:50
Speaker 1: what I listened to, and I memorized every word. I
14:53
Speaker 1: knew everything. Then I was buying Ella Cool J and
14:56
Speaker 1: I was buying Run DMC. Eventually, like Iced tea and
14:59
Speaker 1: stuff that my parents didn't know what I was listening to,
15:02
Speaker 1: had a lot more profanity and whatever. My mom. I
15:05
Speaker 1: tried to get the first the debut Cypress Hill record
15:08
Speaker 1: for Chris Smith, and my mom like Christmas Day came
15:11
Speaker 1: and went and I didn't get it, and I was like,
15:13
Speaker 1: that was like the number one thing on my life.
15:15
Speaker 1: I had more expensive things on my list, but the
15:16
Speaker 1: number one thing was the Cypress Hill CD. My mom
15:20
Speaker 1: is like, are you kidding? She's like, I realized that's
15:22
Speaker 1: what you wanted, but like, do you see the names
15:24
Speaker 1: of the songs? How I could just kill a man
15:27
Speaker 1: and pigs and hole in the head. She's like, I'm
15:29
Speaker 1: not buying you any album with that you cannot listen.
15:33
Speaker 1: I had that album the next day. I think I
15:37
Speaker 1: went I found a way to get it, like in me.
15:39
Speaker 1: As soon as I knew that, She's like, I'm not
15:41
Speaker 1: buying it for you. Well I get this record, yeah, right,
15:45
Speaker 1: because we didn't believe that, Like no, but any any
15:48
Speaker 1: person who's ever been on that side of the equation knows,
15:51
Speaker 1: like listening to this stuff, it's like, I'm not gonna
15:53
Speaker 1: go and like do anything. I'm not gonna go shoot
15:55
Speaker 1: cops because I listened to Cypress Hill. That's stupid, obviously, Yes,
15:59
Speaker 1: it was funny like I thought. I thought they were hysterical.
16:02
Speaker 1: And by the way, all of those things, like there
16:04
Speaker 1: was something I related to in terms of like this
16:07
Speaker 1: feeling of like being an outsider, and I think it
16:09
Speaker 1: was a I think it had to do a little
16:10
Speaker 1: bit with being mixed race and like people would think
16:13
Speaker 1: I do. Even nobody ever knew what I was. I
16:16
Speaker 1: was just like, oh, they just talkally speak to me
16:18
Speaker 1: in Spanish. I was like, I'm not Mexican life. So
16:21
Speaker 1: if your entry into your love of music is hip hop,
16:26
Speaker 1: did you start with the idea of making music? Did
16:29
Speaker 1: it start with the idea of being a writer and
16:31
Speaker 1: writing at being an MC or did you think about
16:35
Speaker 1: making beats? Where were you on the scale? My mom
16:39
Speaker 1: made me do piano, so I was doing I was
16:44
Speaker 1: listening to rap and I was playing classical piano and
16:48
Speaker 1: I hate I didn't really care. I didn't hate classical,
16:51
Speaker 1: but I didn't care for it. I was just doing
16:53
Speaker 1: it because it was a class that my mom was
16:56
Speaker 1: making me take. I think an important moment was around
17:00
Speaker 1: my must have been in junior high I'm gonna say,
17:02
Speaker 1: I don't know. Like twelve ish, thirteen ish, my piano
17:06
Speaker 1: teacher had a songwriting contest with another teacher or a
17:10
Speaker 1: couple of teachers. So there's a recital, and before the recital,
17:14
Speaker 1: everybody submitted their their songs on paper, and you play.
17:18
Speaker 1: Everybody played their song too in the concert, and then
17:21
Speaker 1: and then afterwards you went down a hallway and they
17:24
Speaker 1: put like ribbons on the songs that won, and I
17:27
Speaker 1: won first place, and I won and there were kids
17:30
Speaker 1: who were they're like high school kids who had submitted
17:32
Speaker 1: songs and I was I beat them, and that was
17:35
Speaker 1: the first moment where I was like, oh, that's so crazy.
17:38
Speaker 1: I beat that, like I've I've wrote a better song
17:40
Speaker 1: than those guys. And I was like looking at their
17:43
Speaker 1: thinking about what they played and looking at theirs and
17:45
Speaker 1: like figuring out, like why, I don't know, why do
17:47
Speaker 1: you remember the piece of music? I can still play it? Yeah,
17:51
Speaker 1: it's basically a thirteen year olds version of like a
17:55
Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragons theme, Like imagine the most simple medieval
17:59
Speaker 1: like fifths and a minor and that's it's that, Like
18:02
Speaker 1: that's all it is. It sounds like the hobbit like
18:05
Speaker 1: so that and I don't know, I guess that's what
18:07
Speaker 1: I was into since I was also drawing all the time.
18:10
Speaker 1: I drew a lot of that type of thing, So
18:12
Speaker 1: those things all converge. So eventually shortly after that, I know,
18:17
Speaker 1: I went to my piano teacher and I was like,
18:20
Speaker 1: I want to get more into like writing music. I
18:23
Speaker 1: love it and I want to write stuff like my
18:26
Speaker 1: favorite rap songs, So like, can we do more blues
18:30
Speaker 1: and jazz? And she was like, well, number one, like
18:34
Speaker 1: I'm not your best resource for that kind of kind
18:37
Speaker 1: of music, partially because jazz in particular is so specific
18:41
Speaker 1: and it's not something she studied or really and there
18:43
Speaker 1: was an improvisation element to it too, so she's like,
18:46
Speaker 1: this is this goes outside of the academic trading that
18:48
Speaker 1: I'm prepared to teach you. The other thing is you
18:50
Speaker 1: what you're talking about, she said to me, with the
18:52
Speaker 1: other thing you're talking about is making and recording things,
18:55
Speaker 1: and that's not what I do. So she basically talked
18:58
Speaker 1: me into quitting her lessons. She said, you should go
19:01
Speaker 1: buy a keyboard and buy these types of pieces of
19:04
Speaker 1: equipment to learn, and you'll learn hands on how to
19:07
Speaker 1: use it. And if you can imagine, I always say,
19:10
Speaker 1: like two people, imagine somebody who makes their living teaching
19:15
Speaker 1: students piano and is telling their student to quit piano
19:19
Speaker 1: because it's the right thing. Like there's them no more admirable,
19:23
Speaker 1: that's amazing. I always incredible, incredible. So you're you're so lucky,
19:27
Speaker 1: You're so super lucky, super lucky. Big lesson too. Yeah,
19:31
Speaker 1: what was the recommended equipment then? Like what did you
19:34
Speaker 1: start with? Well? I got she said to get a
19:37
Speaker 1: keyboard that had other sounds so I can start playing
19:40
Speaker 1: different sounds with the same notes that I already knew,
19:43
Speaker 1: which I did. And then after that I think it
19:47
Speaker 1: was um like an SM fifty seven, Mike a task
19:51
Speaker 1: Camp four track, and then my big purchases were I
19:55
Speaker 1: got a little Mackey mixing console and a and a
20:00
Speaker 1: Kai S nine hundred sampler, and that needed to be
20:05
Speaker 1: to be programmed with something else, so like you needed
20:09
Speaker 1: to send MIDI to it. It didn't have an internal sequencer.
