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Mike Shinoda's Daughter Asked, "What Does He Know About Performing?" About Her Dad
After a rejected guitar lesson, Mike Shinoda's wife Anna Shinoda showed their child a concert video that prompted her to ask, "Who's that?"
To millions of rock fans of a certain generation, Linkin Park is an influential, genre-crossing band — one that sold out concerts featuring its newly-reformed lineup in L.A. and New York City just this September. But to Linkin Park co-founder Mike Shinoda's daughter, he's simply "Dad." And during a September 17 visit to The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Shinoda recounted how his wife recently shocked their child with a video of the band playing to a massive audience after she'd rejected his guitar lesson.
Shinoda told Jimmy Fallon that while his three kids "do play some music" including drums and piano, they don't have a ton of memories of Linkin Park as an active band. That's because they hadn't toured "for like seven years," he explained, following the 2017 death of co-lead vocalist Chester Bennington.
"For them, their memories of Linkin Park are — they don't really have them, because they were so much younger," Shinoda said. So when the musician offered to help his daughter with a song she was planning to perform at school, she was skeptical that he'd have anything to offer when it came to performing live.
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Mike Shinoda's wife blew their daughter's mind with a Linkin Park concert video
"One of my daughters said, 'Oh, you know, I signed up to play this song at this school festival type of thing'," Shinoda said, adding that she told him she was planning to sing and play guitar.
"This girl doesn't know how to play guitar. She took two lessons at that point, this was a couple years ago," he continued. "I guess it was probably like a week or two later, I'm listening and I'm hearing her doing her thing, and she's got most of it. Like, she's getting really pretty far, but there's a couple things she's not doing correctly — like, one of the chords is wrong, for example."
"I was like, 'How's everything going?'" Shinoda continued, saying he casually pointed out, "your fingers go here" when it came to playing that chord. "And she's like, 'Yeah, whatever.'" So, trying to be a chill yet supportive dad, he took the hint.
But the next day, "she came to me and was like, 'Hey, Dad, um, can you show me that chord?' And I was like, 'Oh, yeah, cool. No problem'," he said. "I just thought, 'Oh, she came around.'"
That's when his wife, Anna Shinoda, informed him with a laugh, "That's not what happened."
"She said, 'I heard you two talking originally, and [their daughter] was like, 'Get out of here', basically. Like, 'don't tell me how to play,'" Shinoda said.
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He told Fallon that his wife told him, "After you left, I went in the room and I was like, 'Hey, like, you should listen to your dad.' And my daughter goes, 'What does HE know about performing?'"
This got a big reaction from both fellow-dad Fallon and the Tonight Show audience.
"My wife literally pulled up a video of Linkin Park, onstage at, like, Rock in Rio in front of 85,000 people," Shinoda continued. "And she shows it to her, and my daughter goes, 'Who's that?'"
But Shinoda's just happy that "now, they get to be out here and see the real show," he said.
"And they're so cool. They couldn't be nicer kids," Fallon told him, having met them backstage ahead of Linkin Park's performance of "The Emptiness Machine" with new vocalist Emily Armstrong.
"They're so sweet. They're the sweetest kids," Shinoda agreed.
Watch Mike Shinoda's full interview above, and watch The Tonight Show weeknights at 11:35/10:35c on NBC, streaming next day on Peacock.
