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Adopted: October 26, 2008 Launched: November 9, 2008 Site Name: Jared Leto Fan Webmaster: Jen - Contact Staff: Val - Contact Version: 4 Layout by:Papercut Productions Hits: Online: Listed at:IMDB • CL • MC • CE
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Releasing this week on Guitar Hero 5 and Band Hero are three tracks from the Los Angeles-based band 30 Seconds to Mars. The DLC tracks features “Attack” and “From Yesterday” off of their platinum selling sophomore album A Beautiful Life along with “Kings and Queens”, the first single from This is War released late last year. 30 Seconds to Mars, formed by Jared and Shannon Leto, made their debut in 2002 and were met with immediate success with their “post-grunge” and “melodic hard rock” style.
The 30 Seconds to Mars Track Pack is now available on the Xbox Live Marketplace for 440 points, on the PSN for $5.49 and the Wii Shop for 550 Wii Points. As always each song can be purchased individually for 160 MS points/$1.99/200 Wii points.
‘It was pretty surreal,’ the 30STM frontman says.
On Thursday (February 4), Jared Leto decided to hold an impromptu gathering of 30 Seconds to Mars fans at the Hive, the gallery/communal space he and his bandmates run on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. The plan was to treat them to a glimpse of “Artifact,” the 30STM documentary he’s been working on for more than a year now.
The fans turned up in droves — so many gathered outside the Hive that the guys made the call to hold two or three screenings — and everything was proceeding as planned. Leto was standing on a small stage at the back of the space, thanking the first crowd for the generosity they showed in a recent auction the band held to benefit Haiti, when all of a sudden there was a loud banging on the door of the Hive. A man entered, wearing a hoodie and smoking a cigarette, holding a large package in his arms. He called out to Leto, then jumped on the stage, tossed the package to the floor and began ranting.
Footage of the incident has already made its way online, but on Friday, for the first time, Leto talked exclusively to MTV News about the genuinely terrifying string of events that followed.
“There was a giant, really loud knock at the front door, and I joked, ‘Open it up,’ ” he explained. “Then a guy walks in with a giant package in his arms and everyone, including me, thought it was a joke.
“I thought it was a fan who had maybe brought a gift or something, but as he got closer, you could see he was giving off a different kind of energy. A few people in the crowd tried to stop him, because no one was really sure what his intentions were,” Leto continued. “He threw this big package down and it obviously had some weight to it, and addressed me by name and said he had a message for me and started reading out of a notebook. He was very incoherent and delusional.”
Leto tried to calm the man down, but when he showed no signs of stopping, he grabbed him and took him out the back door of the building. He said he tried to talk to the man to calm him down, but quickly realized that “he was not in a good place and obviously disturbed.”
“As I tried to talk to him, he got more and more aggressive. I saw he was not well, and then he started to read out of his book again, saying he had this message for me,” Leto said. “And in these circumstances, you get protective of fans and friends, so I was concerned a little. We were all cautious. He kept trying to push his way back in [to the building] but we stopped him. It was pretty surreal, but at the same time, I did feel some empathy [for him].”
Meanwhile, someone inside the Hive took the package and threw it out the back door. No one knew what was inside, but the situation appeared to be resolved — until word got back that the man had pulled up to the building with loud music blaring from his car and parked it right in the middle of Melrose. Then people got scared. And someone called the Los Angeles Police Department’s bomb squad.
“We did the screening and then, 20 minutes later, we got another knock on the door and it was the bomb squad saying they were clearing the area,” Leto said. “They ended up clearing five blocks of Melrose — streets were blocked off, they weren’t letting anyone in or out and then, all of a sudden, this guy walks down the street towards me and I told the police, ‘That’s the guy.’ ”
Police wrestled the man to the ground and asked him what was inside the package. According to Leto, the man replied that there were “some appliances … and maybe some explosives inside.” And then the bomb-sniffing dogs were brought in.
The man was taken into custody — the LAPD has not released his name — and an investigation into the matter is ongoing. It was revealed that the contents of the box were either “a blender and some candy” (according to one report) or some money (according to another).
Despite the incident, which Leto said was “definitely surreal,” he intends on finishing the screenings Friday night for fans who weren’t able to see the film. And though all of this, the only thing he wants to clear up is a report that, following the incident, he joked, “It’s official, we have the craziest fans in the world.” He wasn’t talking about the man with the package, but rather, one of his fans that managed to affix a 30STM sticker to the back of a police cruiser during the chaos.
“We have wonderful fans and what I said was taken out of context online. After police let everyone back in to the area, a number of people gathered outside and there were media outlets and cameras there too,” Leto explained. “And during all this, someone says that a fan had put a sticker on a police car, a 30 Seconds to Mars sticker, and I joked that we definitely have the craziest fans in the world. That was in reaction to the sticker, not the guy. I mean, someone put a sticker on a cop car in the middle of a bomb scare.”
30 Seconds to Mars frontman talks the new album and getting the fans involved.
Videogame chatter isn’t all Jared Leto is good for; we also talked with him about the new 30 Seconds to Mars album and his seemingly intense love for the bands’ fans and his desired to interact with them in some appreciable ways. And you’ll find all that below.
“It’s overwhelming,” he said when we asked about how fans have responded to the album. “The reaction has been unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before. We worked on this record, I was writing for a couple of years, maybe even three years and in the studio for about two years and hadn’t had a record out in four years. When you wait that long and you spend that much time doing something, it obviously…carries a lot of weight when you finally release it. It was a relief. It’s exciting to have it out there.”
