Ultimate guitar - Février 2010

Yes; we tend to look for things that have been tread upon just a little less than others. I think that it’s exciting to do things that haven’t been done so many times before or not at all. And it keeps it interesting for us and I would hope the audience as well. And, uh, it’s a way to deepen the conversation with our audience around the world and to have a stronger connection as well.

I think for me, some of those bands – whether it was Zeppelin or Pink Floyd or the Who – they certainly had an idea of community that went along with their bands. And I always responded to that. I was always interested in a very active participation from the audience and the bands. We’ve always been really open and engaged with our listeners.

It’s definitely informed us; it’s inspired us. And I think the interactivity on This Is War is really a huge part of the album. The Summit that we did, the very first one in Los Angeles, was so encouraging that we ended up doing eight of them around the world. And then eventually a digital version as well.

For people who don’t know what the Summit is, it was just really a collaboration between our audience and the band. And we invited people to participate and record on the new album. It made a big impact on This Is War.

Yeah, they appear on every single song except for two or three.

It was inspiring; it was exciting. We enjoyed it a lot and we’ve done it now and I’m not so sure we would repeat that but maybe in a different way we would build upon that idea. It was definitely an interesting thing to do and we learned a lot from it.

Uh, not in the way that we’re doing now. We certainly utilize new technologies and we’re able to further some of these ideas and make these projects work in a way they wouldn’t have been able to in a different age. We’re takin’ full advantage of the digital age here and it’s exciting to use some of the new technologies to help implement creative ideas.