- So the 'Meteora 20' set is a pretty big set,
and fans are going to get-
I don't know how else to, like, categorize this.
So some of these items you may not have a player for,
but five vinyl records, four CDs, three DVDs,
plus, like, stencils and stickers and a huge book.
It's basically a super comprehensive package
about the album and the making of the album,
all the demos that went into it, new, unreleased,
never-before-heard songs, and things like that.
Hey, MTV News, I'm Mike Shinoda from Linkin Park
and these are my top five memories
from the release of our album 'Meteora.'
My first favorite memory of the release of 'Meteora'
is probably the actual, like, release day.
We had a signing, just, you know, signing people's albums
at, like, a record store in L.A., and when we got there,
I think it was a two-level place.
The entire place was packed with fans.
The line was out the door and around the block
to the next block.
When we walked in, we were like, the energy was insane.
We sat down and we started signing,
and management came over.
They kept bringing us food and water.
It was so long we had to take bathroom breaks.
They came over to us at one point and they said,
"You guys, we're scheduled to be here 'til, you know,
"whatever time the place closes, like 10 or something,
"but if we do that, there's gonna be another, like,
"thousand people, maybe 1500 people.
"Like, what do you want us to do?"
I kind of looked to everybody else
and we kind of had a little powwow about it, and everyone,
I was so happy that everybody agreed to, like,
stay and sign until every single person
had gotten their stuff signed.
I felt a little bad for the people who worked there,
but I think they were along for the ride
'cause it was a really special moment.
I just met somebody who said to me, "I was in that line
"near the end and we were convinced
"you guys were gonna stop before we got in."
And he was basically like, "I can't believe
"that you guys signed as late as you did.
And I got an..." Like, he showed me the album cover.
Insane.
My next favorite memory from 'Meteora'
was starting to write the album.
I remember we were on tour, we were touring 'Hybrid Theory,'
and at a certain point, we had played, like, 300 shows
in 365 days. Two shows a day at some points,
and the idea got floated, like, you know,
it's probably time to kind of start thinking
about the next album, and at the time, a recording rig,
like, now you can do it on your phone.
Back then, like, the recording rig
had to be, like, the size of a full-size refrigerator.
It was enormous.
In the back of our bus, our road crew
basically took out all of- the sofa and the table,
everything, the back of the bus was flat,
and then we installed this, like, refrigerator
of computer gear and, like, a little desk.
I spent most days of the week before shows,
after shows, back there starting to work on the record.
There's something so special to the idea of, like,
working on a song and then going and playing on stage
for people and then coming back.
I felt like I was still carrying that energy
and that perspective, maybe, like, connection with the fans
as I was working on these brand new songs.
Then the other guys would, like, filter in and out
and, like, throw an idea down
or what about this, what about that?
It was a really unique experience doing it.
My third favorite memory is actually one that's captured
in the 'Meteora 20' box set package.
When we got into the studio to make 'Meteora,'
we were still really, like, I'm gonna say immature,
but also just, like, having fun.
I don't remember how the idea of a mullet contest came up.
I definitely didn't endorse it.
It wasn't my idea and I didn't want to do it,
but whatever happened, I think we all did it.
I mean, that footage is literally in this package.
Like, we've all got the- but there's no explanation.
My favorite part is there's no explanation
for what the hell is going on.
You just see us in the studio,
and all of a sudden you see, like,
Brad [Delson] with a mullet on a horse,
as if that's just normal.
Other than that, I don't know how we arrived there.
I don't know how long it lasted.
I just see these pictures and I'm like, that was real,
but it's, like, so confusing.
It's almost like an alternate reality.
And I know that it was, like,
towards the beginning of recording that album.
We were just having so much fun.
Another one of my favorite memories is 'Collision Course'
with Jay-Z and MTV,
and we arrived there in a really weird, roundabout way.
I had always joked with my friends that, like,
I'd snuck in the back door to, like, being a rapper,
because I didn't come out saying, like, "Oh, I'm a rapper.
"This is my rap music."
I was, like, part of a rock band,
but my background was always producing.
Like, I had learned to produce songs by mashing up stuff.
Like, I was taking, like, Nine Inch Nails
and, like, Jackson 5 and, like, Wu-Tang Clan,
and, like, that's how I learned to make beats.
So that informed how the 'Collision Course' thing
came together.
I didn't know it at the time,
but I was our in-house producer.
It wasn't until years later when we worked with Rick Rubin
that he had said to me like,
"Oh, what you do is actually production."
And I was like, "It is?"
After 'Meteora' came out, after we had toured again,
you know, even bigger shows and gone to places
we had never been, we got a message saying,
MTV has reached out to Jay-Z to do a mash-up album.
They said, who do you want to do it with?
And he said, you guys. He said, Linkin Park.
Do you want to do that?
And we were like, "No way!"
I had grown up on Jay's music. Of all the guys in the band,
I was probably the biggest Jay-Z fan, and so my reaction,
I remember sitting with Brad,
and Brad and I were kind of, like, the core production team,
and I was like, "You know what I want to do?"
I went into the bus, and I basically put together
three mash-ups immediately,
over the course of, like, a day or two.