But it isn’t just about making them happy, Leto says. 30 Seconds to Mars is in it for the fans. “When you’re up there, at least for us, it’s really about what can we give the audience and about what we share with the audience,” he said. “We never really take away from it any worthless adulation or anything like that. It’s really about what we can give; when we talk about the show, we talk about areas that worked and areas that didn’t work and how can we make that better and how can we give a better show for the people that have come.
“When you’re in that place, it’s always a good feeling when you’re giving away. I hate to sound so altruistic about it, but I think it’s common knowledge that giving and being of service is an important thing to do, and you can apply that to your art.”
But the band had a very specific way to give back, as well. “I was looking for a way to include our fans from around the world. We’ve always had a really active participation, and I wanted them to be a part of this record, and I was looking for a way to do that utilizing the technology,” he said. “In the digital age there’s an opportunity there to utilize some of the technology out there to further the experience and the creative experiment. We held an event called “The Summit” in Los Angeles. We invited a thousand people to come and be a part of the album. They sang and chanted, they stomped and clapped, and it went so well we did it in eight different countries around the world.
“I got a Twitter message from someone in Iran who was frustrated they couldn’t make one of the Summits that we held globally, so that gave me the idea to launch a digital version of the Summit. So people could sit at home by themselves with friends and participate… If you’ve heard ‘Kings and Queens’ or seen the video and it sounds like there’s a big gang of people on that song, it’s actually tens of thousands of people from all over the world.”
We capped the conversation with a very simple question: what does he think of how the new album turned out?
“I think we’ve become more of who we really are,” he said. “I think this record is a transformation. We demanded a lot of ourselves; we pushed ourselves are hard as we can, and this is the best we can do. This is it. We all know that because we didn’t let ourselves do anything less; we demanded that of each other and ourselves.
The 1991 Brett Easton Ellis satire, centering around a Wall Street banker living a double life as a psychopathic serial killer, was adapted by Mary Harmon in 2000 into a film and starred Christian Bale, and is now being adapted into a Broadway musical with tunes that will have an ’80s aesthetic, the decade in which the story takes place.
Duncan Sheik, who previously composed the awesome Spring Awakening, will be writing the music and lyrics, and Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, a writer on HBO’s Big Love, is writing the script.
We’re cautiously optimistic – talented people are definitely behind the development, and we LOVES us some ’80s music, so we’ll have to wait and see!
They should get Christian Bale and Reese Witherspoon to reprise their roles from the movie! We saw Newsies and Walk the Line, those bitches can sing!!
Even Jared Leto can come back so he sing while his character gets axed to death!!
Last night, Calvin Klein and the Los Angeles Nomadic Division co-hosted the first annual celebration for LA Arts, honoring projects that have had a significant impact in the field of contemporary art. More importantly: Jared Leto was there.-
Ahhhh, Jared Leto. As much as these pictures were an interesting from an anthropological point of view, especially as Rachelle prepares for her journey out West (People in LA smoke, drink, and text on their blackberries, much like in New York), as beautiful as Nicky Hilton looked, it was Jared Leto’s presence that really impressed us with this gathering. As a fiercely pro-Jordan Catalano office, we had to hide these photos after the page-break to keep us from getting distracted all day. Look at how adorable he is in this candid!
Jared Leto wants more of his music in your games.
Jared Leto doesn’t just like videogames; he wants want to help make them. The third album from 30 Seconds to Mars, This is War, was released in December, but before that the album’s title track was featured prominently in Dragon Age: Origins. And for Leto, those ole videogame machines represent much more than just a way to pass the time.
“I think it’s an exciting place to collaborate, an exciting place to experiment,” he said. “I’m a big supporter of new technologies and new places to share music… I think the [Electronic Arts] Dragon Age is a great example of delivering a song simultaneously with an image that helped to build upon each other. I think there was a good marriage there.”
But not everyone in the music industry has that mindset. “I’ve heard some other artists talk about how ridiculous the notion is that [their] songs would be heard in a video game,” he said before reminding us that is not his view. “I think for people to assume it’s just this wasteland of commerciality or something is ridiculous.
“I think there are incredible opportunities,” he continued. “It’s an exciting place to look for creative opportunities. When I see video games, I’m always blown away by how they’re pushing technology, the sense of community, gamers themselves, their identity, and how it’s become a major part of people’s lives.”
While the members of the band, including Leto, may like to pick up a controller in their downtime, he was hesitant to call them “gamers.”
“All of us in the band dabble. You have to be careful if you identify yourself as a gamer, before someone comes in and shows you what a gamer actually is,” he said. “For me, I’m more on the tech side of things. When I see someone playing a game, I’m less about, ‘Ooh, I wanna play that.’ I’m more about, ‘How did they do that? How did they write that program?’”
For Leto, his ambition is not simply limited to having 30 Seconds to Mars songs show up in a game every once in a while.
“We’re always looking for new opportunities to do something special, and I’d love to actually score a videogame at some point,” he said. “I’m looking forward to finding new ways to experiment in that space.”
30 Seconds to Mars is featured on the cover of the upcoming issue of Big Cheese Magazine. If you pre-order the magazine online, you will receive a free CD and an exclusive My Chemical Romance patch.
30 Seconds To Mars have raised a staggering $100,100 (one hundred thousand, one hundred dollars) for the Haiti earthquake appeal through a charity Ebay auction.
The lucky bidder won the chance for them and up to 3 friends to have tickets and backstage access to any show of their choice, plus an exclusive dinner with the band.
This is just one of many efforts the band have undergone to support the Haiti appeals. Singer Jared Leto recently donated £1000 ($1700) for the Echelon ‘House For Haiti‘ appeal where almost 5 houses have already been funded, and has attended the ‘Hope For Haiti Now’ phone bank in the states.
Jared recently confirmed that himself and brother Shannon lived in the Caribbean country for a year as teenagers where their Mother helped to run two hospitals.
