Mike throws a few surprises into the mix. Who saw Tears For Fears coming?!
“EVERYBODY KNOWS THAT I love PUBLIC ENEMY. The first show I ever went to was Anthrax with Public Enemy, a rap-rock show, which is kinda funny considering that rap-rock is what I ended up doing. A cool first show to go to, right? Less cool that I went with my dad as my chaperone! It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back is an amazing album – so aggressive and abrasive and political, but also funny, and Rebel Without A Pause was a great intro point.
“I collected everything NINE INCH NAILS put out – all the CDs, all the singles, all the remixes, but The Perfect Drug from the Lost Highway soundtrack felt like this wild leap forward for Trent Reznor, or at least it broke my expectations about what Nine Inch Nails were doing. It has this drum’n’bass/ jungle kind of beat, but then that hypnotic, almost psychedelic outro, and it was really influential in encouraging some of the experimentation we tried in Linkin Park.
“BEASTIE BOYS’ Check Your Head was so shocking when it came out, because they brought their punk rock roots into hip hop in a way that was so unexpected and irreverent and exciting. I’d loved Licensed To Ill, but then kinda drifted away when they put out Paul’s Boutique because there was so much other cool stuff going on in hip hop at the time, but So What’cha Want pulled me right back in.