The Thrill of the Hunt – An Interview with Linkin Park

How do you visually translate your videos into your stage show? What can expect the visuals to be like on this tour? 

Mike Shinoda: The visuals on The Hunting Party were rooted in a handful of drawings, artwork by an incredible painter named James Jean. James, I don’t even know where to start as far as how important this guy is or how incredible he is. You can look him up on your own. In talking with him, we wanted to do something that has never been done with his artwork before and landed on the idea of converting it into an actual 3D sculpture, so although the sculptures live in the computer, they don’t exist physically yet, maybe someday they would, but at this point, we got them rendered as 3D art. Our amazing group at Ghost Town did those renders with James and then they built out the basic foundation of the artwork for the album. And that stuff, you’ll find that on the T-shirts and you’ll find that on the website and you’ll find that in the live visuals as well. And then, it’s not enough to just throw the stuff up there. I mean, you can, but it’s beautiful, but I think that in the context of a live show, it’s really important to have something that lives and breathes with the show. And to some degree, one of the challenges that I posed on the production team was, based on what we decide to do with the show every night, if we decide to play something differently, or decide to expand the part, I want the artwork to change with the performance. So, it needs to be malleable and that’s where the real production challenges start to arise. Without getting geeky into it, and in fact I’m not really versed in the geeky stuff, I can just tell them, “These are the ideas,” and then, luckily, we have an excellent production team that can do that. And the guys at Ghost Town, again, the guys who are involved with rendering the stuff in 3D, they’ve been intimately involved, as has Joe, on creating these tour visuals. I think it’s gotten real great. I’m not going to spoil any surprises as far as how the LED stuff gets – what it’s actually being presented on, or as far as what the stuff actually looks like. You’re going to have to come to the show to see that stuff. But, like I said, it adapts with the show and the show is a work in progress; like, we are changing – we do change things usually steadily from show to show, and then from tour to tour, there might be some broader stroke changes. But, yeah, we take the live show seriously. It is, in some part of it, it’s as much a piece of art as the music is, so we want it to be compelling and fit with the overall kind of aesthetic of what the band is up to right at this moment.

You’re donating $1 from every ticket from this tour to Music for Relief. What can you tell us about that organization and why are you so passionate about it? 

Mike Shinoda: Music for Relief started in the mid-2000’s as a response to the Indian Ocean tsunami. We had just been out touring in Asia. We got home and we were watching the news and the whole place has been destroyed. And we just felt like we needed to do something. A year later, we realized that we were actively involved in cleaning up messes, but not so much involved in anything preventative. So, we added an environmental component to Music for Relief, and all in all, I mean, we’ve done projects all over the world. We’ve worked with the UN. We’ve worked with Habitat for Humanity and Direct Relief and the Red Cross and put on concerts with No Doubt and Jay-Z. And most recently, we did an awesome, really fun, and awesome show with Offspring and Bad Religion. Travis Barker came out with us and we hope to involve more musicians. Like, Music for Relief isn’t about Linkin Park. There are, unfortunately, always disasters to go get involved after and there are always environmental causes that we can get involved in to help prevent the natural disasters or at least keep our oceans and our land clean and our air. And so, I don’t know how many tours now we’ve done where we’ve donated a dollar from every ticket to Music for Relief, and that is obviously in addition to running the buses on biodiesel and recycling at every venue.

(To Chester): How are things working out with Stone Temple Pilots?

Chester Bennington: Well, we started writing some stuff a couple of weeks ago, and that was a lot of fun. So, yeah, we’re planning on recording some music as soon as possible and we’ve got a kick-start on a bunch of tracks and it’s fun to be around a bunch of people who just thoroughly enjoy making music all the time. It’s, like, I get to be in Linkin Park and play with some of the best musical minds, in my opinion, in music right now, and then I get to come home and go play with some more people who are great. So, it’s pretty awesome. I don’t know when we’re going to get in the studio. We want to do it as soon as possible, so we’ll make that happen with the time that we have when I’m not with Linkin Park.

What are some of the most important life lessons you’ve taken away from recording and touring as a band?

Chester Bennington: One thing for our group has been so positive is that we have a really good pattern of being direct and honest and respectful with each other. To some people, it’s like we never fight, and that’s nice, but that’s not reality. Like, you get six guys in a group like ours, there’s bound to be stuff that we disagree about pretty passionately. And when those things come up, at least historically, the guys have been able to just talk to somebody else about it and address it head on, or somebody else kind of has to push you in the direction and say, “Hey, man. You really need to go talk to him about that thing that you’re upset about, because if you don’t, it’s going to fester and you guys are going to be a mess later.”

Mike Shinoda: I don’t think about it. It’s a common thing with people and everybody does – it seems like it happens in every group of people. And at least at this point, I really appreciate the fact that the guys have been so open to hearing criticism. It’s really important to put yourself in somebody else’s shoes and see it from their angle and listen with, like, respect. But also, stay confident about what you’re about too, and just come to the table and try to find some middle ground. I mean, I always feel like one of the things that makes this, like, the root of a lot of my problems and other people who I know is usually, like, fear and a lot of that is based in unfamiliarity. People are scared of a lot of things that don’t look like something they understand. And being scared of stuff like that can manifest itself in so many ways. And whether it’s, like, a personal thing or a decision that we make creatively, we’ve tried to be really cognizant about; not operating by fear.

Linkin Park play the Air Canada Centre (along with Thirty Seconds to Mars and AFI) on August 24^th.