20:11
Speaker 1: So I bought this Eleasis I think it's they're called.
20:15
Speaker 1: I think it's an HR sixteen drum machine. And I
20:18
Speaker 1: could use the HR sixteen as a drum machine or
20:20
Speaker 1: I could shut the volume off and run the sampler
20:23
Speaker 1: off of it, and then I was Then I was
20:24
Speaker 1: off to the races. That's how my band started. It's
20:26
Speaker 1: once I got those pieces of gear. I was making beats.
20:30
Speaker 1: My friend was coming over with his guitar, and we
20:32
Speaker 1: were making like we started by making joke tracks, like
20:35
Speaker 1: we were making almost like we think of like weird
20:37
Speaker 1: Al Yankovic, Like we had this thing, this thing that
20:40
Speaker 1: was like like G Funk Snoop Dogg style Gfunk Gangster
20:44
Speaker 1: app his group peripheral group was the dog Pound, so
20:47
Speaker 1: ours was the Pooch Pound, and we had this we
20:49
Speaker 1: had this song where we were North Coast killers, so
20:52
Speaker 1: we hated Canadians, so stupid my friends. It was only
20:56
Speaker 1: to make our friends laugh and to get and meanwhile
20:59
Speaker 1: like learn how to use the gear like I was.
21:01
Speaker 1: The more songs I made, as stupid as they were,
21:04
Speaker 1: they made my friends laugh and I was learning how
21:06
Speaker 1: to put a song together. Well, that that was how
21:08
Speaker 1: to be. The album that influenced you is made as well.
21:11
Speaker 1: It was like it was just everything was written with
21:13
Speaker 1: the idea of making our friends laugh and that's all. Yeah,
21:16
Speaker 1: it was never thought past that yeah. Do you think
21:19
Speaker 1: that the fact that you started learning piano before getting
21:25
Speaker 1: into the production aspect of recording turned out to be
21:29
Speaker 1: a good thing for you? I do. I mean for me,
21:32
Speaker 1: that was like those are fundamentals, those are your building blocks.
21:35
Speaker 1: Like I don't know if I don't know what I
21:37
Speaker 1: would have done. I don't know if I would have
21:39
Speaker 1: had the tools to get excited. Yeah, if I didn't
21:42
Speaker 1: have that, right, if it was just about plugging things
21:45
Speaker 1: in and making noises. Some people are very excited about
21:48
Speaker 1: just making noises and they don't have to be musical.
21:51
Speaker 1: But for me, there was always like hip hop was
21:53
Speaker 1: based on hookey moments, whether that's like finding the best
21:59
Speaker 1: loop off of an obscure record and turning that into
22:02
Speaker 1: a song or like creating your own That has always
22:06
Speaker 1: been something I've been drawn to. Like everything is just
22:08
Speaker 1: like like it's like lego bricks of the most catchy
22:12
Speaker 1: little bits and then you assemble them into either something
22:15
Speaker 1: that's kind of linear and doesn't change a lot, or
22:18
Speaker 1: something that changes a lot, and it's more I think
22:20
Speaker 1: of it as more like an arranged like pop song.
22:25
Speaker 1: And then how has your relationship to the technology and
22:29
Speaker 1: the technology change from then, so we know what you
22:32
Speaker 1: started with. How is that different than what you use now.
22:36
Speaker 1: Let's say so in the beginning of Lincoln Park's career,
22:40
Speaker 1: it was very much of like a hip hop you
22:43
Speaker 1: remember you probably remember this very much of a hip
22:45
Speaker 1: hop approach, where it was like track first and vocals
22:48
Speaker 1: on the track. And then when we met you, you said, okay, well,
22:52
Speaker 1: I remember this one conversation you and I had where
22:54
Speaker 1: You're like, well, have you got have you ever you
22:57
Speaker 1: know you're since I was like the primary writer, you
22:59
Speaker 1: were like, have you ever done a song demo starting
23:03
Speaker 1: with just vocals and an instrument like you you know,
23:05
Speaker 1: piano and vocals would seem obvious? And I was like,
23:08
Speaker 1: usually not, but like there have been a couple cases.
