Linkin Park's Mike Shinoda and Emily Armstrong Open Up On The Zach Sang Show

11-16-2024

Linkin Park's Mike Shinoda and Emily Armstrong join The Zach Sang Show at Amazon to talk about the band's reunion and their new album From Zero, out today. Mike Shinoda reveals how it feels to be playing as a band again, saying "having a thing that you felt was taken away and then being able to get it back...I mean, there's nothing like it. There never will be anything like it." He shares how the band started the search for a new singer, first meeting Emily Armstrong, and how he was able to get the rest of Linkin Park on board.

Shinoda reflects back on writing lyrics with late bandmate Chester Bennington, and how that's changed with this new iteration of the band, saying "He loved for me to suggest him lyrics. A lot of that was either me drawing from my personal experience, or me knowing his experience so well that I was trying to help him tell his story."

He also reveals that new Linkin Park drummer Colin Brittain was almost the guitar player instead, and talks about how hard it was to keep the reunion a secret. Stream the full episode and see some excerpts below:

Linkin Park's Mike Shinoda Talks About How He And Chester Bennington Would Write Lyrics Together

Mike Shinoda: It was really just me and Chester. He loved for me to suggest him lyrics. A lot of that was either me drawing from my personal experience, or me knowing his experience so well that I was trying to help him tell his story, if that makes sense. He had all the good stories, and he had all these really intense emotions and he would tell them to me and I'd jot down stuff and like "What about this? What about that? Like, is this how you felt? Is this a right lyric? Oh, yeah." Yeah, and then he'd riff off that and we'd go back and forth. So we (me and Emily) got into some of that like towards the end of the process. I think we started to develop more of that got to know each other better and to be honest, like, I don't know we were so deep in it that I don't know what the lyrics are about. Like, I know what they're about. I do know where I was drawing from and, like, what we were talking about in the room. But I'm still I think maybe for the best, they're not so concrete. Like they're a little loose, in terms of...

Emily Armstrong: That's me. That's me. That's my Yeah, it's just like That's my influence.

Mike Shinoda: It doesn't need to be, like, super... country music can be that a lot of times, for better and worse, where it's like this is the story. This is the exact story I'm telling you, there's only one version of it, and this is how it goes. And our music, like if you go all the way back to Hybrid Theory, it's a you and me, and it's a core nucleus of an emotion, but you might think it's about you and your mom. You might think it's about a girlfriend, omeone else might think it's about some other thing, right? And that's what I like about the new record is it has this a little bit of like a good ambiguity to it It's not coming an from an ambiguous place. It's coming from a very specific place, but the way it reads is different

Mike Shinoda Talks About How It Feels To Be Back On Stage With Linkin Park

Part of it is going from the band being, uh, like an indefinite hiatus. Or whatever it was. We didn't put names on it. It was just like, yeah, we're not doing anything. From it being that, to standing on a stage and doing it. I think there were all these weird little moments that were so surreal. One of them, just starting, getting on a stage and doing it, getting in a room and doing it for the first time felt so cool.

That was actually stressful, though, for some reason. I felt like, because it was so rough, you know, it was like, I hope we've set aside enough time for us to get this right. I went home and I was like, "Oh, I'm, I'm stressed," but I guess that's normal. We were changing keys on songs that we played for 20 years. I had to relearn "Breaking the Habit" from scratch practically. Well, just cause, yeah, cause it had to be a different key. But yeah, I think the most important thing is that like for me, I can probably speak for the other guys too, It's like, you know having a thing that you felt like it was taken away and then being able to get it back like "oh, you can't play shows as Linkin Park anymore," even though Linkin Park is like Part of my DNA.

Everybody's got like a core identity diagram that you... there's stuff, like when you draw your little, like, this is who I am! Like, if you ask anybody, who, if you, if you were to sit down with a piece of paper and write down the things that make you, you. That's a crazy exercise if you think about it. It's the things you love to do, your family, do you have kids, you have some love, you have a spouse, whatever, like the things that make you, you and your beliefs and blah, blah, like really right in there, in the middle of it is Linkin Park for me. And there are other things too. There are many other things too, but to have that one out was painful. So to have it back in was like...I mean, there's nothing, nothing like it. There never will be anything like it.

Mike Shinoda Shares How He Got The Rest Of The Band On Board With Emily Armstrong

Well, I was a little more of a believer earlier, because I spent the most time with Emily. So, I was like, yeah, she's good. And I think the guys are going to like her, but I don't want to be pushy about it. Like, I want to just present what I think I know and let them, you know. And so we just started doing some sessions. I even made them a little, very short, Dead Sara playlist. A little medley. I mean it was only like five or six songs. Because I was like, if I had sent them an album and asked them to pick through that, forget it. There's something less intimidating about like, "Here's an EP that I put together." But it was specific to like, these are songs that I know have a connection to our songs, that If you hear these and then you start thinking about "One Step Closer" and "Waiting for the End" and different songs that require a different kind of singing, all of the variety of the band, you're going to listen to this and go, huh, I could see that. Maybe that does work. And so I started just giving them different pieces.

