Jared Leto shares why he feared no one would see the comeback of band Thirty Seconds To Mars
Jared Leto has revealed how his House of Gucci co-star Lady Gaga inspired him when he went back into the recording studio. See the exclusive video.
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As Jared Leto prepared to make his grand entrance at the famed Lollapalooza festival last month, he had no fear about free falling two storeys from the roof to the stage.
This is a man whose hobby is to scale sheer rock faces, or climb city buildings while waiting for his Uber ride to arrive.
“To me, it seems so normal. I’m standing there waiting for an Uber and I’m like, ‘Oh, that looks climbable’,” he said from his New York hotel room.
“It’s a pretty natural thing to do, you know? We’re not too far from swinging around in branches.”
What caused him a spike of anxiety ahead of his Lollapalooza leap was the fear no one would see it.
Watch our exclusive video with Jared Leto below:
Thirty Seconds To Mars, the rock band he created with his older brother Shannon 25 years ago, were making their concert comeback in the US after a long hiatus.
“I was more nervous about anyone coming over to see us play because it had been so long since we’d played a show – we played Lollapalooza in 2007 and before that in 2003,” he says.
“The world has changed; it’s a hip hop and pop world.
“But I was really quite moved and humbled by the turnout … my brother and I, we’re at that point in our lives where we recognise how fragile all of this is and we just feel quite lucky to be able to keep doing it, to make a sixth album and go back on tour.”
Leto has always been regarded as an eccentric outlier, a daredevil actor who immerses himself in the disparate characters he plays in film and the persona he inhabits on the concert stage as a rock frontman.
In the five years since the band released their previous record America, Leto has been focused on his acting career and starred in a clutch of films including House of Gucci and Haunted Mansion.
He and his brother moved frequently from city to city during their childhood with their mother and grandparents and continued his nomadic lifestyle into adulthood with touring and film shoots.
When the world was stopped in its tracks by the Covid pandemic in 2020, it was the first time in his life he was forced to stand still.
“I feel like I gained a couple of years in my life,” Leto said.
“I know it was really challenging and tough for so many people, but for us it was a bit of a blessing. I mean, it was good for our heads, it was good for our creative spirit. And we just decided to take advantage of it and start writing and writing.”
Their pent-up creativity unlocked, the brothers wrote 200 songs. Somehow they whittled down that vast collection to just eleven tracks on the new record It’s the End of the World but It’s a Beautiful Day.
Thirty Seconds To Mars have long been regarded as a hard rock band but their new record is irrefutably pop; it is impossible not to think of his House of Gucci co-star Lady Gaga when listening to the opening track Stuck and the “Rah Rah Rahs” of Bad Romance.
“She’s incredible. I don’t know if it was Picasso who said it, but, you know, steal from the best,” he said.
“There isn’t any real direct influence from her song to this but there’s something about that scale that sounds very Russian or something, so I think it’s a similar scale.”
As frontman of the band, and a globally recognised actor, Leto has always commanded the greater share of the spotlight than his brother.
He is quick to sing the praises of Shannon’s considerable production skills, songwriting and musicianship and their sibling bond.
“Our relationship as brothers wouldn’t be the same if it wasn’t for the band or the band probably wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for the fact that we were brothers, because there are too many challenges.” he said.
“And it’s hard to break up with your brother.
It has been almost a decade since the band toured Australia. Leto is in a holding pattern with the current Hollywood writers and actors strikes as he again faces the juggling act of scheduling concert dates around film shoots when the strike is resolved.
So he can’t make any promises about when Thirty Seconds To Mars will return to our stages.
“I hope that we can figure something out. We absolutely love to come down there … it’s a special place.”
It’s the End of the World but It’s a Beautiful Day is out now.
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