23:10
Speaker 1: You hear like which ones And I'm like, well, in
23:12
Speaker 1: the end and breaking the habits like big So our
23:15
Speaker 1: biggest songs were the ones that started that way, and
23:18
Speaker 1: he like looked at me like this. I was like,
23:20
Speaker 1: I know, Rick, Like, I know, it's not that I
23:23
Speaker 1: it's not that I don't recognize it, it's that it's
23:25
Speaker 1: hard for me to do for some reason, I don't
23:27
Speaker 1: want to sit down to do it. And then I
23:29
Speaker 1: don't want to do it, and it was just because
23:32
Speaker 1: it was so comfortable doing it the other way. I think, yeah,
23:36
Speaker 1: that's really funny. Not that we didn't have good results
23:38
Speaker 1: doing it the other way too, we did, yeah, and
23:41
Speaker 1: then eventually, so I think that the next step in
23:43
Speaker 1: the evolution was learning how to like identify parts in
23:47
Speaker 1: a more abstract way, Like I don't need to have
23:51
Speaker 1: the full backdrop of a fully produced track to get
23:55
Speaker 1: me excited to make words and melodies or to make
23:58
Speaker 1: rap lyrics or whatever. I can make a great rap
24:01
Speaker 1: song off a click track, and that's happened so and
24:05
Speaker 1: that In terms of technology, I remember when we had
24:08
Speaker 1: to have like, you know, like a computer rig the
24:11
Speaker 1: size of a refrigerator to make a song. Now I
24:14
Speaker 1: gonna do it on my phone. I had a nice
24:17
Speaker 1: a couple of nice sessions with Tom Morello a few
24:19
Speaker 1: years ago, and we didn't come up with much, but
24:22
Speaker 1: it was just nice to like get together and hang
24:23
Speaker 1: out and pick his brain in whatever. But I love
24:26
Speaker 1: Tom and he's credible. And one of the things that
24:28
Speaker 1: he's all about is like he's got his pedal board,
24:30
Speaker 1: he's got his guitar, Like it's punk rock it's like
24:32
Speaker 1: not a lot of stuff doesn't want it. He doesn't
24:36
Speaker 1: even want the newer version of his wah pedal, like
24:39
Speaker 1: he just wants the old one. And that got me thinking, like, yeah,
24:43
Speaker 1: you know what, Like I've got a lot of plugins,
24:45
Speaker 1: got so many of them, and once you know how
24:48
Speaker 1: they work, like you can download a brand new plug
24:50
Speaker 1: in and already know how it works. But my tried
24:54
Speaker 1: and true stuff, like there's some there's some stuff that
24:56
Speaker 1: I know that I've used for years that like just
24:58
Speaker 1: works really well, and it's kind of signature stuff, and
25:00
Speaker 1: I just know how to manipulate it to find a
25:02
Speaker 1: new thing too that doesn't have to be the same
25:04
Speaker 1: sound every time. I just know how to get in
25:06
Speaker 1: there by plugging in this sampler to that guitar dull
25:09
Speaker 1: to that speaker and it's and miking it with this
25:11
Speaker 1: mic and it sounds great. When did you start with guitar?
25:15
Speaker 1: When I had to? When it was like it was
25:18
Speaker 1: like my friends. I used to play casually with my
25:21
Speaker 1: friend who was like he was taking guitar lessons. He
25:24
Speaker 1: was way into Zeppelin. He would teach me a couple
25:25
Speaker 1: of the like riffs and stuff. But I started really
25:28
Speaker 1: getting into it as the band was starting to take off,
25:30
Speaker 1: just because we needed a second guitar player and I
25:33
Speaker 1: and the riffs weren't hard to play. I don't think
25:36
Speaker 1: I ever asked you how did how did Lincoln Park start?
25:39
Speaker 1: It was really just me and my Like, remember I
25:41
Speaker 1: told you about the joke songs. My friend Mark and
25:45
Speaker 1: I were doing that. We made four real songs and
25:51
Speaker 1: sent those to this guy who's like it was. He
25:53
Speaker 1: was an A and R guy. He put the record
25:55
Speaker 1: labels address on the back of the CDs was Immortal Records,
26:00
Speaker 1: and they had corn and Incubus and so, and the
26:04
Speaker 1: mailing address was on the bat So we just sent
26:06
Speaker 1: it there and it was just like whatever. And then
26:09
Speaker 1: he called us and we were like, holy shit, we
26:12
Speaker 1: have to go in now, we have to go see
26:14
Speaker 1: this guy. And he was so flabbergasted that we made
26:20
Speaker 1: the music that we were making on that cassette four
26:23
Speaker 1: track and sample that thing I described he was. He
26:27
Speaker 1: was like, okay, so how many people are in the band.
26:28
Speaker 1: We were like two. He's like, who plays all the
26:30
Speaker 1: who plays the drums? I was like, it's our all
26:33
Speaker 1: samples and like drum machines, and he's like well, I
26:37
Speaker 1: hear like multiple guitars and bass, and he was like, yeah,
26:39
Speaker 1: we switch off on that stuff. And he's like, do
26:42
Speaker 1: you have you ever played live? We're like no, Like,
26:46
Speaker 1: have you ever been in a real studio. No. He's like, okay,
26:49
Speaker 1: so you need to do everything, like please get a
26:52
Speaker 1: band together, please play shows, please get into a real
26:55
Speaker 1: studio and record, and when you do some of those things,
26:58
Speaker 1: to come back and play me what you're doing. Like,
27:00
Speaker 1: I think what you're doing is great. You guys are
27:01
Speaker 1: just you have a really like long way to go
27:05
Speaker 1: before you're doing you can You're gonna experience so many things.
27:08
Speaker 1: I can't wait to hear how good it is once
27:09
Speaker 1: you get to that point. And his story is that
27:12
Speaker 1: we never came back. I obviously know that we did.
27:15
Speaker 1: We did send him more demos and he was not interested.
27:17
Speaker 1: We would have we would have killed to get on
27:19
Speaker 1: there to be signed by that label, and I am
27:21
Speaker 1: positive we sent them demos. But yeah, it ended up
27:25
Speaker 1: being that Mark was I've known I've been like super
27:28
Speaker 1: super close friends with Mark since we were since around
27:31
Speaker 1: that age, since twelve, and we had to part ways
27:35
Speaker 1: because he was going to give himself an ulcer being
27:38
Speaker 1: in the band, Like he couldn't get up on stage
27:40
Speaker 1: in front of people. He had a panic attacks. He
27:43
Speaker 1: was just freaking out whenever. He was the kind of
27:46
Speaker 1: guy that like, we would show up for our sound
27:48
Speaker 1: check and he'd lash out at the monitor engineer, like
27:53
Speaker 1: five minutes into the being at the club, and the
27:55
Speaker 1: monitor engineer would just be like, fuck these kids, and
27:58
Speaker 1: he'd screw us the whole night. Mike's would he feeding
28:00
Speaker 1: back everywhere because he was just he literally just like
28:03
Speaker 1: set the faders up and went to the bathroom. And
28:05
Speaker 1: part of that was like, okay, Mark, like can you
28:07
Speaker 1: please not scream at the guy who's in charge of
28:10
Speaker 1: us not sounding like crap and having a fun night.
