Interviews » KERRANG! ... 30STM - The Making Of A Modern Masterpiece

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KERRANG! ... 30STM - The Making Of A Modern Masterpiece!

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WORLD EXCLUSIVE STUDIO REPORT![/size]

“The Sky Is The Limit!”
[size=150]30 Seconds To Mars invite Kerrang! behind closed studio doors as they work on their much-anticipated forthcoming album …

How about a quick peek into the current day-to-day schedule of Jared Leto, frontman of 30 Seconds To Mars and self-confessed studio “compulsive”?
At first glance it’s a similar itinerary to your run-of-the-mill desk jockey. A few hours sleep. Breakfast. A journey from home – through Los Angeles – to work. While England shivers in a February cold snap, California basks in the 90-degree heat. The sun is shining as Leto approaches The International Centre For The Advancement Of The Arts And Sciences Of Sound in the Hollywood Hills. It’s here that he an brother an drummer Shannon and bassist Tomo Milicevic have set up camp during the making of their third album and follow-up to 2005’s runaway success A Beautiful Lie. Leto is in a heady mood. He likes the International Centre’s “strange” atmosphere: moving down the corridor towards his recording space, he can hear shamanic chanting from a nearby room, while people meditate in others. There’s quite the spiritual vibe going on and it’s an appropriate environment for 30STM to be creating in.
During much of 2008, introspection and self-discipline have been very much on the agenda. Since July 4, the frontman has been busy working on a batch of 120 songs, shaving initial sketches and demos to a manageable list of 20 tracks before heading into the studio with his bandmates to work with legendary producer, Flood (Nine Inch Nails, Depeche Mode, Smashing Pumpkins). Some songs were written on the piano, others on a guitar. Beat ideas and rhythms have been take down on percussion instruments, computers, consigned to memory.
“I’d get up and sometimes a song would just come,” Leto explains, “It would just happen. Generally if I sat down at the piano or picked up guitar, a song would arrive. But every song is different and that’s what makes it exciting and that’s what makes it interesting. Every song has its own rules – some come quick; you have to beat the living shit out of others. The important thing to know is that the record is nearly finished.”
Though a release ate has yet to be established, writing and recording in LA has clearly been an inspiring experience for Leto. He likes the mood within the city. “Sometimes there is something magical about LA and California,” he muses.
Last year the band even took several trips into the desert “to stoke the creative spirit and aid the imagination”. They later visited a research facility in San Francisco and locked themselves away in isolation chambers. “It was very peaceful,” says Leto. “It was in there for at least 12 hours. You go into a trance, but I still wrote a song in its entirety. I’m not going to tell you which one just yet, I’ll have to kill you if I do.”
Elsewhere, Leto’s mind-expanding approach to songwriting has taken a masochistic turn. Today he faces at least 20 hours of work, maybe 30 and he even confesses to spending 24 hours working on a guitar track. Sleep deprivation, he reckons, makes for “an interesting creative development”. Meanwhile, engineers are booked in shifts to work alongside Leto as he grafts around the clock. And while Milicevic comes in at different times to record his bass parts, Shannon also prefers to work in intense bursts. Must be a Leto gene thing.
“He’ll come in and work for a few days and than he’ll head off,” explains his brother. “He’s been studying some tribal percussion and rhythms. He actually took a trip to the border of Peru and worked with some indigenous group of people, witch was really exciting. This album has been a real journey.”
It’s been an arduous one, too. In the past year, 30 Seconds To Mars have experienced flashes of conflict, moments of self-doubt. A three-year gab between records hasn’t helped. Nor has a gruelling dispute with former paymasters, Virgin/EMI to the small tune of 30 million dollars (around 20,500 00 P.), more of witch we’ll come to later. Still, Leto’s attitude has been ballsy in the face of adversity.
“Want to know the working title of the album?” he says conspiratorially. “Well, I’m going to give it to you. I did this before and I got in trouble and probably shouldn’t tell you this, but the title as it stands is …”
He pauses theatrically.
“This.”
Savouring the moment.
“Is.”
Before delivering the punchline.
“War.”
He laughs.
“You tell me the meaning behind it,” he teases when pressed for a more detailed explanation, before deftly changing the subject.
If the gloves are off, it’s because everybody knows - no-one more so than Leto himself – that the recording of a third album by 30 Seconds To Mars is a big deal.
A confirmation that their shift from a cultish guilty pleasure to bona fide rock heavyweights has been and gone, thanks to a strong run of hit singles, including The Kill, From Yesterday and Attak, allied with playson TV shows like CSI: New York, Without A Trace an, less thrillingly, Hollyoaks, not to mention accolades from the Karrang! Awards and MTV’s Music Video Awards. Elsewhere, public opinion on Leto has also shifted. He turned from the credible Hollywood actor (Fight Club, Chapter 27) with a rock ‘n’ roll vanity project into something more substantial: a heart-bruised songwriter with a talent for radio-friendly hits and accessible anthems with a message. And all that’s quite a lot for one man and his band to live up to…

