Rolling Stone Talks to Linkin Park About Their New Album, Tour With My Chemical Romance

Linkin Park stopped by the Rolling Stone offices for lunch on Friday to talk about their new album, Minutes to Midnight, which drops tomorrow.

Linkin Park frontmen Chester Bennington and Mike Shinoda also held a press conference last Monday at the Museum of Television and Radio to announce their Projekt Revolution tour line-up, which includes My Chemical Romance, Taking Back Sunday and Placebo, among others. After the press conference we chatted with Shinoda, Gerard Way from My Chemical Romance and Matt Rubano from Taking Back Sunday about Projekt Revolution fans becoming one big happy family.

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Song Stories

“Smells Like Teen Spirit”

Nirvana | 1991

"Smells Like Teen Spirit," named after a brand of deodorant marketed to girls, was Kurt Cobain's attempt to "write the ultimate pop song," he said, using the soft-loud dynamic of his favorite band, the Pixies. Cobain "had that dichotomy of punk rage and alienation," the song’s producer, Butch Vig, told Rolling Stone, "but also this vulnerable pop sensibility. In 'Teen Spirit,' a lot of that vulnerability is in the tone of his voice." Sadly, by the time of Nirvana's last U.S. tour, in late '93, Cobain was tortured by the obligation to play "Teen Spirit" every night. "There are many other songs that I have written that are as good, if not better," he claimed.

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