28:13
Speaker 1: But he was just so panicked about the whole thing
28:15
Speaker 1: all the time, and so like he at the end
28:18
Speaker 1: of the day, he knew that it was just not
28:20
Speaker 1: a good fit for him. He loved music, he loved
28:23
Speaker 1: he actually loved more of it than just being on
28:27
Speaker 1: stage part and he and he ended up being he manages,
28:30
Speaker 1: helps manage you know, Mark Wakefield's system, great system of
28:34
Speaker 1: a down, Alison Chain's Deftnes like so many great bands.
28:37
Speaker 1: He's doing great, amazing, So he found what was right
28:42
Speaker 1: for his life. It's like so funny how we the
28:45
Speaker 1: path becomes clear? Yeah, you know exactly who was the
28:49
Speaker 1: first of the members we of the classic assemblage of
28:53
Speaker 1: Lincoln Park. Yeah, who was the first member after you? Brad? Right?
28:58
Speaker 1: And how do you How did you know Brad? So
29:00
Speaker 1: Brad was Mark's next door neighbor. It was like a
29:04
Speaker 1: TV show, Like you could look out Mark's bedroom window
29:07
Speaker 1: on the second story and throw a pebble and hit
29:09
Speaker 1: Brad's window and Brad would open it and he'd be
29:12
Speaker 1: in there with like his slightly long hair and his
29:15
Speaker 1: like ibanez or whatever it was, practicing Metallica. And I
29:20
Speaker 1: didn't know Brad very well in high school, like we
29:23
Speaker 1: knew we knew of each other, and Mark was his
29:25
Speaker 1: next door neighbor and whatever. But Brad hung with different people, remember,
29:28
Speaker 1: like hip hop kids and metal kids. Didn't like co mingle. Yeah,
29:34
Speaker 1: Mark was in a band with Brad before he was
29:37
Speaker 1: with me. He was a little more of a rock
29:41
Speaker 1: kid than me, Like he would he played me Rage
29:44
Speaker 1: against Machine for the first time. He played me Chili
29:46
Speaker 1: Peppers for the first time. He played anything that had
29:48
Speaker 1: a rap like element to it. We saw our both
29:52
Speaker 1: of our first show together was pe Anthrax, Primus and
29:57
Speaker 1: Young Black Teenagers, and we saw in the crowd before
30:00
Speaker 1: the show started. We saw Iced Tea in the crowd
30:02
Speaker 1: and ran over and got his autograph before anybody else
30:05
Speaker 1: like bothered him. So cool, what an InCred I mean?
30:07
Speaker 1: So it's almost like a joke that was my first
30:09
Speaker 1: concert because that's like what I ended up doing. So cool.
30:11
Speaker 1: So but yeah, Brett Mark and I like they had
30:16
Speaker 1: already been in bands together, and then I kind of
30:19
Speaker 1: started writing stuff with Mark on the side just because
30:21
Speaker 1: we were such close friends. And they had this they
30:22
Speaker 1: had this awesome like like rap metal band called The Pricks,
30:26
Speaker 1: which is such a punk rock nay. I love that name.
30:28
Speaker 1: And when did Joe and Dave? Yeah, Brat was the
30:31
Speaker 1: UCLA with Dave. I was at Art Center with Joe.
30:34
Speaker 1: Rob was from a neighboring high school. And then eventually
30:37
Speaker 1: we found Chester through we had gotten like an attorney
30:40
Speaker 1: that was interested in us and a publisher who was
30:43
Speaker 1: interested in us, and they found this kid from Arizona
30:46
Speaker 1: named Chester who we should check out, like we were
30:48
Speaker 1: trying out A bunch of people tried out, Like I
30:50
Speaker 1: don't know how many people tried out a bunch of people,
30:52
Speaker 1: and it was pretty obvious to us, as you can imagine. Yeah,
30:57
Speaker 1: once the group got together, even even before you found Chester,
31:00
Speaker 1: once you started making music together as a group, was
31:04
Speaker 1: the direction of the sound very clear right from the beginning. Yeah,
31:09
Speaker 1: I mean it was. It was clear to the extent that,
31:11
Speaker 1: like so even right now. It last year we released
31:15
Speaker 1: um this Hybrid Theory box set, which I was when
31:19
Speaker 1: it first started, the idea of putting out a box
31:21
Speaker 1: set of our oldest demos and whatever was like, I
31:25
Speaker 1: was like, that just sounds like you're cashing in on
31:27
Speaker 1: whatever on Like you know, we're not doing other things
31:30
Speaker 1: as a band, so like you're going to release this thing,
31:32
Speaker 1: Like I'm not into it, but you're welcome to like
31:35
Speaker 1: prove me wrong. I just I don't at face value,
31:37
Speaker 1: I don't know why we would do that. And management
31:41
Speaker 1: started to come back with some ideas about what it
31:43
Speaker 1: could be, and they had already I had already sent
31:45
Speaker 1: them some demos of things from back then for our
31:49
Speaker 1: fan club that we didn't use, and they were like, well,
31:51
Speaker 1: you've got all these things, and we know you've got more.
31:55
Speaker 1: And other people have found demos and we found all
31:59
Speaker 1: this material. They ended up finding like a whole hard
32:03
Speaker 1: drive full of video from that time. So this conversation, like,
32:08
Speaker 1: it's all documented on this Hybrid Theory twentieth edition thing
32:13
Speaker 1: that we put out last year. If you want to
32:14
Speaker 1: want to hear those early demos right after we stopped
32:17
Speaker 1: making jokes songs and we we want to hear our
32:18
Speaker 1: first three demos with Mark that's on Spotify right now. Wow,
32:23
Speaker 1: so cool, and and I couldn't believe we found all
32:25
Speaker 1: that stuff. So all this stuff is like top kind
32:27
Speaker 1: of top of mind because we just went through all
32:29
Speaker 1: of that and he was there, Like you can hear
32:33
Speaker 1: my favorite one of my favorite tracks is track called
32:36
Speaker 1: she Couldn't, which there's not a single distorted guitar in it.