HAS MAKING THE THIRD RECORD BEEN ENJOYABLE OR IS THERE A LOT OF PRESSURE TO REPEAT THE SUCCESS OF THE LAST ALBUM?
JARED LETO: “Yeah, it’s going really good. You know, it’s weird when you make a record: you can get lost in it in a way. That’s good and bad. In a clichéd way you totally lose yourself in the exploration of it all and the adventure and the discovery and the challenge and the pursuit of it all. Hopefully at the end you find what you’re really trying to say in musical terms. In our case, I guess it’s a reflection on the life that we’ve lived. This record is a collection of the thoughts, ideas, and experiences that we’ve had over the past few years. It’s been an intense and introspective time. We’ve had a great time making this record and an incredibly challenging time.”

WHAT EXPERIENCES HAVE INSOIRED YOU LYRICALLY THIS TIME AROUND?
“Well travelling the world and touring for the best part of three years. The failures and successes that you experience day to day, week to week, month to month as a human being and an artist – that journey is reflected as well. These things become part of who you are. The nice thing about making a record is that you get to put those experiences somewhere productive and creative. Then there are the outside influences too. Like 30 million dollars lawsuits and financial global meltdown, You know, there are things that happen along the way that every normal person on the planet is affected by. That’s all part of the record, because we’re living and writing and creating while all this is going on. We’re a bubble of some short here, but we’re still seeing and experiencing what’s going on outside. I don’t think people will have to understand the lyrics entirely. I think the music will speak for itself.”

HAS THE NEW MOOD IN AMERICA SHAPED THE RECORD?
“It’s too early to define in concrete terms what this record is all about. I think you can only do that with good old-fashioned hindsight, but there are certainly some consistent themes that keep coming up on this record. It’s undeniable that it is a very reflective time for us over here and a great deal of the world. But I think that can be trap – you don’t want to get wrapped up in common themes when writing a record. It’s important to keep on the road less travelled, but it’s been an inspiring time. It’s a phenomenal time for all of us – not just for Americans. It’s a really interesting time for us on the other side of the pond for a lot of different reasons, such as the election and who we are and what we can and could be.”

WHAT’S IT BEEN LIKE WORKING WITH LEGENDARY PRODUCER, FLOOD?
“He was the first person on our list of producers to work with. I heard all the records he produced when I was a kid [including Nine Inch Nails’ Pretty Hate Machine and Depeche Mode’s Violator]. When it came to making the new record, he encouraged us to walk a path that we were eager to walk down. We threw away the methodology of recording in favour of more humanity. The idea was to really capture 30 Seconds To Mars as individuals and as a collective playing together in a room. He’s an artist, he’s a creative individual and he came in and he was part of the team and helped us to build on our ideas and dreams for what we wanted from this third album. He’s really done a brilliant job.”

