Writer: Chris Ahrens | Photography: Estevan Oriol
Linkin Park provides the soundtrack for a generation, producing celestial beats, more an experience than a sound really, and, I’m here to tell you exactly what their lyrics mean, and uh…diarrhea of the typewriter, Ernest Hemingway called it. Hey, this ain’t no press release so let’s be honest. OK, I’ve never seen Linkin Park live, don’t own one of their records, and couldn’t pick Mike Shinoda out of a police lineup.
    Really, I only heard the name Linkin Park four years ago, while eavesdropping on junior high kids debating the relative merits of the band. Kid One: “Is Linkin Park metal or punk?” Kid Two: “Linkin Park is rap.” It ended just short of a fistfight with me refereeing and wondering at the power to evoke such emotion. Knowing nothing at all about the group myself, I abstained from voting, never thinking that years down the line I would speak to Linkin Park’s emcee, vocalist/songwriter, rhythm guitarist, keyboardist, and pianist, Mike Shinoda, leaving the other fixtures for another day. Big deal, right? Well, kind of, with more than 40 million records sold (which equates to about one for every eighth U.S. citizen). And Paramount Studios must have thought Linkin Park is a big deal—big enough to bank their talent on a musical score for this past summer’s megaton theatrical drop, Steven Spielberg’s Transformers.
    While I’m at it, I should also confess that I usually don’t care for loud music or the people who make it—full of themselves, more hype than talent, peddling rehashed licks to the Clearasil generation. And poor Mike Shinoda got me on a bad day, a hot day with good waves to be ridden. Instead I had to make a phone call to this guy that I didn’t know and didn’t really want to know. I mean, what would a surf-addicted cynic from the ’60s and some contemporary musician/artist have in common?
    OK, close your eyes and pretend you’re talking to the smartest kid in preschool, OK an average kid in preschool, all right, the dumbest kid in preschool.
    Ring. Hi, this is Chris from Risen Magazine, can I, I mean may I speak to Mike Shinoda?
    Please call back in ten minutes; he’s eating breakfast right now.
    Sure I’ll call back. [Sarcasm restrained]
    [Fifteen minutes later] Ring, ring. Hi, this is Chris from Risen Magazine. [Faking enthusiasm]
    I’ll get Mike.
    Hello.
    Hi Mike, this is...
    Two minutes into connecting with the voice, I hook up with a mind, an opinion, a sense of humor and gosh, this rock guy, or rap guy, this painter, producer, whatever…Maybe I can get an autograph for my nephew. I mean, he did sing for Spielberg and he knows words I have to look up, and…Shut up, Chris Ahrens. Listen, don’t judge until you’ve got all the facts, then shut up some more. This guy might just teach you something.

Risen Magazine: Einstein said ideas came from outside of himself; where do you think they come from?
Mike Shinoda: I think it’s far too early in my day for me to figure that one out.

RM: OK, your best guess.
MS: [Laughs] I’m just jokin’ with you, man. Actually, I’ve been trying to let ideas happen, as unedited as I can. Whether it’s something for artwork or music, I try to put the basic idea down first, before I start changing it. If I change it before it goes down, I’ll never know what the rawest version of it was.

RM: I think that first impulse is almost a dream state and over-thinking it clouds that vision. Not that he’s my hero, but Allen Ginsberg got to a point where he wouldn’t rewrite any of his poems, for just those reasons, I assume.
MS: That’s a little extreme for what I do, but I can imagine some cases where it might work. It probably works better for art than for music. In art I can put down an idea that’s really raw, that will work for me. Musically, the ideas first appear a little rough around the edges.
RM: As a teenager, I’d sometimes meet a cute girl at the beach, and meet her later that night. After she had put on makeup and changed clothes, I’d think, What happened to that girl from the beach?
MS: Yeah, I used to tell my wife not to wear any makeup. [Laughs]

RM: So maybe that’s a theme throughout your life.
MS: Nah, I think there’s a time for it. When we worked on Minutes to Midnight, as a band we tried to really get in touch with the idea of putting down the rawest version of the song first. I like to polish up a production, where I’ve looked it over ten times and I know every little detail of it, where there’re no cross-fades or anything like that. I had to learn to sort of let those things go, as something that gives the song character or makes it unique.

RM: It seems to me that the best art and music feels like it’s always been around, as if it wasn’t written by anyone and belongs to everyone.
MS: When I hear a song that’s really groundbreaking, there’s always a thought in the back of my mind that something about it is familiar. I remember, for example, the first time I heard Aphex Twin, the first time I heard The Roots, I knew that I was hearing something different, but obviously there’s a lot of other stuff that these guys grew up on. They take what they know and create their own original version of it. It speaks a lot to their influences and their personalities. That’s something Linkin Park strives to do. As musicians one of our goals is to make something completely original. You usually never do that, but you still shoot for it.

RM: We live in a time when people are constantly listening to music, getting constant input; do you think we might be approaching input overload? Maybe it’s changed the way people process thought.
MS: There’s a possibility, obviously, that our brains are working differently than in generations before us. I’ll say from my personal experience that it’s been a challenge and a focus of mine to actually sit with information for longer periods of time, even if it’s something someone said or emailed. You can sit down and turn other things off and enjoy that