32:39
Speaker 1: It's a it's a hip hop beat with some really weird,
32:42
Speaker 1: like weird organic like vocally sounding samples, and like it's
32:47
Speaker 1: done on my old Akai S nine hundred, which is
32:50
Speaker 1: like a twelve bit like boom bap sampler and has
32:54
Speaker 1: a clean guitar with delay on it and Chester singing
32:57
Speaker 1: the entire time. And we wouldn't one of the lines
33:01
Speaker 1: as you are not alone in that song and I'm
33:03
Speaker 1: like that everything in that song is stuff that we
33:06
Speaker 1: were still that was the identity of the band until
33:10
Speaker 1: like five six years later, Like it was still we
33:15
Speaker 1: were still exploring that identity and catching up with ourselves
33:21
Speaker 1: in a sense like amazing. It was all baked in
33:24
Speaker 1: from the very beginning. It was all there. It was
33:26
Speaker 1: just really messy. It's amazing too, And it wasn't It
33:29
Speaker 1: wasn't conceptual. It was just you guys making the music
33:33
Speaker 1: you like, yeah, and exploring different like facets of the
33:39
Speaker 1: architecture that I already existed between us because we weren't
33:43
Speaker 1: naturally all super good friends. We just had similar like
33:48
Speaker 1: once we got interested in a thing creatively or stuff
33:52
Speaker 1: something we would make, or something we would hear or
33:55
Speaker 1: something we would see, then we geek out together. And
33:58
Speaker 1: that's again there's things like oh, man, isn't that cool? Yeah,
34:01
Speaker 1: it's so cool? Have you seen this? And we'd go
34:02
Speaker 1: down these weird rabbit holes together because it because it
34:05
Speaker 1: faced value, Like when Chester first auditioned for the band
34:09
Speaker 1: and we and then we talked, and then we talked
34:12
Speaker 1: after the audition a little more. The reservation my recollection
34:18
Speaker 1: is the reservations that came up. Weren't about his singing obviously.
34:21
Speaker 1: Everyone was like, he's the best singer, He's better than
34:24
Speaker 1: anyone we're hearing on the radio, Like he's the best singer,
34:29
Speaker 1: but his person, Like, but what kind of person is he? Like?
34:32
Speaker 1: We know, we got the sense of like I think
34:34
Speaker 1: he's like kind of into drugs, and like we got
34:37
Speaker 1: Rob's in the band, Rob's straight edge, like Rob was
34:41
Speaker 1: in the programs. He's an a for who knows how
34:43
Speaker 1: long at that point, and that might be a rub,
34:47
Speaker 1: like I don't know, And so we really had to
34:49
Speaker 1: get to know him as a person before we could commit.
34:54
Speaker 1: And that was the part it was like okay, yeah,
34:56
Speaker 1: like we're really different, but we're definitely cool, Like we're
35:00
Speaker 1: definitely we we like each other, and it's it's like
35:03
Speaker 1: we're going to disagree on some things, as any band will,
35:06
Speaker 1: especially with six people in it, but I think we're
35:09
Speaker 1: fun sometimes that the fact that having outliers working together
35:17
Speaker 1: leads to something that could never happen without those different
35:21
Speaker 1: opposing energies coming together. It creates something much more intense
35:28
Speaker 1: and much bigger. So I'm glad that you chose to
35:31
Speaker 1: go out of your in a way go out of
35:33
Speaker 1: your comfort zone to allow that to happen. It's like, well,
35:36
Speaker 1: he's not one of us, but we can do this together. Yeah. Well,
35:41
Speaker 1: I think what we realized is there wasn't there wasn't
35:44
Speaker 1: an united US. There wasn't like us and us and him.
35:49
Speaker 1: It was like Joe and Brad for example, like Joe's
35:52
Speaker 1: favorite kind of stuff. Would you ever hear a group
35:54
Speaker 1: called Lutirics. There's a rap group called the Lutirics, and
35:58
Speaker 1: one of their songs they both rapped at the same
36:01
Speaker 1: time and panned their vocals left and right, so they
36:04
Speaker 1: were just it was a beat going and two guys
36:06
Speaker 1: rapping different verses at once, and you go an you
36:09
Speaker 1: listen to kind of one guy and you listen to
36:10
Speaker 1: the other. But it wasn't it wasn't a type of
36:12
Speaker 1: thing you'd want to just put on and listen to.
36:15
Speaker 1: And Joe loved that kind of thing. That was like
36:17
Speaker 1: one of in that time. It was his one of
36:19
Speaker 1: his favorite records. Brad was meanwhile listening to Britney Spears
36:24
Speaker 1: like right, So like we had to remind ourselves and
36:26
Speaker 1: the conversation it's like all of us, are you know,
36:32
Speaker 1: similarities or whatever, Like we overlap on certain things, but
36:37
Speaker 1: we we definitely are polar opposites in a lot of
36:40
Speaker 1: different ways. Like we we definitely rub this, there's friction
36:44
Speaker 1: in a bunch of other ways. So this this other
36:47
Speaker 1: guy who we don't didn't know very well at the time,
36:49
Speaker 1: Like what's the difference between Brad and Joe and like
36:53
Speaker 1: Brad and Chester, Like we'll have to find out. Yeah,
36:58
Speaker 1: we'll be right back with more from Mike Shinoda. We're
37:05
Speaker 1: back with the rest of Rick's conversation with Mike Shinoda.
37:09
Speaker 1: You've played all over the world and a lot of shows,
37:14
Speaker 1: from very big shows to small shows over the course
37:18
Speaker 1: of your career. Tell me what you've learned from playing
37:21
Speaker 1: live that you've that you bring with you into the
37:24
Speaker 1: music making process. M Sometimes I beat myself up a
37:30
Speaker 1: little bit for not slowing down and like thinking more
37:35
Speaker 1: deeply about like some of the bigger picture why and
37:40
Speaker 1: what you know what I mean, because I know that
37:42
Speaker 1: would be and part of me says, like that's the
37:44
Speaker 1: right thing to do, to like think about the kinds
37:47
Speaker 1: of questions you just asked. Then the other part of
37:50
Speaker 1: me is like really loves like letting intuition drive the
37:55
Speaker 1: ship and just going with it, because I feel like
37:59
Speaker 1: it's not just the creative flow, but there's also like
38:01
Speaker 1: a flow to things. Chester and I used to always
38:04
Speaker 1: talk about like riding the wave. And sometimes you just
38:08
Speaker 1: notice like, well, this came up in conversation yesterday randomly.
