As we posted a few days ago, an interview with Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington talked about LIVING THINGS debuting at number one, but that was just an excerpt. The full interview has been posted via The Indie Spiritualist, it’s an interview with both Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington and Incubus’ Brandon Boyd. They touch on various topics, first Chris Grosso (interviewer) asked the guys about their political affiliations, Music for Relief and their green movement, touring with each other and what they hope fans will take away with them after seeing them both headline the Honda Civic Tour, if Linkin Park have started writing on the their sixth studio album (which he says they haven’t), then Chester specifically talks about tour after the Honda Civic Tour including South Africa (which Linkin Park are excited for), South America, Europe, Asia, and then another U.S. Tour.


Then they touch on writing and producing music as they get older and wiser then take a turn from the question going into…a very different and unusual outcome. Then they move onto the trademark style of both bands, and talk about the Honda Civic Tour again and answer if they have any plans on making any guest appearances while the other band is on stage, which they have answered no plans as of yet. Chester talks about LIVING THINGS debuting at number one, which has been posted here, and then both of the guys talk about being in bands and how hard it is sometimes working with so many. Read an excerpt below or the original HERE.

TIS: It’s great and refreshing to hear that you’re both so in touch with these important issues. So can you guys talk about why you wanted to team up for this tour and what you hope fans who may not have seen one of your bands before walk away with?
BB: Chester, if you don’t mind I’ll hop into this.


CB: Yeah.


BB: I personally think it’s an occasion that’s kind of long overdue. We have a lot of mutual listeners and I think that it’s one of those things that once the idea was floated, and we really kind of caught onto it, that it seemed like, why haven’t we done this yet? Linkin Park has a considerably larger reach than Incubus has, and I think it’s going to be wonderful for us as a band to play in front of more people (laughing.) So we definitely appreciate the opportunity but I personally think that it’s going to be great because of the carryover between the fans. There are a lot of Linkin Park fans who are also Incubus fans and vice versa. But we’ve never done something like this before so I’m really excited for it to get started.


CB: Thank you, Brandon. I agree. I think that it’s funny because in Linkin Park, each member has one thing they do better than others. For example I’m really bad at reading long-form legal documents (laughter.)


BB: You are? (laughing)


CB: Most of it doesn’t make any sense to me. You know, there are guys in the band who are much better and more qualified to kind of go through that process than me. So one of the places that I actually can contribute some skill or input that matters is regarding touring. Typically, even in my loosest form, I’ve been involved in figuring out who we would tour with for a long time now. And so, I swear, it feels like I’ve probably tried to figure out a way to get Linkin Park and Incubus on the road together at least once per cycle for quite a while now. It just goes to show how difficult it can be to actually get two headlining groups together. Kind of going back to your first question, it was surprising to me that we haven’t actually done more touring with Incubus than we have in the last 14 years. We do share a big group of fans that listen to both bands. I do still feel like there’s a large number of people that are Incubus fans that never really got into Linkin Park, or vice versa, but I think that there’s a common interest there. So I feel like that’s one of the things that’s been so overwhelmingly positive, which is everyone’s response to our bands going on tour together. I think it gives both of our fans something that they’ve wanted for a long time because I think they’ve had to choose a lot of times on which band they’re going to go see. Like when we’re on tour in the U.S., Incubus is off in the Pacific Rim, hopping all over Asia or somewhere in Europe and we’re down in Asia. It just never works out. So I think the fact that they’re ending their cycle and we’re beginning ours, that things have lined up for us to be able to do a tour like this together. We get to go out and just fully express ourselves as artists and really do whatever we want to do. So I’m very appreciative to the people on the Civic tour. You know, having the vision to understand that this is something that is rare and is something that people are going to be excited to go see. You never get to go see Bon Jovi and Kiss at the same time. This feels as exciting as a lot of the concerts that I would be excited to go to when I was a kid. That is one of the reasons why when I was young, Lollapalooza became so important, it was the only place that you could go see the Chili Peppers, Ministry, Pearl Jam and Ice Cube play together. That’s been the inspiration for modern festivals and I think that this does kind of feel like a little mini-festival, even though there are only three bands (laughing). It does have that feeling of being a show that you want to go see because it’s got something special. I’m excited. Honestly I think and hope that our bands can walk away inspired from each other. You know? I’ve always appreciated Incubus for their music. And they’re also very good live. I’ve had the chance to pop over and watch them play a couple songs onstage here and there at some festivals throughout our career and they’re a great live band. So I think the energy is going to be really amazing out in the crowd. I would actually like to be down there to watch the show but I don’t know if that’s going to be possible (laughing.)


