Anyway, back to the interview: read to know more about Dead By Sunrise, Fort Minor future plans, Chester's talking about Motley Crue, Velvet Revolver and what Mike and Chester think about Brad's hair!
Read the whole thing here
Guy: The first two albums had absolutely no profanity and the last album has a parental advisory sticker on it I was wondering how...
Mike: It has a little bit.
Guy: Just a little bit but I’m wondering what made you guys decided to take that push?
Mike: Umm…
Chester: It worked for what they are… Nice. Like for example it’s not really necessary to be like ‘that chair just fucking broke’ cause Mike just did that, right? Caused that’s so unnecessary. But like when you are screaming like, you know ‘Put me out of my misery’, maybe it might use somewhere up there, you know what I mean? It’s all like…usually we tried to find a better way to sing what we’re saying without using too many words. But when Mike was like, we were in the studio and Mike goes ‘I want you to scream something you would really scream like up in the air when you feeling like that.’
Mike: We both said that, that was the line. Remember? We said that, and you looked at me like ‘Dude all of the guys are going to think that’s weird.’ And I’m like, I promise you that this line if it feels real, if it feels right …they heard it and we were totally wrong, we played it for them and they thought ‘that’s awesome.’
Guy: Mike, when you going to do another Fort Minor album?
Mike: No plans yet. Before “Minutes to Midnight” I didn’t know…But basically before this record I felt like that’s where that needed to go but now that’s why that sounded the way it does. Before “Minutes to Midnight” I wrote kind of songs like “Hands Held High” which happens to be the song on the Linkin Park record…but now with “Hands Held High” which like a Linkin Park song …I know I can just do that.
Guy: Hey Chester when is your “Dead By Sunrise” album coming out?
Chester: I don’t know when I going to be working on that and as well as working on then new LP record so…and I’m not even sure if I want to call it “Dead By Sunrise” any more. I think I might just go with Chester Bennington.
Guy: What made you changed it from “Snow White Tan” to “Dead by Sunrise”?
Chester: For the same reason that I might…I was just always kind of wondering if I should just go with my name or Phil Collins it or…I think there’s confusion with calling it, naming a band people think that might be…wondering away.
Mike: In my personal experience with Fort Minor it would have been better if I called it Mike Shinoda.
Chester: Yeah so like I don’t want anybody to get a misunderstanding of what it is, you know what I mean…
Mike: I had the worst time…I had the WORST time explaining that to people. Their like ‘Why is it called Fort Minor’ I was like ‘Well I wanted to name it something’.
Chester: Yeah that’s my thing to, like I wanted to name it something but I think I’m just going to name it me.
Guy: What was it like to have you guys’ song on “Transformers”? A big blockbuster to have you guys’ song it… How did that come about? I’m just curious.
Chester: One of the guys that was working on the film like the song and thought it would work great kind of as the song for the movie and took it in and played for Michael Bay, like put it over in certain pieces of the movie where he heard it and make an impact. And Michael Bay said ‘Go tell them that they need to put their song in our movie and do whatever you have to do to get it caused it fit so well, it work so well with the film’. And so it was pretty cool they kind of were very aggressive with us.
Mike: Yeah…I was telling somebody just the other day that their presentation was one of the most insane presentations we’ve ever gotten from anybody as like a pitch. Their pitch to get us like to like be convinced to use our song in the movie…like normally you would get like an email with like a synopsis, maybe like a preview with like some scenes like in a point in time...
Chester: Mind you we’re all huge “Transformers” fans. We all grew up on “Transformers” so we were fans away so all they had to do was to pretty much ask and we would have said yes.
Mike: Instead of that they came down to this thing where we were already at, like they came down to this press thing we were doing. And our manager said ‘Ok you know these guys from “Transformers” are down stairs and they’re ready to give you a presentation for the movie.’ We were like ‘Ok cool’, so we go downstairs and they had taken the entire hotel restaurant and transformed it into a movie theater. The biggest flat screen I have ever seen, 7.1 surround sound, that like blew our ears out, like we had to tell them to turn it down.
