The 46-year-old Los Angeles-born musician Mike Shinoda co-founded Linkin Park in 1996. The group would go on to become one of the biggest in the world a handful of years later, thanks to his production skills and the vocals of screeching singer Chester Bennington.
Videos by American Songwriter
But while the band was at the height of popularity, performing songs like “Numb” and “One Step Closer,” some might wonder what its co-founder has to say about his life, his craft, his proclivities and the world around him outside of Linkin Park’s popular, genre-bending songs.
That’s why we’ve collected some of Shinoda’s thoughts on his craft, his history and his perspective. Here below are the 20 best Mike Shinda quotes.
1. “A decade is a long time to be doing anything, much less to be with the same guys, chasing after the same goals.”
2. “We learned pretty early on in this band that you can’t have snobbery in music.”
3. “I spent ten years playing classical piano, and that was what led to keyboards and eventually to production and to Linkin Park.”
4. “As a creative person you just get an idea in your head, and sometimes you just can’t shake it off.”
5. “I got over being embarrassed.”
6. “My parents still treat Christmas like I’m thirteen years old.”
7. “I’d rather get up early and go out and do something than stay up late and screw up my body.”
8. “I feel really lucky to be in a band where the guys, for all the opportunities to do things that potentially would be good for them but detrimental to the group, that everybody stayed loyal to the whole.”
9. “Who can’t relate to the idea of leaving one chapter behind and moving on to the next?”
10. “I grew up painting and playing piano so when I was a little kid I thought I was going to be an artist or a painter but my mom had me taking piano lessons for about 10-12 years as a young kid.”
11. “My dad remembers being in school with my uncle, and the teacher would say outright to the class that the Japanese were second-class citizens and shouldn’t be trusted.”
12. “We have people in the band who don’t drink or do drugs… some of us like to go sightseeing.”
13. “When we started the band, it was because we were waiting for a sound that never happened. We got tired of waiting, and we decided to just do it ourselves.”
14. “In high school I was making beats for my friends and for myself and rapping over them.”
15. “I remember being a little kid sitting in the living room with my brother and some friends from around the neighborhood, and I would sit at the piano and as they were running around the room doing different things and being silly, acting out, I would actually play the score for it—the music that went along with it.”
16. “I know at one point I had bright red hair and I had bracelets from my wrist up to my elbow and I was wearing size 50 pants. I wouldn’t wear that today, but I’m not embarrassed about wearing it back then any more.”
17. “Go find something that you haven’t done before. Don’t do the same thing over and over again.”
18. “When I was in high school, if my favorite band got too popular, I’d watch carefully.”
19. “Little pieces of advice can provide us with months’ worth of entertainment.”
20. “I like sneakers. I guess I could call myself a collector.”
Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images