And I sent those back to John Meneilly and to Jay-Z.
That was our response.
The question was, "Do you wanna do it?"
The response was, "Here's three songs."
And the response via John from Jay was, "Oh (bleep)."
Like, he loved it and he knew it was a thing.
And finally, my last favorite memory: There was a show,
we were on a festival, and at the time,
we were still proving ourselves as a band.
Like, even though we were headlining shows,
even though we're headlining festivals,
we still approached them like,
well, not everybody in the crowd is our fan.
So we played our set and we headlined the main stage
of this festival and we felt like we killed it,
did a great job, we loved that show.
We went back in our dressing room, we were overhearing,
I think it was, like, our production manager
talking to somebody, and they were really stressed,
and he said, "What's going on?"
He said, "Well, there's a second stage that's,
like, a super heavy metal stage."
I believe it was Slipknot was supposed to headline that
at, like, a late-night set.
Basically, their bus had broken down.
They weren't able to make their set,
and so the promoter was losing it.
He knew that their fans were gonna, like,
he was worried they were gonna riot,
gonna tear apart the venue 'cause they had waited all day
until- now they're, like, drunk and tired,
and the band's not going to show up.
We had toured with those guys a bunch.
We understood them, we kind of understood their fans.
We liked them, like, they are a very, like, impressive band,
really talented, and their fans are hardcore.
So we were like, OK, we kind of powwowed and agreed
that we would offer to the promoter, like,
we'll go play a second set to just appease these fans
and hopefully, like, minimize any problems.
And because it'll kind of be fun.
Like, let's see what happens.
The promoter agreed, and we go out there,
and they got on the mic and they told this crowd
that Slipknot wasn't coming out, and the boos,
I mean, you felt the boos. The boos were so loud,
you could feel them in your chest.
Like, you could feel them in your body.
And they announced that we were gonna come play a set
instead of Slipknot and the boos were worse.
And we took the stage and we got on the mic,
and we said, hey guys, like, listen,
you know we've toured with them a ton.
We love those guys and it's not their fault
that they couldn't be here tonight,
but we didn't want you to go home almost, like,
empty-handed, so if you stick around,
we promise we're gonna make it worth your while.
You could feel them kind of be like,
"OK, like, what's that?"
And we just launched immediately into the loudest, heaviest,
craziest set we could put together with our material.
We maybe played, like, I don't know how long we played,
like, maybe 45 minutes, an hour.
We played deep cuts. I think we played a cut,
like, a Nine Inch Nails cover or Deftones cover or something
and just went as hard as we could.
We were exhausted, but within a song or two,
those fans were with us.
We were- there was a lot on the line for us.
Like, I feel like we could have gotten, like,
stuff thrown at us and gotten, like, knocked out,
but we pulled it off.
I was really proud of the guys.
I was really proud that we'd taken a risk,
and the promoter was, like, indebted to us for life.
A few years ago we did a 20th anniversary
of 'Hybrid Theory' as,
I think it was a little bit of an experiment,
and I wasn't sure that we wanted to do
a 20th anniversary of 'Meteora,'
but the question was like, well, let's see.
Basically, like, let's see what we've got,
and if that's, like, worth putting out,
if it's something the fans will want.
And as soon as we dug into, like, the hard drives and stuff,
we immediately found so much great stuff
and we knew it was gonna be a thing.
Making a second album when your first album
was 'Hybrid Theory' was, like,
I can't imagine anything tougher.
When we made 'Hybrid Theory,' I was still, like,
sometimes going back and staying with my parents.
Like, we were in college and the stakes were low.
It was the best-selling album on the planet that year,
so to come off of that and say,
"OK, let's make another album"-
I remember it being just, like,
there are multiple levels and, like,
layers of pressure and complexity
that you wanna do something
that is commercially successful that the fans like.
You wanna do something that's artistically challenging
that you love and you feel you pushed yourself
and you made something great,
that references, like, what people expect enough
but also pushes the envelope and does something new
and interesting enough.
And then to make matters worse,
there was this rumor that had gone around-
it started in England, and the rumor was
that we were a manufactured, like, industry plant,
that we were a boy band that the label had configured
and we didn't even know each other
and we didn't write our songs.
So we also had to, like, almost, like, address that.
And we started for the first time, like, filming everything.
Like, we were filming stuff on the road,
we were filming stuff in the studio to really show, like,
for better or worse, like, we make this stuff,
to, like, basically show that we could do it again
and that we had the artistic vision
to take it to another level.
I think you hear it on songs like "Breaking the Habit"
and "Nobody's Listening" and "Session."
"Session" was an instrumental song, for example,
that we got a Grammy nomination for.
"Breaking the Habit" ended up being a single.
There's no screaming. There's no heavy guitars.
It's mostly programmed track and live strings, you know.
That's definitely, at the time,
like, no one expected us to go there.
And it set us up to be able to do more things
in our career later on.
For people that do check out
the 'Meteora 20' physical box set,
like, it's a gorgeous piece of work.
Just really proud of it and I think it captures a lot
of the old photos and the culture
of what was going on with the band back then.