UK: For actor and musician Jared Leto life is rocking "30 seconds to Mars"

Things are looking up for 30 Seconds to Mars. After making music for over a decade, touring four continents and releasing two successful albums, it looks like the band has finally turned the corner and are looking to move residence from the small clubs and pubs to larger concert venues. The band, fronted by actor Jared Leto, is in the UK promoting "A Beautiful Lie", the follow up to their self-titled 2002 debut album, and preparing for a busy summer touring the world. The album, which was released in 2005, has sold over 900,000 copies in the United States and 'The Kill' the second single from the record, became the longest-running hit in the Billboard Modern Rock chart. The single is now being released in Britain and to coincide with the launch and due to a successful February tour that included sold out dates in London and Manchester, the band are back for a five-date tour before jetting off to Australia and Japan. It has not been an easy ride for the Leto brothers who started the band back in the 90s and they say they are having a hard time believing success is finally coming their way. "It's been incredible, I mean, we're still kind of getting used to the way things are now as opposed to the way things were, I think that we still carry with us that feeling of the underdog. I don't know, it takes a while for it all to sink in. It's kind of a surreal time," Jared Leto told Reuters. Having made it through various rejections Leto said they were particularly proud of their recent achievements. "We'd been recording music as well and writing music for a number of years and played it for some people and were promptly rejected time and time again and I think a couple of years after playing it to people someone finally said 'you guys want to make a record?' and we had very much wanted to make an album so we did that. And that was in 1998 that that happened. So it's actually been almost our ten year anniversary as a signed band," Leto explained. Long term commitment to this band comes with great fringe benefits. "Tomo is coming up on his fifth year anniversary in the band. He gets a Swatch watch," Leto joked about the band's guitarist Tomo Milicevic. With a successful Hollywood career and over 15 acclaimed films including 'Requiem for a Dream' and 'Fight Club' under his belt, it might come as a surprise that the man who repeatedly made the People magazine's list of "50 Most Beautiful People in the World" struggled to get his band noticed. But from the start, Leto was determined not to be grouped with other singing actors and in the early days of the band was said to refuse to play at venues that used his Hollywood fame to promote concerts. But that is all in the past and the singer, who recently put on 62 pounds to play Mark David Chapman, the man who murdered John Lennon, in the new movie "Chapter 27", says he has moved on and feels more comfortable with being associated with both camps. "I think there are worse problems to have out there, that's for sure. At this point it doesn't really bother me that much. I'm really proud of the films that I've made and I'm really proud of the music and at this point fortunately there's so many things to talk about and it's been such an exciting past couple of years that I'm starting to try to get people to talk about the movies a little bit more, you know, just to balance it out," he said. Leto's brother Shannon and guitarist Tomo Milicevic were quick to show their support and said the frontman's other career does not intervene with their aspirations as musicians. "I mean he is an artist at the end of the day, he expresses himself through these different vehicles and that's just the way it is. We don't want to forget that expression, it is an important part of our life," said Shannon Leto. Jared Leto is very much the creative force behind 30 Seconds to Mars and the band members said they trusted in Leto's vision and direction for the band. But Leto himself said he had come to doubt those visions when what he thought was going to be the band's greatest music video fell short of expectations. For 'The Kill' music video the band wanted to pay homage to Stanley Kubrick's 1980 classic 'The Shining'. But the result was not quite what Leto had envisioned. "When we were doing it we knew that we were doing something that had a lot of potential for us, and that really had a potential to be a great visual representation of one of our songs finally and to do something that has a sense of humour and something that was a little strange like us, something that really said who 30 Seconds To Mars was. And so we shot it, we were feeling great about it and then I saw the first cut of it and I almost had a heart attack because I though it was so bad. I broke down into a cold sweat, I kid you not, I was watching it on the computer and I was like (breathing heavily). I really thought that I had quite possibly ruined our entire career," he recalled. The success of the single has proved Leto had no reason for concern and the band recently went to record their next video in China, making history with what is the first American music video shot entirely in the People's Republic. The "From Yesterday" video was recently voted "the greatest epic video of all time" on Yahoo! Australia and fans down under will get a chance to see the band live as they jet down for the April 29 MTV Video Music Awards in Sydney and additional concerts in Melbourne and Brisbane. Before performing at various European summer festivals including Rock am Ring in Germany and the Download Festival in the UK, the band will travel to Japan, Hawaii and Scandinavia. With 2007 being noted as the year that musicians made a stance for the environment, Leto is acutely aware of what happens when celebrities jump on the eco-bandwagon. Tongue in cheek, the singer outlined his efforts to reduce his carbon footprint. "I've actually decided to stop breathing because, you know, we've all talked about this, the carbon dioxide we give off is really dangerous so if we could all hold our breath for at least four and a half, five minutes, we could do wonderful things," he joked. But Leto was quick to add that the band's latest tour was a "green tour" and that the band were proactively looking for green touring alternatives. "The Kill" will be released in the UK on April 30.

ITN Source | April 26, 2007

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