30 Seconds To Mars
Back in business
It has been a hard year for 30 Seconds To Mars
But with a potentially disastrous legal dispute behind them and new album This Is War ready for it's November release, the trio reveal why they're fighting fit for their return...
For any band practicing their trade in the first decade of the 21st century, the most pressing question is this: what is the relationship between them and their audience? In an age when communications and technology are changing the shape of everything not made of concrete or steel, there are few more pressing issues for those whose living is made with songs and CDs. Today the speed of sound is quicker than ever it was; bands that have done nothing at all wrong can return from the briefest of hibernations only to discover that their audience has all but deserted them.
At some point during the recording of This Is War, 30 Seconds To Mars' appropriately titled,forthcoming third album, Jared Leto received a tweet from a young man based in Tehran. The Iranian had heard the news of the event the band describes as "the summit", where a number of fans gathered in a Los Angeles recording studio in order that their voices be included on the new album. It is a shame, said the Middle Easterner, that admirers who live far away from the City of Angels can't also join the army lending their voices.
Jared thought about this for a bit, realised he agreed and so came up with a "crazy idea" to rectify the situation. If his band -the line- up is completed by bassist Tomo Milicevic and drummer Shannon Leto, a man whose eyes sparkle with the flame of dark magic -were at all serious about the belief that their music is merely the engine that motor a much wider community (and, God, are they serious about this) then members of tha community from all over the world should be included on the upcoming CD. With this in mind he formulated the idea of having "an electronic summit" where "people from everywhere" could send their voices to 30 Seconds To Mars in order to be a part of something that, to it's creators at least, stretches much further than the eye can see.
How many people, exactly?
"Something like 60,000." Says Jared.
Like no big deal.
Blimey.
"Right. And it's something that has never been done before. The [ overall result ] is really, really powerfull. And it has everything to do with them,and nothing to do with us"
As if it weren't enough, 30 Seconds To Mars had another idea that would help make real their clames that the relationship between band an audience -clames that might otherwise sound jaded and mundane- were about more than mere customer care.
The band invited fans to send in fotographs of their own faces, images that will appear as the front cover artwork of This Is War, one face per album sleeve.
On the very day this beautifully berserk idea went public, 30 Seconds To Mars received 1,800 snapshots. The figure now stand at 2,000, the maxium amount agreed with Virgin, their record label (althought the band would like to double this number). The plan is to initially print one hundred CD booklets of each person's face; a website is being built in order that people may trade with others for the album that features their own image and there are also plans to release This Is War with artwork featuring people from different bands, not to mention other special guests.
" We might even have a special edition Barack Obama cover,"
Says Jared.
Really?
"Yes."
Really, really?
"As long as Barack doesn't mind.
We're going to ask anyway."
Back in the 1970s Kiss offered their fans the chance to win one of five polaroid pictures taken of the group without make-up , a state in which they had at that point never been seen. But once upon receiving their prize, the winning entrants that this was a photograph whosed picture lasted for just five minutes after being exposed to daylight. You could drive yourself mad attempting to think of a better idea than this, but 30 years on here is a band that has at least come close.
So, yes, 30 Seconds To Mars have spent a good deal of time thinking about the relationship that exists between band and audience, as well the question of what to do with the attention that is currently theirs.
The answer is this: everything.
Today the trio are in Manhattan, New York City.
Just days ago Jared was in Venice, attending that city's prestigious film festival, being interviewed by seven journalists at a time in order to promote Mr. Nobody, his first film role for more than two years.
Ask him which of this two hats he prefers wearing and he'll umm and aah for about an hour, before finally answering that "film-making in its purest for is a beautiful thing" but that it's "hard to argue with the process of recording songs and then playing those songs live".
In front of thousands of cheering people.
"Actually," he says, " I never think those people are cheering for us. In fact, i don't really hear them at all."
30 Seconds To Mars sit around a wobbly metal table on a patio that sits 14 floors above the human swirl of Midtown Manhattan . Below them, yellow Checker Cab Company cars nudge their way toward the intersection of 8th Avenue and 37th Street. For 20 full minutes a helicopter hovers motionless overhead, ominous in a sky coloured gunmetal grey. The constant whumping of its rotor blades injects this late afternoon liaison with the suggestion of something trublesome.
It's not the only thing. The members of 30STM are all today agreed upon one thing, that they are most relieved that their band is not 30 billion dollars out of pocket. . If it was, and it might well have been, today there would be no 30 Seconds To Mars,no interview, no nothing.
"There were many, many fucking brutal days," says Jared, " We were dragged through the ringer. It was not an easy fight."
This is what happened: The group were being sued by EMI (Virgin music's parent company) for, the claimant alleged, reneging on a promise to deliver three albums, as contractually agreed in 1999. The lawsuit was anulled earlier this year, but not before much energy and money had been to spent preparing for what Jared Leto now describes as " a noble fight".
The legal small print of the eventual settlement decrees that the defendants' are not permitted to speak about the specifics of the suit. However, bloodied but unbowed, 30 Seconds To Mars feels as if they have emerged from this skirmish with one proven point and their dignity intact.