Chester: It was crazy.
Mike: We were just like…They went through so much like trouble just to sell us in this movie and we were like ‘ You really didn’t need to do that’.
Chester: It’s was cool though because we got to see like scene of the movie before it came out. We got to like see how they made the, you know, everything from like the finished fight scenes to just kind of like the broken down CG versions.
Mike: I know we saw like the highway scene…
Chester: It’s pretty awesome.
Mike: Umm unfinished which was really cool.
Guy: Think you guys are gonna have like, another song in the “Transformers” sequel album?
Mike: I say…I say it’s probably unlikely, cause I think the things just lined up really well cause our album coming out and their movie coming out, so unless their movie comes out at the exact same time as our album did then it’s unlikely so you never know.
Girl: Chester I saw your “Artist on Artist”… that was awesome. You guys know each other pretty well.
Chester: Yeah, we met when we did…I performed… during the Katrina middle phased and we did a Motley Crew song together, we kind of just hit it off. I’ve known Tommy Lee for a while and umm I didn’t really know anybody else in the band and when we did “Home Sweet Home” we just started talking, and it was like we were friends. He called me up and be like ‘hey just wondering what you’re doing’, you know, just like what the hell? Umm yeah, so we got to know each other pretty well, and he called me up to asked me to do some singing on the record… and I couldn’t do it cause we were working on “Minutes to Midnight” but then you know, I be like I don’t know, I was telling him about the record and how different it was and asking him for his advice on how I should feel about that. And he was like, ‘who cares because we did like “Shout Out to the Devil” and then we did “Girls, girls, girls,” and everyone was telling us not to do that and we did “Doctor Feel Good” and everyone tells us not to do that and every time they told us not to do it we did it anyway, and they were totally wrong.’ So it was pretty cool. And so yeah naturally we being friends for a few years and so when he asked me to do that, it was nice. We basically just talked for the whole time and it was nice.
Guy: How would you feel about singing with Velvet Revolver?
Chester: It’s pretty cool, I mean I would sing with Velvet Revolver, unfortunately I’m friends with Scott Weiland and I’m friends with everybody else in the band so it would be a little weird cause I know there was some tension between them and it was interesting cause Slash called me and asked me to sing, to do a show in Vegas with them because Scott couldn’t make the show and I was like ‘Ok I’ll do it, what do you want me to do?’ and he was like ‘Well I don’t know like what do you think.’ Well do you want me to sing whole set or do you want me to do some songs? And so that I think might of some how transpired to somebody else and that was when the rumor started and I said couldn’t do the show.
Guy: Is it true that you going to appearing in Timberland’s next album?
Chester: Me?
Guy: Umm Linkin Park.
Mike:…That was a rumor from before the record that he put out already and that happened a lot in the hip-hop community for some reason that people have to go out and say that we’re going to be on their record and we’re not. I heard that we’re going to be in Timberland’s record, I’ve heard we’re going to be in Akon’s record, I’ve heard that we’re going to be on 50 Cent’s record because, because, cause Chester sang on Young Buck’s track and that got misconstrued.
Guy: What you guys think of Brad’s hair when he first grew it?
Mike: I told him he should cut it or I’ll kick his ass…
Chester: I would like him to shave his beard though, his beard is kind of gross but his hair is cool. Just trim it down.
Mike: With the hair and no beard?
Chester: Just trim it down like the beard is kind of like, he’s half of caveman.
Mike: His hair with no beard would look like Will Ferrell…
On another note, Chester was talking to Billboard about Linkin Park's forth album which will start being recorded next month and there's a high chance it will be a concept album. He also said that he is finishing his very first solo album and revealed the producer's name. Check out all the cool news in this article.
Labels: article, interview, linkin park, MnG story, news