YOU MENTIONED HAVING HOPES AND DREAMS FOR THIS ALBUM. WHAT WERE THEY?
“We wanted to write something that we were excited and inspired by. We wanted to make a record that we were proud of. We wanted to further ourselves as musicians and artists. We didn’t want it to be a daunting or gruelling experience – it had to be fun an full of adventure. The band has arrived at a special place. You can feel that on this record.”

DO YOU THINK FANS WILL BE SURPRISED BY THE NEW SONGS?
“It’s different to the last record. It’s a record that is really cinematic and expansive. It’s completely its own thing. It’s still 30 Seconds To Mars, but I think this record is really ambitious. It’s not like anything before. It’s ambitious in it’s size and it’s scope. There are strings on it, but we’ve also been playing with musical an creative experimentation. There are a lot of things that I can talk about soon, but until people can hear it, it seems silly to talk about it now, but this next record is going to be an explosion. It’s the best thing we’ve done so far.”

If the working title of the next 30 Seconds To Mars album is to be believed and there’s a war to be fought, then the grapple promises to be a bloody, box office smash: the eyeliner-heavy David versus former record label, Virgin/EMI. It’s a grandstand event with around 30 million dollars and lawyers are rubbing their hands with glee.
“It’s been a worthy battle,” muses Leto. Still, the grounds for conflict are unclear, depending on who you talk to. According to the band’s former label, 30 Seconds To Mars are in breach of contract by walking away from a record deal. Talk to the band, however, and they are adamant that they are merely invoking their right, by Californian law, to not be bound to a contract for more than seven years (according to Leto, they signed 10 years ago). Virgin/EMI responded by slapping down a 30 million dollars lawsuit claiming the band owed them another three albums.
Today, the band currently find themselves without a label to work from. It’s a messy business, whichever way you look at it, and it’s one that the band won’t be drawn on in detail, but Leto is in a diplomatic . albeit cryptic – mood.
“You never know how things are going to work out,” he says. “People can reconcile. And we always leave a door open for that. We don’t see things in terms of black and white. What we do see is things in terms of fairness and equality. And it’s easy to see what’s right there. This is an age old battle between art and commerce.”
The battle has proved strangely rewarding, however. Without a label to impinge upon any creative decision-making processes, 30 Seconds To Mars find themselves in the privileged position of being a platinum-selling artist dictating their own terms. The administration and interference of a major corporation have been stripped away. Right now, Leto and his bandmates can do whatever the hell they want.
“Right now we’re in the studio and there is no record company paying for anything, there are no record company A&R men coming in and waving their opinions,” Leto adds. “It’s purely a creative exploration. It’s 30 Seconds To Mars being done on 30 Seconds To Mars’ terms. There’s something incredibly free about that.”
For now, though, there is no definite date for the release of the record and there is no label to sign cheques or finance studio time, with people in the 30 Seconds To Mars camp reluctant to divulge exactly how the studio costs are being covered. And 30 million dollars is a lot of money, after all. There must have been one or tow sleepless nights in the last six month?
“Some days it can weigh on you,” admits Leto. “There’s a bitter burden that can sneak in – you can revert to some kind of primal ideas and emotions. But I really think that [this dispute] is part of our journey and part of our path. I think we did the right thing in standing up for ourselves and other artists, really. It’s essentially about what’s fair and what’s right. It’s a basic human idea that everyone from a child to the oldest person on the planet knows what it’s like to be treated unfairly, even if it’s just for a moment. It’s not a feeling that anybody should have to go though.”
But today in the studio, facing 24 hours of work, it’s not something that’s playing on his mind. He is, instead, happy to throw himself into the benefits of artistic freedom and to hell with the financial kickbacks.
“The future is unknown and that can be daunting,” Leto concludes. “But we find it incredibly exciting – the sky is the limit! It’s made us stronger. It’s made this record even better. It’s been a creative hurricane.”

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