get put in a situation where there’s an
expectation put in you as if you are the one
responsible for whether it was good or not.
There was a great TED talk by Elizabeth
Gilbert that I just listened to, and she was
talking about how, in ancient Greek and
Roman times, genius was not a human —
Genius was a deity. And Genius was
responsible for great art – you just chan-
neled Genius the way a religious leader
artists – and I hope I’m one of them – for
whom that stuff is a fact of life, and you
can’t erase it from your mind, but the real
focus of a session when you sit down to
write a song is to find the truth - the truth in
whatever it is you’re writing about. To find
the heart, to create good art. And if you’re
lucky, you’ll create great art. So when I was
sitting down to write this stuff, it didn’t start
off as wanting to make a song or an album
November 2
Black Eyed Peas Masters Of The Sun Vol. 1
Dead Can Dance Dionysus
Marianne Faithfull Negative Capability
Tenacious D Post-Apocalypto
The Prodigy No Tourists
Touche Amore 10 Years/1000 Shows...
November 9
11•2018
would challenge the word of God. Then all
of a sudden the artist was the one responsi-
ble for the great work, and maybe it was ego
that changed that perception. But now, for a
lot of people, it’s hard to wake up in the
morning and say, “Wow – is my best work
behind me?” So I dealt with that a long time
ago. Our first two records were so big obvi-
ously that to expect to be able to do that
over and over again is just ludicrous.
Because again, it’s out of your hands. So at a
certain point, you have to go, “Okay, those
songs are done. So where do we go from
here?”And we started making artistic deci-
sions that were more adventurous and more
risky, and in turn, they were really reward-
ing, and they fed us creatively. And they
definitely were more polarizing for fans at
large because they were riskier ideas.
Fast forward to this year, there was a ver-
sion of that that I had never experienced
before, which was, these days when people
think of you making an album, they think of
marketing and radio play, and you’re basi-
cally contriving a song. But there are still
at all – I was just dealing with life and some
really horrible things that had happened. I
was afraid to go into my home studio – I
didn’t like the feeling of remembering me
and Chester in there, sitting in that room
recording our songs. But I had to eventually
get over that – within a few weeks, I came in
and started noodling, just playing, just jam-
ming on piano and guitar. And those jams
turned into songs; the songs turned into an
album. And at the end of the day, the most
important thing to me was, did I tell the
truth? Is this an accurate journal of the nine
months that passed while I was doing it?
And you can hear it in the songs – the jour-
ney from that really dark place filled with
anxiety and apprehension to hope and con-
fidence by the end of the record. And now
it’s continuing on through the show.
Mike Shinoda performs Sunday, November
11 at House of Blues, Chicago.
10 illinoisentertainer.com november 2018
Tom Lanham
Hanson String Theory
J Mascis Elastic Days
Jeff Goldblum The Capitol Studios Sessions
Mark Knopfler Down The Road Wherever
Muse Simulation Theory
Old Wounds Glow
Charles Bradley Black Velvet
Smashing Pumpkins
November 16
John Mellencamp Other People's Stuff
Little Mix LM5
Mariah Carey Caution
Mumford & Sons Delta
Ryley Walker The Lillywhite Sessions
Smashing Pumpkins Shiny and Oh So Bright...
The Good, The Bad & The Queen Merrie Land
Michael Bublé Love
November 23
Art Brut Wham! Bang! Pow! Let's Rock Out!
Bauhaus The Bela Session
Rita Ora Phoenix
November 30
Bryan Ferry Bitter-Sweet
Jeff Tweedy WARM
The 1975 A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships
Jeff Tweedy