Mars Attacks!

LA trio 30 Seconds To Mars elicit their fair share of eye-rolling from the hipper-than-thou for reasons that have little to do with the music. There’s the fact that their expanded fanbase includes a sizeable adolescent element. There’s singer Jared Leto’s history as a teenage heart-throb turned character actor. Or maybe it’s because of wonderfully OTT mini-movie clips for tunes like ‘From Yesterday’. Or simply because they make unashamedly expansive and windswept rock records.

But cock an ear to the band’s panoramic third album This Is War and the unprejudiced might conclude that the three-piece are closer in spirit to At the Drive-In or early U2 or even NIN’s The Downward Spiral than My Chemical Romance. And while Leto may have come to prominence through roles in Fight Club, American Psycho and Requiem For A Dream, he also possesses a scorched earth yowl of a voice.
“To tell you the truth, I still don’t really think I can sing,” he says on the phone from LA on a recent morning in January. “I suppose I just have that part of me that refuses to not walk through it, regardless of what I think. I’m really compelled to make music and to write songs and to sing, it’s beyond a reasonable doubt. It’s something that, if I was more rational, I’m not sure that I would have continued to do all these years. Really, it’s been nothing short of compulsion. I remember when I was a kid walking home from school I would mimic the voices of some of the singers that I loved.”
What kinds of singers?
“Oh, everyone from Robert Plant to Bono. But I’ve never had a singing lesson, it’s never been something that I’ve pursued except in my own songs. Like, I was never in a cover band, I never was in a jam band. I’ve only ever written songs.”
Is it strange, as a 38-year-old man, to look out into a crowd and see middle-aged males next to adolescent girls?
“It’s always surprising, and we all get a kick out of it. I love seeing the different types of people at the shows, and it’s not uncommon to see, like you said, a young 12-year-old boy or a 40-year-old guy. It’s a pretty disparate audience and I really enjoy that. You don’t choose your audience. Anyone has the right to listen to these songs, and when I write the song I kind of relinquish ownership of it.”
This Is War is a big, bold and unashamedly epic record preoccupied with themes of mortality and faith. The kind of record that, in the 70s, might have been produced by Bob Ezrin (who, incidentally, did the honours on the band’s 2002 eponymous debut). Among the album’s innovations is the use of a mass rabble choir drawn from the ranks of the band’s fanbase, the Echelon, recorded at various Summit meetings in both the corporeal and digital realm.
“When people hear ‘Kings & Queens’ and many of the songs that have the Summit on them, it’s actually tens of thousands of people all over the world,” Leto explains. “It started as a physical location in Los Angeles, we did the first Summit at a place called The Avalon, about a thousand people showed up. It was something I’d been thinking about for a year and a half. I had most of it mapped out and experimented a bit and did some percussion, some singing, some chanting and stomping, and utilised this group as basically an instrument, and it went really well so we extended the experiment to eight other countries around the world.
“And I’ve talked about this before, but I got a Twitter message from someone in Iran who was frustrated that they couldn’t make one of the physical Summits, so that was the impetus for the digital version, where people could sit at home by themselves with friends and participate. It’s fun to do things that haven’t been done before and to try to figure out the schematics of it all and how to make it work.”
This Is War was recorded at the loftily titled International Centre for the Advancement of the Arts & Sciences of Sound (basically a studio carved in the side of a house in the Hollywood Hills). The sessions were overseen by veteran producer Flood (U2, NIN, PJ Harvey, The Killers).
“I’d see his name all over these records that I grew up listening to,” says Leto, “and there was something he was doing that I responded to, some of the choices that he made in his life that were aligned with some of the interests that I had musically. We made this record on our own with really no outside help or influence besides Flood, and then at the end Steve Lillywhite. We didn’t have a record deal at the time, it was self-financed, and y’know, it was an intense time for us and coincidentally for the rest of the world. We happened to be fighting a big battle with our label as well (Virgin sued the band for breach of contract last year; the matter has since been resolved) and there were some personal things that happened, a death in the family, some big life challenges. We’re not expecting anyone to feel sorry for us, these are things that happen all of us, it’s part of what makes us better, stronger, keeps us human, and sometimes gives us an opportunity to have some humility.”
Did the panoramic noir mythology of Los Angeles have any impact on the songs?
“It’s a big character on this record. It’s like this place has been worked over and over again in myth and story and for us it’s a home, but I also think it’s an appropriate place to reflect upon the idea of the American Dream.”
Not least the notion that the fabled mansion on the hill always becomes a prison. Splendid isolation is an old story in rock ‘n’ roll, from the Thin White Duke to Phil Spector, from Marilyn Manson to Michael Jackson.
“Yeah, I would agree with that. I guess it’s a reflection of what people think of as success. It’s dangerous. I certainly could have left the house a little bit more when I was making this record. There were many periods of time where I was holed up in this house and it was quite an isolationist’s dream. Your mind can start playing tricks on you.
“But a big part about music is getting out and sharing it with people, and we’re very much a live band, so it’s important for us to be on the road. We’re psyched to be able to come back to Dublin, which is a very close place to my heart too. The first time I was in Dublin was in 1995, so it’s been a long time. I talk with Irish people and I feel like I need to just shut up.”
Well, a certain 13-year-old Irish girl of my acquaintance wants to know if Leto is actually going to perform at the O2 hanging upside down while on fire?
“Yes, I’m planning on that just for one song... and then I’ve been teaching myself to fly. Even Bono hasn’t figured that one out, so I figured I’d trump him somehow!”

30 Seconds To Mars play the O2 on February 26.