TIS: Now Chester, as you referenced earlier too, this is the very beginning of the Living Things touring cycle. What’s on the horizon after the Honda Civic tour and also, you guys have a habit where the next album tends to start when you’re on the road, so I’m also wondering if that process has started already, too?
CB: Usually in the beginning of the touring cycle we kind of focus on what we’re going to be doing with the new music. Touring at this point for us is pretty awesome. I was thinking the other day about why it is difficult to get casual fans into new music? I think it’s because when we started touring it was just Hybrid Theory and Hybrid Theory was like 36 minutes long. We started out opening shows which was great because we played for 15-25 minutes and then leave. So when we got to the point where people fell in love with what we were doing and were listening to us and we were the headlining band, we were forced to play our entire record. Like, every single night. And so people were, I think, falling in love with the record in a different way. And even with Meteora, once we had that record it was like, OK, we basically have enough music to fill a proper headlining set. And so we’ve essentially played both records all the way through for our entire first five years, six years of touring. So once you get to that point where you have a bunch of songs that people have heard on the radio, it becomes less about playing everything you have and more about playing the songs that people are familiar with. We’re at that point now where it’s like, we’ve been around for over a decade, that makes it sound more important, I think (laughing.) But we’ve been around for over 10 years and this is our fifth record. We’ve been fortunate to have a lot of songs do really well off our records and so a lot of people come there to hear the songs they know. Adding in new material becomes something that is a little bit more difficult for us over the last few records because most of the songs that are really great are like, mid-tempo songs and Linkin Park isn’t the band that you go to see to hear that stuff. No one wants to come to a Linkin Park show and stand there and look at the band and listen to beautiful music. People want that but they also want to be kicked in the face and they want to run into each other and jump up and down and sing and have a really great, high-energy time. So being able to incorporate a lot of new material into our set just felt like it was bringing too much of the energy down. So I think what we’re doing on this tour is like with the new record. The new record has so much energy that we feel like we could add a bunch of new music to the set and people will be stoked about it. Casual fans are there to hear the three songs that they love, and go “Oh yeah, I didn’t know they did this song too!” Those fans will actually enjoy hearing the new music at these shows. Right now at this point we’re focused on making sure the new material is up to speed and that we’re familiar with it enough to go and play it live. At that point, once that kind of calms down, that’s usually when the creative process starts to kick in because now we’re not creating a show and we’re working on learning new music. That’s something we don’t do, we don’t sit and jam, we don’t hang out as a band and write music together. That’s just not what we do. So a lot of our connection time and what you would think would be stereotypical band moment time really comes from when we’re learning these new songs and rehearsing and going out and playing these new songs as a set for the first time. Then everything’s new and fresh and I think because we’re adding so much of the new record over the next few months to our live set, that’s what we’re focused on. But once that calms down, that creative hunger is going to turn itself on and we’re going to start writing new music. So I would imagine by the time we’re done touring this record, we’ll be in a similar position to where we were with 1,000 Suns going into Living Things. We’ll be able to go right into the studio, make another record and put it out and keep that cycle going. We’ve really got ourselves in a position now where we feel like we’re touring less as an idea of let’s go tour really hard for nine months and then come home and then tour really hard for another nine months and then come home and hopefully have enough energy to want to do anything else. It’s like touring for a few weeks and coming home for a month, and going out and touring for a few weeks and coming home for a month. So we’re really spending as much time home as we are on the road and I think that also caters to it and encourages a creative process because we feel energized more, more often. So I think that kind of answers all of your questions into one ginormous ongoing answer.


TIS: I think that’s a fair assessment (laughing.) I’m wondering too after Honda Civic, where else are you guys going to be touring, and how long do you think you’ll be on the road more or less for Living Things.
CB: I think we’ll be touring more or less through next summer for sure. Maybe even into next fall, depending on what the schedule looks like. I know that we’re planning on going to South Africa for the first time, which I’m very excited about. We’re planning on going to South America, going back to Europe, going to Asia, and doing another U.S. tour, I believe to end it all next year and then go straight back again into the studio and make another record.


TIS: As you each grow older and wiser, how do you stay both loyal and inspired to produce the style of music, recorded and in concert that your long-time fans have both come to love and expect?
CB: People ask me questions like, you see the Rolling Stones or guys who have been doing this for 50 years, do you see yourself doing this at their age? And in my mind I know that however long I live, until the day I die I’m probably going to feel mentally immature and physically old (laughin.) But my brain’s not going to be calculating, “Oh, I’m 70 years old.” It’s like, “What do you mean I’m almost done? Aagh! I just got started.” And so I think that it will become a bit more difficult for me to perform a few songs on a roster that I did so easily through my twenties and thirties, you know? When I’m 70 I don’t know if I’ll be screaming “Victimized” at anybody. Hopefully that will be the case, but I doubt it. That’s one of the things that’s so interesting about our business anyways. None of us are guaranteed that anyone will come to one of our shows or care about the last record we put out. With every record that we go into, I look at like, this is our very first album and this is the best representation of what we are and either people are going to love it or they’re going to hate it. Or not care. So you know, that’s what happens. We take the creative gamble and we write music that we feel passionate about and what we feel is important and that we feel is, um, what’s the word I’m looking for, um, damn it!


BB: Vital?


CB: No, not vital, but like, giving something to the people who are going to hear it. It’s basically like when you create a song and people hear it and they connect with it, you’re giving that person a sense of inspiration. And so I think that… that word threw me off. Trying to find that word threw me off! My brain just went into a completely different area. I’m sorry, it just shut down. But anyways, I think I’ve answered at least part of your question. And so if Brandon wants to jump in. I just completely shut down. My brain went into left field on that question. You melted me.


BB: You made me think of something though when you were saying, will you be screaming some of your most demanding lyrics when you’re 70. You can’t really imagine yourself doing that. I agree with you. We have so many songs that we written when we were in our young twenties. Some of them we wrote when we were teenagers and we still perform them. It occurs to me now at 36, damn, what was I thinking? This is hard! I have to really concentrate and sit still in order to do this.


TIS: So will there be any guest appearances by either of you, or any other band members in one another’s sets?
BB: At the moment there’s nothing planned in the traditional sense but it really only takes a couple of days of making music and being on tour with new friends to become inspired by each other and each other’s mutual distinctions and idiosyncrasies and stuff and then for that desire to share a little moments to arise. I have a sneaking suspicion that some of us will be sneaking onstage in each other’s sets and I hope that you guys are cool with that (laughing.) We have a tendency to sneak onstage with our friends’ events once in awhile. We took this band out with us years ago, Sparta, I don’t know if you know Sparta. They’re an amazing band kind of from the ashes of At the Drive-in.