The Moment That Kickstarted New Linkin Park Music

Though Linkin Park’s return has been a strategic and highly publicized event, the beginnings of where we’re at now was anything but a grand plan. Mike Shinoda discussed the band’s return with The Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon during the band’s appearance on the NBC late night talk show.

According to Shinoda, the seeds of the band’s return started with the group’s members just deciding that they wanted to be in each other’s lives more after going on hiatus following the death of Chester Bennington.

“I think the important thing for us was we never set out to ‘let’s bring the band back. Let’s find a singer.’ That was never our intention or our goal,” explained Shinoda.

“I remember there was a moment where our DJ Joe [Hahn], we just like went to breakfast and he was like, ‘I think we should hang out a little more often. We’d just like to get together and be creative.’ I don’t know what that means, but one thing led to another,” says Shinoda.

As has been documented in past interviews, the living members of the group, minus drummer Rob Bourdon, began to get together for creative sessions while occasionally working with other musicians. The pandemic quelled things for a bit, but after the band was able to regroup they invited Dead Sara’s Emily Armstrong back for more sessions and began to envision the possibilities of returning under their longtime band name.

“It was almost like this new record, we wrote it and came up with the music while we were creating the new band,” Shinoda told Fallon. “When we started the music, we didn’t have a band and it just came together while the music came together.”

READ MORE: The Reason Linkin Park Didn’t Change Their Name for Reunion

The interview also included a trolling of the Linkin Park member by Tonight Show house band The Roots as they played The Knack’s ’70s classic “My Sharona” with the titular lyrics replaced with “Mike Shinoda.”  The co-vocalist also waxed about the euphoric feeling of playing their first full concert in Los Angeles at the Kia Forum and he offered more insights about the album title and its ties to the history of the band. Watch the chat below.

Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda Interviewed on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

Linkin Park Makes Their Late Night TV Return

With their global livestream and shows in Los Angeles and New York out of the way, Linkin Park took their show to a national TV viewing audience Tuesday night. In addition to Shinoda’s interview segment, the band performed their current, chart-topping single “The Emptiness Machine” live on national television for the first time on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

Linkin Park, with their new additions Emily Armstrong and Colin Brittain, will release their new album, From Zero, on Nov. 15. They are currently in the midst of a limited world tour with a handful of stops remaining before the year closes out. Concert tickets and album pre-orders can be found at the Linkin Park website.

Linkin Park’s “The Emptiness Machine” Makes Network TV Debut on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon