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The bonds we develop with the music we first fall in love with are everlasting.
The nakedness of the emotion the catalogue tapped into was always unnerving, but this is something different.
Its aggressive, such a dope production.
Thats the key in of stuff that I loved growing up.
I started listening to old rock records because my favorite rap records sampled them.
I got into Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin.
In the late 90s, rap and rock started to cross over into each other.
Anthrax and Public Enemy in particular did a version of Bring the Noise.
I went to that concert.
It was my first.
That was stars aligning.It was.
Its almost comedic that that was my first show.
But I went for Public Enemy.
I didnt really know any Anthrax songs at all.
There was theJudgment Nightsoundtrack mixing rock and rap, which was dope.
Different artists were starting to experiment one way or the other.
And we tried studying those and incorporating those into what we were doing.
DJs would press unauthorized scratch records with other peoples sounds on it and shit.
Me and Joe made a single pressing of original sounds and whatever else.
There were a couple things on that record that were actually lifted off of other peoples records.
We never sold it.
It was just for Joe to scratch and give out to friends.
I still have a couple copies.
I was going to ask what happened to them.
There was some trepidation early on at labels around the rap and rock sounds being in the same frame.
That was the initial concept.
We called it Xero, and we made a bunch of rap-rock songs and tried to get signed.
So we did that.
Joe was my friend from college.
Brad was Marks next-door neighbor.
Phoenix was Brads roommate.
We knew Rob from a school near where we grew up.
At a certain point it didnt work out with Mark and we parted ways and he went into management.
We had met with every label and most of the indies and got turned down by everybody.
Then we got Chester, and we were like, Now were going to get signed.
We went and met with everybody again, showcased for everybody, and they all turned us down again.
And it worked out.
We loved DJ Shadow, Fatboy Slim, Moby, Aphex Twin, and Portishead.
Im missing a ton … the Prodigy.
With that stuff in the music, labels were like, Whos going to listen?
And then on top of it, we were more introspective.
What we didnt like about what was going on in the scene was that it was very frat rock.
It was toxic masculinity.
We didnt know the term yet.
We just didnt like how everything was about tough-guy shit, and we didnt identify with tough-guy shit.
So nobody wanted to sign us because we didnt fit.
They couldnt see us onstage.
It was a joke, right?
But probably true, at least for me.
I wouldve gotten beat up.
Chester wouldnt have gotten beat up.
Hed fuck somebody up, too.
It was always the point.
I wanted to put that into my songs, like bands like Depeche Mode and Nine Inch Nails did.
I was listening to a lot of U2.
None of those are, like, Hey, Im going to kick your ass songs.
Those are all, Oh, I got ass my kicked.
This isnt fair or this feels bad or maybe its my fault.
We werent hearing those emotions as much in music that was out there.
And when we did hear it, I liked what I was hearing.
I should give groups like Deftones and Korn more credit.
They were doing that.
So coming off of theHybrid Theorytour, youre in your mid-20s with one of the biggest-selling records out.
Management called and said, Yeah, its bigger than all of them.
It was the biggest album on the planet Earth.
And thats not a hyperbole.
What does that feel like?We werent digesting that.
Theyre very different from the rest of the album.
And when youve got some success, you could dictate things like that.
It was important for us to release a song that didnt have any screaming or any heavy guitars.
Thats the whole point.
Theres a simplicity to some of the writing onNevermind.
Nevermindis melodically simple, but anthropologically, nine things had to collide in order for it to even exist.
Movements had to crumble.Meteorais really slippery to me.
The guitars dont always necessarily sound heavy.
They land like synths sometimes.
There isnt always a noticeable attack.Right?
Some of that was very intentional.
How do we add something thats not rock into it?
He did it, but we took the first and looped it.
Brad played a pattern, and we chose the best pattern of his guitar.
Looping the parts made it more electronic, more hip-hop.
Thats what we loved about hip-hop records.
We tried to add that approach to …
Were getting very nerdy right now.
Youve got me on some very nerdy shit.
We loved the genres that we were playing with.
We were obsessed, and we went deep.
You got to hear this.
At the time we were using really obnoxious samples.
Something that intrigues me aboutMeteorais timing.
Doors are closing for people blending raps into rock around 2003.
There are a lot of people you dont hear from too much after then.
You show up dropping your best shit.Well, the stuff youre talking about was probably afterMeteora.
ForMeteorait was still red hot.
We were on fire.
We played 300 shows that year.
I feel like there was a different level of acceptance for you.
There wasnt a single place that wouldve given us more than three and a half out of five stars.
The day before we played our first show of Ozzfest, and shes already shit-talking us.
Thats wild because on the fan end Ozzfest is remembered for embracing those bands.Now, its known for that.
Back then it was just metal, metal, metal.
Its a trip looking back from your 40s at the thought processes of your 20s.
Im curious, why are you putting yourself throughMeteora 20?
I was like,Well see.
It hinged entirely on the quality of the material that we found.
It was born on my hard drives, so Ive got to look.
The more we found, the more it became apparent that it was a great idea.
We had great material to put out.
How do you lose Lost initially?It was very simple.
We made 20-something tracks forMeteora.
We knew the album was going to be 12, and Lost was the 13th track.
Then we just didnt do any of that.
We went from being college students to this, and we needed to take a sabbatical to look inward.
When we got to the next album, we wanted to completely reinvent the band.
It didnt work because the Japanese companies dont want to license their stuff in that way.
They want to maintain the integrity of the series and shows.
People were uploading videos to YouTube for the first time and they ran out of home videos.
They started editing together stuff they loved, and then they started adding music.
So that community knew it was us high-fiving them.
We couldnt doMeteora 20without saluting that.
Lost is drawing some intense responses.
Theres this air of unfinished business.
Youre going to get that if you loved that.
Massive and Healing Foot also shouldve come out in 2003.
So this is all about that 2003 moment.
Theres a certain level of quality control going on.
Is it going to be perfect?
Is it going to appeal to everybody?
It never will be.
To me, my favorite Linkin Park album is probablyA Thousand Suns.
When it came out, half of the reviews were one-star reviews.
Literally 50-50, five stars or one star.
Nobody in the middle.
Everybody loved it or hated it.
Is that how you see it?At that point in your career, good job, kid.
You did pretty good.
Overall, the guys did a great job.
I think the efforts were in the right place, and we were working really, really hard.
And we had some great, almost miraculous little ideas come to us that we were lucky to have.
I was further along in the process than they were.
And their version of it wasnt my version of it.
I wrote and produced for other people.
Some of those songs are starting to come out.
I heard it constantly, because I would be the one that they would talk to.
Itd be like, Yo man, youre the only band that I like.
Or, I didnt listen to any rock music until Linkin Park.
Now I like this band and this band and this band.
I cant remember much of it.We had a really funny conversation with him.
We were on the road together, and Ghost and his manager were, like, five minutes late.
Then it was ten minutes late, 20 minutes late.
Keep in mind theres a curfew.
The show had to stop at a certain time.
If you go over, theres a fee.
And Ghost is like, Yeah, yeah, no problem.
They were about their money.
To his credit, hes a respectful dude.
They didnt come to us and try and start shit about it.
He just did his set and everybody was fine.
I think I mightve compromised a little bit.
It was a time, man.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
