The brothers Leto -- singer/guitarist Jared and drummer Shannon -- have returned stateside with lead guitarist Tomo Milicevic to deliver more spacewalking rock from their popular power trio Thirty Seconds to Mars. Along for their interstellar ride is the crowd-sourcing project called Faces of Mars, in which fans can upload their mugs onto the cover of limited-edition copies of the multiplatinum band's latest effort, "This Is War," released last December.
They scored Best Rock Video for "Kings and Queens" at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards, to go along with their various trophies from Kerrang! and others, as well as a string of No. 1 hits. In advance of the band's Oct. 3 performance at Egyptian Room, Jared Leto talked about Kanye West, tweets from Iran and more.
» You went crowd-sourcing with the Faces of Mars campaign by pulling fans into the creative process online and in a real-time gathering called "The Summit." Are you raising an army to take over Earth?
It was great to do something interactive and include our fans. We ended up doing the first one here in L.A., and about a thousand people showed up from all over the world. It went so well, we did it in eight other countries.
» What impact did that social engineering experiment have?
It really added something special to the songs. I got a Twitter message from someone in Iran who was disappointed because they couldn't make it to any of the global summits that we did. That gave me the impetus to do a digital version of the summit, where people could participate from anywhere.
» What was it like working with Kanye West on "This Is War?" (Editor's note: West's contributions to the track "Hurricane" were removed due to label conflicts.)
He was a pleasure to work with. Easygoing, nice and really hospitable. I think what he did on the song is some of his most interesting singing to date.
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