38:12
Speaker 1: I don't know why that came up in conversation, And
38:14
Speaker 1: then I got I saw it on a Twitter yesterday
38:17
Speaker 1: or Instagram, and then and now we're talking about in
38:19
Speaker 1: the studio and that Isn't it weird that that's come
38:22
Speaker 1: up three times in two days and you just start
38:24
Speaker 1: to pay attention to like little things like that. It's like, Okay,
38:27
Speaker 1: well that feels like a pattern. It's just like in
38:29
Speaker 1: the ether. Let's write a song about that. Why not?
38:32
Speaker 1: I don't know what that is. I mean, it's stupid,
38:34
Speaker 1: but it's worth it seems like a thing. With that said,
38:37
Speaker 1: I feel like the show thing I didn't, by the way,
38:41
Speaker 1: I didn't just say that just to buy myself time
38:43
Speaker 1: to think about the answer the question that was. By
38:46
Speaker 1: the way, that was a great answer. I feel like
38:49
Speaker 1: that's a thing that for me, like doing the things
38:54
Speaker 1: that I do, I probably learned things from them consciously.
38:58
Speaker 1: I probably learned some things from them subconsciously that I
39:01
Speaker 1: don't know that I know because because at the end
39:05
Speaker 1: of the day, when I'm making making a song, I
39:08
Speaker 1: know it's up. Like just like any artist when you've
39:12
Speaker 1: toured a bunch, you go, oh, that's not gonna be
39:13
Speaker 1: very fun to play live. It's not question, it's like,
39:16
Speaker 1: it's not like I wonder if it is, like no,
39:18
Speaker 1: if it definitively is not. Like, So I've to now
39:22
Speaker 1: make a decision as I'm writing it, like is it
39:26
Speaker 1: a thing that I record or I write right now
39:29
Speaker 1: because I'm going to have to live with it later.
39:32
Speaker 1: I think maybe the reason I asked it is of
39:35
Speaker 1: all the artists I've worked with, you were the first
39:38
Speaker 1: band who didn't do the process like a band. So
39:43
Speaker 1: it struck me as here are a group of people
39:47
Speaker 1: who all are essentially producers, and they would create something
39:55
Speaker 1: and share the files and pass around the files to
39:58
Speaker 1: create it, and then at the end of the day
40:01
Speaker 1: make the most interesting music. Virtually the whole process was virtual.
40:07
Speaker 1: And then when it would come time to or you'd
40:09
Speaker 1: figure out, Okay, who's gonna play what, how's this going
40:11
Speaker 1: to work? How what would the band version be like
40:14
Speaker 1: because it was never made like a banned version in
40:17
Speaker 1: the recording. I was shocked when I found out, just
40:21
Speaker 1: like how some people would like write a thing in
40:25
Speaker 1: person or jam a thing out until they got the pieces.
40:29
Speaker 1: Like we were talking about Tom earlier, like when they
40:31
Speaker 1: were doing that first Rage record, they like just went
40:34
Speaker 1: in and jam stuff and then Zach and the producer
40:37
Speaker 1: would like assemble it and then he'd like rap over it.
40:40
Speaker 1: I thought that was crazy, Like to just jam for
40:44
Speaker 1: a couple weeks and walk away and then come back
40:48
Speaker 1: a month or two later and have a record. That's
40:50
Speaker 1: super weird to me because you're leaving all of your
40:53
Speaker 1: You're leaving like all of the why what about all
40:56
Speaker 1: the development time? In my head, I'm thinking, like I
40:58
Speaker 1: could have if I had a good bit have peace
41:01
Speaker 1: in the jam that I then took home and I
41:04
Speaker 1: really thought about, And so this riff caught my ear.
41:08
Speaker 1: What elements are that are cool? What if I change
41:11
Speaker 1: the drum sound? What if I change the tempo? What
41:13
Speaker 1: if I change instead of it being four bars, what
41:16
Speaker 1: if it's two? What if it's eight? What if it's
41:18
Speaker 1: instead of being that guitar, it's it's a keyboard. You
41:21
Speaker 1: have a whole universe of ways to change it. I
41:24
Speaker 1: think that's where the like producer slash hip hop producer
41:28
Speaker 1: comes in, right. I love that process of experimentation. By
41:33
Speaker 1: the way, the Twitch. Coming back to the twitch thing.
41:36
Speaker 1: One thing that's awesome about doing that same process that
41:39
Speaker 1: I'm talking about on twitch. I just had two thoughts
41:42
Speaker 1: the Twitch thing. I can get immediate feedback from the fans.
41:44
Speaker 1: You know, you're playing a thing on stage, like people
41:47
Speaker 1: used to do this, people in the seventies. They'd write
41:50
Speaker 1: a song, play it, and then they'd get audience feedback,
41:54
Speaker 1: and then they change it and then go on the
41:56
Speaker 1: next show and play it again. Oh tonight it was.
41:59
Speaker 1: It got better feedback. But fans really love this part,
42:01
Speaker 1: or the fans really reacted when we did this. So
42:04
Speaker 1: then they kept that, and they changed other thing, and
42:05
Speaker 1: they kept doing it. They kept doing this trial and
42:09
Speaker 1: error with these test groups of people who are in
42:11
Speaker 1: the club listening to them, and eventually the song got
42:14
Speaker 1: good and they recorded it. They went into studio and
42:16
Speaker 1: they play the exact same thing that they've worked up
42:18
Speaker 1: however many times, and that was the track Twitch. I'm
42:21
Speaker 1: on the channel, I'm recording. I'm writing and recording in
42:26
Speaker 1: real time, very fast, and at every moment where I
42:31
Speaker 1: go what's better this or that, I literally just asked
42:34
Speaker 1: the chat. I can literally put a pole up. There's
42:36
Speaker 1: sometimes there's people in the chat who are louder than others.
