Sound CheckThirty Seconds to Mars remembers their first show in Toronto
In 1998, Los Angeles rock band Thirty Seconds to Mars played their first show in Toronto. In a very candid interview with Yahoo! Canada Music, the group recalled their visit to the Great White North and why performing in Canada matters so much to them.
“Our first show in Toronto was in 1998 at the Horseshoe Tavern,” lead singer Jared Leto said. “It’s been a while now.”
“We were so excited,” drummer Shannon Leto added. “We were rehearsing down the street in this warehouse, getting ready for the show and we all got there and were so excited and there were like three people out there. It was great.”
This week, the band (consisting of brothers Jared and Shannon Leto and guitarist Tomo Milicevic) releases their fourth studio album, "Love Lust Faith + Dreams," and even though they’ve come a long way, they still remember their special Canadian fans.
“I think [Canada] was a place for us that was kind of an early indicator that we were actually doing something meaningful, something worthy,” the frontman explained.
He continued, “People supported us and believed and came to the shows and that meant a lot. We were very proud of that, that early success in Toronto and [in] other parts of Canada and we went out there and toured. We played all of these places like Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary [and] London.”
Available now in Canada, "Love Lust Faith + Dreams" features songs like “Up in the Air” and “Conquistador” and cover art from English artist Damien Hirst’s Spot Paintings series.
Hirst said of his Spot Paintings series: “To create that structure, to do those colours, and do nothing. I suddenly got what I wanted. It was just a way of pinning down the joy of colour.”
When asked if the above quote tied in at all to the connection between Hirst’s work and "Love Lust Faith + Dreams," the singer agreed. “This new album is very focused, there’s a lot of space, it’s at times very minimal and [also] at times a celebration.”
He also said, “It was great to work with his art and have him be part of the video and have his work grace the cover of our album … I think that something about the ‘joy of colour’ feels like a rebirth, a renewal, and this album feels that way for us, too. I also think that ‘Love Lust Faith + Dreams’ are like the four elements of the emotional life.”
In addition to feeling “like a rebirth,” it seems like this record also helped the band bring a piece of their past forward. The sounds of a music box that the Leto brothers used to fall asleep to when they were young made its way on the album’s last track, “Depuis Le Début.”
“It’s carved out of wood,” Milicevic described. “It’s old and little and it looks exactly how you would think.”
Check out the music video for the album's first single, “Up In the Air,” which also features Hirst’s work. According to Leto, the clip is a “bizarre, hallucinogenic, experimental film [that’s] gotten a tremendous response.”
Head here to learn when you can see Thirty Seconds to Mars on tour.
