Rick Rubin recently recalled working with Linkin Park for the first time.

Rick Rubin opens up on Linkin Park

During an interview with Rick Beato, Rubin recalled the time when he worked with Linkin Park. He said the band had never played together and produced the songs in studio. They used to play their songs only on stage. However, things changed and got interesting.

“When I produced Linkin Park the first time, the idea of them playing together as a band was so alien to them, in the past, I think they’d made three records before that.
Not only had they never played together on any of their records, they never played their songs together until they played them on stage. They were always made in the studio.
That’s how they worked. So we tried doing it in the studio, we tried playing together in the studio, and it was interesting sometimes, but it didn’t have to be that way. It’s always interesting to test, you know, to test those, the way you’ve done it before, is there a new way or an old way that works better? We don’t know until we test it, but to assume there’s the one way is never the case. You never know.”

Linkin Park were hardly in need of a makeover when they arrived at their third album in 2007. Their two previous records, 2000’s Hybrid Theory and the 2003 follow-up Meteora, had sold by the bucketload and made the nu-metal rap-rock crew from California huge. But the band needed a fresh start.

They continued with this approach by enlisting Rick Rubin’s services for the album that would become Minutes To Midnight. Famed for guiding artists through a creative reset, the Def Jam co-founder helped Linkin Park start fresh.

Rubin encouraged the band to explore new sonic textures and experiment with different instruments, even bringing out the drum machine he used on the Beastie Boys’ 1986 debut album Licensed To Ill for use on the record.

Despite being the most experimental of their three records to date, Minutes To Midnight became another huge hit for Linkin Park, going five times Platinum in the US and topping charts around the globe. This solidified their status as one of the biggest rock bands of the new millennium, leading to further collaborations between Linkin Park and Rick Rubin on future recordings.

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