"It was an impossible battle, against a bigger, wealthier and stonger opponent," the frontman says, "But we are fighting for very specific things; we were fighting for fairness, and the right to be treated as people rather than as a commodity. [People] say that there is no fight like the fight of the just. There wasn't a day went by [during litigation] that we questioned the choice we were making, which was to go to war.
And if we had to go through it all again, we would do it exactly the same."
Tomo and Shannon are each asked if they agree with the statement that has been made on their behalf. "Yeah," answers the bassist, without hesitation. The drummer waits longer before quickly and almost imperceptibly nodding his head.
How do you think EMI happened upon the figure of $30 million?
Jared smiles like a cartoon cat, playfully letting the question hang in the air. The rotor blades of the still present helicopter count the seconds ticking away.
"Well," he says, "Think about it."
So i think about it. Nothing.
"Okay," he says, "Well, how about this? Some journalists have claimed that the figure was $30 million because our name is 30 Seconds To Mars."
Really? Oh, come on, you've got to admire their style.
The singer stares back, as unmoved as a waxwork.
Apparently not, then.
"Well, all is said and done," he says, "This will be very important part of our story. I'm very proud of the fact that we didn't shy away from the battle. We could easily have kept our mouths shut and been good boys, grateful boys, happy to do we were told. But we said, "No, we want to fight for what's fair". And we stayed committed to that fight to the very end, until the point where we felt comfortable resolving [the issue]."
Who won, you or them?
"That depends on who you ask."
I'm asking you.
"Well, i don't like to put the words 'we won' out there," answers Jared. "I think there's a little too much ego in a statement such as that . But i will say this, if we had lost we wouldn't be sitting here talking to you today."
At least to an infrequent observer, Jared Leto appears to be a man whose mind is fuelled by a constant flurry of ideas. As if to supply evidence to this observation, he is struck by one somewhere in the midst of recounting his band's long months of struggle.
"Hey," he says to his bandmates, "do you know what we should have done? We should have covered the Sex Pistols' song , EMI. That would have been so cool!"
The song who which Jared refers happens to be the Pistols' best, a tune that seethes with jeering contempt at the then stuffy British record company who signed the Englishman only to quickly drop them, frightened half to death by the filth and the fury the group attracted. 'Blind acceptance is a sign', sings Johnny Rotten, his voice laced with the purest poison. 'Of stupid fools who stand in line,like EMI.EMI.EMI...'.
Jared Leto seems pleased with his idea.
Somehow, in the midst of all this turmoil, 30 Seconds To Mars continued to work on an album they insist was christened This Is War some time before they decided to head off into battle. From a melting pot of more than 100 composition they managed to settle in just one dozen.
"If you can't fashion 12 half decent songs from more than a 100 you should probably think about doing something else for a living", says the man who sometimes does something else for a living.
As well as the contributions of 60,000 fans in places as far removed as Albuquerque and Zurich, the album also features the talents of Kanye West (on the song Hurricane), as well as Shannon playing the taiko drum set that his brother bought him for Christmas. Not merely content to hit these large oriental drums with sticks, the elder Leto evern travelled to Southern China in order to learn how to properly play them.
When Jared says that 30 Seconds To Mars are "not the kind of band that can throw around millions of dollars defengind a lawsuit" the reason for this might be that they've spent most of their cash making This Is War. They even spent 18 months locating an order of Tibetan monks who they flew to Los Angeles in order that the band could record a blessing that beggins the album. Only on of the order spoke English, not fluently, while another held inside his head 10,000 chants, more than even the most commited football supporter. (Plus, it's a fairly safe bet that none of the Tibetan's chants contained the line 'you fat bastard, you ate all the pies...') During a break in the recording sessions, one of the monks was seen outside by the swimming pool scooping drowned bees from out of the water and placing their dead bodies gently on a secluded piece of grass.
"They were the real deal," says Tomo. "Those guys weren't faking it one bit."
It seems only fitting that a band that goes by the name 30 Seconds To Mars should so constantly aim to experience and utilise things that are not of their world. For them, the comfort zone is not at all comfortable, where they are never as good where they want to be. "Paitings are framed by canvas," says Jared, "that's their boundary. For me the boundary of an album is measured in time."
And it's not the only thing. As a few final answers are squeezed from the interview, Jared Leto, now indoors, glances quickly at his bandmates and says quietly, "We have to be somewhere".
Wherever this place is, it isn't here.
The three musitians make it to the ground floor before anyone else in this room, and within moments after saying his goodbyes the man who speaks for this unashamedly expensive band can be seen in conversation with the driver of a people carried parked by the pavement on West 37th Street.
Less than half a minute after this 30 Seconds To Mars are gone, their leader's eyes still trained on some distant horizon at which he will not, and should not, ever arrive.
30STM RELEASE THE ALBUM THIS IS WAR ON NOVEMBER 23 VIA VIRGIN RECORDS.
PROVEHITO IN ALTUM.
- JariAttack .
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