L.A. Rocks: eleven acts that shatter the cliche that L.A.'s a one-note town

Interview, Nov, 2002

RS: Well, I get the good food. If I'm looking for something to eat, I can just go around the corner.

GA: Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers said something very interesting in an interview recently--that the fact that people can stay sincere and have joy in the face of phoniness or economic elitism is a testament to the spirit of Los Angeles.

RS: That's true.

GSL: Oh, I love Flea.

GA: Yeah, he's the coolest. And like he said, L.A. is such a strange conglomeration of focuses on the purest form of the self and also the purest form of elitism. My experience in Los Angeles has been that there's a predominant focus on what's trendy--the new car and the new tote bag, all that stuff. It seems to me, however, that your focus is grounded more in the self and finding out what makes real joy, not instantaneous material joy. How are you able to handle that in a city like L.A.?

GSL: Disengage. I mean, I have a daughter and I'm married and I think that has been one of the most grounding things for me, because I can't go out clubbing every night, and I don't feel like doing it, so I pretty much avoid that world. I'm only in that world when I'm working in it.

GA: Same here. And how has your daughter influenced how you make music?

GSL: Well, she's been the inspiration for a lot lyrically, but I definitely have to be more organized with my time. It's been quite challenging to write.

GA: Can you tell me about the title of the new album, Divine Operating System?

GSL: We wanted to name the record Dos initially, which is the Spanish word for two, and then it was a question of, "Will we get in trouble from Microsoft for this?" But then I started thinking about the whole operating system aspect and it just came to us that Divine Operating System would be a great analogy for the human condition.

GA: Do you think that your fan base is similar to you, in how they live their lives?

RS: Our fans are all geeky, like nerds and-

GSL: Freaks.

GA: So are mine! [all laugh]

Gillian Anderson can be seen in a West End production of What the Night is For starting the 27th of this month.

30 SECONDS TO MARS BY INCUBUS' BRANDON BOYD

As other bands strip away the layers in pursuit of a raw, ragged sound, 30 Seconds to Mars are busy piling the layers on, with their atmospheric self-titled debut (Immorta/Nirgin). Here front man, actor Jared Leto, sheds some light on the forward-thinking band's evolution.

BRANDON BOYD: Did you guys start out in L.A.?

JARED LETO: Yeah,. We used to play shows in and around California and we would change our name every night because at that point we were just doing it for ourselves. We were signed in '99 but we never thought we would make a CD.

BE: I have a question about your name, 30 Seconds to Mars. Is that like a "quickest way to the sky" metaphor, or is it a "colonization of a fertile planet" metaphor?

JL: I think the first is closest to the truth. It's something that was referred to in a thesis we found on the Internet, that a professor at Harvard wrote. It was a subsection in the thesis about the impending advancement of science and culture and how it's happening quicker and quicker and we're almost quite literally 30 seconds from Mars. You thought it was something sexual, didn't you? BE: No! [laughs]