On the Making of Meteora video, Phoenix talks about how they had recorded a bunch of songs to put on the sophomore album, but junked it all in order to avoid the sophomore slump. Is there any other information on this lost album? Here's a link to the documentary, the quote I'm referring to is at 3:17. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzTYLztMQkw
I wouldn't be too surprised if they tried to make something like MTM as their second album, but were told to make something more basic.
At that stage, and considering the couple clips that were made around HT era and heard on Frat Party (From the Inside, Somewhere I Belong), I doubt it.
I'm not so sure about that. From the Inside was one of their more ambitious ideas at the time, as it was the first song they'd written in 6/8 time (at Phoenix's suggestion), and the original Somewhere I Belong intro loop heard on Frat Party, when listened to on its own, is actually pretty unconventional compared to the type of samples they normally came up with around that time. They just happened to work it into a more "typical Linkin Park song" at the end of the process. I wouldn't be surprised if the 40-50 re-writes Don Gilmore made them do for that song in particular were purely done to make the song as radio-friendly (or "safe") as possible. I also find it incredibly telling that Meteora is the only Linkin Park album we've never gotten any real b-sides from (ATS excluded since it's so new and there wouldn't be much info on b-sides now anyway). In fact, we've never really even heard much about any b-sides from that album EXISTING. We know Hybrid Theory didn't have a lot of non-album tracks (She Couldn't, the re-recorded version of High Voltage, and updated versions of Carousel, Part of Me, and probably And One, that's likely about it), we have a HUGE list of probably half of the seed titles for Minutes to Midnight, and we even have some working titles from the A Thousand Suns sessions already, even though they've said they didn't write nearly as many songs this time around. The only 2 demo titles from Meteora that were ever mentioned were Nocturnal and Shifter, and that accounted for one brief comment by Mike in one interview from around January of 2003. Other than that, there's nothing. We know they wrote between 80 and 100 songs for Meteora, yet we've never gotten any information about any of them, save for the 13 tracks on the CD. The band has always danced around questions regarding Meteora b-sides (and even lied outright to avoid discussing them - see all the "Oh, we deleted everything that didn't make the album" comments they made), yet they're totally open about them with the other 3 albums. Why is that? Answer: I fully believe that Meteora was almost entirely a record label creation. Mike was talking about not wanting to make a "Hybrid Theory Part 3" for their next album as early as June of 2004...before they had even finished touring for Meteora. If that was the case, why would he have been content releasing "Hybrid Theory Part 2" a mere 15 months prior to that comment? We know most of the band's early demos originate from random experimentation. Why then, does Easier to Run sound like a blatant attempt to re-write Crawling? Why does Numb sound like Pushing Me Away with piano added to it? Why does Meteora have a Mike/Joe instrumental as the second to last track on the album just like Hybrid Theory did? Why did every song on Meteora follow the same "verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus, 3 and a half minutes or less" formula that the songs on Hybrid Theory did? Why did the band demand a contract re-negotiation with Warner before they would even begin working on their third album, which delayed it by close to a year? Somewhere, there's probably a hard drive under lock and key containing dozens of Meteora outtakes that Warner rejected because they didn't sound enough like Hybrid Theory. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a gag order with 6 signatures on it in a file cabinet in the same general vicinity either.
In all seriousness though, I've never looked into this subject. Shame, that the odds of the band releasing a few of the finished tracks out to the masses are more than likely.. not good. Poop.
To Dr. Octogonapus, there actually has been one B-side released from the Meteora sessions, A.06. But other than that, you're right there's not really anything out there from Meteora, which is something that I've always wondered about.
This is quite possibly the most honest statement out there. There was probably alot of crazy seeds. We've seen how many drum tracks Rob came up with. It just wasn't Hybrid Theory 2 so it had to be changed. I'm suprised Breaking The Habit dosen't have heavy guitars and rap verses.
Fucking signed. I want to punt Don Gilmore in the head. For all my trashing of Meteora, I did like it, but I think it could have been amazing if they hadn't been told to write it specifically vague for the sake of repeat value . Which, according to the Making of Meteora DVD, is exactly what Gilmore told them to do.
Well one can only hope a b-side or two will someday make its way onto an LPU release down the road. Also, whenever LP breaks up, be it in 10 years or 20, you can bet all the unreleased material (except She Couldn't probably) will appear on a posthumous release type thing, like all those Nirvana and Hendrix albums that mysteriously surface every few years.
Wow thats something to think about. Who knows what the original songs where/could have been like before Gilmore/warner got their hands on them? Heres hoping LPUX will release some juicy Meteora demos/b-sides. I think us fans deserve it & next time when theres another chat or something with mike and when the subject of meteora arrives we have to bring this up. We need the truth!!!
Good observations / insightful. Honestly I've always loved Meteora so I would absolutely love to hear any b-sides, maybe one day, one day.