42:39
Speaker 1: Other people don't want to talk. I can put a
42:41
Speaker 1: poll up and get an and know exactly how popular
42:45
Speaker 1: a choice is the other day, I had a song
42:47
Speaker 1: that was like it was I had vocals and I
42:50
Speaker 1: had like drums, and I was like, should I go
42:54
Speaker 1: keyboard like a like a low whole note keyboard thing,
42:59
Speaker 1: or should I do this like more funky bassline with
43:02
Speaker 1: a live bass. So I did both, and I asked
43:05
Speaker 1: the chat which one's better, and they and in my
43:08
Speaker 1: mind they're both equally good. In their mind's eighty percent
43:11
Speaker 1: for the belive base. So cool. So that's taking everything
43:14
Speaker 1: we just talked about and wrapping it up into one
43:17
Speaker 1: moment in four minutes, right, I'm jamming in real time,
43:20
Speaker 1: like an idea pops in my head, my fingers go
43:22
Speaker 1: to whatever, frets like, my fingers go whatever keys maybe
43:24
Speaker 1: some accidentally like that's what's recorded. I've just now made
43:28
Speaker 1: a thing. And then they can give me their feedback
43:30
Speaker 1: in real time, and I can know, oh, the audience
43:33
Speaker 1: actually prefers this thing. And now I'm it's done. I'm sorry,
43:37
Speaker 1: it's not only is written, it's recorded, and I just
43:39
Speaker 1: move on. So cool. There was also an aspect of
43:42
Speaker 1: an artist playing playing live in a club and getting
43:46
Speaker 1: the feedback that wasn't only based on the feedback coming
43:49
Speaker 1: back from the audience, but how the artist's relationship to
43:54
Speaker 1: the music changed when they're playing it in front of people,
43:56
Speaker 1: which it does change. Like when you play a song
43:59
Speaker 1: for the first time in front of people, you might realize, oh, this, uh,
44:03
Speaker 1: this solo section is twice as long as as it
44:05
Speaker 1: wants to be, or the opposite, it wants to go
44:08
Speaker 1: longer at the end, you know, it wants to have
44:10
Speaker 1: this Like you feel the energy of the music in
44:14
Speaker 1: a different way when even just people are listening, not
44:18
Speaker 1: based on their reaction. Yeah, I also realize if you're
44:23
Speaker 1: playing the same song for twenty years, sometimes you play
44:28
Speaker 1: with those things just like you just those those realities change,
44:34
Speaker 1: Like we've played this song and back when we first
44:37
Speaker 1: started playing this song, they really the fans wanted to
44:40
Speaker 1: hear the album version and so did we If we
44:42
Speaker 1: changed it, it was less, it was it made it
44:45
Speaker 1: worse right, And then at a certain point, once everyone
44:49
Speaker 1: has heard it that way, then not only did we
44:52
Speaker 1: want to hear it a different way, like they wanted
44:54
Speaker 1: to hear it a different way. So all of a sudden,
44:55
Speaker 1: then it was like, well, let's take a song that's
44:57
Speaker 1: two minutes and forty five seconds and expand it to
45:00
Speaker 1: four minutes by like doing a brand new thing in
45:03
Speaker 1: the bridge for like two minutes. Yeah, just because like
45:06
Speaker 1: because now that's fresh. Now that's you've heard thing, and
45:09
Speaker 1: now we can play with the expectation absolutely, and there
45:12
Speaker 1: might even be a time in the future again we
45:16
Speaker 1: want to go back to the album version and it'll
45:18
Speaker 1: feel new again. And then it feels new again. Yeah.
45:22
Speaker 1: So the last three projects you've put out were instrumental only.
45:27
Speaker 1: Oh yeah yeah, I did. I mean, I know I
45:29
Speaker 1: consider those like mixtapes or something, Okay, but did they
45:33
Speaker 1: tell me how did that happen? Those are the things
45:36
Speaker 1: I was making on Twitch So I was just making
45:38
Speaker 1: like all like for nine months last year, I was
45:40
Speaker 1: just making instrumentals. So I generated over one hundred songs.
45:44
Speaker 1: I made a ton of songs, and some of them
45:48
Speaker 1: got released. I put some of them together in this
45:52
Speaker 1: like trilogy called Dropped Frames, which is a reference to
45:55
Speaker 1: like basically having bad Internet and not being able to
45:58
Speaker 1: stream properly, which was the case and when I was
46:00
Speaker 1: first streaming and I put some of those out, and
46:05
Speaker 1: like part of me was like, I know that those
46:07
Speaker 1: types of releases are some all they're not for everybody.
46:11
Speaker 1: I also love I've always loved like Dyla and DJ
46:15
Speaker 1: Shadow and like so many fine lotus, like so many
46:19
Speaker 1: producers who when you listen to their tracks it's almost
46:24
Speaker 1: like they can hold my attention with no vocal yeah,
46:28
Speaker 1: you know, because it's it's just they're creative enough without it.
46:31
Speaker 1: And so I felt like encouraged in a way by
46:35
Speaker 1: listening to some of that stuff to be like, oh
46:37
Speaker 1: it was you know, it's with COVID and everything, Like
46:40
Speaker 1: I feel like, actually, it wasn't just COVID. It was
46:43
Speaker 1: it was like with Trump and COVID and all of
46:46
Speaker 1: the noise on social media. I felt like everyone's always screaming,
46:51
Speaker 1: So it's nice to listen to music with no words.
46:53
Speaker 1: There's a break, Yeah, really cool And it's funny when
46:56
Speaker 1: I would listen to them. I would hear like baby
47:00
Speaker 1: Lincoln Park songs, you know, like often like I could
47:03
Speaker 1: hear it's like, oh, I if this was going to
47:05
Speaker 1: be a Lincoln Park song, I know where this would go.
47:07
Speaker 1: Like it wouldn't be so different than the seed ideas
47:10
Speaker 1: that would start that would often start songs. Yeah, that's
47:15
Speaker 1: I mean, that's it's I think that's the for people
47:17
Speaker 1: that make music, or it's aspire to make music they love.
47:22
Speaker 1: There's a lot of folks in my who watched that channel,
47:25
Speaker 1: my channel, who are in that category. A track like that,
47:29
Speaker 1: you know, ten years ago, that would be like two
47:31
Speaker 1: days of work, and these days it's like ninety minutes
47:33
Speaker 1: of work. Right, I just get there. I get there
47:36
Speaker 1: very fast now. And it's because of the repetition. And
47:40
Speaker 1: I'm not saying it's like like my my worry. Actually
47:43
Speaker 1: sometimes I worry because there are some little I don't
47:46
Speaker 1: expect everything to be great. I don't expect everything to
47:48
Speaker 1: even be good, but I do know I do guess
47:52
Speaker 1: that just because of the the volume, that there's actually
47:56
Speaker 1: gems in there. And it's like am I throwing away
47:59
Speaker 1: these gems? Like one of these little pieces of a
48:02
Speaker 1: thing could actually be like a very like big song. Yes,
48:06
Speaker 1: is it worth it to like just throw them out
48:09
Speaker 1: there on twitch and do it in live and then
48:11
Speaker 1: maybe not even release it? Like is that? Is that
48:14
Speaker 1: a dumb thing to be doing? And at the end
48:16
Speaker 1: of the day, I feel like that's where modern culture is.
