I think ive seen changes in styles of many bands who've changed labels.Do labels force them or is it just a new environment for the band to work in?
They probably suggest that bands come up with a certain kind of broad appealing hit, sometimes they'll probably even amp up the pressure and threaten them with being cut from their deal, but I think a lot of people s claims about labels "ruining" bands or albums or forcing them to change styles entirely are exaggerated. You have to think, if we're using the base definition of "careless, money hungry label exec", it was be easier to cut a poorly selling group and sign a band doing more in the vein of what's popular at that moment than it would be to sit there and increasingly pressure another band to do something else.
As far as the Get Me Gone story, yes you're right. But the band has admitted several times that Meteora sounded the way it did due to a number of outside influences, one of those being the label wanting more of that thing that just sold millions of copies (as well as the pressure of having a ton of new fans so quickly, journalists, and personally feeling they had to replicate what they did). Also, as seen in Meeting Of A Thousand Suns, sometimes label expectations just creep into the studio without anyone giving much thought to it. Mike had a line that went something along the lines of, "if we make a sleepy song, *** will love it." I can't be sure, but it sounds like the censored name was "Tom," as in Tom Whalley, former president of Warner Bros. Records. MOATS also showed the label having doubts about their being a good "lead single" for the album, leaving Mike to attempt to create new music solely for that purpose. So to answer the OP, yes, labels often do influence bands. They are the bands bosses, after all.
Completely off-topic, but shouldn't you guys be using "affect" instead of "effect"? I agree with you, Brandon. It kinda sucks, but the label influence is inevitable.
I might have to watch it again, but I thought the name wasn't censored and he said "Rick" as in Rick Rubin.
Just rewatched it to make sure, it is censored out pretty heavily. Rick's name isn't given the *censored* treatment at any other time in the documentary, so I don't think that was it. It's around the 6:40-7:00 mark for anyone curious for the sake of reference.