By Therese McKeon

While the music industry tries to figure out what sells, Linkin Park continues blurring sonic lines and melding musical influences. The result is one explosive release called "Meteora" that delivers a familiar sound while still taking chances.

Shoutweb caught up with Linkin Park drummer Rob Bourdon as the band was wrapping up rehearsals for their LP Underground tour dates designed specifically for their loyal fanbase. Read on for details on how "Meteora" came together, why "Easier To Run" is the most challenging song for him to play, and what you can expect from Linkin Park in the next year.

Chester Bennington • vocals
Rob Bourdon • drums
Brad Delson • guitar
Joseph Hahn • DJ/samples
Mike Shinoda • vocals

Shoutweb: I was reading some of the journal entries on the web site and it's interesting to me that the drummer is always the one finished first! Is it less stress or more stress for you being the drummer? Nothing can continue until you're done but I guess the pressure is off once you're done with your part?

Rob: I guess there is less stress for me actually *in* the studio and it takes less time because of all the work that goes on before. Before we enter the studio is when all the pressure is on me to get everything up to speed or up to where it needs to be for the actual recording. Probably about three months before we started recording I was working on my parts and working on the parts and getting all that stuff together.

Shoutweb: Do you have to write all of your parts yourself?

Rob: Well, everything is kind of collaborative but all the drum parts are for the most part written by me. I also work with Mike a lot on all the rhythmic stuff because we blend a lot of samples to live drums so there kind of has to be a collaborative effort to get those to blend in a way that sounds really good. So we always discuss it and talk about where the live sounds and the electronic sounds will blend together. Umm...

Shoutweb: You okay?

Rob: Sorry, Joe Hahn is over here interrupting me. He trying to give me a lap dance so I lost my train of thought for a second. He's trying to distract me.

Shoutweb: (laughter) Well, I guess it worked! Speaking of samples...

Rob: Yeah, he giving me a sample of something I don't want! (laughter)

Shoutweb: As long as he doesn't start scratching, you'll be okay. (laughter)

Rob: Yeah, whenever he sees me on the phone, he starts trying to distract me.

Shoutweb: Tell Mr. Hahn to keep his clothes on. (laughter)

Rob: So, anyway... where was I? Oh, so Mike and I definitely talk about that. I spent a lot of time. On this record, one of the things that was cool was that I had a lot of time. I had a ProTools rig and I was able to get a lot of tracks from Mike's ProTool rig, which is where bass and guitars tracks were recorded. So I had a lot of time to write drum tracks for the new stuff and play around with it. By the time everything was done and written and everybody had given their input into what was going on, I kind of just sat in a room for ten hours a day for six weeks and I practiced the parts until I knew them perfectly. By the time I went into the studio, there were some minor changes here and there but it was pretty much done in four days and the pressure was off me, which felt good. Shoutweb: How do you remember all of it? After being done so early on in the process, I imagine some parts gets rusty? Rob: Actually, I had a drum room with all my stuff set up in it. After I was done in the studio, I just went back there and continued to play the stuff that I had recorded. As the recording process was moving along, some things kind of changed here and there. A chorus might not be as long as it was before. It might be cut in half and then there are little changes. We definitely all went into the studio to give our input on it but I would get updated files basically off the ProTools rig that was in the studio and I could continue to practice what I did in the studio. So it was pretty fresh and now that we're rehearsing it's fresh so I don't have to go back and learn it all again.

Julie Hunt (Washington, DC) and Ani Lewis (Columbus, OH) arrived at the Roseland Ballroom at 10:15AM to get their front row spots at the LP Underground show in NYC. (March 12, 2003) Copyright (c) 2003 Therese McKeon/Shoutweb.com

Shoutweb: By the way, congratulations on your cover.

Rob: Thanks. I was pretty happy with it. I thought it was a good article.

Shoutweb: I haven't read it yet but I saw the cover and thought, "There's Rob, who everyone wants to always call Brad." (laughter)

Rob: Everyone is always asking me for guitar picks. (laughter)

Shoutweb: (laughter) Oh, man!

Rob: You'd be surprised how many times that has happened. It's pretty funny.

Shoutweb: I can understand that because you're way back there behind the drums. One of you will have to do something different like get a nose ring or something. (laughter)

Rob: (laughter) I'll leave that to Brad. It sounds too painful for me.

Shoutweb: I read that you guys had a drum specialist in the studio with you?

