Born in Los Angeles in 1977, Mike Shinoda is a founding member of US rock band Linkin Park. They garnered huge acclaim in the 00s as one of the pioneering groups in the nu-metal genre. Initially establishing a loyal online fanbase in the late 90s, their popularity filtered into the mainstream in 2000 with their debut album, Hybrid Theory – one of the bestselling albums of all time. After seven albums, Shinoda released his solo debut, Post Traumatic, a collection of songs written after Linkin Park co-frontman Chester Bennington killed himself in 2017. His new EP, The Crimson Chapter, is out now.
I was 25 and backstage on a US tour when this photo was taken. Back then, there was a difference between the way I might act in a social situation with friends versus the person I was on a photoshoot or on stage with Linkin Park. Like many artists, I created a persona as a defence mechanism. I wasn’t entirely comfortable being in the spotlight, so I developed a way I’d act around people. I think that comes across in a lot of the pictures from the time: I look a little more cocky, as if I am trying to emulate the rappers that I grew up loving, such as Public Enemy. Thankfully, now I am a lot more at ease and have stopped that.
Left to my own devices, I would just stand still in a photo. But by this point we’d had so many pictures taken for so many different publications that photographers would want more unique compositions. I was amenable to a relatively benign pose like this, but photographers would often want weirder stuff: “Just act silly!”; “Will you jump off this thing?”; “Can you make this dumb face?” I learned pretty quickly that if they took 100 normal pictures and one stupid one, it’s the stupid one they were going to put on the cover. We’d get so mad and eventually learned to stop. If they said, “Hey, could you do something crazy?” we’d just say no.
My memories from this era are blurry, but we were definitely riding on a high. It was such a sprawling tour and the last part of promoting Hybrid Theory, while also recording our second album, Meteora. We were going from city to city all over the world without any breaks for 18 months. I was rarely home – to the extent that I let the lease go on my apartment. My stuff went into storage, and when I was back I’d stay with my girlfriend. I didn’t have a clue about the world yet, but it was life-changing to taste new food, see new buildings and explore other cultures.
While the group had got bigger, we were still the same, focused on curating and communicating our message, and always questioning our motives: what are we trying to say with our music and what is our artistic vision? We knew we had done something life-changing with Hybrid Theory, that it was a moment that a lot of people were going to remember. But we felt strongly that we didn’t want to get pigeonholed into a past version of ourselves. Now I can look back and let in a bit of nostalgia. I have more of a sense of humour about that period – mainly about all those stupid pants I used to wear.
Growing up, music was always my passion and my hobby. Until we formed Linkin Park in 1996, music wasn’t my work, it was my play. I started learning the piano when I was four years old, and I kept going from there: getting into jazz, rap, blues; learning the guitar, keyboard and samplers. When I was at the ArtCenter College of Design of Pasadena, I thought I was on a path towards being an illustrator. I worked as a graphic designer for various places and whatever I earned in my job I’d spend on buying music gear or records.
Fame was never a priority. But it happened. In the early days, we would pile the whole group into the photos. If the photographer had it their way, it would just be Chester, or me and Chester, but we wanted people to know that this band was all of us, not just the singers at the front. Linkin Park being well known or well regarded was a blessing, but would I have wanted the band to be successful without being recognisable? Probably. The fame aspect of my career always felt odd – to the extent that I did an art series in 2008 and 2009 called Glorious Excess, where I painted about celebrity culture, reality TV, Michael Jackson and Diana, Princess of Wales. At the time I was standing on red carpets a lot with celebrities and thinking, “Wow, this is so weird. What a strange phenomenon.” It felt fascinating and unnatural to be treated in a certain way because our music was popular.
That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy the success of something that a lot of people had told us was not going to work. We felt vindicated, especially by the connection we had with our fans. As we got further into our career, everybody in the band adapted in different ways, but we always tried to look after each other. Each member of Linkin Park is very intelligent academically – but emotionally smart, too, which was fundamental at times. We toured non-stop for the first two records, and kudos to Brad [Delson, guitarist], Dave [Farrell, bassist] and Rob [Bourdon, drummer], who took stock of how our lives had changed and suggested we had a break. They would say things like, “Aren’t we lucky to have done this? But don’t we also have a lot of responsibility now?” That subtle approach to communicating was very powerful and led us to the decision to slow down for a minute.
Without them, I don’t think I would have stopped and reflected. There is rarely a period where I am at a loss for a creative idea to pursue. I am always writing songs, working with the band, scoring a movie or painting for fun. I just keep going. Different people deal with grief in different ways. My coping style was to stay in motion, through music and art.
Even though we didn’t have lyrics about getting older in an overt way, the subject of evolution was a theme that came up frequently over the years in Linkin Park. In 2007, we noticed that the landscape of music was changing. When we first arrived, bands such as Korn, Rage Against the Machine or Nine Inch Nails could debut and be in the charts. But by the time our third album, Minutes to Midnight, came out, the Strokes and the White Stripes were dominating. We were aware that there were younger people with new ideas who were showing up, and that our band had a different place in the world. It didn’t make us worried, but we knew we had to keep looking to the future.
That being said, we recently had the data for how many listeners we had in 2023. There are a huge number of new fans, in the multiple tens of millions, on streaming platforms. It’s also hysterical to see memes circulating on TikTok using Linkin Park music. That contingent is really exciting to me – not just because artists want to have new fans, but because it is a testament to the songs we created. Back then, I would have never guessed the music we were making would continue to connect with people 20 years later.