48:22
Speaker 1: Like that to me, that's that's right on the edge
48:26
Speaker 1: of like where we're at in terms of like like
48:29
Speaker 1: entertainment and music. Like music is not music. Music doesn't
48:33
Speaker 1: mean what it used to mean back in the day.
48:36
Speaker 1: And I don't mean that in terms of value. I
48:38
Speaker 1: just mean that in terms of identity. It doesn't it
48:41
Speaker 1: does to a thirteen year old. A song generally is
48:47
Speaker 1: just like a little piece of background thing that you
48:50
Speaker 1: associate with a moment, and that moment is short. Once
48:53
Speaker 1: in a while, it kind of goes back to that
48:56
Speaker 1: you remember that long tail, the book The long Tail.
48:59
Speaker 1: It's kind of like that, Like once in a while,
49:02
Speaker 1: something will go up the rise up to the to
49:05
Speaker 1: the front of that long tail and become like, I mean,
49:08
Speaker 1: we're looking at it with right right now, there's a
49:10
Speaker 1: song that song is it Driver's License? Am I gonna
49:13
Speaker 1: screw up the name? Huge song? Number one? On at
49:16
Speaker 1: least the US charts for three weeks, and the first
49:20
Speaker 1: time I heard it, I listened to it twice. I
49:22
Speaker 1: was like, what the fuck did I just listen to?
49:23
Speaker 1: That's incredible? I love this and it takes that It's
49:26
Speaker 1: almost like a Yeah, it takes that level of a song.
49:29
Speaker 1: That's how it's got to be that special, and everything
49:32
Speaker 1: else is just way lower on the on the long tail. Yeah, yeah,
49:37
Speaker 1: it feels like that too. With you know, when you
49:41
Speaker 1: put out Hybrid Theory, you probably put out how many
49:44
Speaker 1: singles did it have? Do you remember? Oh god, five? Yeah,
49:51
Speaker 1: arguably five, Chester would say six, five or six and
49:55
Speaker 1: that was over a two year period till the next album,
49:58
Speaker 1: would you say more three something like that? Yeah, eighteen
50:02
Speaker 1: eighteen plus over eighteen months. And in today's world nothing
50:06
Speaker 1: exists like that. There's no such thing. Whatever. Whatever the
50:10
Speaker 1: biggest record in the world is comes and the super
50:15
Speaker 1: fans of that record a month later are probably over it.
50:19
Speaker 1: Whatever it is, it's just like the rhythm, the rhythm
50:23
Speaker 1: has changed. Yeah, they burn really really bright and really fast. Yes,
50:28
Speaker 1: And that being said, you could put out something on
50:33
Speaker 1: Twitch that's that in its use feels disposable, but you
50:39
Speaker 1: did write it, and it does exist, and you could
50:42
Speaker 1: take one of those and turn it into a giant
50:45
Speaker 1: song at some point if you wanted to. It's like that,
50:47
Speaker 1: the beauty is now. It's like they're not gone. Yeah.
50:51
Speaker 1: I think the reason one of the one of the
50:53
Speaker 1: reasons I switched to the idea of working these songs
50:59
Speaker 1: off of like to include the fan vocalists and the
51:02
Speaker 1: and the aspiring vocalist is because all of them, I mean,
51:06
Speaker 1: they literally have a thousand followers on their biggest social platform, right,
51:09
Speaker 1: most of them are very comparatively very small, and so
51:14
Speaker 1: doing it this way, then I get to deal in volume.
51:17
Speaker 1: I can finish five songs in two weeks. Yes, give
51:21
Speaker 1: those to the artists. That's the that's their best ticket
51:24
Speaker 1: so far of having a shot to get on playlist
51:27
Speaker 1: and get in front of more fans. And they're going
51:29
Speaker 1: to work really hard to get there with it. It
51:31
Speaker 1: has my name attached. So that's that helps them, right,
51:35
Speaker 1: hopefully with some people, it helps them. With other people,
51:38
Speaker 1: it hurts them. Hopefully it helps yes, And then your
51:41
Speaker 1: intentions are good and I get to explore every genre.
51:45
Speaker 1: I feel like exploring every type of song. Today's today
51:48
Speaker 1: is a rap song, tomorrow's a metal song. The next
51:50
Speaker 1: day we're doing a female vocalist, no drums, like it's
51:54
Speaker 1: every day. It can be something completely different, super fun,
51:58
Speaker 1: great experience. It's fun cool. I love seeing you. I
52:02
Speaker 1: miss you you too. Man. All right, Rick, Thanks Man,
52:05
Speaker 1: great to talk to you. Thanks to Mike Shinoda for
52:10
Speaker 1: taking time away from making beats to talk to Rick.
52:13
Speaker 1: Do you hear a playlist of our favorite Mike Shinoda
52:16
Speaker 1: and Lincoln Park songs. Check out a playlist we created
52:18
Speaker 1: at broken Record podcast dot com. Be sure to subscribe
52:22
Speaker 1: to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash Broken
52:25
Speaker 1: Record Podcast, where you can find extended cuts at new
52:27
Speaker 1: and all episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at
52:30
Speaker 1: broken Record. Broken Record is produced help from Leah Rose,
52:34
Speaker 1: Jason Gambrel, Martin Gonzalez, Eric Sandler, and Jennifer Sanchez, with
52:40
Speaker 1: engineering help from Nick Chafee. Our executive producer is Mia LaBelle.
52:44
Speaker 1: Broken Record is a production of Pushing Industries and if
52:47
Speaker 1: you'd like the show, please remember to share, rate, and
52:49
Speaker 1: review us on your podcast at right. Music by Kenny Beats,
52:53
Speaker 1: I'm justin Richmond Bass