I think the one big turning point, like there are checkpoints where it was like "Oh this conversation just took a step up," and then one of the big ones was kind of out of nowhere Joe [Hahn], we were sitting there talking about the new music that we were writing and we had over a dozen songs at that point that we liked and Em had sung I think lead on one or like a part of a chorus on one or two of them and sung backgrounds on couple and that was it at that point. And it was just me and Joe and Dave [Farrell], and Joe was like "Do you think Emily would just sing? Could we just have her sing all of the stuff?", and he wasn't being silly. He was serious he's like "Do you think we could demo her voice as the lead? Like on certain songs just her on the whole song just to hear what that sounds like?" And I heard him say that I was like "This dude's a believer!" I know she'll be down to do it, I know he's gonna hear it, and he's gonna like it. I'm positive. The fact that he came to that conclusion before even I suggested anything was really, like, that was a big deal.

Mike Shinoda and Emily Armstrong Reveal How They First Met

Mike Shinoda: How did we meet?

Emily Armstrong: Do we tell the truth?

Mike Shinoda:, I mean here's my version of it was that I believe it was actually our drummer Rob [Bourdon]. But it could have been somebody else because I think a couple different people said that you should meet Emily. That she's not horrible and I think you would get along and it wasn't through the lens of the "you should meet her because I think she could be like the singer for Linkin Park." It was more just like she's cool, she's a great singer... and oh, yeah at the time it was when you reached out it was around the time...

Emily Armstrong: Yeah, for the Hollywood Bowl. The benefit show, yeah.

Mike Shinoda: The celebration of life, the Chester show.

Emily Armstrong: I was like, Oh, I'd really like to do that. And I was being vocal with friends and stuff, and they're like, Why don't you ask? And I was like, Oh, right. I mean, but like, okay. They've got everybody. I was like, Who the f***? Why would they want me? But I asked, but it was a little too late. Somebody got word of it at some point, but it was just like, yeah, we already have it all.

Mike Shinoda: Em had told me that later, and at first I was like, I don't remember that at all. And then something jogged my memory that we were literally, it was like the week of or something. We were already rehearsing all the songs. We had so much on our plates to get that show together that we didn't want to mess with what we were working with. Which actually in retrospect was lucky that it didn't work out that way because, by not having Emily present in that kind of space, later when we got together and started making new things and getting to know each other and stuff I think it was more of a blank slate

Mike Shinoda On How The Band Decided To Start Looking For A New Singer

We didn't go, "Alright, starting today we're gonna reform the band. Starting today we're gonna find a singer." That's like leaving your apartment and saying "Starting tonight, I'm going to find a spouse." You're going to do what? That's a crazy thing to do. Don't do that. Like, why don't you go out and like, see who's out there and hang out with some people and meet somebody and see if you get along. Like, that's way better. And by the way, I think I'm riffing off of this because, because this was actually our bass player, Dave's, um, kind of his project. He said that at one point, like he made that analogy, he described that analogy, and I just thought that was so funny and so real that, that, yeah, you don't, like, keep the pressure off yourself a little bit and like, we'll just, we'll just make music and we'll meet people and eventually, if it's meant to be, like, we'll connect with those things. We'll connect the right music, we'll connect with the right people, and we'll figure it out.

Mike Shinoda On How Colin Brittain Joined The Band, And Was Almost The Guitar Player Instead Of Drummer

Mike Shinoda: Colin Brittain was part of the process just as a writer and a co producer, like, I just love working with Colin. I met Colin, I met him in sessions and then was bringing him in to help with writing and production. And then eventually we were like, "hey, dude, turns out, we need somebody to play drums," I know that's his primary instrument, so I was like, "is that something you would want to do?" It would mean stepping away from your, like, production career.

Emily Armstrong: Wasn't it the thing where it was like, "well, we need somebody live, so do you want to play guitar or do you want to do drums?"

Mike Shinoda: Oh yeah, originally it was like that. We knew Brad [Delson] was gonna, Brad is... In case anybody doesn't understand like dynamic like our guitarist Brad is our guitarist. He's in the band. Yeah, but he's realized that in terms of his like... it's kind of like a mental health thing. He doesn't love the touring and the live show lifestyle. And so he's he is our guitarist, but he's not playing live. So he found a guy named Alex who's spectacular, really good guitarist and they get a long great and Brad chose Alex to play his parts live. But at the time we hadn't met Alex and so we asked Colin. I was like, "You know, Brad needs somebody to play guitar, and we need a drummer, like, you do both equally well, what would you want to do?" And he was just like, kid in a candy store. I think he said, "I can't believe what you're asking me right now." So excited.

Mike Shinoda On How Hard It Was To Keep The Linkin Park Reunion A Secret

Yeah, I was proud of myself. I was so tempted sometimes, there were some moments when people were asking a question and I'd be like, "oh if you only knew, motherf***er." Because we were in it at that time when I put out 'Already Over,' we were making Linkin Park songs at that point.

Like, we weren't calling them Linkin Park songs, but we were involved. You know, we were getting busy. And, uh, I think one of the things that struck me is that keeping it a secret. Like a bunch of people knew. They had to know because we were setting up things like we were having people come in and write. We're shooting things. We were talking to openers. So that meant like other bands and management and stuff. And the only thing that makes any sense to me logically is that the reason it didn't leak is because people either liked us or respected us enough to not do that.

And that, so to me, that's like, it was such a beautiful thing. That's big. Yes. Right? I like my friends even more now. Absolutely. Because nobody went out and was like, "yo, did you hear?"