Rob: It's actually someone who is a specialist in tuning. His name is Ross. He's from the Drum Doctors. That's the name of the company. He has a whole, big collection of drum kits and if you kind of have an idea for the sound you want on the record. We talked before and talked about the kind of sound we wanted to get. He comes in and just brings whatever kits he thinks are great for the project. He brings a whole bunch of different snare drums and a whole bunch of different cymbals. I had a lot of time to experiment with all of these different sounds. He's great at tuning the drums and getting them exactly to sound perfect. He's the guy that can go in. When you record drums a lot of times after hitting the snare drum a bunch of times, it starts to change the pitch so he would have to go in and change the head real fast in between takes and then tune it up to match exactly where it was on the first half of the song. There is a guy who is awesome at that. I've never seen anybody tune drums like he does.

Shoutweb: What are you going to do, take him on tour with you now?

Rob: It will sound pretty much the same live. I play Gretsch drums and I recorded the album with Gretsch drums. I have a great tech out here on the road that can do the same thing for me out here and when we start touring. In the studio, it's just more under a microscope. It's going to be on the album, so everything has to be identical to where it was before. But in an arena, the snare pitch changes from the beginning to the end of a song a little but they're not going to be noticeable. And the same goes for pretty much all the instruments in the studio.

Shoutweb: All of things that you don't have to think about unless you're a musician. Wow.

Rob: Yeah, I guess so!

Andy Wallace visits with Chester Bennington backstage at the LP Underground show . (March 12, 2003) Copyright (c) 2003 Therese McKeon/Shoutweb.com

Shoutweb: So, I saw Brad and Mike in New York at KROCK's Claus Fest. When I asked them what they were doing, they told me they were out here mixing. When I asked them about interviews, Brad told me to call you because you were already done and sitting around doing nothing. Rob: I did have some down time but not much. I always seem to be pretty busy. I always seem to be scheduling stuff at night for the next day. We're definitely all involved. Every guy in the band is involved with different aspects of the band. Joe is directing the video for "Somewhere I Belong".

Shoutweb: I want to hear about that.

Rob: It was a great shoot. The time was really condensed and we really didn't have time to do it because the album was just finish and we had a deadline to pick a single. The people at the label helped us and then Joe had a few days to write a treatment for it and get everything rolling on getting this video going. It came together pretty quick. It was an amazing shoot. The set design was incredible. We had fire and lots of pyro and things lighting on fire and blowing up. We just saw the first edit of it yesterday.

Shoutweb: So, the majority of this video takes place in Chester's head.

Rob: Yeah, It kind of shows Chester in the beginning of the video in his bedroom. He kind of looks around and sees this environment and a couple of different things in his room and then he falls into this dream world. These things he had seen in his room are in his dream world and become big. When he is going into his bedroom, you see these robots and in the video you see these big pieces of them and things he saw just before he went to sleep. When he falls into his dream, that is where the band is performing.

Shoutweb: Sounds cool.

Rob: It was a very well thought out video. It's cool when you see Chester fall into this dream world and he falls into his bed. It's this surreal world that is his dream.

Shoutweb: When I looked at the drum tracking dates and saw that it was July I couldn't believe it was that long ago. And you guys were writing for ten months before that!

Rob: Yeah, we actually started out with a studio on our bus. We had a ProTools rig in the back of the bus when we were on Ozzfest. We continued through for Family Values and into Projekt Revolution up till March of last year. Throughout that time, we really had a chance to put some ideas down in that studio to throw a lot of things together. Once we got home, we were able to really focus on some of the ideas and weed out the weak ones and take some of those really good ideas that we had on the road. It gave us a really good start into the writing process. It definitely helped out a lot. There is so much time on the road so it's good to bring that stuff out there so you can be productive and have that creative side while you're on the road. The recording process was about a three-month process.

Shoutweb: So, there are 13 tracks, right?

Rob: One of them is more like an instrumental interlude song. It's not really an interlude though. It really kind of shows the electronic element of what we do. There is a lot of drum editing and a lot of different editing on that. It's a really, really cool song.

Shoutweb: Is that "Forward"?

Rob: No, that is actually just a little intro. The song I am talking about is called "Session".

Shoutweb: So that actually makes only 12 songs on the record.

Rob: It was almost 13. You know what? We had so many songs. We actually went into the studio with 18 songs that we recorded drums on. We really tried to concentrate on the record as a whole, besides just the songs. It's hard to cut songs out because we had songs that we're just so attached to and I think are really great songs but we really tried to pick the amount of songs that fit the record to make the record a whole piece of work. Not just a bunch of different songs thrown on an album. We really wanted to take you on a journey so you can listen to something from beginning to end. We want something that is going to grab your attention the whole time and you've gone on this musical journey that is just under 37 minutes this time.