Hey guys, sorry I've waited so long, but last week at the LPU Summit in Camden, I was lucky enough to win a raffle for a backstage tour with Mike and Dave. I wrote down some of the more interesting questions/answers that came up while we were back there, and I wanted to share them with all of you. During the tour, we saw a few rooms, like the Wardrobe Room, the Production Room, and even the "Zen Room." A handful of crew family members were hanging out in the Production Room including Production Manager Jim Digby's little boy who had been practicing his "rock, paper, scissors" skills since earlier in the day (for those of you who were there, you'll know what I'm talking about). The LP video guy recorded our entire tour (hopefully we make an appearance in the next LPTV episode!) and Mike recorded 3 Viddy's while he and Phoenix showed us around. Here's some of the more interesting items that came up while on the tour: 1. While in the Wardrobe Room, someone asked about whether or not they get to choose what they wear on stage. Mike explained that they do indeed choose for themselves and that they had tried in the past to have "show attire," a handful of outfits that would continually be washed and re-used for shows, but after a while, they got sick of not being able to choose their own clothes, so they threw that idea out. 2. Someone asked one of the LPA-inspired questions regarding the speech that plays at the beginning of Victimized. Mike explained that it was a recording of some random guy in some random foreign country who had been selling bootleg Linkin Park merchandise, a recording which he kept on his phone and which they eventually used for the song. It has no deeper significance. Kinda funny though. 3. I asked about the song title Iridescent and where it came from. They told us that it had been the working title for a DIFFERENT song while they were working on ATS (they didn't say which) and eventually as things progressed, they just decided they liked it and would keep it as the official title of what came to be Iridescent. This prompted a talk about the working titles they use throughout their recording. They mentioned Tinfoil, Figure.09, and others all came to be named by the same method. 4. In conjunction with the discussion of past working titles becoming song titles, they joked about how when Brad comes up with the working titles, "they usually come from a really inspired place" and end up being things like "Song B, Song D, Song A" lol They also told us a story about a song Brad had introduced that they came across while working on an album, the working title for which was something like "Bloody Warhammer." When they saw it, they were excited to get a chance to work on something up-beat after a while of working on slow songs, and when they finally played it, it was the SLOWEST, most boring acoustic melody accompanied by Brad's slow singing. That made us all laugh. They said Brad names songs like that harmlessly while Joe does it on purpose lol 5. I asked if there had maybe been just a few songs that got "the final cut" just before they chose the official 12 tracks for Living Things, and they just talked about how there are always songs that they work on over long periods of time, maybe that they come back to after a long while, but they also mentioned that they started work both Powerless and I'll Be Gone BEFORE ATS ever came out. 6. That response reminded me of another question I'd been dying to ask: "When They Come For Me, I'll Be Gone. Both the 5th track on subsequent albums. Was that intentional?" Mike paused for a second, recited the lyrics outloud, then said "Oh wow, no, that was completely unintentional." Without skipping a beat, Dave said to him, jokingly "What are you doing??" then he turned to me and said "Yes, that was intentional, and any cool things you ever notice like that are always intentional." Then we both joked about how I should also assume they were probably his idea. They both had an awesome sense of humor. 7. Someone asked about any strange requests that any of them might have made or usually make while on tour. They couldn't think of any, other than some dietary requests, but they did tell us a story about the first time they played in Israel. They said a local newspaper had written an article explaining that the band had "apparently" requested something like 1000 towels all on golden towel racks. They obviously did not come up with that but joked that they wished they were that creative because that sounded like fun lol On our way out, I asked if they would ever play Wretches and Kings or Pushing Me Away again live (preferably sometime soon). Dave explained that W&K is tough to play live and that they didn't have the right stuff to pull that one off right now, but he said Pushing Me Away was definitely a possibility, and I tried to hammer home my interest in seeing it live. It's one of my favorite songs, and I really hope they bring it back, so maybe my plea will have some effect in the near future. Anyways, sorry for being so long-winded. We saw Chester standing in his practice room with his vocal coach talking but didn't have any run-ins with Joe, Brad, or Rob. But the tour was really cool, the guys were great. I hope some of this information was insightful for you guys. I certainly enjoyed hearing it all. For those of you who will have a chance to catch the second half of the Honda Civic Tour, PLEASE GO. You won't regret it. Thanks for reading. -Eliot EDIT: For those of you who haven't seen it yet (or anyone who wants to see it again), I recorded both of the acoustic songs LP played during the summit and I put the videos on YouTube. The links are here: The Messenger: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26DHK8xc_AA In My Remains: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvTo8Yp14NA
Awesome review! Glad you had a great time I also had a backstage tour with Mike at the London Summit and it was amazing! He also joked about the gold racks there too, haha.
Great review! Sounds like the tour was awesome! And great questions ^^ the guys seems hilarious. Can't wait to meet them one day!!
That's awesome! Thanks for sharing! Now the question is, he mentioned Figure.09... How did he say the title? Figure point-oh-nine, Figure point-zero-nine, Figure Nine, Figure Oh-nine, Figure Zero-nine, Figure dot-oh-nine, figure dot-zero-nine? You get my point...
Awesome review!! I wish I got that backstage tour, I was at the Summit as well. Really interesting information. I always thought that POWERLESS sounded like a MTM song, maybe it really is from that era. Great read. Thank you for sharing!
That was interesting to read! I definitely feel MtM vibes from both Powerless and I'll Be Gone. The latter one especially feeling close to the sound of Pretend To Be which was the direction they were heading before ATS.
I can't believe they didn't notice the When They Come for Me/I'll be Gone thing. Seems like they would be right on top of that kind of stuff XD
It's pretty obvious now that I'll Be Gone is Primo. This is the last bit of information I needed to confirm what I thought.